The Mask of "Fine": Cea Sunrise Person on Why Teens Hide the Truth

When your teenager says "I'm fine" but your gut tells you otherwise, you aren't imagining it.

In this episode, Dr. Suzanne Simpson sits down with Cea Sunrise Person, bestselling author of North of Normal and Nearly Normal, to talk about the "mask" - the survival strategy many kids use to hide a chaotic or painful home life from the adults around them.

Cea grew up off-the-grid in a teepee, moved to a city at 13, and became a high-fashion model in Europe. Behind that success was a child who had become a master at performing "normal" to keep her secrets safe. Her story is one parents and educators need to hear.

In this conversation:

• Why the "good girl" who never causes trouble is often carrying the most
• How social media trains today's teens to perform and hide every single day
• Warning signs: extreme people-pleasing and not wanting to go home
• How to respond when your child says "I'm fine" and you know they aren't
• The power of being a "sponge" for your child's pain instead of trying to fix it

A key takeaway from this episode: kids don't struggle in adult life because they went through trauma as children. They struggle because they went through it alone.

Find my interview playlist on YouTube Dr Suzanne Simpson, at Get On Their Turf:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC8JprFdrPA&list=PLi7xFsX7h7tdxBsVx38UIRVrvnCc_9IBW

New releases every second Monday 8:00 am PST.

👉 Get the free guide "8 Ways to Get on Your Kids' Turf" at www.drsuzannesimpson.com

Connect with me: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drsuzannesimpson/ 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drsuzannesimpson/ 

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drsuzannesimpson 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61566148964209

Please note that the contents of this website are not a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. My scope of practice is as an educator, and this work is intended to provide information for educational purposes only. Testimonials of lived experiences are opinion only and have not been scientifically evaluated.

Transcript

Suzanne (00:00)
I'm Dr. Suzanne Simpson and welcome. I am here to help you learn how to understand your child and to get to their level and find authentic connection in every way.

This podcast is based on my PhD research with teens in crisis and it's real conversations for parents and educators about how to support our kids better and get on their turf.

Today, I interview Cea Sunrise Person, who is the author of North of Normal and Nearly Normal, which became a movie in 2022. We look at what your child isn't showing you. Cea and I explore why kids from difficult homes become experts at performing "fine," the indicators that reveal the truth behind the mask, and how you can create a home where your child doesn't need to hide.

Cea and I explore how we can build up our kids with authenticity and safety.

Suzanne (00:54)
Good afternoon, Cea Sunrise Person. Thank you for joining me again. This is our third interview. I want to talk to you about a different topic today - about the facade that happens in kids, and this idea of kids putting on a mask to hide what's going on at home when they are at school or outside of the house. You are the perfect person to talk to about this.

Cea (01:00)
Hi, Suzanne. How are you? Good, thanks.

Suzanne (01:22)
You're always ready for anything. I love your poster there of North of Normal. So you wrote North of Normal. You wrote Nearly Normal. You just told me you're doing screenplays now, and I want you to tell me the important, relevant parts of your upbringing. Everyone could watch the movie North of Normal, but let's hear it from you.

Cea (01:27)
Thank you. Well, very briefly, I was born in 1969 and my family was very much into the counterculture and wanted to live off the grid. My mom, who was 16 when she had me, basically took me with her parents - my grandparents - to live in the wilderness, in teepees, hunting and gathering for our survival and living under canvas. We lived like that, off and on, for the first ten years of my life. In the meantime, my mom was looking for love in all the wrong places, so there were a lot of adventures that went on with that. Then, after we moved to the city when I was 13, I embarked on a modelling career in Europe. So I kind of went from this crazy wilderness to a different kind of jungle, I guess.

Suzanne (02:47)
That's a jungle, alright - in Europe. And you're also writing screenplays now.

Cea (02:54)
Yes.

Suzanne (02:55)
And what I love about you is that you are absolutely proud to say you will not hike in the mountains here. It makes so much sense given your upbringing in the wilderness. You will not go in our North Shore mountains.

Cea (03:02)
Yeah, it's not really my thing. I hate camping. Oh my god, I hate hiking. I just - I don't know. Maybe I had too much of all that when I was young.

Suzanne (03:16)
I love that you're proud of that, because we are a hiking community here, right? I just think it's so great to be so honest about it.

Cea (03:26)
I wish I enjoyed it, quite honestly. I just had to accept that about myself, because I tried really, really hard to like anything outdoorsy and I just don't.

Suzanne (03:38)
We're in our 50s. You don't have to. Can you tell me - I've never asked you this - what does the word "normal" mean to you? It's in both of your books, North of Normal and Nearly Normal. What does that word mean for you?

Cea (03:40)
Hmm, I haven't thought about that in a while. I guess, to me, it would mean living in a peaceful place where I am living the way that I want to, and not feeling like I have to pretend or be anything that I'm not. That I can just, yeah, be myself.

Suzanne (04:28)
I like the word "peaceful." I hadn't considered that part of it, but it makes sense - because you are then not in turmoil.

Cea (04:34)
Yes, for sure. I think I've spent most of my life in turmoil. I think a lot of us do. There have been more moments of normal in my life than long stretches.

Suzanne (04:48)
You had said to me that you had gone to school for "normal" - that you desperately wanted to have normal at school. You're actually in my thesis because of that: this idea of putting on a facade and how easy it is to hide behind beauty. Everybody thought you were OK. So can you tell me what school was like for you in the midst of all of your home turmoil?

Cea (04:52)
It varied. I went to quite a few different schools and I was often the new girl. A lot of the time, school felt kind of threatening to me because it was the place where I had to go and try to be like everybody else, and I was so different from everyone else. I did not want any of that to be exposed. I also started school a year late, so I felt academically behind a lot of my peers because I was in and out of school so much. My early years were very difficult. I was really trying to fit in, and the way I tried to fit in was by fading into the background. But later, as I got a little more stability in my life, school became more of a stable anchor for me - something predictable I could go to every day, unlike my home life. Especially after I made a group of friends, though making friends was always very challenging for me.

Suzanne (06:22)
That moving around is so hard. Do you have a best story of hiding the turmoil at home? You had a lot of neglect, particularly.

Cea (06:44)
I was in grade seven or eight and we were in social studies class, talking about economics. The teacher - and teaching was so different back then - would just ask personal questions. He said, put your hands up if your family is low income, put your hands up if you're middle class, put your hands up if you're upper class. We were supposed to rate ourselves by our financial situation at home. I kind of looked around and then I put my hand up for middle class.

Suzanne (07:08)
What? Really? Wow.

Cea (07:33)
Which was completely false, of course. We were trying to live on about $20 a week of grocery money. It was just...

Suzanne (07:42)
Wow. And your friends didn't know, right?

Cea (07:45)
Well, some did. I had a couple of close friends that I would have over, so they got to know my mom and my home situation. I had a couple of friends who knew, and they were in similar situations to me - maybe not the same family dynamic, but similar.

Suzanne (08:03)
We've talked before about you falling under the radar, and I think it's so powerful for anybody who works with kids to understand that kids want to appear normal and hide. I found that at my psych unit, the kids with the most trauma were often the best-performing students at school, because school was their safe place.

Cea (08:23)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Suzanne (08:27)
So did you put any facade on at home with your parents in terms of how you were feeling?

Cea (08:34)
No. It was just my mom and I, and I was probably myself with her - angry or frustrated because of what was going on. There was a lot of tension and friction between us. I would say people probably wouldn't recognize me at home because that's where I let a lot of my anger out.

Suzanne (08:41)
Mm-hmm. When did your facade to the outside world crack? Because it obviously did - you've written two books about your upbringing.

Cea (09:06)
Probably around the time my books came out. You can't write two memoirs and not have people know the truth about you.

Suzanne (09:18)
And you said the writing itself was your process, wasn't it? Like you worked through all of this in your writing.

Cea (09:25)
I would say especially with my second book, I worked through the things I had really not faced before. The stuff in my first book was more the crazy stories of my life that had always been out there.

Suzanne (09:39)
Sure. So part of my goal here is to look at the indicators that something isn't well at home. What is the difference, do you think, between a child who is genuinely thriving and one who is just really good at performing fine?

Cea (09:48)
With most kids who are really having problems at home, you're going to see it in their behaviour at school.

Suzanne (10:04)
Now I want to shift into what parents can do at home. You have kids. How do you create a home where your kids don't feel the need to put on a facade or behave differently from how they're actually feeling?

Cea (10:15)
For me it's just all about being there for them. Everyone's going to go through stuff. Kids go through stuff. You can't stop that from happening. The point is that no matter what they're going through, as long as you are the solid one who stays there for them and isn't afraid to go through that stuff with them, they'll be okay. I really believe that.

Suzanne (10:47)
And what you said to me when we did the podcast about healing from trauma - when I asked you how you know that you're healed - really stuck with me, Cea. You said you're healed when you can put yourself first sometimes, because your kids have been your number one. You've done the exact opposite of your mother. You've been very present for your kids.

Cea (10:56)
Mm-hmm. Yes, definitely. And I've definitely put myself last. A lot of that is just something you naturally do as a mother, but I let it go to the extreme, I think, just because of the way I was raised. I wanted to be 100% certain that I didn't repeat any of the mistakes my mother had made. I spent a long, long part of my parenting years never able to put myself first. And that's not the best thing in the world for them either.

Suzanne (11:44)
No. But you've been there. It's Gabor Maté who talks about trauma and says it's not what actually happened to you - it's how you process it after the fact. And that's exactly what you've described: having people with you matters. For parents dealing with hard things at home, it's about being present and not perfect. Being able to walk through it, even when it's easier to hide in your office and close the door.

Cea (12:02)
Exactly. And I think that's what a lot of our parents' generation did. They would send kids to their rooms, or leave the room themselves, and just let the child deal with it alone. I think that's actually what has caused a lot of problems.

Suzanne (12:36)
Absolutely. I'm curious - when your own kids go through their stuff, does that bring up your childhood experiences at all?

Cea (12:47)
No, no. It's just so different. My kids had such a different childhood than I did - everything about it is so different.

Suzanne (12:51)
Your kids do have a very different childhood than you did. I can attest to that. I know I've asked you this before, but I want to go back to it because I think it's such a powerful question for the adults who work with kids. What did you need the other adults in your life to know about you, even though they didn't? Is there one thing - from teachers, coaches, any outside adults?

Cea (13:27)
I don't think there was anything specific I needed anyone to say. I think it was just about making school a welcoming place. I got that from a lot of my teachers.

Suzanne (13:39)
What strikes me, again and again, is how we do not know what happens in homes - and we would be gobsmacked if we did. So you never assume. And if somebody has won the genetic jackpot, you especially never assume, because what's happening behind closed doors can be very well hidden.

Cea (13:45)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I agree.

Suzanne (14:10)
I've said that I think teenagers today are the masters of the facade, because they learn it every single day on social media.

Cea (14:16)
Yes, that is absolutely true.

Suzanne (14:18)
The branding on social media - how you're supposed to look, how you present yourself, what you share or don't share. They unknowingly learn every single day how to put on a facade. You're doing great. You've got the great life. You went out on Friday night. And then we lose all the authenticity.

Cea (14:28)
It's terrifying what's happening to the younger generations. The research shows no surprises there. I don't see how it can't continue to get worse and worse.

Suzanne (14:49)
We've got to call it. They're more disconnected than ever. There's more of a facade than ever before. There's more of a need for support, understanding, and care - and yet we don't see it, don't call it, don't name it or really tackle it.

Cea (15:01)
Yeah. It's very hard to put the toothpaste back into the tube.

Suzanne (15:09)
I know. But I will say - I'm doing a presentation on Friday about this - we did it with cigarettes. We did the cigarette revolution. There's no more smoking on airplanes, no more smoking in hospitals. In 2008 the BC Tobacco Act came in and you weren't even allowed a designated area anymore. People freaked out, and yet the research says we adjusted faster than people thought. We did it with cigarettes.

Cea (15:27)
I would love to see it. But then again, I'm not going to be the very first to start it either.

Suzanne (15:38)
Fair enough. Okay, I always do three wrap-up questions, as you well know. I want to get into warning signs now - we've touched on it, but can you be more specific? What are the warning signs that a child might be hiding the fact that things aren't well at home? Are there certain behaviours or mannerisms that reveal it?

Cea (16:03)
I think people-pleasing is a big one, especially for girls - which is tough, because girls are already trained to please. To an extreme degree, that's probably a warning sign.

Suzanne (16:32)
Yeah, that's a good one.

Cea (16:33)
Any sort of indication of not wanting to go home. Kids whose parents never show up for them.

Suzanne (16:41)
Right. And the part B of that question: if your child tells you they are fine, how do you know if they actually are?

Cea (16:50)
I think that's a personal thing between a parent and a child. I can always tell when my kids are fine or not, no matter what they say. I spend a lot of time paying attention to the looks on their faces, the tones of their voices.

Suzanne (17:05)
Yes. And they're not always willing to share, but I find that giving them some space and coming back later is key. Let's pause there - you hit it. If they say "I'm fine" and they don't want to talk, a lot of parents accept that and consider the conversation done. But what matters is coming back the next day, or the next week. You don't want to hound them, but when they say "I'm fine" and you know they're not, they're protecting themselves, not being truthful. Coming back is everything.

Cea (17:39)
That might not be the right time. But it's so important - that idea of, "I will be back to you."

Cea (17:45)
I always just say, "I'm here if you want to talk."

Suzanne (17:49)
It's so important to understand the teenage brain - the neurology of it, the heightened emotions, the negativity bias, the elevated responses. They need more time to cool down than we'd like to think. Okay, wrap-up question number two: what can parents and teachers do to build the kind of safety where kids can stop performing and just be themselves?

Cea (18:21)
I don't feel like my kids ever feel like they need to perform in front of me. I think most kids kind of let it out with their family. But I know that for kids who've experienced turmoil, if they know the parent is going to get mad, they hold it in. Or if they've felt judged in the past, they hold it in next time too. Unfortunately it only takes a few of those incidents for them to go into their shell and learn - get that signal - and stop talking. So if you can, try from the beginning to always let them know you're a safe spot.

Suzanne (18:52)
The thing I found most in my research was that it was judgment that shut everything down - even a look on the face, a tone of voice you didn't even intend. Especially if there isn't a strong relationship with the parent already. That was the number one thing. If you want to shut down your kid, judge them - even unintentionally. That'll do the trick. Or offer unsolicited advice. That's another one. I've made that mistake myself. Now I ask first: would you like me to just listen, or do you want my thoughts?

Cea (19:46)
It's a dance sometimes. Sometimes I know my kids want advice, and it depends on the context. Other times - like just this morning with one of them - I just said, "I'm so sorry. That sucks. That's heartbreaking." Zero advice.

Suzanne (20:02)
Last question. If there is one single thing you would want to penetrate every home - so that parents understand how to build the space where their child can be authentic - what is it?

Cea (20:17)
Just be there for them. You can be dead silent. Think of yourself as a sponge - absorbing the bad stuff for them, if you can. That's kind of all that you need to do.

Suzanne (20:37)
I love that. The idea of just knocking on the bedroom door, asking if you can come in, and sitting down on the floor. Just being there. You might ask what they want for dinner - something non-threatening - and then say, "I'm here if you need to talk." And that's it. Give them their space.

Cea (20:44)
Mm-hmm. Exactly.

Suzanne (21:00)
Food gets them every time. I've always said - if your kid wants to go for a burger, get them bacon and they'll open right up.

Cea (21:03)
The classic move.

Suzanne (21:11)
Thanks for listening. You can do your part and share this with a parent who wants to know how to support a child who may be putting on a facade at school or not being authentic at home. Subscribe to the channel, leave a comment below - I respond to all of them - and I will see you next time.