There is a version of you that explodes. There is a version of you that shuts down. There is a version of you that performs.
They are all you. They are all trying to protect you.
Some days the mask slips in fire.
You find yourself yelling "I changed everything for you and it is still not enough." You hear your own voice and you barely recognize it.
That is the rage mask. The part of you that is tired of bending, tired of chasing, tired of being the one who always adjusts. It screams because it never got listened to when it whispered.
Other days the mask slips in ice.
You go silent. You pull back. You think "Fine. I will disappear. I will go be whoever I need to be somewhere else."
You look calm from the outside. Inside you are gone. That is still self protection. It is your nervous system hitting the off switch before you shatter.
Sometimes you become the performer.
You get louder. Funnier. More magnetic. You turn everything into a show. Underneath is this ache.
"Do you see me yet. Do you see how special I am. Do I finally matter."
If they do not respond, the performer mask can twist into chaos. Complaints. Demands. Scenes. Anything to avoid feeling invisible again.
There is also the stone.
Cold eyes. Flat tone. Doors closing. "Get out. I do not care if you ever come back."
People call this heartless. They do not see how many times the softer part of you got stomped on before this one took over.
None of these masks exist because you are evil.
They exist because somewhere along the way you learned that your soft, honest self was not safe.
You learned that crying got you mocked or ignored. You learned that asking directly got you punished. You learned that trying to calmly explain got you twisted into the villain.
So your system built a toolbox of extreme modes.
Rage mode. Ice mode. Performance mode. Stone mode. Caretaker martyr mode.
It is survival, not identity.
You may never fully get rid of these masks. They are part of the wiring now.
But you can build something underneath them. A core self that can notice when a mask is about to take the wheel and say
"Wait. I know why you are here. I know you are protecting us. Let me handle this one differently."
Healing is not about pretending you never flip, never rage, never shut down.
Healing is when those parts of you are no longer running your whole life on autopilot.
They become signals instead of drivers.
You are not your mask. You are the one underneath, learning how to come back to yourself without needing to burn everything down just to feel safe again.
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