Do you Internalise or Mask or both ?

It's good advice. I have thought about that for a long time and got nowhere but somehow been drawn back to thinking about this reply at various points today. What would you have done differently ? 

I think I do both, but mostly I internalise. It's bad! I've spent most of my life keeping all my feelings stuck inside and ruminating on everything because I couldn't explain to anyone. The longer you live like that, the harder it is to let it out.

I don't like masking. I hate pretending to be someone I'm not. I can't convincingly act cheery and friendly when I'm not feeling it. I'm bad at acting, especially if I'm tired/anxious/stressed.

However I do make an effort to be polite by doing friendly smiling, because when I was younger I always got told off for not smiling and I don't want to be considered rude. It might be a friendly smile into thin air, as a sort of compromise if I don't feel like doing eye contact. (I only just realised that I do this, it must look weird.)

I do both. Internalizing aggravates my anxiety, and masking wipes me out. I'm not just hiding my disinterest of what others are saying, not just trying to fit in socially. I'm masking certain behaviours, such as stimming and random sounds. I'm also very childlike, so have to hide that in public and at work. I have to relive my day, analyse, find faults, stress over them and get angry with myself for not meeting my standards. Then I have to predict all the conversations I may have the following day. I'm not surprised that the only thing I want to do is sleep.

I'm with you there.

Here, in Rural Ireland, even men aren't allowed to be eccentric. We're branded 'Not Wise'.

I can mask up to a certain level. But thinking of issues, such as the things my cleaner told her gran did and said, would make me giddy.

I'm working on it :) I have a small group of friends who have been a great support over the winter. They live a long way away each of them, so this Spring/Summer, I'm working on finding a group of friends within travelling distance.

It takes a lot of energy for some of us to establish a new friends group, especially at the current time - but I guess I have a natural drive to be social, which helps :) 

I've been happily pestering the local Mind organisation here about adding me to the opportunities that are going at the moment - volunteering, digital support, outdoor activity groups. That's starting to help. I'm also pushing myself a touch to be bold and to keep communicating, invite people to meet up (if they wish) and stuff like that. Trying to give myself plenty of opportunity of getting two or three friends going in the county I'm in.

I do both. I used to be a very heavy masker in my 'old life' pre-diagnosis, it didn't go well because I am not very good at it. These days I have very limited social interaction, I don't mask with my close friends, but in the rare occasions where I have to meet neurotypicals I don't know, I automatically start masking - it's a fear based response.

I tend to internalise until such a point where I have a massive meltdown followed by a depressive episode.

In my experience, females tend to mask more, and males tend to be more open with their autism, because eccentric behaviour is more socially acceptable in males.

I think your inclinations are so right. It's absolutely exhausting and we would definitely benefit from a support/friend network. 

I sympathise with you. It must be very difficult to just be yourself and even more so as we tend to analyse and categorise to the extreme which can be so unhealthy. Do you have a support/friend network ?

Yes - understand yourself as early as possible and take a life path that makes you happy - regardless of earning potential or criticism - or you will struggle your whole life. 

I'm sorry to hear that. Do you have any advice for others ?

Maybe I have it the other way around then. Going by this thread, there seems to be quite a few who do both. Would you say then that females try harder to fit in ? 

I definitely do both. I've always read that women mask more than men and that's why they're less obviously autistic than male. 

I am extremely aware of my masking since my diagnosis and I'm feeling really tired of having nobody to say it aloud to who will understand. Typing it still feels internalised to me, even though your responses are external. The lack of identity behind the usernames doesn't make me feel less alone in this journey really. 

I think post-diagnosis it would be really useful to have a peer support network. I think there may be a social group in my area but covid has impacted on that and I don't know if it is operating online. It is one of my questions for my follow up appointment on Friday. 

Interaction is so exhausting for me. It doesn't surprise me at all that so many autistic people are unemployed or underemployed. 

I'm male at birth but feel rather more non-binary/androgynous than male at heart - so ... analyse/categorise this as best one can

I also both internalise and mask.

I definitely do the 'copy and paste' thing of working out how people respond and doing my best to fit in, within reason. I don't mind being a bit different at times - situations depending. If I need to mask to protect myself from danger (rough neighbourhoods and all that), I'll definitely mask, for example. At work, I'll try and mask a fair old bit (a lot?).

At home, I internalise a lot. I have loads of self-harm scars from lots of internalisation. I'll also try and ensure I process things internally and try to understand things to find peace. Which I would call a kind of internalisation(?)

There are a fair heap of guys I know (particularly from uni time) who internalised and self-harmed, so I wouldn't think it's a female-only thing.

I internalised as a kid, but masked as an adult.

I do both depending on the situation.     I internalised so much that I developed a serious health problem from the stress.    Masking is simpler but more tiring working on 3 levels - public side, real side - and a third system translating between the two systems - quick route to burn-out.

I chose masking in females as my final project in my social science class at college, and I've read the opposite to what you propose; that females are the ones who mask and do so so effectively that it's thrown the statistics off as males being more apt to have ASD than females.  I personally internalize and mask, and it is exhausting.  In my readings, it mentions more and more females not being diagnosed as autistic until adulthood because physicians and psychologists disregard the patients' parents' attempts for the proper assessments in childhood.  Of course, the autism stigma is much less than 20 or 30+ years ago, so that plays a part as well.