Exhausted from Masking? Here’s How to Know When It’s Time to Stop
I want to talk about masking. For those who are unfamiliar with what masking is, or at least with the term masking, because that’s a bit newer to me too, is essentially the constant management of your behavior so as to not seem different or to fit in with the group.
So if eye contact is difficult for you, kind of forcing eye contact, even rehearsing things that you want to say in a conversation before the conversation happens, monitoring your behavior and your stims. Even for me, it just, kind of monitoring your face. I have a tendency to be pretty flat affect, so that can come off not the way that I want to come off.
And then monitoring essentially how I’m presenting to other people, which I do want to get into because there are pros and cons to masking. I don’t think it’s all negative. I think there are pros to knowing how to move and present yourself in certain spaces as to accomplish what you need to accomplish in that space. So I don’t want to come at this conversation saying that masking is completely bad, because I don’t think so. But it is something that takes a lot of effort and energy, and it’s important to recognize that in yourself and then make adjustments based on the kind of situation that you find yourself in.
Setting the Stage: Esther
But the person I want to talk about today in regards to masking is actually Esther, and Esther is one of my favorite characters in the Bible. It’s one of my favorite books of the Bible. I think it’s such an incredibly nuanced story. It’s such a beautiful representation of how God can use such a complex political situation and just use one girl in order to change things for an entire group of people.
And I know that Esther had that internal struggle when we get to the climax of the story when she goes in to see the king. But there’s a lot that’s happening there just from a human perspective, I think.
Esther’s Backstory
So for just the context of the story, Esther was a Jewish girl living in Persia. The Jews had been displaced from Jerusalem. Some of them were living in Susa, which I believe was the capital at that time, living in Persia. Esther was an orphan who was raised by her cousin Mordecai, and we have the whole situation with King Xerxes or Ahasuerus, whichever, I think they’re just same, two parts of the same name or one name. Who knows? But he decides to find a new queen, long story short, and all of these virgin girls in the capital are rounded up like cattle, and they are slowly presented before the king so that he can choose a new queen.
Esther, the Bible says that she was fair and beautiful. The girl was objectively gorgeous. Knowing this, Mordecai knew that she would be likely rounded up as well, and he warned her not to tell anyone that she was Jewish. He told her to hide her identity.
Now, I just find this kind of interesting just as a history kind of view. There must have been diverse enough of a city to where her outward looks didn’t automatically tell people that she was Jewish. She must have looked like the other people that were around in order for her to be able to hide her heritage in such a secretive kind of way. I’m African American. I’m not going to go to Sweden and then just hide my identity. It’s quite clear I’m not from there. So for her, I just find that very interesting, that in order for people to know that she was Jewish, she would’ve had to tell people. So she was blending as much as possible.
So we get into the story. She is not only beautiful, but she’s also gracious. She’s humble. She listens to the eunuchs and the people who are preparing them to see the king, and she ends up highly favored in the harem, given some of the best servants and the best living quarters and all of that. And it gets to a point later where she’s finally presented to the king, and he favors her more than everyone else, and she becomes the next queen.
Masking to Stay Safe
Her hiding her identity at that point in time was something that she needed to do. She needed to mask who she was in order to get through this situation safely. If she were to reveal her identity, there’s no telling what kind of harm may have come to her because there were plenty of people who did not like the Jews, and hated the Jews, and wanted harm to come to them. And Mordecai, knowing this, that’s why he warned her so strongly, “Hey, in order for you to stay safe, in order for you to be protected, you need to hide this part of yourself in order to get through this process.”
And so she was able to gain this access and step into a new role, step into a new part of her identity that she probably never would’ve seen coming, partly because she masked part of her identity, part of who she was, in order to be able to move forward safely.
And I think a lot of us do that. We live in a majority neurotypical world, right? So in order to move through life, and engage with people, and accomplish things that we need to accomplish, you need to be able to socialize or appear neurotypical in a way in order to get things done, and that’s just how it is. I don’t think that’s a negative. If I go to another country but refuse to ever learn the language to live there, that’s kind of an insult in a way. That’s kind of harsh language, but you know what I’m saying. If however much percentage of people appear this way, then I need to learn how to play the game. I need to learn the rules. I need to know how to do those things in order to move through a world in a way and accomplish the things that I want to do.
And I don’t see that as a negative because that masking in that way is developing a skill set, the same way you would develop a skill set going into corporate America or developing a new social skill set in the military or on a sports team. There are different ways that people socialize. There’s different social rules. There are different social customs. And so when you’re dropped off in that kind of environment, even if you are a different person or that isn’t naturally how you are, you learn those rules in order to advance or in order to get through the day or just to be able to move forward.
The Turn: A Time to Speak
Now the Jews are in trouble because Haman gets the king to sign this declaration that the Jews are going to be wiped out, and Mordecai understandably is very, very upset. He puts on mourning clothes, and Esther is just beside herself trying to figure out what’s going on with Mordecai. Mordecai tells her about the decree and says, “You need to talk to the king.”
Esther says, “Okay, I understand things aren’t looking too good, but I can’t go to the king. He hasn’t summoned me. If I go there and I reveal this thing, if I go and reveal myself, if I put myself in that type of position, he could kill me. If he doesn’t hold out his golden scepter, then I could be killed.”
And Mordecai replies to her in Esther, chapter 4, starting at verse 13, “Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, ‘Do not think that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silent at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father’s family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.'”
It almost seems contradictory because Mordecai was the one who told her to hide in the first place. So on the one hand, you’re like, “Hey, you’re the one who told me to keep this thing a secret. You’re the one who told me to mind my tongue and keep that part of my heritage to myself in order for me to get through this process. But now you’re telling me that I have to reveal this kind of information about myself. Now I need to speak up.” And that is terrifying. It’s terrifying.
Now, she did end up replying, “Go and gather all of the Jews and pray for me for three days. Fast and pray for three days. My maids and I will do the same, then I will go into the king.”
A Time and a Place
But I just want you to see this contrast here. Sometimes you can kind of get into this black or white thinking or concrete thinking where it’s, “Oh, I always have to mask,” or, “I’m never going to mask. I’m always going to just be myself.” There’s a time and a place for everything, right? I think Ecclesiastes makes that pretty clear. There’s a time to mask. There’s a time to use the social rules to fix your…
I had this thing growing up that my mom would always tell me. I have a tendency to be very flat affect in my face, which is not showing a whole lot of expression or emotion on my face, or not always having what seems to be the appropriate emotional response to things. And a lot of times if I was going into a social situation with my family or something, my mom would tell me to fix my face. She had to tell me this because I wasn’t really aware of it. I was just existing as myself, and I didn’t realize that I was coming across very either mean-looking or uninterested or standoffish, and I know this because people have told me so. They would say, “Oh, I thought you were gonna be really mean. I thought you were a mean girl or something because you just look like that. But actually you’re really nice.” And I was like, “Oh yeah, I’m sorry. I didn’t even know that I looked like that.” That would happen in school a lot of times or with new teammates or something, and they were like, “Yeah, once we got to know you we just realized that’s just how your face is.”
But everyone isn’t going to be in a situation where they get to know you, so how you present yourself or how you contort your face for the moment in order to show that you’re friendly or show that you care or something like that, while that might be a little bit more difficult for someone on the spectrum, I think it is a very good skill to have. You need to know how to present yourself in a way that communicates the thing that you actually want to share with people. Okay? And when you get home, then you can just relax your face and look like the Stoics. Then you can do that or when you’re with people that really know you and then you don’t have to make your face up like that.
Knowing the Difference
There was a time for her, Esther, to hide who she was and to perform her duties, to do the things that she was being asked to do, and then there was a time to reveal herself, and knowing the difference is important. Mordecai didn’t ask her to unmask just because. There was a situation that occurred that made it then necessary for her to put herself in that position.
There are going to be times where revealing yourself or expressing your true thoughts is going to feel scary or feel dangerous, or feel like you might be rejected, or feel like you’re going to be embarrassed. And when that occurs, you don’t know how God may use that. There’s a lot of commentary around feeling safe and having safe people and safe environments, and I think that’s important for you to have those one or two people or have that place that you can go to be yourself. But then there are other times where you have to step into something uncomfortable and be one hundred percent honest about how you’re feeling or what you’re thinking or what your struggle is, even if it seems like it could backfire on you, because maybe that’s what’s necessary in that moment, not just for you, but for the other person.
Because who knows if maybe it was meant for such a time as that. And from Esther’s perspective, we know the end of the story. We get to read the book from that vantage point. But from Esther’s perspective, she didn’t know what was going to happen, right? There are plenty of martyrs in the Bible. But as Mordecai said, maybe you’re in this scenario for a reason. Maybe it’s time for you to take off the mask. Don’t think that, and going back to what Mordecai said, don’t think you’re going to escape just because you keep silent. Maybe speaking up will be the very thing that changes things for you.
A Personal Reflection
And I understand the hesitation. I’ve said to myself, well, I’ve always been this way, or I’ve always done things this way, and now you’re telling me I have to do the opposite? But there comes a time where the things that you did in childhood or as a teenager or even in your 20s that kept you safe, now it’s holding you back from moving forward. The things that I did as a child to mask, to not take up too much space, to not be a burden to other people, those very things hinder me from connecting and communicating with others in my life, whether that’s my husband or my kids or other scenarios.
It worked back then for a reason. That’s just what I needed to get through that time. Esther needed to hide her identity in order to stay safe, in order to get through the process. But then there came a time where she needed to do the opposite and leave it up to God. She recognized that this is a pivotal moment. She spent time in prayer and fasting, and then she made the decision, and she went and saw the king.
Take the Step
So I want you to ask yourself this coming week, is there an area in your life where you have been masking? And is there a way for you to step forward and say, “You know what? I’m gonna make a different choice today”? Even if you don’t know the outcome, even if you think this person might react badly, where in this area…
And just like Esther, I want you to pray about it. If you need to fast as well, then do that. Lord, where is one area where I have been masking, been silent, been hiding? What is that one area that you want me to work on opening up in? Where do you want me to start speaking up in my own life and not using fear as an excuse? It’s a very real thing. She very well could have been killed. But asking the Lord, okay, my life has been going one way. I want to be able to make progress. Obviously, you can’t make progress doing the same thing over and over again, right? So what is the one area that I need to take a step forward in? And ask Him to reveal that to you, and then move on it. Not ruminate. Don’t ask for 12,000 signs from the Lord. Consider, pray, fast and pray, those are both options, and then move on it through the fear. Okay?
I’m very glad that you stuck with me. I love Esther. I would encourage you to go back and read the story of Esther and get even more of the context. I’ll be diving into that a little bit more in the newsletter this coming week. But thank you so much again for joining me, and I will see you next week. Bye.