How to stop masking

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

0:30Kimberley Wilson:at Whole Foods Market. Most of us are one good deal away from finally replacing that worn out rug, fixing up the backyard, or getting the bedroom we actually want. Good news, that deal's almost here. Wayfair's Black Friday in July sale. Get up to 80 % off area rugs and up to 60 % off outdoor and bedroom furniture. Shop Wayfair's huge selection of styles and find the piece to fit your style, budget, and space. Plus, free shipping. Black Friday in July ends July 27th. Shop today at Wayfair.com. Way fair, every style, every home. Hello and welcome. I'm Kimberley Wilson. I'm a counselling psychologist and this is Complex.

1:11Kimberley Wilson:The psychology podcast that helps you work out how to work your way through all the information that's out there about mental health. In today's episode, I'm exploring masking.

1:31Kimberley Wilson:Now, first up, it is very common and very typical to present a different version of ourselves in different situations. Most people don't give their boss a hug and a high five when they see them first thing. Or we notice our accent automatically changes when we're at a posh party. It's a feature of connecting and fitting in. But for some people, this goes much deeper. This is when fitting in becomes hiding who you truly are in order to feel safe and to be accepted. Maybe you spend your day rehearsing conversations or you find yourself copying others' gestures or meticulously monitoring yourself in a group environment.

2:17Kimberley Wilson:Now, it might work for you, but not really being yourself can come at a huge cost, leaving you drained and disconnected. It's something a lot of people have been doing for a long time, and it's so instinctive that you might not even know you're doing it. And so, my dear listener, this is exactly the kind of topic that I love to dig into. So, let me be your guide from the stormy sea of misinformation to the sunlit lakes of understanding.

2:55Kimberley Wilson:And today I'm delighted that psychotherapist Dr Charlotte Cooper is back in the Complex studio with me. Hello Charlotte. Hi there, what a pleasure it is to be here. We had such lovely conversations about lying and letting go, which listeners can find in the Complex feed on BBC Sounds. So please remind our listeners about your work. I work as a psychotherapist. I'm also a researcher. I'm working on a project at the moment with the photographer Holly Revel around using photographs in a therapeutic way. So I do lots of different things, cultural work, all kinds of things. But psychotherapy is my main thing.

3:34And thinking about today's topic, how does masking show up for you? Well, I'm a queer person and masking shows up for me as a kind of safety valve when I'm not entirely sure if I can trust the other person or if I feel safe enough. So I might present a version of myself that I think is acceptable to somebody else. And in the clinic, people talk about the ways in which they can't be themselves. and are frightened of being themselves too. So the work can be about understanding what that fear is about and seeing whether it can be, you know, loosened a little bit or it can be relaxed or the volume on it turned down.

4:17Thank you.

4:22Kimberley Wilson:Now, listeners will know that I love a definition. I like everybody to start on the same page so that we know what we're talking about. So Charlotte, can you explain what we mean by masking? What I think masking is, is a kind of acting or pretending, but it's not fun. It's not fun like playing a game might be, a pretending game. It's a chronic way of being and it's about hiding, putting a part of yourself away, maybe your opinions, maybe your feelings, maybe your identity. and it's different I think to other forms of you know bringing your best self to a job interview or something yeah this is about not being able to be your authentic self with people so a kind of camouflaging or a kind of suppression of aspects of yourself that feel authentic yes and what you're saying is that it it's different from just generally fitting in yes and so I'm interested in masking because this is where sociology and psychology come together for me because I think it's about power actually masking happens when perhaps you're relating to somebody who has more power than you and you don't feel safe that's really interesting I think we can already hear that this is going to be a really important episode this was like the perfect moment to bring in the listeners experience.

5:52Kimberley Wilson:So this is someone I'm going to call Helen to protect her identity. And Charlotte, I'd love you to just listen in and tell me what you think. Helen says, I'm autistic, female, and in my 60s. And for more than 60 years, I didn't know that I was autistic, which means that for the same period I've been masking successfully, have had a career and not raised too many eyebrows. However, now I know that I'm constantly masking and find it difficult to trust most other people. Autism strikes again. I can get on well with everyone I meet masking again, but I'm feeling the lack of a close friendship circle.

6:35Kimberley Wilson:And then she writes, do other older autistics have a similar experience? And are there any ways for me to unmask and open up friendships with closer acquaintances. Thank you for sharing that with us, Helen. Charlotte, what do you make of that? Oh, Helen, my heart, my heart, my heart. I know, there's so much in there. There really is. When she says, I'm finding it difficult to trust other people, I'm wondering whether if she's disconnected from herself and she's not sure she's trusting herself in social situations, she's wondering whether she can trust other people. One of the problems with masking is that you can lose yourself.

7:13And if you've been masking for such a long period, it might be quite difficult to find yourself and to know yourself too. I mean, a valuable task and I hope Helen is up for it, but a difficult one too, if you've never really known who you are. And there's another piece that comes out from Helen's letter, which is about being disruptive. You know, I've always got on with people. It's always been fine. If she unmasks, is it going to, you know, blow everything

7:38Kimberley Wilson:up is it not raised too many eyebrows yes oh yes it really does touch on there's something i suspect about my real self that might be weird or shamed or you know people won't understand eccentric or something yes isolating or alienating yeah there's a lot for her to deal with so thank you helen and thank you charlotte it's really helpful for us to try to gain an understanding of what we do and how we behave and why. So let's get into the complexity.

8:19So Charlotte, what's going on inside for the person who's masking?

8:24Kimberley Wilson:What does it feel like? Well, it's a bit of a weird one because it might not feel like anything. It might feel like being normal. There's an element of unconsciousness about masking. But I think the evidence that you might have been masking is what happens afterwards because it's exhausting to carry on. Masking is an unsustainable tactic because it just tires you out. Do you mean physically exhausting, emotionally exhausting? All of it. All of it. It's a full body mind experience. You know, has there been too much relating? Have I had to present a self that is not really me? So yeah, it takes an enormous amount out of people, I think.

9:01Kimberley Wilson:And is that because there's you and then there's the you that's monitoring the response or the outside world or looking for clues and hints of how we should behave. And then there's almost a third aspect, which is the performance piece. I think that's beautifully put. It's about having a kind of spider sense. You know, you're always on, very hyper vigilant hyper aware and that is very tiring to to keep up i mean when actors come off the stage you know you take your wig off your makeup off you put your regular clothes on and you can go back to being yourself but if you're masking you might be maintaining that as a durational performance actually for a very long time really exhausting and as you say afterwards hopefully you can drop the mask but depending on someone's circumstances potentially not it might be something that they're presenting different aspects or suppressing different aspects of themselves in lots of different realms of their lives.

9:58That's right. And not even really be aware of that. Think of that as normality too. Yes.

10:03Kimberley Wilson:And as you say that, I'm thinking about the way it disconnects you from yourself. I speak a lot with clients about actually getting to be familiar with and to trust your instincts, the aspects of yourself that are aware and conscious and filtering things that are happening to you. But that takes practice. It's like getting to know a new person. It really is. To be able to notice something feels a bit off here. It's not quite right. Am I fully relaxed? Do I feel able to bring my full self? Do I need time to recover? And so what drives us to mask? Are there any reasons that actually we might consider masking to be helpful or useful for us?

10:42There's a wonderful book by Irving Goffman, who's a sociologist, and he published this book in the 60s, and it was called Stigma. And in this book, he talked about the ways in which people manage what he called, we'd use a different language today, but what he called a spoiled identity. And people do this because if they don't, well, you might lose your job, you might get into a terrible fight with somebody. We might lose the approval or the love of a friend or a parent. so there are a lot of risks in being yourself and a lot of you know short-term benefits in tucking that away and as you're saying that I'm thinking of ways in which it might show up in all sorts of ways that people keep themselves safe so I don't know the way a woman might present

11:28Kimberley Wilson:to a man who approaches her in a bar exactly that queer people who do have to be careful about am I in a safe environment is this a safe person yes I think it's adjacent to the closet and I I think that masking has a relationship to fawning and pleasing behaviour too, that it comes from fear. Interesting. So fawning behaviour is a kind of development of the fight or flight response. So we think fight, flight, and then freeze and then fawning. And so it's a way in which you might try to appease, ingratiate yourself to the other person as a survival strategy to prevent them from becoming hostile or aggressive.

12:05Yes. Smoothing. Everything's fine here. Nothing to worry about. No bother. It's all right.

12:11Kimberley Wilson:And you touched on sometimes it's not entirely conscious. What did you mean by that? I think it's very normalised. It's kind of taken for granted or seen as a social good even. Don't upset anybody. Don't be weird. You're being weird. And it can make you scuttle away into a hole, you know. I would like to encourage people in their strangeness and weirdness, to be frank. We are pro-strange. Yes, I really am. I think normality is incredibly overrated. and that strangeness should be encouraged, but it isn't always encouraged. And especially for young people, I think, yeah, people's idiosyncrasies are beautiful.

12:48This is part of human diversity. We should really, really adore and love and cherish that.

12:53Kimberley Wilson:Yes. And you said young people, and I think there is a certain period in adolescence where stakes feel incredibly high for social exclusion or rejection, oddness, strangeness. I mean, I certainly remember kind of on non-uniform days, really worrying and panicking about what I should wear to fit in and look right. You know, it felt so important. Yes, I wonder if masking is an element of a conformist society. Yes, a kind of compliance. And thinking about masking, it seems to me, and from what you're saying, that it really cuts across a huge range of differences. so gender, race, class, religion, cultural expectations.

13:42What do you think of that? Well I'm interested in the people that don't feel that they have to mask. Who are they? What information does that give us about the people who do? And the sociologist in me comes back to power and I suspect that people who have access to structural power don't feel that they have to mask as much. They can bring their full selves.

14:02Kimberley Wilson:And thinking about our listener Helen who wrote in, autism research suggests that women and girls mask more than men and boys. And that's actually one of the reasons that they're so under-diagnosed. And would there be an aspect of that which is about girls being socialised more into masking? Be good, be nice, don't upset anybody. Yeah, I think it's to do with that too. thinking about masking as a psychologist is very interesting because we know that a lot of the discussion and research about it sits at the moment within neurodivergence and that includes conditions like adhd autistic spectrum disorders ocd that kind of thing but i'm thinking back to you know my training and notions of the self and the false self from winnacle you know way back and these ideas about the ways in which we learn to understand what polite society requires or expects of us.

15:07Kimberley Wilson:And that that can happen surprisingly early in life, that children can pick up on these expectations either from the world or from their parents. Do you have a sense of how early or when masking begins? super early it's about socialization and conditioning yeah it happens absolutely in childhood and perhaps as a result of parental anxiety about children doing it wrong or how their children might reflect on them exactly or about keeping their children safe as well I think it happens super early and it might not be disruptive I mean as Helen has found out she's in her 60s and it has been a lifelong experience of hers to mask.

15:54Kimberley Wilson:And again thinking about Helen who's asking about other people who are older with similar experiences. Does masking change across the lifespan and if so how might that shift? What a brilliant question that has never occurred to me. Yeah I imagine it does change across the life course and depending what happens to you and your experiences of masking. And maybe at this point in Helen's life, because she has had this diagnosis, she understands herself a little bit more, it's going to change again. She might not ever stop masking, but I'm sure it's going to shift now that she has this information about herself.

16:31I wonder if today, younger neurodivergent people who perhaps have more support to be themselves might also experience masking differently across the life course. And then at the other end,

16:43Kimberley Wilson:And I was thinking about this idea of masking changing. And it reminds me of that poem by Jenny Joseph that starts, when I'm an old woman, I shall wear purple. And that sense in which as we get older and as we feel more secure, perhaps maybe we've had encounters with power and we've survived and we've seen that we have resources or we've established ourselves in other ways, we've connected with ourselves, that we can lean into that authenticity much more. One of the great pleasures of getting older is becoming more of your pruney, wrinkled, essential self, I think. Not everybody gets to do that.

17:24I sincerely hope that Helen does. But that is, I mean, for me, one of the great benefits of aging, you know, really coming into yourself.

17:36Kimberley Wilson:now Charlotte you and our listeners will know that I do like to put our topic on a scale just so that we can have a sense of where we fit within a bigger picture so if we were to do that with masking what would it look like I'd say that in the middle of the scale would be using masking as a strategic tactic or a choice where you could do it and recover from it and regain your equilibrium, your sense of self. At one end of that spectrum where masking was enforced, I mean it sounds quite dystopian really that you completely lose yourself and your ability to relate to other people and they are alienated from you and you become isolated.

18:19If you are perpetually unmasked, it may bring up questions around risk and safety and exposure danger as well so I think there is

18:29Kimberley Wilson:a balance to be found with it okay so we're thinking about throughout how much connection do you have to your real self yeah that's it isn't it being connected to your real self yeah it's about your soul about I think it's about nourishing and treasuring yourself really being alive. I wish I was a bit more articulate about this. You've got into your feelings. It is though, isn't it? It is. It's about really being yourself and being alive and living a life. It's important. Maybe that's what I'm trying to say. It's really important to be yourself.

19:09Kimberley Wilson:So for everyone listening, especially those people who might be beginning to realise that they've been masking maybe for a long time, let's start to think about what we can do. And we acknowledge at this point perhaps that for some people the stakes are high and it is about safety. But how do we navigate that? How do we start to get our heads around thinking about shifting things? I think the first thing is about noticing it, noticing that it might be a possibility in your life that this happens. am I masking is this what's going on for me and from then I think about doing a bit of an audit are there situations where I really do have to mask are there situations where I could lessen it a little bit am I really in danger can I take a risk here I'd be thinking about also making time to recover so if I've got a lot of peopling to do I might think about you know having a day off in the hammock in my garden afterwards.

20:14Yeah, and I think about approaching masking as a strategic choice rather than something that I absolutely have to do at all times. Would you think about creating or being in mask-free spaces? Well, sometimes there are masking-free spaces, which are relaxed performances where you can come and go, where you can have a chat with your neighbour. you know bring a cup of tea in these sorts of places where you're not expected to perform a good silent attentive audience that the performer can handle that and might enjoy that too so different sorts of spaces where the rules can be broken or stretched yes and i'm thinking actually

20:58Kimberley Wilson:sometimes and hopefully our intimate relationships are mask-free spaces and that you don't have to pretend always to be a fully put together organized member of society adulting in the finest way yes to be a mess to know that that relationship can stretch and hold you and that you do that for the other people too i mean i'm not exactly the most bright and perky person early in the morning and so there is a household rule where i really don't want to talk to anybody I just need to focus on becoming awake, having a brew, some toast, you know, coming into the world. So for me, that's a period of not masking.

21:40And it comes back to safety for me, people that you're safe with, that you can really show who you are and it's not going to make really much of a difference to them. And that you also offer that to somebody else. You know, being more relaxed about people being a bit odd or awkward, letting that in, enjoying it even.

21:58Kimberley Wilson:And I can imagine that there are people listening who think, oh, actually, my friend or my colleague or somebody I know is definitely masking. And I want them to be themselves. I want them to know that they can relax around me. What should they do or not do? It's nice that you notice that and that you care. But I don't think you should try and push somebody into unmasking. I think it's up to them to decide if it feels safe enough for them to reveal more of themselves or if it doesn't. And perhaps the best thing you can do is to just be your own self in that space. And that becomes a model or a demonstration that I'm accepting of me in this space.

22:38Kimberley Wilson:And that usually means I'm accepting of you being yourself. Yes. So back to the work of making a space where people can be themselves. I think that's lovely. So bringing it back to Helen's question, she said, are there any ways for me to unmask and open up friendship with my closer acquaintances? And I suppose we're wondering partly how viable that is as an option for her and if so what might she do? I think there's no one size fits all solution to Helen's situation but she might become a bit more curious about where things could be stretched. She might experiment with more disclosures she could have a bit of fun with that as well i'm imagining being a little bit different changing the script for herself where could that change there might be places where it can't change and there might be places where she's too afraid to change things but to be curious there might be spaces in her life where there are people who could accommodate more of her quirks and differences yeah and to show that to show more of herself so maybe I don't know, imagining her experimenting by changing her hairstyle or wearing a different colour jacket than she would normally or something like that and then seeing how people respond might be a kind of lower risk experiment for her.