Today, I want to talk about the voice mask of defense. Voice masks is a unique concept of mine. It is something that I hear. I hear certain sounds and I can identify with how they are processed subconsciously. That's my body of work.

Voice mask of defense is something that I just recently had with someone in a group that I formed. It was a course testing group. And I've heard it all the time. I hear it all the time. And it is the voice mask of defense. It's very similar to needing to prove, but defense is saying “I know”, needing to prove is saying that ‘I know everything. I’ve been there. I've done it.” I always use the example of my brother and the story about Italy and how he said, “Oh, don't go to Italy. I know all about Italy” and he'd never been. Defense is the ego. Defense is feeling inferior, and here's the thing;

All masks are about insecurity. We are insecure about something that comes from a driver and we put something in place. We put this mask in place because we think it will cover up whatever we're trying to cover up and that it will get us what we want. So, defense is very much a repellent and I'll be totally honest with you, defense exhausts me. It's an area that I struggle with because I find it very disrespectful and a lot of people do. And the interesting thing about this mask is that everybody hears it. Everybody sees it. A lot of times, people can't identify people-pleasing. And a lot of times people can't identify needing to prove.

Needing to prove is very often initially perceived as confidence. And then it moves into obnoxiousness. But the initial reaction and perception, especially from somebody that is more insecure or has lower self-worth, is that they're confident. They're really good. And then they get repelled and turned off and find that ‘needing to prove’ mask exhausting and obnoxious.

Defense is almost the same thing. Defense is very much about saying “I cannot be wrong. I cannot take responsibility. I cannot under any circumstances let you know that I feel inferior in any way, which means I cannot let you feel superior in any way.” Now that's kind of crazy because I don't feel superior in any way, but I know what I'm talking about in my area of expertise. I don't know a whole lot about anything else though. I don't say that I'm not smart anymore because I, that's not a story I'm going to buy into. But I don't know a lot about anything other than voice. I don't know how to cook. I don't know much about math. I don't know science.

I have stayed in this lane and I don't feel superior on any level. I think that there are people in this field that probably know more than me. But what happens in the mask of defense is even if I'm teaching, the other person puts up this mask of defense, whether they know what I'm talking about or not, but they want to create the perception that they already know and they already do. They already do it. They already know it. I just had such a great example of this the other day.

I can't even remember was sharing this with me. I would imagine it's somebody that I'm working with. It was this scenario where someone had asked the person I was talking to a question and my person answered the question and the other person said, “I already knew that.” And my person said, “well, why does this person have to even go there? If they already knew, why did they ask?” And I said, “well, it sounds like a mask of defense to me because they have a driver that says, ‘don't let people know that you don't know everything’.”

Let people know you are protected. If you let people know that you already know everything and you push back on what they have to say to you. “Oh, I already know. Yeah. I already know that.” An example from my work and I don't see it a lot, but I do see it sometimes and it's a form of resistance. The mask of defense is a form of resistance and it will come in my work in a scenario like this; somebody will ask a question. It's very similar to the story I j