Unmasking Into Authenticity
Embracing A New Identity
This week, I’ve been traveling and have not recorded an audio voiceover. I plan to update this post with an audio option next week.
Masking is something that I know–I mean, I really know–very well. For decades, I would pretend to be someone I’m not. And, I got really good at hiding behind these false facades. The reality is that I didn’t want to stand out, be seen as different from others, or feel like I didn’t belong. I desperately wanted to be included and accepted. However, I felt lots of shame and thought that if people really knew me they would reject me and I would continue to feel isolated and alone.
Sure, masking was a way to protect myself from potentially being rejected, bullied, teased, or mocked. As a child, I experienced plenty of those treatments from my peers. For years, as a kid, I would get picked on, mocked, physically and verbally assaulted, and rejected from participating in group activities. Once I got older, I wanted to do anything in my power to never, ever again experience those awful feelings of mistreatment. Who would ever, in their right mind, want to experience this kind of treatment again? Nobody!
The Birth of Steve
So, whenever I had a chance, I decided to pretend I was someone else–I put on a mask. This started quite innocently when I was still being bullied in school around the age of 11 years old. At the time, I lived in northern New Jersey about 15 miles from New York City, and had to take one of the public bus routes from my school to the end of the bus line to get home. In order to feel safer traveling by myself, I would always sit in one of the first few open seats across from the bus driver. Because I took the same bus route each day, the bus driver started having a conversation with me.
I remember how it started. “Hey, what’s your name,” the driver asked me. I thought about it for a minute and decided that it would be better if I didn’t tell him anything personal. So, I pretended to be someone else and answered, “Steve, my name is Steve.” “Oh, like Steve McQueen,” he said. I laughed and nodded my head, “Yes.” And, there it started. It was so easy. From that day onward, anytime I boarded the bus, the driver greeted me with my new name, “Hey, Steve! How’s your day?”
Over time, the driver would ask me questions and try to have small talk with me. And, I would play along and come up with fictitious answers to satisfy his curiosity, or at least help him pass his time driving the bus. This lasted for the entire school year while we still lived at that address.
That experience helped me to see that I could pretend to be someone else and get away with it. Sure, in that situation, the stakes were low and ultimately it wouldn’t have mattered whether the bus driver really knew my real first name or not–unless there was an emergency that involved me and now everyone was searching for “Steve” when they should have been looking for “David.” Well, actually, “Richie.” Let me explain.
Little Richie
When I was born, my parents named me “Richard” after my father. I was Richard Junior and my father was Richard Senior. The justification for this was that I was born prematurely on my father’s birthday. For him, it meant that it was a “sign” that I should be a junior.
This would have been fine; except, my father and I never had a good relationship. As much as I tried to have a close relationship with my father–as any other child would have attempted, I was always rejected or felt like I was a bother to him. Not to mention that while I was growing up, he was either drinking or working late hours and I hardly ever spent any time with him sober. And, when he did have moments of sobriety, he usually felt guilty and tried making it up to me which confused me even more. Sometimes he’d be nice, other times he was really mean and abusive. This was very confusing behavior to a young child and he didn’t feel safe to be around.
Then, because we had the same birthday, my parents decided that we had to celebrate together–on the same day. Unfortunately, this too didn’t turn out very well. As I got older, I realized that we usually (at least what I can remember) had only one cake for the two of us and I recall that it really ended up being more about my father and the adults having a party and getting drunk rather than it was about me as a kid celebrating a birthday. I can still vividly recall my seventh birthday celebration feeling bored watching my father and all the other adults drinking and getting drunk while I was feeling worried about how the night was going to end. That is, whether my father would get into a fight with my mother, or just fall asleep.
In retrospect, I feel that my father could have let me, as a young child, have a party and he really could have downplayed the fact that his birthday fell on the same day as his son’s. But, that didn’t happen. I always felt left out as though it was always about my father and never about me.
In reality, that was his personality, everything seemed to revolve around my father including my given first name and my birthday celebration. Honestly, I felt that my father wanted me to be a smaller version of himself. Yet, I never wanted to be like him at all. He was always angry, aggressive, judgemental, and complaining about everything–all the time. And, when he drank, he got loud and violent.
As much as I tried to be different from my father, unfortunately, as the cliche goes–the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Having learned well from his example, I took on a victim/abuser perspective myself and also lived from a space of anger, judgment, and a negative mindset filled with complaining and entitlement.
Growing Up as Rich
As I’ve shared in other posts, I grew up taking on and feeling lots of toxic shame, experiencing ongoing complex trauma, believing that I was a broken misfit of a human being, and trying to cope with and escape from my reality through different addictions. Additionally, because of my undiagnosed neurodiversity, I also had difficulties connecting to others, communicating and expressing my needs appropriately, and was extremely impulsive and rigid in my thinking.
In fact, I had developed a persona, a mask, that I wore as this real-life character called “Rich.” My entire identity as this person was wrapped around trauma, drama, and feelings of inadequacy. I had developed a type of association or bond with my identity and my name. I felt shackled to it. Everything about who I saw myself to be was connected to my identity as “Rich” and it was also associated with my trauma bond with my parents.
“A trauma bond is an attachment that develops from a cycle of physical and/or emotional trauma followed by positive reinforcement…When a person experiences emotional or physical abuse trauma, it is hard to process the feelings. It can be especially confusing when the abuser acts kind or loving afterward.”1
“Put more simply, trauma bonds occur when we go through periods of intense love and excitement with a person followed by periods of abuse, neglect, and mistreatment. The cycle of being devalued and then rewarded over and over, works overtime to create a strong chemical and hormonal bond between a victim and his or her abuser. This is why victims of abuse often describe feeling more deeply bonded to their abuser than they do to people who actually consistently treat them well.”2
Trauma bonds can occur in any relationship including narcissistic romantic, or sexual relationships, friendships, work relationships, and parent-child relationships.3 They can be pervasive and challenging to break because of the mutual history that everyone involved has experienced together. Some experts suggest that people involved in trauma bond relationships actually get addicted to the relationship itself. This is especially true in parent-child relationships because a person’s entire identity and developmental milestones have been shaped and impacted by these trauma bonds.4 In other words, most of us, have built our understanding of the world, our relationship to others, and an understanding of ourselves through these critical relationships. When abuse is involved, it complicates the relationship and our understanding of ourselves.
From Rich to David
As in all relationships, we cannot make another person change. We can only work on changing ourselves and being better today than we were yesterday. Consequently, there may come a time when the desire to heal from trauma supersedes our desire to be in an unhealthy relationship with our abusive parents. Specifically, the desire to be free of our trauma bonds may be greater than the desire to continue the abusive relationship.
In my late thirties, I made a significant choice to begin focusing on healing from my complex childhood traumas. This started what has continued to be an ongoing process for the past twelve years. As part of my healing, I decided that I needed to emancipate myself from my abusive past including my parents. To begin, I needed to claim my own identity outside of my family of origin.
In order to move into a new life, I needed to legally change my name as my birth name no longer served me and I wanted to be free of my trauma bond with my parents.
In retrospect, despite the fact that the legal process was quite easy, relatively quick, and pain-free, I went through a lot of emotional turmoil before I filed the paperwork to have my name changed in court. I felt like an ungrateful, bad son for wanting to be free of my parents’ abusive past.
Yet, on the day I appeared in court to finalize my legal name change, I knew the decision to put my past behind me was the right one. First, the judge asked me a few questions and reviewed my court documents requesting a new name. Then, as she looked at me, announced that she approved the change, and told me that I legally have a new name, I felt overwhelming feelings of relief, freedom, and joy. As tears streamed down my face, I thanked the judge for her time and felt like many of the shackles that bound me were broken.
From that moment, I had a completely new name–first, middle, and last. I was ready to begin a new life. Now, it still took many years before I completely distanced myself from my parents. In fact, over time, I saw them less often, but truly breaking the trauma bond was extremely difficult. With my father, I decided I couldn’t have any more contact with him after a particularly stressful encounter during a family visit to my parent’s home around nine years ago. Not only did I get emotionally triggered, but the after-effects from the encounter lasted for several weeks. Prior to this visit with my parents, I hadn’t seen them for almost a year and I had been feeling quite different–more calm, more at peace, more of my new self. But that didn’t last long after my negative encounter with my parents–especially my father.
Due to that encounter and finally seeing how negatively I felt impacted by him in my life, I made a commitment that I wouldn’t engage with him again. Nothing good was ever going to come from that relationship and nothing was ever going to change. For my own sanity, I didn’t engage with him ever again. My father died in early 2023 and I hadn’t spoken to him for around nine years. Once he passed, I was sad with grief over not having a father who truly loved or cared for me. But, more importantly, I felt that I was finally free from our abusive trauma bond. He certainly was never going to hurt me again.
Continued Unmasking
Outside of my complex traumas and family of origin issues, I recognize that I have also been masking my neurodivergent differences. Since discovering and receiving my official diagnosis as an autistic ADHDer, I have been more kind to myself and have been embracing my individual neurotype. On a regular basis, I no longer feel ashamed of myself for my neurological differences unless I get emotionally triggered. Then, my shame does get triggered, but it doesn’t last as long as it had in the past. Feeling less ashamed has also helped me to be more authentically myself. As a result, I have been learning to be more gentle, kind, and loving toward myself and others.
Takeaways
Putting up a false front or mask is very common for many of us. Compared to when I was a young child in the 1980s, it seems that it’s even easier today to pretend to be someone else because of social media; anyone can pretend to be somebody else. I mean look at all those perfect photos of food, loving relationships, and adventures that everyone posts about on their socials. If I didn’t know better, I would assume that I’m the only person who’s got issues.
Yet, at what cost to our own health and well-being do many of us try to hide from our true identity and put up masks?
For me, I masked to protect myself from literally everyone, including all external critics and my own internal critics who told me that I was worthless and didn’t belong. Taking on false beliefs about myself from my family of origin including a negative mindset and lots of toxic shame, I believed everything I was told. Pretending to be someone else, I tried being acceptable and valued. And, I tried escaping my reality through addictions because of the false image I had of myself that kept telling me that I was worthless. That identity was all I knew; however, it wasn’t really me—my true self. It was the persona that I created based on my trauma bonds.
In the end, to break my traumatic bond with my father and release myself from the grips of my false identity, I needed to take action. It meant literally separating myself from my family of origin. It meant changing my legal name completely which also meant leaving my “old” identity behind. The old persona no longer served its purpose and I was ready to start a new life with a new name and identity.
At first, I felt like a fraud as though I was wearing a new mask. I was so used to being called “Rich” and believing all the lies told about me that it felt fake to now be called “David.”
Even though the name change started this process for me, it wasn’t until I finally decided that I couldn’t engage with my father anymore. I needed to leave him behind and make a life without him in it. Ultimately, this took courage and a willingness to live more authentically. Once I started uncovering my authentic self and stayed away from my past relationships (namely, my parents), I grew into my new name and identity.
Today, I no longer feel any connection to my old identity or my previous name. Recently, when I met someone who knew me from the past and called me by my birth name, at first, I felt a bit confused. It felt hard to place; it seemed to me that they were talking about someone else—not me.
At this point, much of my past feels like a lifetime ago, and with my new identity, I have embraced a new life that I’ve been working to create.
Is there anything about yourself that you need to leave behind to heal? Are there people in your life that you need to leave behind? Do you have any relationships that need to end so you can begin to heal and start a new, healthy life? Ask yourself, what do I need to do to start unmasking and embrace my true identity?
Endnotes
1. https://www.sandstonecare.com/blog/trauma-bonding/
2. https://cptsdfoundation.org/2019/11/22/recognizing-and-breaking-a-trauma-bond/
3. https://www.choosingtherapy.com/stages-of-trauma-bonding/
4. https://hopefulpanda.com/signs-of-trauma-bonding-with-parents/