Masking As One Of The Reasons For Suffering From Anxiety
Anxiety has become perhaps the most common psychological and emotional problem today. We feel so much anxiety that it leads us to live with constant discomfort, intrusive thoughts, and even over time it leads us to discouragement. But what are the reasons? One of the most frequent is masking… that is, when you (unconsciously) strive to not be who you are but rather you build a different image of yourself for fear of the reaction of others or of not fitting in.
It is a more common problem than we think. Human beings are social beings and we adapt to different situations and contexts. You do not behave in the same way with your family, friends, partner, boss, co-workers or children. However, When we feel too much anxiety in our relationships (whether as a couple, social, friendly, work) it is because we are masking our personality
Over time this makes us feel discouraged and not know who we are or what we want. But today you are going to start solving it with this article. Let’s dive deeper into: what anxiety is and why it comes up so much, how masking your personality (or over-adapting) is a problem, and how you can start solving it today. What I am going to tell you is based on my direct experience in therapy over the last 11 years as a psychologist and coach accompanying people who managed to solve this problem. Let’s go for it.
Let’s start at the beginning. Anxiety is a state of fear and insecurity that has become widespread, as if you lived in a state of alert It is an unpleasant emotional state that leads us to live with intrusive thoughts, negativity and, over time, fatigue and discouragement.
Feeling anxious at certain moments in our lives can be normal: a first date, a first day at work, moving, exposing yourself in front of an audience or taking a flight… All of these situations can make you feel a little anxious. The problem arises when anxiety is so frequent that it becomes the most common emotional state. The reasons are mainly two:
And what is masking?
It is both a symptom of anxiety and one of its causes. Masking means that you overadapt to others for fear of their reactions if you make your own decisions or your behavior is more spontaneous. Let’s see it in detail.
Mask: stop being you
Masking is when we make an extra effort to adapt to what we believe others expect, in such a way that we do not make our decisions and do not act as we need. Sometimes it happens completely unconsciously, to the point that the person loses their identity. This can happen to you in several situations:
Start being you and overcome anxiety
These types of difficulties may have developed throughout your life or perhaps as a result of more intense experiences. The important thing about this is to understand that solving it does not consist of going to the past or seeing the cause, but rather working with what is happening to you now and solving it through your own personal change.
If that’s what you want and need, don’t hesitate to contact me. This way we can schedule a first session, get to know each other, see what the problem is and how we can solve it.
