What Masks Are You Wearing This Halloween?
This week in the United States we are all getting ready for Halloween, the annual holiday characterized by trick-or-treating, carving jack-o-lanterns, attending haunted houses, and dressing up in costumes. While the holiday is mostly associated with children, over the years more and more adults are embracing the chance to put on a mask and let their inner child come out and play. ll you have to do is look at the internet and the plethora of Facebook posts from this past weekend to see that more than ever, adults use Halloween as an opportunity to step out of their everyday persona and expose their suppressed wild side, superhero, sexy Cinderella or favorite character from hit TV shows like Orange Is The New Black or Breaking Bad.
Halloween is all about dressing up to have fun so this past week on Shadow Talk we discussed the Shadow of Fun. Many people realized that they are actually wearing a mask all year round. It is their mask of being the “Responsible One,” “Perfect Daughter,” “Good Guy or Girl,” or the “Steadfast Provider” that impacts their ability to be spontaneous, relax, put down the “to do” list for an hour, a day, or a week and just have FUN!
In her book Why Good People Do Bad Things, Debbie Ford describes in great detail the false self and the process by which our wounded ego, in an effort to distance itself from its deep feelings of shame, unworthiness and powerlessness, constructs masks and personas for us to hide behind. We create a false self and select what we consciously or unconsciously believe will be the perfect persona in the hopes that somehow it will help us fit into the strict guidelines of our outer surroundings. We cover up our authentic self and meticulously craft our mask in order to become who we believe will be the “right” us, the acceptable us, the us that will be loved. However, day by day, experience after experience, our costume becomes our cage as we unknowingly construct an invisible fortress that becomes our false self. This fortress of false expression obscures our essence, hiding our vulnerabilities, our sensitivities, our ability to know and see the truth about ourselves, as well as our propensity to let go, relax and enjoy life.
Just like year after year we dress up in different Halloween costumes, the wounded ego can take on a variety of different masks to camouflage its perceived inadequacies. The nature of the facade that we choose varies from person to person, and most of us have more than one social mask that we wear, depending on who we are with and what stage of life we are in. Most of us began constructing these exterior facades at an early age as we tried to calculate which way of being would get us the most love and provide the greatest cover-up for our wrenching shame and our wounded egos. Some of us chose our personas by observing how others perceived our true and authentic self and then adjusted our personas accordingly.
Although we originally choose a particular persona hoping it will protect us or get us the attention we crave or the love we need, once our facade is firmly in place, we begin to be used by the nature of the mask we have chosen. If we are the “Responsible One,” we can never stop working or taking care of others. If we are the “Good Girl or Guy,” we will we will seek out opportunities where we can show up as being helpful, kind, and useful at the expense of our own truth. If we are the “Martyr,” we will unknowingly put ourselves in precarious situations where we will be used, abused, and taken advantage of. If we are the “People Pleaser,” we will find exactly those people to latch on to—usually people whose approval we crave—who will ask us to do things for them so we can say yes even when we are dying to say no. In other words, we attract to us the very people who will help us ensure that we can continue playing the same character over and over again—even when it has become so painful that we can no longer take it. We stay glued to our costumes because we believe we are the mask we are wearing.
So as Halloween fast approaches, take time not only to think about the costume you will be wearing on October 31st but also to recognize the masks you wear on a day-to-day basis. The gifts that come with breaking free from the bonds of the restricted and tightly held-together false self are well worth the discomfort that we must go through as we peel away the layers of lies, distortions, false assumptions, and denial that hold together the mask of our self-made personas. By becoming present to the tricks of the false self, we can finally enjoy all of the treats of our authentic expression.
Transformational Action Steps
1. If you want to see how you became the person you are today, why you behave the way you do, and why you attract the kinds of experiences you attract, I invite you to examine the 20 masks of the false self in Why Good People Do Bad Things and rank them in the order in which you think they might apply to you.
2. Listen to the Shadow Talk call on The Shadow of Fun by clicking here.
3. Even if you were not planning on dressing up this Halloween, spend a few minutes to consider bringing out one of your light shadow personalities this Halloween. If you were going to dress up as your highest self, what qualities would you display? What would you wear? As a Master Integrative Coach and leader of this work, I can tell you that there is nothing more powerful than unpeeling the layers of the false self. I invite you to take this incredible journey, leaving behind the facade of yesterday for the powerful face of tomorrow.
With love,
Kelley
