I was just watching a youtube on Jungian personas and masks. The problem, Jung said, is that people put on masks to gain love and acceptance but hide their true authentic selves. Over time, they forget who they really are and become their mask.
The video was about how to remove the mask and discover your true self, but all I kept thinking was “love and acceptance? just for putting on a mask? how can I learn this skill?”
The only thing the masks have given me is a way to camouflage myself so the normal people can’t tell I’m not normal. Also I started masking in diapers, how the fuck does one undo that old a coping mechanism?
I just want to highlight that social masking and autistic masking are very different kinds of efforts.
Sure, autistic masking happens because of social pressures but its not the same thing as simply changing your presenting persona to match the circumstances.
Anyways, masking for love and acceptance would be a very difficult thing for a lot of autistic people. Sure, you might actually convince someone to accept the fake you, but eventually losing touch with yourself would destroy self esteem and make you miserable from the inside… which will then destroy your relationship anyway.
Don’t mask, let as many people dislike you as necessary to find the few who will love you for who you are.
I am confused about that. On one hand, I know that I may be masking - due to autism, cptsd or, most likely, both. But I am not sure, how I do this. Instead of putting out a fake persona (which makes me exhausted even thinking about), I rather mute my personality and become bland. I have no idea, who my real self is, though. As for your question, my intuition is against it - if you’ve never done it, you may be perceived as fake and it may backfire. Don’t try to win with the NT in their game - it’s as sensless as expacting that a random NT will be eager to chat about nuclear fusion.
Anyway, my guess is to read about people with APD - they are pretty effective in masking, if they’re smart.
love and acceptance? just for putting on a mask? how can I learn this skill?
If you ever did something that you disliked or thought was dumb but was “what others expect of you”, congratulations, you’ve applied masking. If you ever hid or resisted a behavior that other people would complain about, despite said behavior not being troublesome, you’ve also applied masking.
We get “love and acceptance” (mostly acceptance) when we mask because we fit in with a group, but that’s where we can get socially and mentally exhausted, because it’s not “the real” us that’s fitting in.
People will put mask on to gain love and acceptance.
This is true…
But its not really love and acceptance if you have to pretend to be a different person, its simply the illusion of it.
You ask, how you can learn this skill and the answer is to keep lying to yourself that it’s working till you believe it.
My advice would be to stay true to yourself, your own wants, needs, morals. (What do you think and belief inside and not what opinion some internet video fed you cause thats an easy mistake )
When you find love and acceptance, which you, like everyone, deserve and require. You will know it is sincere.
The first person to love and accept you for who you are (if not your parents) can be yourself.
Follow up: can you be loved and accepted without being understood?
sometimes, yes.
Yes and it is what is what sometimes is called “unconditional love”
Loving someone regardless of understanding is one of the strongest display of acceptance that can be demonstrated.
Its hard to find though, but once you do find good empathic people with an open mind you will know the difference and be capable of letting go of the people who are making you feel like you do.
Loving someone regardless of understanding is one of the strongest display of acceptance that can be demonstrated.
Hm. I honestly don’t want love unless it comes with understanding. How could you love something if you don’t even know what it is?
If you are able i recommend getting a dog to get an example of honest love without need to understand.
The same example can be seen with kids. (Normal) Parents love their child regardless of whether it’s old enough to be understood.
Children themselves can just like dogs show tremendous honest love for people things they have no capacity to understand.
What makes unconditional love so special is precisely that it is unconditional. Requiring “something” in order to show love is not love but a social business transaction.
Masking is a useful tool, but don’t rely it for “love and acceptance”. People who like you only because you can performs emotions at will, or fake being extroverted/cheerful/whatever, are probably not the people you want in your life.
That said, learning to mask can still be a good idea (for example, it can make it easier for you to get what you need/want when hiring tradespeople or services, etc.).
Off the top of my head, here are some ways to learn:
- People watching. Observe how they interact, both in speech and body language. Note what topics people commonly like to discuss, then practice small talk with someone who is happy to help with it. Personally I find small talk boring and tedious, but it’s very useful at establishing conversation with someone so you can actually get to the more significant topics you might want to discuss.
- Reading self-help books. These might not be obvious, but books about communication (e.g. Crucial Conversations) and emotional regulation (or even more scientific or psychological works about social cues, etc.) can help you develop the tools to interact well with others (which usually leads to being more accepted).
The key thing to keep in mind is that you want to consciously learn how to do this, so you can choose which parts of the mask to deploy when you need/want to. You don’t want to just default to always masking - it is absolutely exhausting and leads to burnout. It does take time and practice, though, and it’s not always pleasant working out what aspects of masking you need to get along with certain people (colleagues, extended family, etc.).
I think I need some how to get through job interviews more than anything.
I have a pretty bad work history and I don´t have a way to explain it to someone that isn´t willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. The other option is to just lie about it, but I feel to me like that is almost like spitting in their face. Like, obviously something went wrong with some of my jobs, and pretending that everything was hunky-dory is the equivalent of saying, “You must be really stupid to believe this obvious whopper of a lie I’m about to tell you,” but I think the reallity is that people like being lied to, or at least they’ll hire you if you lie baldly enough.
I’ve tried being honest in a way that emphasizes my strong points, but nobody wants to hear it. They say, “I didn´t like the job because they honestly had nothing for me to do.” and they’ll think, “this guy’s lazy! there’s always something to do!” (there wasn’t!!) or I’ll say, “I left my job selling car parts because I couldn’t learn enough about mechanics from reading books and watching videos, you really do have to work on them!” and they’ll think, “this guy is too stupid to learn” or "i bet he got fired for some other reason (which I did, but ultimately they were trying to get rid of me because between the guy who hired me and myself, we were perfect examples of both sides of Dunning-Krueger (he assumed everyone knew more than they did, and I assumed there wasn’t that much to learn)).
Then if I ever get a job, I might have to do a little more masking. Social work is a tough gig for me socially because I have a lot of huge problems with the profession and I think ultimately I need to stay away from careers where ingratiating yourself with the power structure is the only method of advancement (but I think that’s most of them?), especially when I am ethically opposed.
I got along great with my co-workers in tech when I worked in tech, but someone here pointed out that tech is chockablock with autistic types; and I’m really bad with tech.
And, sadly, one thing I might have to do is learning how to put up with abuse and being treated like shit and yelled at, because that’s where I am in my career at this point, like those are probably the jobs I can get. I walked off my last job because my boss was a total asshole in a way that I’d never experienced before: my reward for getting off disability.
Most people prefer a pretty lie to an ugly truth. Masking is lying. Completely making something up is an obvious aka ugly lie, the worst of both. The best way to lie to to base it on a kernel of truth.
So the best way to mask it to take some real aspect of yourself, and slightly exaggerate it to stretch it into an acceptable shape that the other person likes. This requires people watching, being present in the conversation, etc. Over time you’ll pick up trends or categories of people. You’ll mess up and put on the wrong mask for the wrong person sometimes, but you’ll get better with experience. Like the other comment said, small talk is great practice and low stakes. Some people will start liking you way more than you feel that should, and some people will dislike you and you’ll wonder why. Its because they felt your mask fell into the “uncanny valley”, and even though your intentions werent bad, they are justified at feeling uneasy around you because you are in fact acting fake around them.
If this all sounds psychotic, its because it is, masking isn’t something you should ever have to do, but the world we live in is fucked so sometimes in bullshit situations you have to be bullshit yourself.
Specific to interviews, they expect you to follow social customs and exaggerate, if youre being honest then even if that shows youre a virtuous person (and they may even like you more because of it) it also means that you either cant follow social normals because you dont know how, or you refuse to (which might show issues with authority) and either way it will lead to problems in the workplace. Passing qualifications is a minimum bar (most of the time), the real test in an interview is proving to them that they would like working with you. So in a round about way, it does make sense logically.
Passing qualifications is a minimum bar (most of the time), the real test in an interview is proving to them that they would like working with you.
I kind of don´t even apply to social work jobs anymore. I know they are looking for people they can “relate” to and, surprise!, it’s young college educated white women with long hair who follow all the rules society’s given them.
Specific to interviews, they expect you to follow social customs and exaggerate, if youre being honest then even if that shows youre a virtuous person (and they may even like you more because of it) it also means that you either cant follow social normals because you dont know how, or you refuse to (which might show issues with authority) and either way it will lead to problems in the workplace.
This is quite a long sentence, but I think you’re just describing a Catch-22?
Also about relationships (any kind) you shouldn’t mask, because its wrong to lie and manipulate people who care about you and they deserve more than that. But also because masking is exhausting, and one day you’ll either run out of energy and drop it (and freak them out), or slowly push them away because you dont have the energy, and both lead to you wasting both of yours times, energy, heart, and trust.
in private relationships, there should come a point where you can be honest and open up about these struggles
For a book on the subject, Alice Miller’s The drama of the gifted child is all about losing yourself in masks and finding yourself in adulthood. Seems written with therapists as the target audience.
Its answer to your question: your high abilities will never truly substitute the love and acceptance you didn’t get, and insisting in it will give you depression.
I’ll have to read that again. I think I went through the entire book thinking she meant “academically” gifted.
Nope, she clarifies at the beginning. It’s emotionally gifted, as in especially talented in detecting other people’s emotions and expectations and mask accordingly.
I wasn´t a very careful reader.
But, kind of someone with sublinical autism, would it be fair or delusional for me to identify as “gifted” in that way? I think I’m pretty average at emotion detection.
Don’t get too hung up on the “super powered” meaning of gifted. It really is a curse she’s describing. If you relate to the rest of the symptoms she describes, chances are you qualify.
I’ll need to give that one a read. I’m nearing my sixth decade of life, and while I think I found love, I still have to mask to make it seem right. After all this time, I doubt any true sense of acceptance is in the cards for me.
She talks about mourning for the acceptance you didn’t get, and that freeing you to finally be yourself.
It’s not a terribly long or hard read, go ahead. But without a therapist by your side it might prove not very helpful. It’s not a self-help book, it will show you the problem with clarity, but solving it is through bespoke therapy.
Having a mask that receives love and acceptance is EXACTLY THE SAME as receiving conditional love and rejection. Why are you going out of your way to take the wrong lessons when the right ones are staring you in the face.
Why are you going out of your way to take the wrong lessons when the right ones are staring you in the face.
Because I’m unemployable and would be on the verge of homelessness without my family’s help.
So you’re looking for financial support. That’s valid and that’s not counterproductive the way masking for love is.
i thought this was going to be about us who still put on the masks after covid19.
It’s all kind of bullshit, yes you can learn to be lovable and acceptable. It’s not even masking, usually it’s just manners or being mindful of people. The only catch is doing so doesn’t mean you’re going to get that back. Or get to choose who loves you.
People get so fixated on this idea “authenticity, authenticity bro be you’re true self” because it helps them not consider which parts of themselves are a performance and which parts are automatic for them without intentional decisions.
I don’t understand what you mean by “authenticity, bro.” Wouldn’t a genuine attempt be authentic necessarily force you to look at which parts of yourself are performative?
You know, you would think so. That’s what I personally feel. But there’s like this whole social vibe around it that I think has swallowed up the actual act of introspection in a performance of genuineness. I once heard a woman refer to it as “the authenticity trap” and I guess that has just really stuck with me. Like people want you to be your true self and they think that they’re always being their true self, but that’s only because navigating social situations comes so naturally that they never have to consider the act of performing or the things they’re doing to pull that off.
For people on the autism spectrum, our unfiltered selves may seem desirable until people discover that authentic autism also includes social faux pas, needing breaks when we get overstimulated, not being able to parse multiple complex interactions at once. Personally I’ve noticed that people who fixate on the idea of authenticity a lot tend to quickly assume I’m being disengenguine with them when I don’t hold their gaze or correctly match their energy. It kind if just makes me think that authenticity as NT’s conceptualize it is just another way of arbitrarily sorting people based on vibes and that I can do the same thing they think that they’re doing just by being kind.
Sorry, for the rant. This is kind of a dead horse I tend to keep beating often. I’ve found Judith Butler’s Theory of Performativity to be kind of helpful in navigating this but that’s probably not how she even intended it. It just seems helpful after decades of trying to parse the “just be yourself” thought-terminating truism that people love to hand out.
Great article; as someone unemployed and friendless, certainly gave me some things to chew on. I kind of do need a job, but I think ultimately what I’ve decided is that friends are more effort than they are worth for usually very little to no reward. I tried friending someone, but he didn´t care about anything he couldn´t stick his dick into; desperately tried to connect with another person over Buffy the Vampire Slayer only to have me babysit their dog so they could visit their girlfriend then disappear with Season 7 DVD which is only available in the full fucking set AND the streaming (and piratable version) is some bullshit widescreen abomination with random color grading. Now I’m someone’s boyfriend, apparently the only relationship status that any gives a fuck about, so I guess I’ve achieved everything one can hope for socially.
I kind of don’t share the author’s belief that you can be 100% yourself with a therapist because they’re a “professional.” That’s some delusional bullshit and I wonder if people have trouble being authentic with her because she has trouble being authentic with them… becoming authentic is a matter of trust, and trust must be earned, and this should be obvious. If someone doesn’t understand that and think I OWE them my authenticity, then can talk to my persona all day long.
As far as rules go, I notice there is a lot of delusion around the way the world works, lots of things people don´t recognize are involved.
Yeah isn’t that fucking weird how as a masc presenting our value is measured by whether we’re in a committed relationship? No I definitely get deprioritizing certain stuff, the cultural pressure feels manipulative. I don’t like people’s reasons for expecting those kinds of connections from me, I want to have my own reasons for dating or making friends.
Also I’m with you there. Therapists aren’t a monolithicly well-practiced or even well intentioned group. I’ve had a pretty mixed experience with finding therapists who will see me as I am and not project an archtype they’re more familiar with onto me. After a while of that you get cautious about the speed with which you give them info. PsychologyToday tends to be more of a pop-psy website that I avoid but this article just was the most accessible for what I was trying to communicate.
Well, to expand your variety of kinds of friends that you have I am now deciding that we are internet friends. That’s a kind of friend that you can have, one that just goes “we’re friends now” without much consideration or change. So what does this mean for you? Nothing except you now have an additional friend-type. Congrats. 👍
I was more referring to the fact that friendship doesn’t exist in my world. When I try to make friends with straight men, they’re mostly confused. They’re not really interested in talking or sharing their lives with another man, they just might want to kill time. All they’re really interested is in a woman to have sex with, and it’s pretty obvious the moment they find one because they completely disappear.
I’m not sure the effect of social pressure there. Is there a genuinely felt pressure to mate or is it more that they think having any kind of emotional bond with a man is gay (and therefore bad)?, leaving a single woman the only person that will enable them to perform their full humanity?
So with no men wanting to be my friends, and women all avoiding me because I would eventually want to have sex with them probably, that really leaves me with a girlfriend as the only person in the world who will take me halfway seriously. I’ve never been disappointed to get into a relationship before in my life, but I was this time. “Well, shit, here we go again, someone to tell me they love me until they don’t anymore and they switch to texting me once-a-year on my birthday.” I didn´t want a girlfriend. I wanted a friend, or a friend group.
I think I’m done with therapy. “It’s easier to become a good therapist than to find a good one,” so I’m doing some reading and pondering.
Thanks for being my friend.
My experience is obviously perspective to the US but I hear it’s different in other places. Relationships could be less streamlined for accommodating men who work 12 hour shifts and just never get to be around. There’s a little bit of both social pressure here to get into a relationship fast and also a stigma against being single or having emotional connections with other men. I get the idea from media and anecdotes from my elders that deeper male friendships were less more common before I was born. But given that older people here are more homophobic I don’t entirely understand how they could gave.
Are men not forming friendships even after they marry either? No couple’s nights bowling?
And yeah how fucked is it that women have to be in the role to give us meaning? I don’t like that for them because that’s a messed up expectation to have but I mostly don’t like that I supposedly don’t have meaning without a woman in my life. If I do ever date again, I want it to happen because someone enjoyed my company and not because I needed them in order to feel like I was worthy of love.
I’m sorry you felt pressured to be in a relationship. I hope you guys can find a spark that at least makes each other’s company feel worth the effort. Søren Kierkegaard says it’s a worthy way of living to be vulnerable and opt in to the inevitability of loss
Any time, chief 🙂 I hope you find the answers you’re looking for
Can I check out.the video?
~~Sure, though Jung as a topic is pretty heavily farmed and i have no opinion on this channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwzSSweFhjk~~
Watch this examination of Jung slop offerwd by another user instead: https://youtu.be/9hyfAhGjqf0
AI slop psychology videos are not to be taken seriously. They’re full of inaccuracies. All of them. Don’t reward these lazy and borderline criminal “content creators”.
is it definitely slop? the information seems cohesive and concise. i think i may have heard a few weird turns of phrase. but, yeah, try looking up jung + anything and see how far you have to look for a human only for them to immediately start talking about astrology seriously. lots of kookery with jung.
At some point I was being served slop jung videos on my recommended very aggressively. All the channels were about 2 years old with very consistent video length and publishing rate almost daily. The speech synthesis is also very easy to tell.
Scammers and grifters and narcissistis like to massage with our psychological weaknesses to manipulate us. That’s all one needs to know. They seem to have found Jung a good vehicle.
My thoughts exactly. I would rather recommend reading an actual book by Jung or on Jung. Some of them are rather approachable (far more, than Freud, at least), except for the Red Book, afaik.
Nice! Thank you! I’m swearing off the slop! I have volume 12 of Jung’s work on alchemy and dream interpretation on my reader. Back to the source!
Have you had run-ins with Alan Watts slop, too?
Yeah, can’t go wrong with published old books. Yes it did cross my feed. I miss occasionally hearing some bites of Alan Watts or Terrence McKenna talks in music mixes. Funnily enough those seem to have disappeared from youtube from what I’ve heard. I already was taking everything with a grain of salt back then. These days with voice deep fakes, I may need a handfull of salt. I just don’t waste time with it anymore.
I’m sure archive.org has a bunch of old recordings though. So definitely go there.
