A good friend and teacher showed this to me, and it really opened my eyes. I hope it does the same for you.
Parents, teachers, friends and media images taught you acceptable and unacceptable ways to look, act and believe. You learned which behaviors earned you approval, which “self” of all your possible selves would be accepted and loved. Using this knowledge, you constructed an acceptable personality and internalized the rules of conformity.
You can suppress traits that don’t conform--dangerous thoughts, naughty impulses--but you can’t destroy them. They go into hiding, creating subconscious personalities or shadow selves, the cast of characters for your dreams and a rich source of insight into human nature for anyone willing to venture into wild, uncharted areas of the psyche. Your public persona might earn the acceptance and love you want. But you lose a lot, too--all those possible other selves you might have been, the authentic impulses you never express, the creative resources that might have enabled you to live more fully, effectively and joyfully.
And your mind may pick up a constant, numbing fear: if you must suppress some of your impulses and inclinations, they must be wrong or even evil. That means you must be wrong or evil, too. You may fool the world into thinking you’re okay, the reasoning goes, but deep inside, you know what a wretch you really are. You may become terrified that a shadow self will emerge at the wrong time, like a belch at the dinner table, and you’ll be found out for the faker you know yourself to be. When that happens, all your love and acceptance will be snatched away, leaving you alone and miserable.
Only in moments of extreme intimacy do you ever get to see anybody else’s shadow selves. Usually you see only the assured, confident masks others wear. So you may believe you’re the only pretender, all alone in your deception and fear, the only one in the world who must forever wear the lying mask. It takes a lot of energy to create the mask and to keep it from slipping. The constant anxiety and underlying sorrow costs still more. The strain may even make you sick.
“You are healthy when you are most yourself,” according to Dr. Kenneth Pelletier, an expert on links between stress and disease. “There is no prescription for health other than that. Do anything that gives you a sense of enthusiasm and joy, and be yourself.”
If you could put down your mask, release your fear, welcome your shadow selves out into the sunlight--imagine the energy, health and joy you might also release. It’s easy to say but terribly hard to do, after a lifetime of keeping the mask firmly in place. It may be the hardest work you’ll ever do--and the most rewarding.
“This is my way,” the philosopher Nietzsche wrote. “What is your way? The way doesn’t exist.” But how do you begin to create that authentic “you” as opposed to a masked self? You don’t. The real you is already there. You need only let it emerge. Take off the mask. Stop pretending. Be what you are. Set your own standards. Strip your life of any object or action that is false to your true self that clutters and complicates your life and separates you from your true self.
It won’t be easy, especially at first. The longer you’ve responded as your masked self, the more automatic those responses have become. Your first thought will be the one you were taught to have. Your first impulse will be the acceptable impulse, the “right” behavior, the desire you’ve learned to let yourself have. Take a deep breath, challenge that first response, and ask yourself if that’s what you really want to do. If your gut tells you that what you were about to do is false to what you believe, don’t do it.
If others disapprove or fail to understand--as they surely will--grant them the freedom to react as they must. You want their love and approval, of course. But you don’t need it. And when you drop the mask, you’ll begin to attract those who can approve of and love you for what you are, not for what you’ve worked so hard to seem to be.
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