The Public Face vs the Personal Struggles! Who Wins?

Girl, fix your face!

My face tells you everything that I am thinking and never say aloud. Sometimes, this has gotten me in the worst trouble.

Hey, let’s face it, we all like to put up a face around people we don’t know and especially the ones, we want to impress. At the very least, we have some sort of public face that we try to maintain.

What is this public face? Well, we want people to think that we’re strong, confident, and successful. We want to give people the impression that we have our acts together because we don’t want them to see our weaknesses.

We really are often embarrassed by a public display of shortcomings or other features that we think will make us look bad. This is why we put up with appearances.

We know, deep down inside that, most of the time, we can’t trust appearances. People who seem to have the perfect families, the perfect careers, or the perfect lives are actually going through a tough time. But, since we maintain this public face, most people are simply left with the surface impression that everything is going well.

Here’s the thing. You can get so caught up in the public appearance that you’re putting up that you end up playing seriously damaging games with yourself. One of the worst things that you can do is to be in denial about your anxieties.

Now, let’s get one thing clear. Everybody’s got anxieties. We all have fears about the past. We have regrets, guilt and other negative emotions about things that have happened in the past.

We also have issues about the future. Sure, these things have not yet happened, but despite that fact, we can’t help but worry about them.

We would like to gain some measure of control over our lives and sadly, too many of us try to do this by simply trying to worry ourselves into some semblance of control.

Well, just as we can’t control what happened in the past, we can’t control the things that have yet to happen. And that’s why, unfortunately, a lot of people struggle with anxiety. For years, I have struggled with nerve-wracking anxiety, but here’s the thing, while it’s almost normal to assume that a certain level of worry is fine, it’s very easy to overstep our bounds. It’s really hard to find that thin line between “healthy worries” and obsessive anxieties that wear us down and pollute our relationships.

It is no surprise that a lot of people, including me at one point, refused to acknowledge their anxieties. In the past, I would rather hide my anxieties than let the world think I was weak or vulnerable. So many people would rather have you believe that they’re living perfect lives or something close to it. That’s the public appearance they want to give, but that doesn’t make it the truth, but before you know it, they start believing their own press. They start believing the image that they portray to the rest of the world and that’s why they are terribly surprised when they figure out that they have these anxieties that are eating them from within. I hope you are not struggling with deep-seated anxieties and battling putting on the public face of strength.

My friend, you don’t have to bear under the crushing weight of anxiety and act like everything is peachy if you are struggling. Drop the mask, get the help you need and deserve to manage your anxieties and live a happy and authentic life.