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The Use of Masks

TheCatWoman

We're told and generally led to believe that masking is bad, but is it really?

Everybody uses masks or faces to go about thier everyday lives, there could be a inner looking blank face for when we're on publc transport. A Work face that looks professional and in control. The face we show in private to our nearest and dearest, a slightly despairing face when we need help. If everybody does this NT's as well as ND's then why's it bad when we do it, or more importantly why are we made to feel bad for doing it?

All our masks and faces are an authentic part of us, just a different facet, a diamond is no less a diamond for being multifaceted.

Maybe we should start to see masks and faces as a dressing up box and using them to help us do the things we need to do. Be a bit like Mr Ben, go into the changing room with a costume and come out through the door as a lion tamer, or a train driver. I've found this approach to be really empowering and I think its how I've survived my first 50 undiagnosed years. One of my most important masks is my brass necked one, I put it on like a collar and it allows me to say things that I would think outrageous and unsayable if I wasn't wearing it, sometimes what comes out of my mouth when wearing it can get me in trouble, but because I've got  brass neck I usually come away unscathed. But it's also what allows me to speak the truth to power, to ask for what I want and need, to not be victim. I still come home and take it off and put it back in the dressing up box and go through all the usual worrying about what I said and did etc whilst I was wearing it, but then I think I'd feel that anyway, so I make it serve a purpose, in helping me to stand up for myself.

  • I do agree, I think it confuses people when they are told they are masking as if it's something false like lying, when actually it's how society functions - even kids learn quickly what they can do at home is different to what is expected at school. You have to modify your behaviour for your environment.

    I do use up so much more energy out in the world interacting with people than when I'm at home, so the extra energy use is really hard, I'm just wiped out and can barely do anything. Sometimes I just have to lie on the sofa for a bit with my eyes closed. 

  • in reply to Expecto_Patronum

    I think thats where thinking of it like a dressing up box and conciously putting on a taking off a mask can be less exhausting. Maybe some of the exhaustion and cooties from being with other people all day stays with the mask and not on you? I guess it might depend on how good you are at visualisation, I'm very good at it and find it fairly easy to create new masks to wear and to take them off again. I find it a bit like thinking about what to wear for an ocaission, only without actually having to leave the house and go to the shops and finding they have nothing suitable. 

  • It is true that we wear masks in different situations. I have done that throughout my working life. A lot of my earlier life fitted my pace.

    However also during that time life has become more challenging for many reasons. Particularly since the pandemic my work has become more difficult and at the same time my employer has been trying to save money, so not immediately replacing posts when people leave being one way. Also when I started working I expected to have retired nearly 4 years ago.  Then there are all the new challenges of technology and remembering passwords. The world has become a faster place.

    Perhaps without all these changes I might have coped better to continue with a mask. I will never know.

  • I find that masking uses up an awful lot of my energy meaning I spend a lot of my time recovering from interacting with others. I also think that masking has taken a toll on my mental health.

    Having said that, I don't think I could do my job without masking. I think I would get fired fairly quickly without it. So yes, I do think masking has a place but I'd like to learn not to have to do it all the time. And for it to be accepted in certain situations that I can just be me, whatever the heck that actually looks like.