Illusions we project for others allow us to remain hidden inside

By David McElroy · October 11, 2020

When people look at me, they see an illusion. They don’t see the real me.

That’s true of you, too. Some of what others see in us is the illusion we project. Another big part of what they see — probably the biggest part — comes from their unconscious assumptions about human beings. And a bit of it is actual truth that leaks out through the cracks in the masks we wear.

You could spend your life studying one solitary person — as a full-time job — and still not understand every single thing there is to know about that person. Humans are too complex on the inside. We often have little understanding of ourselves. Even the best of us keep discovering new things that later seem obvious.

Since it’s impossible to know another person completely — and few are even interested — it’s natural that we would develop quick abstractions for those we see around us. We project what we want to see onto those we perceive as good or even ideal. We project what we expect to see (or fear we’ll see) onto those we perceive as bad. We go through life with this rough shorthand about others. It’s horribly inaccurate, but it’s good enough to allow us to survive.

Most people go through life believing they are known and understood by others — and that they know others, too. Some of us know better, though, and that leaves us feeling unbearably alone.

For some reason, that feeling of separation from others has become far worse for me in the last few months.

If you dealt with me in daily life — at work or as a casual acquaintance in public — you wouldn’t know that. I’m moving through the world on “autopilot,” continuing to execute the normal social scripts that everybody expects from me.

That’s the only way I know how to act. My childhood programming taught me to act in the socially acceptable way at all times. No matter how hurt or angry or confused I was, I had to pretend everything was just fine. And I learned never to ask for help, because that was weakness and also because I wouldn’t get the help anyway.

I’ve been isolating myself more and more for the last few months. It’s not clear exactly when it started. I don’t really mean physically isolating — since I’m still around a pretty good number of people at work and restaurants and stores — but psychologically. I’m not sure what’s driving this, but I feel as though I’ve been emotionally shutting down.

Even when I have things I need to say to others I care about, I’m remaining quiet lately. The people from whom I’d like to get normal help and support are the ones from whom I’m isolating myself the most. I have specific people I’ve wanted to talk with about what’s going on — some I could easily reach out to and some I don’t feel I could speak to — but I’m not even trying.

It’s not emotionally healthy — and I don’t know why it’s going on.

For the most part, I am nothing but an illusion to others. There are very few I’ve allowed to really know me and there are few others who’ve tried. The ones who seem to know me the least are those who take the bits and pieces that I present publicly and decide they understand based on that.

If you know me in real life, you know only the masks I wear. You see the illusions which I project — mostly unconsciously out of long habit — and little else. But because I have such a deep craving to be known and understood, I provide little keyhole views into my psyche through what I write here. You can’t even know whether I’m completely honest or accurate in what I present — or in what I see in myself.

It’s just a series of illusions. You see the masks I wear.

I want to reach out and touch you. Not most people. There are only a handful — fewer than half a dozen — who I even wish I could connect with. But I’m like a man with no mouth right now — but who feels the deep need to scream for help. And all anyone sees is the smiling and happy mask instead.

I have a lot to say right now. I have a lot to talk about. I need to talk to someone about trust and love and goals and sacrifice.

But I don’t know how to connect with that person I need. So I’m trapped inside, in a prison I’ve made for myself.

But nobody knows I’m trapped, because I keep projecting the right illusion. Wearing the right mask.

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Years ago, I heard a question that seemed very insightful at the time. You’ve probably heard it, too. What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? The question is intended to help you uncover things you really want to do, but which you’re afraid to try — for fear of failure. In an interview today, I heard the great marketing guru Seth Godin give a different point of view. He said the better question is to ask what you would do even if you knew it would fail. That struck me as far more insightful than the original version. We ought to be doing what we know is right, not what will maximize our success or praise from others. There are some battles that are worth fighting even if you believe you’re doomed to failure. Those battles are often for love or important ideas or our children. Some things are simply worth fighting for — and the truth is that you might win anyway. Do the right thing. Take the chance.

The more I understand about myself, about human nature and about the nature of reality, the more I realize I’m a radical by the standards of both Modernism and Postmodernism. Seeing the things which I’m stumbling toward makes me an enemy of many of the core ideas upon which contemporary culture is built. It exposes the culture as a monstrous lie — like a dangerous infection that’s slowly destroying what human were created to be. My “inner observer” has always known that truth was found in the ideas of the Enlightenment, but I’m slowly finding words to explain what has merely been instinct until now. The Enlightenment was humanity’s great leap forward, but shallow and arrogant thinkers for the next two centuries threw away the fruits of that achievement. We can’t go forward as a species until we go back to correct this intellectual and spiritual error — and part of that is acknowledging that our collective attempts to do away with our Creator will always fail.

I’ve come to believe that some of us — including me — aren’t very good at knowing how to be happy. I don’t mean that in the sense that happy talk and positive thinking should be able to make us happy regardless of the circumstances. I mean that some of us had so much experience with being unhappy when we were young that we were trained to be unhappy — and that being happy is an unconsciously uncomfortable thing. When I look at times in my past when I should have been happy, it rarely lasted. I believe now that I found reasons to be unhappy — and caused real problems for myself — because being comfortable and happy felt so foreign to my programming. If I’m right, this means that some of us have to do more than just change our circumstances. It means we have to learn how to accept the happiness that we unconsciously fear we don’t deserve.

After I wrote last night about being happy, I thought of an old song that mirrored what I was feeling. After listening to the entire album, I found it remarkable how well the emotions of that music match my own heart at this point in my life. Bob Bennett’s “Matters of the Heart” came out while I was in college. Even after all these years, it holds up really well, and you can listen to the entire album on YouTube. The specific song which matched my feelings last night was “Madness Dancing,” but I still find every song on the album to be strong with the exception of the eighth and ninth. (The song about his parents, called “1951,” is especially poignant.) In fact, the opening and closing songs paint a picture of my heart at its best now in these lines: “A light shining in this heart of darkness, A new beginning and a miracle, Day by day the integration of the concrete and the spiritual.” It’s old music that you’ve probably never heard, but it means a lot to me.

Narcissists tend to turn their children into narcissists — and since a narcissist doesn’t realize he or she is a narcissist, there’s no bad intent. How does this happen? I watched a YouTube video over the weekend from an Australian psychologist who does a nice job of summarizing how it works. None of this is new to me, but I thought it was useful for those who haven’t spent years digging through books and articles about it. The same psychologist has an excellent summary of something which confuses a lot of people about narcissism. You’ve all seen examples of the loud, boisterous and overbearing narcissist, but what about the ones who are more introverted and vulnerable? This type is called a covert narcissist (or a vulnerable narcissist), and this is what my father was. In the first video, I strongly see myself in the ways my father treated me and in the second video, I see what my father was almost successful in making me become.

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