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It is to a certain degree. You don't bring your love for milk shakes to your "business attire only" office job. You may love Hentai, but you're not telling the person next to you during an opera visit. These are aspects of you that don't match the occasion, so you skip that. Most people do this naturally, they don't spend much thought on it.
Then there's "masking" as used by neurodivergent people. That's an entirely different matter. More info an that is over at neurodivergentinsights.
Haven’t watched but going by your description alone : absolutely and I think it’s necessary.
Your closest person could be ok with most topics except for a few that maybe you talk to a therapist about as this person would incredibly sensitive with said topics to the point they’d have a meltdown or have very limited experience and start giving terrible and/or biased advice on. And maybe you care about all the other aspects about this person enough that you just save it for the therapist. EG: family trauma, mental illness, etc. and the therapist relationship, while different and not as deep, it can functionally overlap these missing parts and give you what you need to share it.
Or maybe that person does understand but can’t find the right language and say it in the way you need or want to hear it. Or you could have issues trying to share your perspective. Again: what a trained therapist can help you with.
And that is fair. I think we need to understand and respect the limitations of the people we love and respect our own boundaries about such topics. There’s only so far you can stretch a person or the relationship with them. It’s healthy to recognize this.
It’s also important to realize that no one other person on earth is going to be your entire witness of your life. Especially when they are already witnessing their own life. Equally: You are your full witness. This is your journey. You’re just sharing part of your ride with other people.
Persona (psychology) - Wikipedia https://share.google/aeMgXcVW6RqPHrwg7
As for everyone keeping a secret from everyone? Maybe. You don't have to share everything with everyone, it's ok to keep stuff to yourself if you want to. Most secrets are probably pretty banal though.
The person you don't show others is no more your "true self" than the one you do. It's still you, existing in that moment, responding to your environment, whether it's your deepest emotions or your best mask.
Yeah, I like to think of out more as a spotlight than a mask. You're choosing which aspects of yourself to draw attention to rather than hiding yourself behind a persona.
That is, unless we're talking about the masking that neurodivergent people talk about wherein they put conscious effort into hiding their essential nature in order to fit in.
As someone with ADHD, absolutely. I've heard that many people with nerodivergent brains use this coping skill.
They covered this when I took Sociology 101 about 40 years ago.
I think I'd go further and say that there isn't really any such thing as a person's "true self." People present different aspects of themselves in different circumstances. It's like asking which orientation you should hold an object against a light to see the "true shape" of its shadow.
I believe thats whats called in Buddhism as having No Self. You are who you are at that moment.
Could be, I'm not deeply familiar with Buddhism. There's still a core "something" in there that's casting the shadow, but it's not something that can be interacted with directly so I don't know if it would fit the normal definition of a "self". You can only directly interact with the shadows it casts and those shadows are situation-dependent. It doesn't think or act in isolation.
I suppose one could just pick some specific set of circumstances and call the self that emerges under those conditions the "true self." For example you could call the version of you that emerges when you're lying in bed alone at night thinking about the dumb stuff you did during the day your "true self." But that's a bit arbitrary.
it's called roles. we play the sibling role, parent role, friend and SO role, our job role. there is no true self, just adjusting to meet the role's needs.
Just watch out for the person who thinks they have to be the handler role all the time. That’s a messiah complex.
And some are psychopaths in all roles and each role just covering for it.
I've always thought of it like a d20. For every role we occupy, we show a different facet on top. Some facets remain visible despite not being the "dominant" one, but others are hidden on the other side.
No single face is our "true self" but they are all a part of who we are.
I like that
Or persona per the psychologist Karl Jung IIRC.
So definitely a thing for basically everyone.
What’ll really blow you’re mind is when you realize we aren’t even honest with ourselves either.
Your mask you show to others is no more fake than the mask you show to yourself.
That is not universal, some of us have actually thought about things for a long time and are honest with ourselves.
I try to be honest with myself about everything, but I'm also honest with myself that sometimes I subconsciously avoid thinking about things consciously anyway
I find being honest with myself to be easy anymore. It's not something I've always been good at but I've worked on it. Understanding myself is still hard at times. If I'm feeling a certain way about something, sometimes I have to pause for a while to think about why.
Example: the wife and I have an argument about something (which is rare) and I take offense to something she said. She never says anything with the intent of offending me. I know this even though I'm feeling angry. Instead of just reacting in anger, I like to put a pause on the discussion, be alone for a while, and think about why I was offended.
The reasons vary but I pretty much always figure it out, after which I'm ready to resume the discussion with, it nothing else, a little more clarity.
Yes. We all have an avatar
Masking is how I get through the Christmas season as it's a time of year I really struggle mentally.
That said, I think their use of it is more tied to the Japanese concept of "your three faces". One you show the world, one you show your closest friends and one you only show yourself.
https://www.pranshuwrites.com/2025/01/The-Three-Faces-Japanese-Psychology.html?m=1
Very interesting read on tatemae and honne, thanks for the link. Always love it when I discover that some culture has a word for a familiar concept/thing
I think everyone has about 3 "versions" of themselves.
One version for work. One for family. One for friends and partners.
The work version is the least honest because so much is unacceptable to say at work and people self-censor a lot. Say the wrong things and you will get meetings, write ups and maybe fired. Everybody gives their boss to much information at least one time and learns why you don't do that.
The friends and partners version is normally the most honest version and can be completely genuine for some. Good friends can be trusted to keep secrets and don't judge.
Family is normally in the middle but this depends. If the family was incredibly old fashioned, conservative or religious then maybe a person would need to self-censor even more than they do at work?
Politicians do this all of the time. Say and do one thing as theater to the public, turn around and do and say different things out of the public eye we later find out about.
I do this fairly often too. Where I work, nobody doesn't need to know of shit about my personal life, it is none of their business. There's nobody I like enough there that warrants me gushing about myself. I have about maybe five key friends who all know in depth of me, but how I tell things slightly differs from another but they're generally getting the same stories and experiences I talk about.
You would love Erving Goffman
I wouldn't call it a "mask", because it implies deception. Depending on who you are around, you show (and hide) different treats of your personality: In an employment setting you do not act the same way you would act when you hang with your boys (or girls, respectively) - you show different aspects of your personality while you are with your significant other, rather than with your parents. Also, your online behavior would be different from your offline behavior when navigating public situations.
Different people around you and/or different social settings make you filter things regarding your personal beliefs and/or personal traits.
People have different facets. The way I interact with my partner for ten years is different to my close friends I've had for 20, different to my co-workers, different to my family. But my family and friends and co-workers see how I act with my partner.
I mimic people to some extent treating them similarly how they treat me. There are limits though, I'm bounded on that scale by my personal values which mature as I do. So I'm still never going to act outside the bounds of my morality and values, but I'll still treat my partner with unconditional love, and my friends with the best times and silly jokes.
These I don't consider masks, but not everyone sees me the same. They're just facets.
Yes. There are many different traits that I would all call a part of me but how much I act out on them is different between different people.
In some groups there are topics that define me for the other members, while in other groups the members don't know I even care for this topic
I overact some traits but what topic I overact os different in each group
No. I think people are extremely diverse in how they experience and engage with their individual subjectivity. I think a lot of people are like that at least some of the time, but it's more complicated and probably a nonconscious behavior for most people when they are doing it. Describing it as a "mask" I think is potentially misleading because I don't think that's necessarily how people experience this phenomena subjectively.
For the sake of the survey, I know I do.
Yes.
Love, -A formerly closeted queer person.
Everyone has 3 personalities.
The person they are around strangers.
The person they are with friends and family.
The person they are when completely alone.
Huh. Did not expect a SPYxFAMILY reference here! わくわく!
Linkin Park said it 25 years ago, "everyone has a face that they hold inside," I think that was in Papercut, the opening track to their debut album, Hybrid Theory. Good song about that.
I don't really believe everyone has a true self they hide. I do believe we don't share certain things with certain people, sometimes for good reason.
What I do believe is that we are a different person to every person who knows us. That is to say, if your parents are still together, you have these two people who have known you since you were an infant, but they have different views of you. Or if you have a decent sized friend group, each of these friends sees you slightly differently. I think this is more useful to us. Knowing who we are to each person we meet; rather than focusing on the persona we share with others, understanding how another sees us and acting accordingly can be used to great influence and effect. Find the people who underestimate you and show them what you can do. Find the people who don't like you and show them kindness. Things like that.