Healing all starts with unmasking our wounds. Whether it is financial healing, healing our self-esteem or healing broken relationships, we can’t achieve wholeness unless we first uncover what’s really wrong and what causes our hurts.
“Pain is unmasked, unmistakable evil; every man knows that something is wrong when he is being hurt.” – C.S. Lewis
Life Coaching by Unmasking is a method I use in LIFE COACHING where assistance is given to clients as they unmask their own blocks in life which keep them from achieving their true desires. Unmasking usually happens in the following areas:
The Seven Masks That Block Your Success
- masked wounds
Masked wounds are real wounds that exist but may have been so deeply covered, forgotten or ignored for so long that they appear to be almost non-existent except for the fact that they do affect the client’s life. These wounds may manifest in some forms of defensiveness, fear or even choices and decisions made which seem to be misaligned with the other areas of the client’s life. They often surface during problematic times or whenever a certain point of intimacy is reached with the client’s most important relationships.
- masked gifts
Masked gifts are talents, skills and other potential of the client that remains to be tapped in order to live a full life and achieve one’s dreams. Years of criticism, of living in an unhealthy and unsupportive environment may have buried such gifts and left the client believing he or she has no real gift to share to the people around him/her. This is in turn connected to feelings of worthlessness, low self esteem or lack of purpose in life.
- masked dreams
Masked dreams are the true desires of one’s heart. These however may have been previously judged as unattainable, impractical or very difficult if not impossible to achieve. In the process, the client may have exchanged this true dream to other dreams like a stable job. However, even after reaching that new dream, one still feels lack of contentment or fulfillment, feeling as though something is wrong but one cannot clearly identify what it is.
This may also consist of thinking that another person’s dream is the client’s true dream. The process then includes unmasking which is the real dream and which are those that belong to the clients loved ones.
Without unmasking one’s real dreams, one may feel a general LACK OF COMMITTMENT and a lack of motivation towards achieving one’s dreams.
- masked relationships
Masked relationships are relationships that may be very important at the moment for the client and may even seem to be the ideal thing, but for one reason or another is bound to fail or is already failing for reasons the client may not see or may be afraid to see.
- masked beliefs
Masked beliefs are those beliefs that the client truly has in one’s subconscious mind. At the surface, the client may believe in a good and benevolent God. In reality, the client may have strong beliefs deep within that contradicts this like God’s harsh justice, God failing him during some dark period in his life and God judging or condemning him whenever he fails to be perfect.
- masked progress
Masked progress is being unaware of one’s true growth in a certain area in life. For example, one may believe that one has already gained self confidence, but the truth is one has merely relied on some external things like job status or money to which one’s self confidence is attached.
On the other hand, one may have really achieved progress in one’s maturity in life, but one may think that the presence of certain problems in his life may indicate otherwise. One then fails to notice that growth is often a growth in spirals. Setbacks may be experienced now and then but he has in truth become stronger and wiser along the way.
- masked fears
Masked fears are those that keep us from achieving many of our goals in life. Such fears such as the fear of success may sabotage all our efforts towards reaching our ambitions. Some other fears which the client may not be aware of are the fear of intimacy, the fear of being rejected, the fear of being alone and the fear of not being good enough.
It’s not easy removing our masks. Sometimes, we don’t even know we’re wearing one. Years of repressing our dreams, our hurts or our many other frustrations have unknowingly buried our true selves within layers of defence and subsequent covering up of the things we can’t handle anymore.
But unless we do so, we’d fail to understand why despite our outward success, we still feel a certain emptiness deep within us. Unless we do, we may fail to get to know our true strength, our true beauty, our true gifts which can bless the people we love the most.
It is only by unmasking our pain that we can find the wounds beneath the mask, and it is only by finding those wounds that our healing could ever begin. May you find your way to healing. May you find your way to joy!
“Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.” – Kahlil Gibran
“I bare my nakedness to the world that the world may see who I am; not the mask that hides my flaws, not the mask that hides my beauty. I bask in the light and I TAKE OFF THE MASK!”- Joyce