What are the factors that make up your identity? How much of who you are is determined by your family, your friends, your heritage, your profession—and what other people perceive you to be?
In a thought-provoking TEDx talk by one of our very own columnists, Mahdiyah Bandali talks about deconstructing cultural constructs and her experience as a ‘hijab-wearing paramedic’. She delves into the social psychology concept of the ‘looking glass self’ coined by Charles Horton Cooley to explain how many of us develop our sense of identity based on our perception and internalisation of what others see when they look at us and what they appear to think about us.
When we think of ourselves a certain way or assign a particular trait to ourselves, but then realise that people are responding to us as if we are the opposite, we begin to question whether we really carry the trait we thought we did. In fact, we may even revise the way we are, not to align more deeply with who we feel we are inside, but with the information we have received from others about who they think we are. This may be an effort to match up our internal and external worlds so we feel aligned, in integrity and whole—rather than having to handle what can feel like multiple identities, which can leave us feeling divided. It can also be an effort to ‘fit in’ rather than ‘ruffle feathers’, as was often the case for Mahdiyah's family, who felt lucky to come to England from east Africa and did not want to draw any negative attention.
This theory can apply not only to individuals, but also to professions. Mahdiyah's perception of a paramedic was always a burly, white male—quite the constrast from her own appearance as a 5’1” brown-skinned Muslim woman of east African, Indian and Iranian heritage who proudly wears a hijab. That disconnect luckily did not prevent her from entering the paramedic profession, despite surprised and sometimes discouraging reactions to her career choice from people she knew—but it will surely have played a role in the decisions of many others.
Interestingly, not only can negative feedback from others make a person doubt some of the positive traits they thought they had—but positive feedback can also leave one feeling like an imposter. On p 172 of the current issue of the Journal of Paramedic Practice, Mahdiyah tackles her own experience of ‘imposter syndrome’, noting that this is common among newly qualified paramedics, who can feel that their lack of experience in years takes away from their up-to-date knowledge and opinions about how to approach a patient's care or how to go about contributing to changing or improving a long-accepted but perhaps broken process.
This theory can also apply to the overall culture of paramedicine. If paramedics are perceived as needing to be tough and resilient, expected to simply move on after a traumatic experience because it's all in a day's work, or to use dark humour to handle some of the grimmer aspects of the job, this is what most paramedics will do. If it isn't ‘the done thing’ to seek help when struggling to cope with one's thoughts and feelings after a particularly difficult shift, it should come as no surprise if a quiet epidemic of post-traumatic stress creeps into the profession. On p 170 of this issue, Lyanne Pudney presents the ‘rewind technique’ and how it might benefit ambulance staff in particular. Perhaps now is the time to rewind our own process of identity development—personally and professionally—and revamp, from the inside out.