What Mask Do You Wear? Quiz

• Annie B. Bond

One of the first steps toward creating a life that fills us with joy and  contentment is recognizing the role we play that may be keeping us confined in  unhappy, unsatisfying patterns of behavior. Most of us learned our roles early  in childhood, but after a certain point, those masks we wear stopped helping us.  Which mask do you wear?

Take this quiz to see which role you play. You may recognize the masks your  loved ones wear, too!

1. Do you often find yourself thinking, “It should be like THIS” or “They’re  doing it WRONG”?

2. Does your striving for perfection sometimes drive you crazy?

3. Do you feel like you will never be good enough?

4. Do you often tell yourself, “I can’t help it” or “It’s not my fault”?

5. Do you find yourself looking to the past and thinking, “It would have been  alright if only. . .”

6. Do you look to the future and think “Everything will be alright  when. . .”

7. Do you sometimes do things because you think you should or you feel  obligated to, but you really don’t want to?

8. Do you commonly tell yourself that making others happy is more important  than what you need or feel?

9. Do you often say yes when you really want to say no?

10. Do you often rush in to help people and fix it for them?

If you answered “yes” to 1, 2 or 3, you may be wearing the mask of the  Judge. The Judge is the mouthpiece of the Demon of Perfection that says,  no matter how good it gets, it will never be good enough.

If you answered “yes” to 4, 5, or 6, you may be wearing the mask of the  Victim. The Victim makes up “poor me” stories and is rarely in a state of  gratitude or in the present moment.

If you answered “yes” to 7, 8, 9, 10, or 11, you may be wearing the mask of  the Prostitute/Rescuer. The Prostitute pretends to be anything you want  her to be, compromising herself to get what she wants–which is usually love and  acceptance. She hides the truth of how she really feels. The Rescuer is the more  respectable face of this mask–the Nurse endlessly mopping the brows of the  wounded, the Hero rushing in to make everything better. The problem with this  mask is that it subtly (or not so subtly!) tells people, “I don’t respect you  enough to believe you can do this yourself.”

There is no shame in having learned to play one of these roles. Most of us  did. But we can all learn how to gently put aside the masks that hide our  authentic selves.