Masking Complex Trauma (CPTSD) and the Holidays

The holidays can bring up old and painful memories we're often not sure what to do with. For those of us with complex trauma (CPTSD), connecting with family often remains challenging when past patterns persist. Despite running low on time and energy during this season, we often have high expectations and put pressure on ourselves to perform and enjoy.

Most people with complex trauma (CPTSD) approach the holidays with a sense of dread and endurance. We try to "Just get through it," or "Don't make it worse," or even, "Just don't engage." We might step away to try self-care without having useful tactics for when we want to engage with others.

This can leave us feeling exhausted and resentful, like we're always missing out, and longing for an experience that feels perpetually out of reach. Maybe we notice how we continue to live with the consequences of trauma that happened a long time ago and that we want to put behind us.

It can feel risky and even confusing to spend time with people you love, who also continue to activate old and familiar pain. For reasons that have everything to do with our nervous systems, and nothing to do with effort, the past doesn't seem to want to stay in the past.

The solution is not to avoid the holidays or your family, or to try to ignore the stress of it all. "Canceling" your family or the holidays out of reactive self-protection only perpetuates the pain.

What most people get wrong about this is they take a step backwards, instead of stepping into the challenge and creating new ways to offer — and receive — care.

To do this, though, we have to stop masking.

That means no more performing or pretending to be who we think others want us to be.

No more repressing our preferences and needs out of habit.

No more compensating for the stress we feel about all this by comparing ourselves to "normal" and feeling bad about it.

The way out is to do something different that creates new possibilities for connection and care — without masking.

What is "Masking" with Complex Trauma (CPTSD)?

High-performers with complex trauma usually learned, early in life, to hide trauma symptoms like isolation, fear, and dread behind a mask of cheerful compliance. Masking our true feelings this way kept us from attracting attention and "getting in trouble."

As children, it's sadly normal to blame ourselves for the trauma we experienced in our households — even if we're not explicitly told it's our fault. We adapt by trying harder and "Going along to get along."

We might even mask to manage other people’s feelings. Our caregivers might have been sad, so we didn’t want to burden them with our childhood sadness. Or they might have been angry, so they didn’t feel like a safe place where we could share our anger. Instead of getting the emotional support all children require to navigate big feelings, we learned to mask them instead.

We might have heard personal development slogans like "Fake it until you make it," or "Act as-if" and taken them to heart, innocently hoping that pretending things were okay would make it true.

We may have also masked our feelings, preferences, and needs in order to be agreeable to the people taking care of us. Infant and toddler research (by Ed Tronick and others) shows how this is an adaptive survival strategy to unpredictable or terrifying caregiver behavior.

Masking is a safety strategy, an attempt to control others by making ourselves agreeable and erasing our needs.

We do it to maintain connection and belonging, which we need for survival, but we do it at the cost of being truly seen, heard, and loved.

It's a steep price to pay, especially when this behavior continues into adulthood and impacts our adult relationships. Masking often does a lot of damage until we get clear on what it is, where it came from, and work to change it through trauma resolution (like the work I offer individuals and couples).

In adult relationships, masking shows up when we’re aware of what is expected of us and act accordingly, out of touch with our true preferences and needs. We might say things are fine when they're not. We might hide our desires behind dutiful performance, unsure exactly why it doesn’t feel safe to be seen by those we love.

The result of this kind of complex trauma masking is that, despite spending time with our partners and people we love, we often feel like no one truly knows us. When gathering together to celebrate the holidays, we might feel lonely while surrounded by the people who care most about us in the world.

This is very sad. And also, fixable.

Inside, those of us who mask are longing for the people we love to see through the mask. When they don't (because we can be quite convincing) we might even tell ourselves stories about how they don't care.

Or, we might feel shame about masking in the first place, self-criticizing without understanding how this early survival strategy helped us succeed in our family when we were growing up. But masking no longer serves us.

Some of us tell ourselves that the kind of holiday season happiness we see others enjoy isn't meant for us. But the goodness of family connections and holiday celebrations is meant for everyone to enjoy. Wanting it for ourselves is simply a sign that we care about it enough to want to do something about it.

How Masking Complex Trauma (CTPSD) Impacts our Relationships

Masking complex trauma keeps childhood wounds bandaged so tight that they can't fully heal.

The solution isn't to stop masking completely. That would be shocking and stressful for the parts of us that still see it as a survival strategy.

Instead, we can start to notice when we're masking and step into more honesty about what's happening and why. We can take self-responsibility for the distance that masking creates in our relationships and make different choices.

This approach doesn't require anyone else to change or heal. They don’t suddenly become emotionally more reliable or less activating. We shift our position in the dynamic instead.

This shift, away from masking, allows us to slowly, reliably create the conditions for a different experience for ourselves. Gradually, we risk showing more of ourselves and notice the impact, teaching our nervous systems to feel more at ease with the people closest to us.

Even a few moments of letting the mask down and allowing ourselves to be seen and loved can feel deeply healing. And it is.

Even when it doesn’t go the way we hoped, this kind of relational risk-taking shows the most wounded parts of ourselves that we now have the skills to navigate adult relationships and to protect ourselves at the same time.

Five Steps to Stop Masking (with CPTSD Over the Holidays)

Here are some ways to explore what it could be like to stop masking, during the holidays and with the people you love. Remember, masking was a survival strategy you learned as a child, so the unlearning process works best when it’s gradual and gentle.

1. Recognize complex trauma as a natural survival response to an unhealthy environment.

It can be hard to reckon with how much pain, fear, and isolation we carried as children, and with the strategies we adopted to help us cope. When we’re willing to see just how much complex trauma has impacted our adult lives and relationships, we’re a step closer to changing it. We can’t heal what we don’t see. Recognizing the strategies we learned, such as masking, is a pivotal step.

2. Take responsibility for your experience by prioritizing self-regulation.

Now that we’re adults, we’re the only ones who can heal our complex trauma. Our families can’t do it. Our partners can’t do it either. During the holidays, it's easy to look to family for care we still long to receive. The shift is to recognize where we're looking to others to provide this — and then to give it to ourselves. 

3. Commit to loving firmness over harshness, with yourself and others.

We connect with others best from a kind, centered nervous system. We need to learn how to create that, even in the most stressful holiday environments. It's easy to distance ourselves with sarcasm, cynicism, and meanness. But there is nothing that harshness accomplishes that loving firmness can't do better.

4. Maximize the good that's available now with the people you love.

Modern culture says when families feel "unsafe" or "toxic," the best option is to leave. With the exceptions of substance abuse and physical violence, this usually isn't true. Leaving situates us even farther from the repair and connection we long for. Healing takes courage and someone has to go first. That someone is you.

5. Celebrate yourself for each and every win.

Notice and celebrate each moment you allow yourself to be seen, heard, and loved without the mask. Amplify your positive self-talk when you try to be vulnerable and visible with the people you care about. Give yourself credit for each step you take towards putting down your mask, whenever you decide it's right to do so.

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When we stop masking, we finally experience the connection we long for. 

Discerning when to slowly put down the mask and be ourselves creates new corridors of connection. Visibility and vulnerability require risk. And as adults, we can handle the disappointment when things might not always land the way we hoped.

What matters is how we keep showing up for ourselves, our families, and the holidays with hope, determination, and courage.

One person is enough to shift the balance of a family system towards more connection and care and begin to heal the legacy of intergenerational trauma.

Thank you for exploring when it's time to put down the mask.

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Elie Losleben Calhoun supports individuals and couples internationally through trauma resolution and embodied healing. She brings extensive training in somatic approaches and a deep understanding of how the nervous system shapes our capacity for connection. To learn more about working together, you're welcome to reach out.