(This Blog originally appeared on my other website; www.secs.ie)

We are all familiar with phrases like “that person wears their heart on their sleeve” or “I can read you like a book” or “what you see is what you get with that one”. All imply that we fully see the ‘real’ person in question, but is that really true? Do we ever really get to see the real you, or is ‘what we see is what we get’, the view that you have unconsciously (or consciously) decided that we should ‘see and get’?

We all suffer from split personalities; the person we really are (our unconscious profile, aka our ‘natural style’) and the person we allow others to see and interact with. Have you ever thought that you knew someone until a time when, perhaps they were under particular stress or pressure, they acted in a manner that seemed alien to them? We are familiar with the line from the movies;“Who are you and what have you done with ‘Name’?”

In fact there are times, when the people we thought we knew so intimately act in a manner that is strange to us. They display traits that we never saw from them before, sometimes we don’t like what we see. We try to explain away their unusual behaviour by putting it down to pressure or stress and we tend to give these people some space until ‘normal service is resumed’. In essence, we wait until the mask that has fallen off, is replaced.

It’s sad to think that we all live under false pretenses. To some extent we all wear masks that hide our true selves at some point in our lives. In a world dominated by ‘PC” (Politically Correct) behaviour and the need to impress others, we may feel that we have little option but to ‘follow the pack’ and match others. In effect, we air-brush our natural style to become the person others see. So what are we ashamed of?

In a world where image is everything we are constantly bombarded by messages telling us how to act and behave in various circumstances. Add the hardship of a global recession and the increase in the numbers of unemployed people looking for work and we see the pressure increasing for us to become someone else in order to get a job or just ‘fit in’.

We engage with people with whom we have no connection and we demonstrate the external signs of interest while internally, there is a voice in our heads telling us to get away. We take on roles that do not suit us and force ourselves to undertake tasks that we are uncomfortable with. Such tasks put us in a spiral that can have serious consequences to our health, our relationships and our work, if left unchecked for a long period of time.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation (work or social) which left you feeling drained? You might blame your tiredness on the pressure of the work or having to deal with so many people. You might feel guilty over feelings you have about ‘having to talk to’ , or just spend time in the company of certain people.

In reality, your feelings may not be due to the pressure of work or the people you interact with. You might, in fact, be feeling this way because of how much you have to change from your Natural Style to another style in order to interact with your job or other people. The greater the level of change, the greater the effort required and the greater the effect it will have on each of us.

You could argue that in the current climate, it is necessary to take on roles that require a major change in our personality in order to earn money and pay the bills. While, that may be so, it is also important that we are able to recognise the effects the additional effort is having on us.

It’s not all doom and gloom though. It is possible for us to change so that our natural style becomes the style we need in our lives. However, before we can change, we need to know what to change and, we need to be happy to make the change.

Emotional Intelligence tests (EQ-i) as well as other Psychometric tests can help indicate specific areas that we could work on in order to become more effective in our lives or in a specific situation or role. For example, a person in a customer facing role might need to work on his/her interpersonal skills to help when dealing with customers, while a person in a pressure role might need to reduce their chatty nature and develop their stress management skills. Without such tests, the people in question could continue in their roles blissfully unaware of their need to make changes. Blissfully unaware, that is, until something goes wrong.

When things go wrong, the first indicator is that the mask is dropped. The person will return to their natural style. If they are naturally very quiet and withdrawn people, then in a customer facing role, they will stop interacting with their customers and they will tend to avoid contact. They may then move to avoiding the work altogether. To colleagues and managers, this will probably seem like abnormal behaviour, while in reality it is actually the person’s natural behaviour and what the management had been seeing up to this was abnormal for the person.

At it’s extreme, a continuous change from our natural style could affect our health. How many times have we witnessed celebrities suffer from what we call a ‘melt-down’. While some of it may be drug or drink induced, we should ask how much of it is simply because they have been so long operating outside their natural styles to the point where the effort required to ‘be the person everyone else expects them to be’ has become too much of an effort.

Even those celebrities we see flaming out through drink and drugs may be using the intoxicants to help them play the role that the public expects of them. Drink and drugs are simply ‘courage in a bottle’ that they use to overcome their natural styles and put on the mask of someone else.

We see similar ‘burn-out’ situations in the people around us and much of it can be due to people reverting to their natural styles due to the level of effort that has been involved in maintaining this mask or alter-ego.

It can be scary to see your profile in the black and white print of a psychometric report, but it is also fascinating to be able to get a clinical view that is not tainted by friendship, fear or some other emotion.

If you are feeling increasingly tired after work. If you feel something is wrong with your life, or if you would like to find out more about yourself, why not take the test. You will be surprised at what you will discover about yourself.