"I Don't (Autistic) Mask"
A guide for those who are seeking diagnosis, are questioning if they're Autistic, are newly diagnosed or just wish to learn more.
Caveat: Not all autistics can mask. Not all autistics want to mask. Masking is very damaging to our mental health.
This post is to give ideas of how it may look, but I encourage those who do mask to reduce the amount of time they do.
What Autistic Masking Can Look Like (examples and not an exhaustive list):
- Practicing conversations in your head frequently.
- Replaying successful interactions in your head in order to learn exactly what went right.
- Forcing eye contact despite it being extremely uncomfortable or even painful.
- Watching how others do things before doing them yourself. This can be a child standing to the side during recess and watching, or an adult researching how to order at a restaurant etc.
- Taking on accents or mannerisms from movies, TV or real life people.
- Learning conversation from books, movies, TV or by eaves dropping.
- Practicing facial expressions. This can be subconsciously done when watching TV (copying the expressions of characters to practice) or in front of a mirror to ensure what you look like.
- Over exaggerating facial expressions. Because the expressions are not natural, they can be over done to try to ensure they're interpreted.
- Forcing speech even when exhausted.
- Practicing vocal tone or over enunciation of words.
- Taking on the interests of friends and family rather than your own interests.
- Forcing social interaction despite feeling exhausted, confused or even ill.
- Being afraid of deep conversation because you don't actually have deep answers, as everything is superficially pasted onto who you are.
- Feeling alien when in a group, despite fitting in.
- People thinking you're odd when tired because you are no longer able to give facial expressions, vocal tone or hold conversation.
There are many ways masking can occur, and these are just basic ideas. But many autistics don't realise how much they do mask.
Unmasking is hard, and loss of friendships can occur. But mental health improves when you can be your autistic self.
