Here in the United States, we are fast approaching Halloween, an annual holiday characterized by trick-or-treating, carving jack-o-lanterns, watching horror films and, most importantly wearing costumes. This time of year always makes me reflect on the imagination and effort we put into creating our disguises and how the human operating system works the exact same way.
In my book Why Good People Do Bad Things, I describe 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 these personas to hide and protect what others (and we ourselves) have made wrong, bad, and unacceptable. We create a false self in the hopes that somehow it will help us fit into the strict guidelines of our outer surroundings, no matter how crazy, scary, or dull they might have been. We cover up our authentic self in order to become who we believe will be the "right" us, the acceptable us, the us that would belong. Day by day, experience after experience, we unknowingly construct an invisible fortress that becomes our false self, and this fortress of false expression obscures our essence, hiding our vulnerabilities, our sensitivities, and often our ability to know and see the truth about ourselves.
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 adjusting our personas accordingly.
We may have chosen a particular persona thinking it would protect us from harm or make us invisible so that we would go unnoticed by those who were critical of us. We may have taken on the mask of the Tough Guy/Tough Cookie because that’s what our culture expected, or because we feared that if we exposed our sweet, innocent self, we would be beaten, taken advantage of, shunned, or teased. If stupidity was condemned in our households, we might have become the intellectual snob, otherwise known as the know-it-all. We may have chosen a particular mask because we saw how well it worked for someone we knew. Maybe we met a friend at school who gained admiration or respect by flaunting the mask of the Good Girl, Too Cool, or the Bully, so we fashioned our persona in their likeness. We might have observed how much attention the Seductress seemed to get from men or how the Charmer always seemed to have women eating out of the palm his hand. Maybe we realized early on that we were never going to be the so-called popular one, so we opted for what we hoped would be the next best thing-becoming the Entitled Supporter and positioning ourselves close to those with fame, power, or a status higher than our own. Maybe guilt and burden were passed down from generation to generation in your family, so you just took on the persona you saw operating in your mother and became a classic Martyr.
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 Good Girl, we will seek out opportunities where we can show up as being helpful, kind, and useful. If we are Martyrs, we will unknowingly put ourselves in precarious situations where we will be used, abused, and taken advantage of. If we are People Pleasers, 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.
As a coach and seminar leader specializing in emotional and spiritual education, I have spent the last twenty years teaching people from every walk of life to recognize their masks and begin to dismantle them. 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. The challenge and the opportunity is for us to wake ourselves from the trance of the false self so that we can experience the limitlessness of our authentic expression.
Transformational Action Steps
- 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 Thingsand rank them in the order in which you think they might apply to you.
- 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?
In all my years of teaching, 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.
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