What did you go as this Halloween? I love a bit of dress-up myself, this year I ended up as a slightly frazzled mum trying to look like I’m keeping it together. My mask was a weary smile.

We all have masks we wear, not just when we’re in costume. They are our ‘front’, what we let people see. The Granddaddy of analytical psychology, Carl Jung, called these our ‘personas’, after the large masks worn in the amphitheatres of Ancient Greece. Just like those masks, our personas give information about our character, about the role we are playing. They are the images of ourselves that we present to the world, often for its approval, and can also be something we hide behind.

Our personas, in many instances, provide a valuable function: they help establish expectations and often allow us to ease between social interactions more easily by setting up predictable parameters for relationships. For example, we often take on a professional persona for work: a businessperson, a lawyer, a teacher, a janitor … We may have other roles like, mother, wife, father, husband, daughter, son etc. And less defined roles that we hope to project, a ‘Success’, a ‘Saint’, ‘Infallible’, a ‘Lady’, a ‘Tough guy’ a ‘Player’, the list goes on. I believe low self-esteem and conditioning can lead some people to even adopt negative personas to curb expectations like ‘victim’, ‘loser’ etc.

Who are you?

We present ourselves in these roles, often reinforcing them with our outward appearance: a pinstriped suit and a Blackberry or some other uniform, or long painted fingernails and coiffed hair, or a coy smile, whatever fits the ideal picture. Establishing our persona allows others to better know what to expect from us. We would expect to have a different interaction if we went to see a teacher, wearing their ‘teacher mask’ versus a doctor wearing their ‘doctor mask’. This also tends to inform the role we take on in response. I wear my ‘coach mask’ when people come to see me, and in response, they wear their ‘client mask’ and we both roughly know what we expect of this relationship and interaction.

However, we can also get trapped in our roles. We can find ourselves wearing the same persona in all areas of our lives, unable to switch it off. A teacher who is always being ‘a teacher’, a caregiver who is always caregiving, even when not required or appropriate, the Suit who is always in ‘business’ mode, even when the pinstripes are hung up. When we take on these roles to such an extent, we can begin to forget what else is inside us. We hide ourselves behind these masks long enough and lose the rest of what we feel, what we think, what is important to us, and who we truly are.

We can end up living “a life of seeming rather than being”, in the words of Dr Eugene C Rollins, who wrote, “The Masks We Wear” (AuthorHouse, 2010).

It might be because a role feels all-consuming, becomes habit and we literally forget the other aspects of ourselves. (I experienced this during my first years of motherhood, a new role I felt almost overwhelmed by). Or we deliberately or subconsciously choose to allow a role to dominate us because it feels easier and less painful to be ‘this’ than the real me.

Suppressing or ignoring our real self in order to constantly perform a particular identity or give-off a certain appearance in the hopes of being more socially acceptable or revered, is exhausting and ultimately detrimental. It draws a lot of energy to maintain a mask all the time. Denying ourselves of who we are can lead to feelings of emptiness, frustration, dissatisfaction, boredom, and sometimes resentment towards others, despite it being our choice (though perhaps not entirely a conscious one) to live this half-life.

What are we so afraid of that we feel the need to cover up with these masks and personas?

Vulnerability. We believe these guises protect us from that sense of being exposed or open to attack or judgment. We use our masks to hide behind or other defence mechanisms like anger, indifference or toughness to keep people from getting close enough to see the real ‘us’ and pass judgment. It seems what we most afraid of is the thought of being rejected. This fear is so great that we can go so far as to reject our inner wisdom and compromise our deepest feelings or values to maintain a persona in order to be accepted or thought well of.

“He who trims himself to suit everyone will soon whittle himself away,” wrote Canadian playwright and author, Raymond Hull.

The irony is, that while we whittle ourselves away out of fear of rejection and a desperate need to be accepted, some would say that the only way to access real connection and love is through vulnerability — the very thing we are trying to avoid. This is the belief of Brené Brown, aka ‘Vulnerability Ted’ who has been researching this subject for the past 12 years and influenced millions through her TED Talks available online (really worth watching). She defines vulnerability as “emotional risk, exposure, uncertainty — our most accurate measurement of courage — to let ourselves be seen, to be honest.” She goes on to say that vulnerability is also “the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change”, what many of us our striving for in both our personal and professionals lives.

Vulnerability, it seems, is not the weakness we fear it is and could possibly be our greatest asset. This is not to say we necessarily need to ditch the suit, the make-up, whatever our accoutrement, and go around in our sweats telling everyone our deepest, darkest secrets. There are some helpful, healthy and measured ways to introduce more vulnerability into our lives. Next week I’ll be sharing a few ideas with you, of gentle steps to allow ourselves to be seen a little more, to peel back some of the masks and pretences we may have been using to block out the truth of who we really are. Each a layer closer a life, not based in fear of rejection, but lived with authenticity and finding those deeper levels of love and connection we deserve.

Julia Pitt is a trained Success Coach and certified NLP practitioner with Benedict Associates Ltd. Telephone (441) 295-2070 or visit www.juliapittcoaching.com for further information.