When The Mask Comes Off

The mask doesn’t come off with a victory lap. It comes off with grief, and if nobody warned you, you might think you’re doing healing wrong. We’re naming what actually happens when a spouse of an addict stops performing, stops managing, and finally tells the truth about how bad it’s been.

We talk through the “hiding place” codependency builds, where our worth rises and falls with the addict’s choices and we become as okay as they are that day. Then we slow down and name the two griefs many partners carry: grieving the person we thought we married and grieving the version of ourselves that existed before survival mode took over. We also share why Jesus wept matters here, because faith does not require skipping pain, and grief is not a lack of trust.

From there we move into what transformation looks like: the difference between being broken down and being broken open, how honest confession is about truth not shame, and why shifting prayers from “fix them” to “Father, help me” can be the first breath of freedom. We end with practical steps you can try today, including naming one thing you’ve been pretending about and giving yourself permission to say, “I’m not okay.”

If this connects with your story, subscribe, share it with someone who’s carrying this quietly, and leave a review so more partners of addicts can find hope and real support.

Transcript

Pretending Is Over And Why

0:00

Most people think the hardest part is pretending. It's not. It's actually the moment that you stop pretending. You see, when we take the mask off, the first thing that comes isn't a relief. It's actually grief. And if nobody told you that, it's coming. If you are gonna step into a place of healing, it's coming. And I just wanted to let you know that. Let's talk about that today on this episode. I'll see on the inside. Welcome to Reclaiming Your Identity, a podcast dedicated to providing hope, healing, and support for married individuals whose spouses are battling addiction. Rooted in the truth of your identity in Christ, this podcast offers practical guidance and biblical insight to help you navigate the challenges of addiction within your average. Here we'll find encouragement and embrace God's plan for restoration in your life. Let's walk this journey together, one step at a time. Hello and welcome to Reclaiming Your Identity Podcast. I'm Steve, your host, and as always, I'm super excited that you're here today. Hey, we are in a series called Pretending Is Over. Yes, pretending is over. There's no longer a way that you can pretend it's over. Start your healing, stop being fake. Anyway, we're in episode number two today, which is what happens when you stop pretending. But if you haven't listened to episode number one, please go back and check it out because it lays the foundation of the whole series. So please go check that out. And before we dive into this episode, would you please like, subscribe, share, comment, do all that stuff on all the socials because it really helps get the program out there. It's starting to make a little bit of a movement, and I could use your help in making it move a little bit faster. So if you would like, subscribe, do all that good stuff for me, I would appreciate it. Also, I'd love to hear from you what your thoughts, what you'd like to hear, maybe just uh how this has impacted you. So reach out to me as well. You can visit partnersofatics.com or the actual website, which is walkrightministries.com, which houses everything.

Codependency And The Hiding Place

2:15

I want to talk about what happens when you stop pretending. So, what happens when you stop pretending that you're here for somebody else, that you're trying to fix somebody else, that you're pretending you're okay. What are we gonna do when we take off that mask? So last week we talked about the hiding place. We talked about how codespendency trained you to find worth into somebody else, that you need to be validated through somebody else, that you're worth everything you put into yourself is actually dumped into somebody else. So that is you're hiding behind that person. I like to put it this way you're only as good as that person is that day. So you're only as good as the addict is that day. And if that addict's having a great day, guess what? You get a chance to breathe, you are having a wonderful day, and life is just great. But what happens when an addict takes the next day or does the unhealthy habit the next day? Where are you then? You're a complete wreck. How showing up for everyone else becomes the way you avoid showing up for yourself. You put all your worth into this person, you've always tried to fix the addict, you're always worried about what the addict is doing, you're trying to stay a step ahead of the addict, but you're never showing up for yourself. You're hiding. The pretending game is over. So we've had a lot of people come into the social medias, some of the groups, some people have reached out to me directly, but after talking to them, they initially say, Hey, I'm here for my friend, I'm here for my brother, I'm here for my sister, I'm here for so and so. And after we dive a little bit deeper and have a little bit more of a conversation, we realize that they're the ones that actually need the help. And they were pretending, like a lot of people do. And what happens in those conversations is God shows up. God meets those people right there. He doesn't meet the addict, he meets them right where they need to be. That's why I do this. And that's what's so amazing about having this kind of community because it's not what most people expect. And I just want you to be ready for it. I just want you to be ready for all this, so that's why we're also doing this series.

The Mask Becomes Your Life

4:38

But let me paint a picture for you. You have been holding it together for a long time. You have been doing this maybe years, maybe your whole life. I don't know, but you've been doing it for a long time. You wake up every day, you put the mask on, you manage, you try to control, you function, you show up for your kids, you show up for your job, you show up for your responsibilities, you answer the questions about how things are going with a fine, or I'm getting through it, or I just take one day at a time. Those are the typical responses, and you just keep moving. You got the mask on, and you just keep moving. Why? Because stepping out feels so dangerous to you. It feels so dangerous to step into a place of truth. Because you know that if you stop, if you actually sit down, if you get still, if you let yourself feel what's underneath everything, all that managing, all that control, all that I'm trying to fix everything, you don't know what's gonna come out of you. You're afraid of that. You were actually afraid of that. You're not sure how you're gonna be able to handle that. So what do you do? You just keep moving. You just keep moving forward. You put the mask on every single day, and you slowly disappear, you slowly lose who you are, and you just keep putting the mask and keep putting the mask until one day, one day, you just can't take it anymore. Maybe it's a moment, maybe it's a conversation, maybe it's a post that you scrolled onto at midnight laying in bed. Maybe it's something else, maybe something nudged you, but it stops you cold and it's an eye-opening event. Or maybe with you it's a slow fade. Maybe it's where exhaustion just gets heavier and heavier and heavier until one day you realize you have nothing left in you. I don't know how it's gonna happen for you. I don't know if it's happening right now, but at that moment the mask is gonna come off. You're gonna take the mask off. It's coming off. And here's what I need you to hear.

Grief For Them And You

7:00

The first thing that shows up when you stop pretending, when you take off that mask, isn't relief. Unfortunately, it's grief. True, raw, unfiltered, overwhelming grief. That's what's gonna happen. And if nobody told you it's coming, it is. And I want to be the one to help you prepare for it. It's gonna want to make you feel like putting a mask back on. It's gonna want to make you feel like you made a mistake, it's gonna wanna feel like you've never should have even gone down that road. But I'm telling you, you didn't make a mistake. So let's talk about the grief that nobody really talks about. I've talked about this on many podcasts before, but there's a special kind of grief that partners and spouses of addicts carry. And I'm not talking about the grief of a person that has died. Although it feels that way, it does. I'm not talking about that kind of grief. I'm talking about the grief of losing the person you thought you married, the grief of the future you planned together with this person, the grief of the holidays that don't look the way that you planned. And you're afraid of the future ones, the milestones that got swallowed up by all the trauma, all the chaos, all those moments that you're never going to get back is grief. That grief is real and it deserves to get named. But there's another layer of grief that I don't talk about enough, and that is the grief of yourself. And what do I mean by the grief of yourself? That's the version of you that was before all this took place. That's the person who had dreams, who had goals, who had nothing to do with managing somebody else's addiction. That person, the person who knew what they liked, the person who knew what they wanted, the person that knew where they were going. Before all those things got buried up under years of survival mode and wearing a mask. Grieving that person, grieving that life that you thought you were going to have is some of the hardest work that you have to do in recovery. And this is what catches people off guard. When you've been wrapped up in codependency wearing that mask for a long time, your feelings don't just come out at a time in a neat and organized way. They all just come out at once. It's an overwhelming grief. It just all flows out of you. Everything you stuffed down, everything you told yourself you were over, every time you said, I'm fine, you weren't, every time you said, Oh, I'm just getting through, you weren't. Every prayer that you prayed through your gritted teeth that you had no hope that was even going to reach God, every night you cried in in bed before you went to sleep, or in the parking lot before you walked into work. It comes up all of it, every single bit of it, and it can feel like way too much. John 11 35 says Jesus wept. It's the shortest verse in the Bible, hopefully the easiest to remember. But it said Jesus wept. Not Jesus observed the grief of others, not that Jesus acknowledged that the situation was sad, but Jesus wept. Even God, in human form, did not skip grieving. He didn't skip it, he didn't have the superpower and blew it off. Jesus grieved too. He sat in it, he let it be real, he let it move through him, he wept. And this is your permission to do the same today. You can grieve, you can weep for yourself, for the life that you don't have at the moment, and that's okay.

Broken Open With God

10:59

So let's talk about the difference between broken down and broken open. Because there is a difference. Broken down is what the enemy wants you to think. Broken down is where the enemy wants to keep you. It is a place that when you are looking at the grief coming up, it's a place where when you are looking at the sadness that's gonna set in, you're looking at the anger that's gonna boil up from you. It's gonna bring all these things. This grief is gonna bring all these things to the front, and the enemy wants to keep you broken in it. He's gonna say that, look, you start in this process is wrong. You feel more comfortable under the mask, so put it back on and stay there. That's what the enemy wants you to think. He comes to steal, kill, and destroy. That's not how God designed you, that's not how God intended you to be, and he wants you to be free from this too. So don't believe the lie. Don't believe that you cannot handle what is underneath this healing process, this grieving process of us moving forward. Broken open is this, and Isaiah 61, 3 says this He will give beauty for the ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirits of the heavenness. This is not a transaction. This is a process that God puts you through. This is what suffering brings. He takes the ashes, the burned up, the used up, the exhausted remnants of what you've been carrying around in this entanglement with an addict, and he makes something out of them. So don't believe the lie that God's not gonna do that. Don't believe the lie that you need to stay hidden under the mask. I have a lot of people reach out to me for help, and then the moment that they open up and you start to help them, they shut down and disappear. Because it's uncomfortable to continue to step into that newness, that unknownness. That wait a minute, I'm starting to get feelings that I don't know. I gotta go back to being comfortable. People are afraid to move forward. People enjoy staying stuck. And I don't mean enjoy is that that's where they want to be, it's just that's what's comfortable. They've survived so long, that's what they know. You have to go through a little bit of that roughness to get to the other side. God cannot give you the beautiful end result of your ashes if you don't let go of the ashes to begin with. If you want to hold on to all that, he's not gonna force himself in. But he will transform you if you allow it. You don't have to be stuck under the mask, you don't have to be stuck in those lies, and you don't have to be afraid to take a step forward to move into a place of healing, especially a place of grief, because you have to grieve in order to let a lot of that go. And I know that letting go is the scariest part of all of this. I lived it, I went through it. Finally, letting go of all that that controlled you, all that that was in survival mode, letting go of all that was the scariest thing that I probably went through in the whole healing process. But it's also the beginning. It's the beginning of something completely new. It's the beginning of getting your life back, it's the beginning of being back to who you are before this whole addiction entered your marriage. It's okay that the truth that you have been pretending this entire time and that you've been doing it for a long time is okay to get out there. It's okay to let that go. It's okay to open up and allow that to be released.

Confession And New Prayers

14:52

You can say you're not okay. You can say, hey, I've been hiding under a mask and I've been lying for a long time. I'm actually a complete wreck and I need help. And it's okay to do that. God already knows it. He's not waiting for a confession. He's not waiting for you to confess, and he's gonna be surprised and go, Oh, really? Let me help you. He's waiting for the confession because he knows that the moment you stop hiding from all this stuff is the moment that he can start working on you. You have to approach our Father in truth. He doesn't work with a false identity, he doesn't work in lies. And that's what confession is. Confession is not going, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, oh, I'm sorry, I don't want to do that again, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. No, confession is Father, this is destroying me. This is not who I want to be anymore. This is not the life I want to live. I'm tired of hiding behind a mask, Father. Please, Lord, help me remove the mask and move forward in my healing because I want to receive all that you're giving me. That is true confession. That's come to the Father in truth. If you fear him and that he's when you're apologizing and you're shunning and fear, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, like you're getting ready to be whooped, that isn't love. That is the total opposite. He's ready for you to come to him in truth and just be open and honest. And I'll tell you, I promise you, it's gonna release so much when you just come to him in truth. When you stop praying for the addict, and and I don't mean that in a bad way, I'm just saying when you stop your prayers, fix this, do that, please fix them, do this to them, do this to them, please help them, please get us back on track, please do all this. When you change that to Father, please just help me. Get me healing, get me clarity so I can move forward, so I know what to do with a clear head and not live in a lie, and not live under a mask, that is so freeing. And I challenge you to do that. So I want to get practical here for a

Healing In Real Life

17:08

second. I think sometimes we can hear things like grief, healing, breaking open, and we find it kind of weird, kind of abstract. But I want to let you know what it actually looks like in true life. It might look like crying in the shower for the first time in a very long time. Just letting it go. It might be letting you actually feel something and responding instead of shoving it way deep down inside of you and keeping quiet. It might look like saying to a trusted person, I'm not okay. I'm not doing good. You don't have to approach everybody in the I'm okay, I got it all together, survival mode, you. It's okay to open up and just say, I I I'm not good. I'm not good. It will look like sitting in your car before you enter the house because you know it's gonna be another chaotic night, and just saying, Okay, father, you're with me. I'm gonna be ready for this. This is where I'm at, this is how I'm feeling, and not go backwards. I don't have any pretty words for you today, but I know this evening's gonna be rough, and I know you're in it. It's gonna look like that sometimes. And I'll tell you what, you're gonna become angry. You're gonna become so angry the more that you start getting clarity. You're gonna become angry, not at the addict, not at the person, but you're gonna be angry because you allowed your life to be robbed of this stuff. You're gonna become angry because what it's done to you, not what it's done to the addict, but what it's done to you, what it's robbed you, what it's cost you. It's cost you a lot. Anger is not ungodly. Anger at injustice is righteous. The key to it is what you do with it. Because you can go either way with it. I've said before, God's wrath and anger is he wants to remove all that lie, all that insecurities that you are feeling trapped under this mask. He just wants to come in and rip that out of you. He's so angry at that injustice. He just wants to rip that out of you because that is not who he designed you to be. That's none of his characteristics, that's none of what he put into you. You just are believing a lie, being in an entanglement, and he just wants to kick in the door and remove all that from you. That's his anger, that's his wrath, but he doesn't do it because he's given us the ability to choose him. If he just did that for everybody and kicked his way in, we would be puppets, we wouldn't have free will, we wouldn't what what good of a father's that if he controls us? So it's okay to be angry at what it cost you, what it's costing your kids. And I'm gonna be upfront and honest with you. This is why people are afraid to go through transformation and healing. Because at some point it's gonna feel like the worst part of your entire process. Even worse than when you were with the entanglements with the addict and some of the fights and some of the things that you've gone through. When you start going through healing, you're gonna go through a season where you feel a lot worse before you feel any kind of better. That's the grieving process. That's the transition we have to move through. Everybody's gotta go through that door in the healing process. You have to go through that door. And you may go through it many times, but but we all have to go through it. So are you afraid and not wanting to walk through the door? Or do you just want to go put the mask back on because it's comfortable and that's what you know? That's only what you can do. Only you can surrender that. I can't force you, I can't make you. I can just share how great it is on the other side of all that and how freeing life can be when you're not held down by codependency.

One Practice And Next Steps

21:19

So as we close out the show, let me give you something practical to walk away with today. I want you to think about one thing that you're pretending today. One thing that you've been pretending about name it today. Just one. I just want you to name it. Write it down, journal it, name it out loud. What is one thing that you've been pretending about? You don't have to tell anybody else. Maybe you can reach out to me and email me or or message me and tell me if you want. I'd love to help you walk through that. But you don't have to tell anybody. Just tell yourself. Maybe you can let that go to God and just say, Hey God, I've been pretending blank. And I want to change it. Just put your toe in the water just to feel it out a little bit. I want you to name the one thing you've been saying I'm fine about when you haven't been fine at all. You know what it is, it's touching your heart right now. Because naming it is the first act of stopping to pretend about it. You don't have to fix it today, you don't have to plan today, you don't have to know what comes next. It's okay. But knowing that you need to stop pretending is just enough to get you started. The second thing I want to do today is I want you to give yourself permission to not be okay. You don't have to have it all together. You act like it, but you don't. When you're alone, give yourself permission to say, I'm not okay. And it's okay to do that. I know it sounds simple, but most people in a recovery community setting have not been able to say it's okay. That wasn't an option. There's kids to take care of, there's jobs to show up for, there's houses to take care of, there's all these things to keep together. Not being okay had consequences to you. So it wasn't okay to be that way. But here in this space, in the Walk Right community, at the show, everything we talk about, you have permission to not be okay. It's not a weakness. It's honesty. And as we talked about just a little bit ago, honesty is where everything starts in the healing process. I want to thank you for listening to today's episode. Again, if you would please like, subscribe, share, comment. I want to take a moment to invite you in to this community to where you don't have to say who you are because we already know. And it's a safe place to gain healing, to find out who you are in Christ. No religious stuff is in here. It's just about a relationship with you and the Father who made you. This community is a space where you can grow, heal, and take off the mask and start to live out a life of clarity, transformation, healing, and hope. You can visit partnersofatics.com. It has information on the community. And it also has a couple courses that might interest you. I've got a short course, which is $25, 5 reasons why you're stuck, why you can't move, why you can't change, why you stay under the mask. And then I have a weekend crash course, $47. It is a course that just dives into your soul and starts to rip back some of those layers. Start doing something for yourself. All that can be found at partnersofatics.com. And I'm so glad that you guys are reaching out, and I'm so glad to meet new people. So glad that I'm helping new folks on their journey to healing. And next week we're going to shift our focus to something that's also really hard, and that's learning how to receive. We'll be talking about that in part three. If you haven't listened to part one, I'd go back and listen to it, and I'd get some people that maybe you know that are entangled with an addict to maybe listen to these five episodes or any of the others that are in the archive. Go back and listen to those because this is a place of hope, healing, and transformation. I want to thank you again for listening and supporting us, and I'm so thankful that I get to do this every week. Remember, as always, you're loved, you're holy. I'll see you in the next episode. God bless you, but I'm not sure.