Halloween is around the corner! As kids all over the world are getting ready for trick or treating and picking out costumes. It is a good time to ask yourself, What is my favorite mask? A Minions one? Spiderman? A mask that will hide my authentic self from the world?

During childhood, the Halloween Masks we wore were all fun and games. They helped us to create a fantasy play life. In time, We mature and let go of our favorite scooby doo and boogie man masks, but.. what happens when we enter adulthood and have not outgrown our favorite masks? The ones we use to control how others perceive us. The ones we use to protect ourselves from the projection. Or maybe, the ones we use to hide addiction or to help us avoid looking at ourselves in the mirror.

Regardless of the reason for your favorite mask, Specialized Therapy Associates can help you not only remove the mask but also, help you to discover yourself again. Call our intake specialists today at 201-488-6678 to schedule an appointment and learn about our specialized programs.

“THE MASK I WEAR

Don’t be fooled by me.
Don’t be fooled by the face I wear
For I wear a mask. I wear a thousand masks-
masks that I’m afraid to take off
and none of them are me.
Pretending is an art that’s second nature to me
But don’t be fooled, for God’s sake, don’t be fooled.
I give you the impression that I’m secure
That all is sunny and unruffled with me
within as well as without,
that confidence is my name
and coolness my game,
that the water’s calm
and I’m in command,
and that I need no one.
But don’t believe me. Please!

My surface may be smooth but my surface is my mask,
My ever-varying and ever-concealing mask.
Beneath lies no smugness, no complacence.
Beneath dwells the real me in confusion, in fear, in aloneness.
But I hide this.
I don’t want anybody to know it.
I panic at the thought of my weaknesses
and fear exposing them.
That’s why I frantically create my masks to hide behind.

But I don’t tell you this.
I don’t dare.
I’m afraid to.
I’m afraid you’ll think less of me, that you’ll laugh
and your laugh would kill me.
I’m afraid that deep-down I’m nothing, that I’m just no good
and you will see this
and reject me.

I idly chatter to you in suave tones of surface talk.
I tell you everything that’s nothing
and nothing of what’s everything, of what’s crying within me.
So when I’m going through my routine
do not be fooled by what I’m saying
Please listen carefully and try to hear
what I’m not saying
Hear what I’d like to say
but what I can not say.

It will not be easy for you,
long felt inadequacies make my defenses strong.
The nearer you approach me
the blinder I may strike back.
Despite what books say of men, I am irrational;
I fight against the very thing that I cry out for.
you wonder who I am
you shouldn’t
for I am everyman
and everywoman
who wears a mask.
Don’t be fooled by me.
At least not by the face I wear.”
– Author unknown