Do you hide your anxiety from your colleagues? Your friends? Even your family? Do you put on a brave face, force a smile, and pretend to laugh at their jokes. You might even do this when you are desperate to tell someone how you feel and what is going on inside.
This is called “masking”. You may do it consciously or quite unconsciously, hiding your true feelings just to conform to social norms. Maybe you force yourself to make more eye contact than you really want to, or tell people around you, “I’m just fine”.
Masking is exhausting. You spend your day living a lie, pretending you’re something that you’re not. You do this in order to fit in, so that people around you don’t feel uncomfortable, so that they don’t start avoiding you, so that you are accepted. But at the end of the day, you feel shattered.
To Mask Or Not To Mask?
You will need to create a balance between when you mask, when you mask just a bit, and when you don’t mask at all. You need to have the balance between fitting in with social norms and avoiding feeling exhausted all the time.
When you are talking to someone important (say, going for a job interview), you probably want your full mask on. When talking with your family or friends who know the state of your mind, then you can go “half-masked” for a while. When you are talking with your therapist or you are on your own, you can go completely unmasked.
Only you know the relationship you have with people around you, so only you can judge how masked you need to be.
What To Do About The Masking Dilemma
The first thing to do is to recognise when you are masking. Many anxiety-ridden people mask automatically, without consciously thinking about it. Being aware of your masking habit is useful. Start to develop an awareness of the situations when you mask and the people you mask in front of most often. Become aware of the times where you can let go of the mask and drop any pretence.
Once you are aware of it, you can start to choose when you want to mask and when you don’t. You have more control over it. When you have more control over it, it can become less exhausting.
If you realise that you have long periods (say at work) when you are masking all the time, it can be helpful to schedule in breaks when you can be on your own, letting the mask drop for a few minutes.
If you find yourself avoiding company because masking is too exhausting, remember that positive interaction with other people is very good for counteracting anxiety, so consider scheduling in more time with friends.
Masking is all a balancing act. You have to find the best point on the scale for you.
And Finally …
I help people with anxiety, using hypnotherapy to help them to get back to normality and free themselves from the masking dilemma. You can Contact Me if you want to ask questions about how it all works. I work out of my clinic in Fleet, Hampshire as well as online.
Photo by Sean Nkomo on pexels