When the Mask Gets Applause

 

I used to get praised for being calm.

For being so easygoing.

For never complaining.

For making it work.

People liked that version of me. The one who adapted. The one who smiled even when something felt wrong. The one who translated chaos into calm and made it easier for others to feel okay.

But here is the truth. That was not calm. That was masking.

It took me a long time to figure that out.

Even longer to admit it.

What looked like flexibility was often confusion.

What looked like patience was often shutdown.

What looked like resilience was often exhaustion.

Masking does not always look like a lie. Sometimes it looks like success. Sometimes it looks like leadership. Sometimes it looks like best behavior or being the strong one.

But underneath, something else is happening.

You start to lose track of what you actually feel. You second-guess what you need. You chase the version of yourself that other people like, even if that version is slowly burning out.

And when the praise comes in, when they say things like you are always so calm or you never let things get to you, it does not feel like validation. It feels like invisibility.

Because what they are cheering for is the mask.

That is the part that hits hardest.

Not because people mean harm. They are responding to what they see. But what they see is filtered. It is shaped by what we have learned to hide.

And it takes real effort to stop performing.

That is part of what Wired Differently is about. It is not just a book series. It is not about labels or diagnoses. It is about what happens when we start naming what is real. When we start asking what it costs us to be who others expect us to be. When we choose to unlearn the performance and return to something honest.

It is not always clean. But it is worth it.

So if you have ever been praised for something that did not feel like the real you, I hope you know this.

You are not the mask.

You never were.

And you do not have to earn love by erasing yourself.

You are allowed to show up differently now.