"Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be." --- Kurt Vonnegut

There may be times when you wear emotional masks to cope with what is happening in the world around you. You might feel overwhelmed, hurt or confused. You may hide your real emotions from others to try to keep your current situation under control. For instance, you may not want to stir up any trouble and it might might seem like the effort to explain how you actually feel will not be successful.

Just yesterday, I was having coffee with a friend. He got there early and had engaged in heated conversation with some other people. They were all involved in a lively discussion about local happenings.  I felt a little trapped as I sat down with my coffee, so I excused myself for a few moments. When I got back, after the others had left, my friend asked me why I had gone. I said that I wasn’t trying to avoid the discussion, and told him that I was indeed upset about the circumstances. But, I didn’t feel good about the conversation. It just didn’t feel right to me.

For this particular event, I decided not to act like everything was okay. In the past I might have simply sat down and held my true feelings in. There are times when we all might think that by hiding our feelings,  we can prevent some kind of argument, rejection, or judgement from happening. But, these fears most often exist only in our imagination. And, internalizing our emotions can cause personal problems, like stress and anger, later on.

In his book, "A Natural History of Human Emotions", Stuart Walton writes "I invite the reader to dwell on the active and passive forms our emotions may take, for it seems increasingly important that we be vigilant about the ways in which they are evoked - by whom and for what purposes. Once they have been misdirected in a particular context, it can prove extraordinarily difficult to reorientate them."

By giving yourself permission to look at, and eventually lift away, your masks, you're giving yourself permission to be human. You're giving yourself permission to honor your emotions. Please understand that it may take time to look at all of the masks that you wear. When you remove one, another mask that you hadn’t thought about may be underneath. But this is all a part of being human. With patience and compassion you can gradually get to know the real you.

Tags: Identity Personality Compassion Connection Relationship Feelings Emot

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