Hi Reader,

I am MaskMan! I fight anxiety, low self-esteem, and fear. Join me on my superhero origin story!

I have struggled for the majority of my life being afraid to appear in front of the public. I still remember when I was called to receive my medal for winning the Best School Magazine Award, my friends instead of congratulating me, said “Why were your legs shaking?”.

But, it wasn’t just limited to fear of appearing in front of the public but also fear of being judged.

The whole superhero MaskMan thought came to mind when I attended the Kimff Movie Festival ’22. Once the movie screening was over, the organizers wanted the audience to give feedback or ask the director/actors questions. I had a question in my head that I wanted to ask. So, I stood up and started asking.

Instead of focusing on my question. From the corner of my eye, I could see 100s of people just staring at me. Man, I was just terrified of being judged, making the situation even worse.

After that, I went to see the screening of another movie but now I changed my approach. While asking questions I kept my mask on and it went spectacularly well. In Fact, since the Kimff festival, I have always seen this pattern continuing.

When I wear a mask, it tricks my brain into reassuring me (They can’t see my face, they can’t identify me. So even if I ask something silly or get judged, it won’t matter.)

It’s like the Superman’s Glass Effect.

It was like a get-away card for me to use at times when I felt uncomfortable but there were some obvious flaws with this approach.

While I got to freely express my thoughts without worrying about what others might think of me. It was just a way for me to escape the situation and not face my fear. It pushed me into an endless loop where I remained under-confident for a very long time.

Now looking back at it, it intrigues me how quickly I went from being insecure to not caring anymore all that just with a single fabric of cloth. Makes me think how easy it is for us to trick our brains into doing something which we feared just a minute ago.

With this newsletter, I wanted to explore how we as a person face our fear and how we trick our brains to combat those fears.

Do you have similar instances like me? If so, how are you tackling it? I would love to hear about it 🙂

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Thank you for reading the article

If you feel that this article helped you in any way. Please email me back at sumit@sumitsah.com, that would make my day.

Have a good day ahead.

I will see you around 😉

– Sumit