Why You're Always Performing Even When You're Alone | Somatic Dispatches 22
You know the gap. Between what the room requires and what you actually are. Between the face that functions and the self underneath it, waiting.
The standard story calls this a condition. Diagnosable. Manageable. Something to be accommodated. That framing isn't wrong — but it mistakes the symptom for the structure.
Belonging is neurobiologically baked in. The organism that couldn't find the tribe didn't survive. So when the room requires a performance, the organism complies. Not from weakness. From the deepest possible necessity.
But there is a distinction that matters: between those who perform and those who mask. Performers sublimate the role — the cultural opiate does its work, and they function, without too much ado. Maskers know the gap. They feel the incongruity. They must force the mask to their face. And hold it there.
I am a masker. The self I appear to be is not acceptable.
This is not a solution. It is an observation — from someone still holding the mask, still sounding a yawp over rooftops, still not belonging anywhere.
If that is also where you are — you have been seen.
Somatic Dispatches are unedited dispatches from my lived experience of ExistentialNeurobiology.
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