unmasking for help.

When did you stop giving yourself pep talks? Maybe you still do.

Ok, so then when did you stop giving yourself pep talks that sounded like, “hey, come with me”, and started sounding like, “No, NO. You stay there!”?

My social media exit in January of 2023 was to reclaim time spent scrolling.

And, it was also more than that. 

Withdrawing offered quieter space to channel my energy into the things I cared about. It’s helped me to operate more smoothly and to make faster progress on the projects I’ve given my time to. It led to maintaining meaningful relationships and created a calm ease in my life where I could just exist...something that was completely foreign to me previously. Stability and comfort: what a gift. 

and…

Stopping to pick my head up and look around more broadly, I’ve realized that this type of withdrawal has existed in my life for a very long time in a different form, sans the calm and ease. Social media hiatus in full effect, it struck me as odd that I still felt the exhaustion of masking in my otherwise peaceful day-to-day life.

Maybe it’s easier to identify the steps and micro decisions used for the personas we present online because we physically unplug—and plug—ourselves in to maintain them. 

Brené Brown calls it armor; the personas we wear in real life. Internal Family Systems (IFS) outlines an ideology that we, humans, are made up of “parts” — that our mental operating system can be thought of as separate people within us, acting for different reasons and in different ways, as part of a whole. If you’ve ever seen Disney’s Inside Out movies, it is this theory on which the animated characters are based. 

In the neurodivergent and LGBTQIA+ communities, an extended component of this is also commonly referred to as “masking”; or concealing parts of ourselves for situationally dependent reasons.

Chalk it up to boundaries.

When it comes to the separation of my professional and personal lives, the divide is distinct and has been prioritized since I first started working at 13. It comes from a place of self-preservation by protecting image and maintaining appearances. 

After-all, I’m a member of the generation who pioneered myspace and facebook as adolescent status-showcases before realizing, “wait…colleges will rescind your acceptance based on a facebook post???”.

Originally used for seeking acceptance in a market of exclusivity, social media quickly turned toward social advancement and pontification. The fallout can now be felt in younger generations who came up during the tidal wave of manicured profiles that followed. This contrast is clearly depicted by the polished pages of LinkedIn compared to the laissez-faire lifestyle-moments exchanged on snapchat.

I’ve spent my career thus far essentially trying to prove that I deserve to be wherever I am. Anyone else? In the “age of thought leadership”, I’m acutely aware of the IFS parts governing my professional and personal identity. Identities? Identities. Woof.

As a result, I’ve held very distinct lines between my personal and professional lives. The unfortunately heavy filter that's been baked into my online presence has followed my professional development up the ladder and into the office. What I choose to share (or not share) at work runs through an eerily similar filter as the criteria used to govern what to post on social media. I’m even talking, like, in meetings. Literally, wtf happened to me?

I suppose it’s a balance. 

The trick is to share enough to be personable, but not too much to distract from my ability or performance. Right?

That balancing act is built into my role at my company just as it has been at previous organizations. On the one hand, neutrality is a huge asset as a marketing and sales leader. A good skill for any leader to have, really. On the other hand, downplaying or withholding parts of myself that might conflict with the understood social norms associated with a role like mine is exhausting.

This just in: I hate masking. The irony? It’s worked.

Well, it works until it doesn’t.

This strategy of neutrality seems to have benefited me so far in my career’s progression. I’ve been able to work amiably and cohesively with a myriad of people, teams, and organizations across a wide variety of industries, priorities, and projects. The cumulative experience has earned me plenty of opportunities.

The very idea behind a strategy of neutrality is that blending in provides safety. Yes, yes, my therapist and I are both well aware that manifesting invisibility is a trauma response and that the effect of trying to blend into the wallpaper is a prime example of the law of diminishing returns. Yep, masking too.

Case-in-point, the jig seems to be up for me. In recent months, more than a few people in my social sphere and at work have casually noted that I seem reserved, guarded, or withholding.

Welp, I reckon they have a point.

In her book, Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert makes the case for the healthy role of anxiety. She describes the biological benefit of someone asking us if we’re sure this really is a good idea (there are those persistent IFS parts again). She likens her relationship with anxiety to the passengers of a road trip, stating that she saves a seat for anxiety and holds space for its thoughts on decision-making. The caveat is she does not permit anxiety to drive the car.

While reviewing my own road trip passengers, my therapist suggested I revisit Brené Brown’s classic Ted Talk on vulnerability, guilt, and shame.

Asking myself the question, “is my armor serving me?”, I reflected on Brené's nod to Theodore Roosevelt’s Man in the Arena speech. 

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

― Theodore Roosevelt

Healthy boundaries serve a purpose.

I don’t plan to remove them from my life. 

And, I’ve found there’s room to shed some armor.

A few friend’s have expressed their interest in learning more about the adventures, situations, and lessons that shaped my perspective and skill set — should I choose to share. I’ve always thought of my own journey as unworthy and of my skills as table stakes. Living my life in a seemingly constant state of imposter syndrome, well aware of all that I don’t know, I am a voracious consumer of educational content from others. I specifically love interviews so I can better understand how people think about certain things. The nuggets of knowledge gleaned go on to be tested in my own life and any irrelevant or ill-suited elements get left where I found them.

I fall into the trap of assuming that others know what I know. So, the race to “catch up” continues. 

Until now.

Another overlapping trend emerged in those conversations with friends. Where I’d thought sharing more of myself to be an imposition, with the additional possibility of marring whatever credibility I’d scrapped together, they said they'd wanted to learn from me in the same way I’m drawn to learning from others.

Huh.

Well, I’ll be damned.

We really do tell ourselves the worst version of our stories, don’t we? While I am not rejoining social media, I am leaning into sharing more openly — in my day-to-day life and here on Connecting the Contours. I just love writing. I like creating. The process of puzzling through how the words and ideas fit together is what I most enjoy. And I’ve been standing in my own way. Life’s too short for that.

Best case, I get to do what I enjoy and it resonates with others.

Worst case, I get to do what I enjoy, it doesn’t resonate with many people, but it does connect with some and leads to new opportunities of shared interest.

so now what?

I've made the move to Substack.

You can subscribe to receive my bi-weekly newsletter, Connecting the Contours, about building better systems for navigating daily work and life.

As a storyteller, masquerading as a corporate growth leader, I share 15 years of b2b marketing, sales, and ops team insights. Regular experiences like climbing to the top of 10,000 foot mountains with high-profile clientele and a snowboard or gripping the helm of a sailboat during a turbulent midnight crossing of the Caribbean ocean also inform my approach to building better systems.

• I like understanding how things work.
• I'm drawn to the art of effective messaging.
• I'm interested in the alignment of purpose and process.
• I’m a mental wellness advocate learning alongside others.
• I enjoy productivity; in the sense that I find fulfillment in accomplishment without overwhelm.

Connecting the Contours is a place for me to explore and share interconnected topics of interest with others — from essays and reflections to overviews, tools, and how-tos.

Thanks for being here. Let's see where this goes.

onward.

-dm