One of the hardest things to understand if you haven’t poked about it already is that there are differences in how people do what’s called “making meaning.” This is the same as how people understand the world around them. While each individual uses their existing contexts, there is a difference between whether something is related to themselves or out in the world in general.
When all things are evaluated in terms of what they mean to the Self, this is called Identity Space. It’s an important concept because when every input, every Event is evaluated in terms of how a person looks to people outside them, it can affect so many things. If one is successful, that can increase someone’s feeling of self-worth, even self-importance. If one is not, then with the Identity mode, this can lead to self-criticism, sadness, other bad stuff we don’t need to list.
There’s another way. It’s called Model Space. Here, the Events are understood in terms of “themselves.” This means that when the software fails to do what it’s been planned to do, then it’s simply a matter of going in and fixing the code. If an outing has been planned and the weather has turned bad, this is simply a situation where new choices have to be conceived and considered. And it’s really the same with the software example: When things don’t work as planned, then we consider all the possibilities of where it goes off the rails. (I love that expression; it sounds something like: CRASH! Ooops!)
So back to things going off the rails, which happens a lot in a lot of different places, ways, generally all over. Here’s a popular example.
- You meet someone;
- they ask for your phone number;
- you start chatting;
- they ghost you.
In Identity Space, you look over what just happened and look for the story of The Coming Together. This is where two people come with their histories, expectations, experiences and make something new in the space they create together.
And as everyone knows, this can go lots of ways.
But the key here is to realize that everything that happens is not ‘your fault.’ Let’s be real here for a moment, though. Sometimes it IS your fault; frequently it’s mine, also, but usually I did it on purpose. Sometimes not, but usually.
When you use the Model approach to making meaning, you are forced to ask questions. In Identity Space, there usually aren’t questions because Feeling has taken over. When Feeling is in charge, one needs to get out the tools to move into Model Space. One could ask: Why am I feeling like this? What were my expectations? How were my expectations not met? This is a meta language, an exploration of the details of what happened. The details, not the Event itself.
Take the common complaint: Well we were chatting and then he just ghosted me.
Ok. And then what happened?
Option 1: I called my best girlfriend and told her what a creep he is and then we decided that there was something wrong with what I said or what I did and how embarrassing this whole thing was and, and, and… you kinda have to have been there once or twice.
In Model Space, the questions don’t need the girlfriend, although it can help. Here, the thing we look at is what was it for him? Do we know? What did his communication tell us about how he was feeling, what he was thinking, how he was in general. How did I react to that? What did my body do without my thinking about it? What little signals did it give me that created my responses, my behaviors, in the exchange.
And in Model Space, we learn from these, not exactly abstractly but at a distance. They don’t become part of who we are. They say off in the distance like a movie we are watching.
Short story: In Identity Space, you are only either “good” or “bad.” In Model Space, things continue to flow. You can see different perspectives, different ways of telling the Story.
One thing that’s important to know in today’s world is that the number of people with COVID-related PTSD is very high; the number of people with Politics-related PTSD hasn’t been measured yet but should come as no surprise that it’s going to be huge.
There’s one other important process in play in the Spaces and that’s called Elaboration for our purposes here. In Identity Space, one Elaborates the facts – “makes meaning of the situation” – instantly. And the individual frequently reacts to that new State. This reaction creates a reaction in the other individual and can easily escalate.
In Model Space, one observes and reserves judgment. The difference here is easy to see in this example. A person is talking and has a paragraph she wants to say to explain her point.
In Identity Space, the person will interrupt with their own idea of what they want to say. It may or may not be related to the topic sentence in the paragraph being spoken. In Model Space, the person listens to the end of the paragraph and responds based on the full text of the paragraph rather than just one of the ideas, maybe even foundational.
One more thing here, ways of making meaning are not either/or, this or that. English forces that distinction. In fact, people can slide between them, employing different skills from the Spaces to create new meanings and understandings. Frequently, there are efforts to engage this movement from one way of making meaning to another, but at the same time, there is too little support for the Model Space and too much for the emotion-laden Identity Space.
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