Masking doesn't change
who you are. But it does
change how people see you.

One of my teachers used to open every class with the same statement.

"You are perfect as you are. You do not need to change anything."

I have thought about that sentence many times since, particularly in the context of masking. What is masking, really?

What masking really is

When we mask who we are, we are not changing — we are hiding who we truly are.

When you repress fidgeting, hold back a thought in a meeting, laugh at a joke you do not find funny, or try to look focused when you are actually exhausted and need a break — in these situations, you have not become someone else. You are hiding your experience. The mask does not change you. It changes what people can see of you.

The symptoms we all know

Masking triggers our fight-or-flight system. The body prepares for an emergency. Blood moves from the brain into the limbs and heart. The brain does not work as well. It becomes hard to focus, hard to think. The body needs to move — fidgeting, restlessness, a feeling of pressure that has nowhere to go.

Over time, the symptoms accumulate. Fatigue that sleep doesn't fix. A low hum of anxiety that follows you into the weekend. Anger that surfaces at strange moments — not because something big happened, but because the accumulation finally tipped. Disengagement. The slow erosion of the sharpness you used to have. Burnout, eventually, that looks from the outside like a performance problem and feels from the inside like disappearing.

These are not signs that something is wrong with you. They are signals that the current arrangement is costing more than it is worth.

Belonging versus rejection

In social systems, humans and other animals will not feel safe if they leave the group. At the same time, everyone tries to keep their individual characteristics. As a result, we are constantly pulled by opposing forces: trying to fit in to stay safe, and to individuate and stay connected to ourselves.

In that context, masking is a natural self-preservation mechanism that we want to honour — without losing ourselves.

Many people begin masking not as a deliberate choice but as a response to having been penalised — fired, sidelined, bullied, or simply excluded — for traits they didn't even know were considered wrong. I know this personally. Early in my career I didn't have a framework for any of this. I just knew that certain things I did — the directness, the intensity, the way I processed out loud — created friction I couldn't always explain. The feedback was rarely specific. Just a sense that something wasn't quite right. That I wasn't quite right.

The mask becomes a survival strategy. Not because you want to fit in. But because the cost of not fitting in turned out to be higher than you were prepared to pay.

The alternative is not transparency.
It is connection.

Here is where most of the conversation about masking goes wrong. It presents the choice as binary — show everything or hide everything. But transparency is not the goal. Connection is.

And connection begins with ourselves.

How do you know you are connected with yourself? It is not a process of self-discovery or analysis — it is a physical state. There are moments when you are simply present. No gap between you and what you are doing. No monitoring, no performance. Just here. You know this feeling. It is the opposite of the hum.

I have experienced this most clearly with horses. Being around them, I can be fully present in the moment-to-moment experience — not thinking about how I appear, not managing anything. Just here.

When we are connected with ourselves, we are in a place from which real connection with others becomes possible. Not because we have revealed everything — but because we can be fully, authentically present. Others feel that presence. It creates a sense of safety in the room.

What about being vulnerable?

A leader I once knew was exceptional at this. In high-stakes rooms he would occasionally choose to say something simply human. He spoke once about his children — what it meant to him to be their father, the quality of that love. The room shifted. Something that had been performed became real.

He was not exposing himself indiscriminately. He was making a deliberate choice — expressing a passing feeling, simply and honestly, to people who were listening. There was no narrative about his private life. Just the brief, genuine acknowledgement of something he felt.

That is the skill. Being vulnerable without telling a story. Offering one true thing — not as a performance of openness, but as a moment of actual presence. That is what closes the distance between people.

The question worth asking

So, in that context, masking becomes a decision. Do I want to be authentic at this moment, or not? We have the freedom to decide whether to show ourselves or not. Masking becomes a choice — and a form of empowerment — rather than a source of problems.

Masking or unmasking does not involve changing who you are. The work is simpler and more specific than that. It is looking clearly at the decisions you are making — in each room, with each group — and asking whether those decisions are serving you. Whether the concealment is deliberate or habitual. Whether the cost outweighs the benefits for you.

Masking is not something that happens to you. It is something you do — and something you can choose differently. That is the difference between being managed by a strategy and owning one.