- People with low self-confidence, or who grew up in unsupportive environments, may think they have to hide their true selves to make friends, one expert says
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Social masking involves hiding your real personality to fit in with the crowd. Photo: ShutterstockAndy learned a hard lesson at a very young age – that if he wanted people to like him and spend time with him, he had to completely hide how he felt and who he truly was as a person. While Andy is a fictional character, his feelings are very real, and if you’ve ever felt like him, there is a fair chance you could be engaging in social masking, says clinical psychologist Ken Fung.
Fung, also the director of therapy and counselling at Jadis Blurton Family Development Center in Hong Kong, said social masking was first used to describe a behaviour adopted by those on the autism spectrum. “This refers to people who express or understand emotions differently than the rest of us do,” he explained.
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“Because they tend to have difficulty making friends, many of them have been taught at a young age, either by their parents or through social interactions, that in order to be accepted into groups, they have to mimic ‘normality’ to fit in.
However, more recent studies have shown that a lot of “regular” people also engage in such behaviour in hopes of fitting in and being welcomed in social settings. “There is a little bit of Andy in all of us,” Fung said.
Hiding to fit in
There is a difference between establishing a natural rapport with someone to create a better relationship versus social masking to fit into a group. The former does not require a person to suppress their original personality. “You may need to put in some effort, but it shouldn’t be that hard or leave you feeling exhausted,” Fung said.
According to Fung, the environment a teenager grows up in can determine if they are more prone to social masking. “While teens are generally more sensitive to issues related to identity, it also depends on the sort of relationship they have with their parents,” he said. Fung explained that when a person grows up in an emotionally accepting, caring environment where their struggles are seen as opportunities for improvement, they tend to have higher self-esteem.
But on the other hand, if they are constantly being criticised or dismissed by their parents, this rips apart their self-confidence. As such, they tend to resort to social masking because they believe it is better to take on the persona of someone more popular or acceptable. “They will think: ‘I’m not loved by my family. How can I expect to be loved if I am who I am?’” he said.
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Learning to be yourself
While social masking can bring some immediate benefits, such as being welcomed in social groups, one risks deviating from their true personality in the long run. The psychologist said that social masking leads to self-doubt and anxiety, especially when trying to create closer friendships.
“[Someone] will have a high level of anxiety, [fearing] they might be exposed. The more they mask themselves, the more they dislike who they truly are.”
All this starts with negative self-talk – thinking we are not good enough and cannot be accepted for who we are. Focusing on these critical thoughts can send us into a downward spiral of questioning our identities, so it is important to address this practice and insert a buffering question between the social masking thoughts and behaviours.
“Ask yourself, what if things are not as bad as they seem? What if they find my jokes funny? Doing so makes the social masking thought less powerful and allows your true personality to emerge.”
It is also helpful to identify your emotions when you are not feeling great about yourself, especially when scrolling through social media – a primary trigger for masking, according to Fung. “Everyone wants to present a popular persona on the ‘gram, and this desire fuels the need to social mask,” he explained.
“Before you beat yourself up for not being invited to the hottest party, you need to identify your feelings and where they stem from,” the psychologist said. To break out of this negativity loop, we must determine what exactly we dislike about our personality and work on it. Then, it wouldn’t be necessary to keep social masking to cope with low confidence and self-image.
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Other ways to break free from social masking include paying more attention to how you behave and what you enjoy doing when you are alone versus what you force yourself to do to please others. “It is natural for some of these forced habits to become part of you, and it is not necessarily bad if they have become part of your identity or even motivate you to become a better person,” Fung pointed out.
He emphasised that it is common to want to be someone who is welcomed and loved by all, but social masking all the time is not the solution. “Only when you appreciate who you really are will you find your true value and acceptance by those around you.”