Let's not pretend

How “real†are you around other people, and how much do you play a role, pretending to be different than who you really are?  

I have a client who is playing different characters from the time she gets up in the morning to the time she goes to sleep.  She changes her personality, demeanor and her emotional energy depending on whom she is interacting with during the course of her day.  

With her co-workers she puts on a show of being “very busy.† When I asked her what the purpose was behind this facade, she said it was to make her co-workers think she had numerous customers.  

I asked why she would want to project this image, versus her real situation — which was that she did not have that many customers.  She said she did not want her co-workers to think she was not capable at her job, or think of her as some kind of “loser.â€

With her friends outside of work, she said, she would put on a different persona. For instance, when she was out to dinner, she would be the “fun†person.  She was always laughing at things, even when she didn’t find them particularly funny.  

She also cracked jokes and needled her friends to show how much fun she was. When we talked about it more, she admitted that she was afraid they would not like to be with her if she was not as “fun†as she appeared. She felt she needed to play this role in order to be included in dinners out and weekend parties.

With her siblings, she felt the need to play the role of a “person who was really enjoying life and for whom everything was working.†She believed her siblings saw her as an oddball in many ways, someone who was not on the right track in her life.  The persona she created for them was her way of heading off any negative judgments and potential criticism on their part.

I asked her how the whole role-playing strategy was working for her. She admitted that it was exhausting. And, as it is for many of us, she said she was afraid to be herself because then people might not like her or respect her any more.

I suggested that she was doing something many of us have been guilty of:  She was trying to manipulate the way other people saw her in order to protect herself.  And by pretending to be someone else, she was actually distancing herself from all these people. If one party is not genuine, how is it possible to have a healthy friendship or relationship?

The only way to change this pattern is to practice being your true self, taking small steps.

To help her start changing this pattern, I asked her to experiment with being more genuine with other people as a test, just to see if her life would improve. The idea of this was initially quite intimidating, as she had been  “acting†for years. She agreed to start with her friends, which was the least threatening of the three groups for her.  

The results? She found that they did ask her why she was being quieter. She realized that, as she was more “real,†certain friendships got stronger and others practically disintegrated.  She liked the feeling of having fewer friends with whom she could have a closer bond. She also realized that she did not enjoy many of those dinners out and did not really like some of her “friends†after all.

She then practiced with her co-workers and was very surprised to find that, as she became more forthcoming, they were more honest with her about their own customer bases and challenges.  

Finally, with her siblings, she was honest about what was working for her and what was not. They soon appeared to be more at ease around her and less critical of her, because they no longer felt compelled to chip away at the “wall†she had built up around her.

When I asked her how all these changes felt, she beamed. It was a relief not to have to be an actor anymore.

She also felt closer to her friends, co-workers and siblings.

When you pretend to be someone that you are not, you may push away the people you could truly relate to.  

Being genuine is a way to make healthy connections with other people, and those connections are the ones that will bring the most satisfaction to your life.  

The smaller the gap between who you really are and what you project to others, the less work it is and the more genuine you feel.

Brooke Loening is a life coach in Sharon who works with individuals, and runs weekly coaching groups on achieving growth in career, health and relationships.  To make column suggestions, e-mail him at bloening@snet.net.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less