A framework from Maureen Walker’s work on disruptive empathy.
Model Me is how we want to be seen.
Not Me holds what we feel ashamed of.
Growth involves loosening these rigid categories and allow our full humanity into connection.

Model Me may hold qualities we deeply value: being generous, capable, fair, or loving. When that image becomes rigid, experiences that complicate it can become difficult even to admit to ourselves. We may explain away resentment, dismiss a mistake, or struggle to hear that someone experienced us differently than we intended.

Not Me gives us a way to notice what we push out of that picture. Some of it may be ordinary need or anger that we have learned to regard as unacceptable. Some may involve prejudice or harm we need to face. Shame alone cannot tell us whether an experience needs care, challenge, or repair. In a responsive relationship, we can begin to understand more of what is there and choose how to respond.

Maureen Walker was using the paired terms by 2016 in Who Do You Think You Are? Moving Beyond Words to Rewrite Our Racial Narratives. Her teaching placed them within an exploration of race, power, and belonging. The same presentation connected mutuality with allowing our images of ourselves and others to change. From this early use, the terms belong to a relational and cultural inquiry into identity. 

In When Getting Along Is Not Enough: Reconstructing Race in Our Lives and Relationships (2020), Walker developed Model Me and Not Me within her chapter on disruptive empathy. She described how an idealized identity can organize what we expect from ourselves and how we understand an encounter. Experience that threatens that identity may bring embarrassment or shame, giving us something difficult and potentially useful to hear.

Walker offers an example in the chapter, keeping the concept grounded in how racial power operates between people who care about one another. The example helps illustrate how recognizing contradictory experience can help us take responsibility for our participation in a relationship.

In a 2020 essay, Walker also distinguished thoughtful privacy from withholding that protects a preferred image. This adds an important question: what is our silence doing in this relationship? Making room for more of ourselves involves attention to purpose, timing, and impact. We still choose what to share and with whom. 

BCC brings this lens into everyday relationships, where many of us carry an internalized division between “all good” and “all bad.” When being caring or fair is part of our Model Me, a flash of resentment or hearing that we have hurt someone can trigger a threat to our whole sense of who we are. We may rush to defend our goodness or feel suddenly bad through and through. Loosening these categories makes room for a fuller truth: we can care deeply and cause harm, feel something we dislike and remain worthy of connection. From there, we may be more able to hear another person's experience and take responsibility for our impact.

Think of a small, recent moment when your experience surprised you: resentment while helping, uncertainty while leading, or envy toward someone you love. Name the quality you wanted to embody and the feeling that seemed to contradict it. Try a sentence that holds both: “I care about being dependable, and I am tired of being the person everyone relies on.”

If you choose, explore that sentence with someone you trust. What becomes easier to understand when both parts can be heard? You can also begin by remembering a relationship where someone made room for more than your usual role. Keep the practice small enough to stay curious; noticing may be enough for now.