Unmasked: Discover the Hidden Power of Your True Self, by Catherine A Duca, asks us to really consider these common questions that often slip in when we’re dissatisfied, and then use this dissatisfaction to find our inner selves.

• Why don’t I feel happy? Especially when I “should” be feeling happy?
• What am I missing in my life?
• When will I finally get what I want?
• Do I even know what that is?

Unmasked looks at a common problem, this feeling of disconnection from our deeper, true selves, that leads to questions about what we really want and what will really make us happy.Many of us were taught as children to be polite, but masking our real thoughts (pretending to enjoy a meal or an unwanted gift, hugging relatives you don’t particularly like, etc.) can be the beginning of disconnection between what we actually want and what we feel me must tell others we want. The book also discusses patterns of communication we picked up from our parents, many times we thought our real preferences were too unusual or too embarrassing to share, etc., not to mention the hours and hours spent performing professionalism at work. Then, as a adult, we wouldn’t say that we experienced trauma or even that our childhood was unusual, but we might wonder why we’re not feeling happy and fulfilled.

Of course, this disconnect is even stronger for people who grew up deliberately shielding themselves or trying to perform a certain role, but haven’t we all found ourselves trying to be polite or to say what we “should” say?

The book looks at how we might be more authentic in our communications with others and with ourselves. The focus is not just on emotional healing, although there are plenty of times to reflect on what we may believe about ourselves and where we’re looking for our happiness and fulfilment in our lives. There’s also a focus on making changes.  Emotional Freedom Technique, or the tapping system, is applied to areas of frustration to create forgiveness and acceptance. (You don’t need to be familiar with EFT to read this book, I wasn’t. The questions presented in this book also work for journaling, if you are a constant journal writer like me, or just personal reflection, as the author encourages readers to look inside common deflections.)

Unmasked: Discover the Hidden Power of Your True Self invites readers to look inward, and consider the stories we tell about our pasts and our identities, in order to really consider what we want out of life. This is especially valuable now, as we all live though covid isolation, when we’re not constantly moving and we’ve lost a lot of our distractions from our inner selves. So many of us are struggling now that our usual success markers are changing, or are completely gone, and this is forcing us to look inward.

Unmasked: Discover the Hidden Power of Your True Self will be released by Emotional Freedom Press, LLC on February 2, 2021.