Life is Just a Masquerade Ball

Narcissism seems to be the diagnosis du jour.

Please don’t get me wrong, I am in no way minimizing the devastation that narcissistic individuals can wreak on society in general, and families in particular.

I am intimately familiar with the push and pull, the word salad, the gaslighting, abuse in all its forms, and the wedges that these “people’ can drive deep into a family — into a heart.

So I am not in any way saying that narcissistic abuse and toxicity in any form is to be taken lightly. Or brushed off as just the latest “fad” diagnosis.

What I do want to talk about is the concept of ‘masks’, a term so often used to explain how one gets caught up in the web of the narcissist in the first place. The explanation is that they are wearing a “mask” — the one of a caring, civil person, capable of empathy and love and all the “human” emotions most of us agree make society…well human. But it is not their real selves.

And when that mask finally slips — well all bets are off then. The “victim” (I abhor that term, but we will use it here) is then left blind-sided, feeling like the wind has been sucked right out of their sails. Thus begins the frantic floundering as they attempt to figure out where they went wrong and how to bring back the false person they thought they met in the beginning of the relationship.

UGH….it’s exhausting just to type that.

Unfortunately, the reality of LIVING that is even more exhausting.

However, I think that to claim that only those on the psychopathy/narcissism spectrum are the only ones to wear masks is faulty at best. Maybe even a dangerous assumption to make.

Let’s unpack that.

We live in a society in which we are subject to expectations and cultural norms. In addition to societal norms, we are each subject to the values and beliefs that are common in our families and neighborhoods. Then we learn that in order to assimilate with our particular friend groups we also must adhere to some form of those norms.

By the time we reach adulthood we have spent 18 years adhering to somebody else’s version of who we should be (and so often those versions are different based on the particular group or setting we are in).

In other words — we have spent our entire lives wearing a mask. In reality, different masks in different settings. Sometimes those masks fit better or more comfortably than others, but rest assured we are in one just the same.

So to say that false selves/masks is just a narcissism issue is far from the truth.

It was tough for me to accept this in my own life.

I have been involved with a very toxic narcissist for the better part of my life. As I am trying to gather my wits about me and heal enough to take back my own power, I am confronting some rather uncomfortable truths about myself, as well as him.

This acceptance that, while my mask was not covering up as devastating and devious a persona as his may have been, it was still concealing — willfully — my truth. Which is no less damaging to a healthy partnership than the narcissist’s mask is to his or her partner.

At least it has been extremely damaging to my SELF.

I am no psychologist, I just play one on the internet, but I do believe that the only way to truly heal from a toxic place, and to avoid EVER getting into another (which is, after all, the goal of this healing) is to accept my own masked self, and to begin to let my own mask slip.

In doing so, I believe that not only will I attract healthier partners and be capable of experiencing true connection — I will also (and more importantly) have a healthier relationship with myself. And finally be able to become the person I have sensed inside for most of my life.

And isn’t that the point of this life? To live authentically and fully as the amazing humans we were created to be?

I like to think so.