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Unmasking experience

Max

Has anyone else on the spectrum spent most of their time on earth presenting as neurotypical? I spent many of my formative years, including all of my adolescence and now adulthood, trying to appear as ordinary as possible. I don't know if I'm 'high-functioning' or simply a good mimic.

This has included:

- keeping my niche interests and tastes to myself unless I know for certain that others will find them agreeable

- keeping physical tics to a bare minimum

- hiding my true feelings/opinions (this could be related to C-PTSD)

- mirroring the personalities or quirks of other people

I'm a deeply unhappy person with no real sense of self, no real friends and nowhere that I belong. That's what you get for trying to please everyone else!

If anyone has had a similar experience, feel free to share them here.

Thanks.

Parents

  • I can relate to everything you've said. You reminded me how much I mirror other people when speaking to them. Sometimes I have to wonder who the real me is. He's been hidden so much while these other masks are in place. 

    I love it when I speak to someone a little quirky and I instantly relax and be the real me. It happens so rarely though. 

    I have had a lot of time without friends because I can't tolerate the superficiality of NT's. Nothing against them, but I just don't operate on that wave length, and interactions just don't work between us. 

    Only recently did I agree to go to a workmates house to join in a game of D&D. I did so reluctantly because i thought it would be so awkward with these people I hardly knew, but it turns out that half of them are Neuro-diverse and we just all got along like wildfire. It's been really great to have fascinating conversations with people that get me. 

    There are people like you out there, but unfortunately I think a lot of us hide away from the crowds and are hard to find. Don't give up because your "people" aren't too far away. You just need to find them. 

  • in reply to JohnnyBeGood

    D&D groups generally are full of the social outcasts and downtrodden, the nerds and so and, the people who are in our position. which is why i usually recommend that adults of autistic kids dont push their kids into normal outdoorsy football type social groups but instead find a D&D or board game type of nerdier group instead.

  • in reply to Caelus

    Great advice. It's hurts me to see kids pushed into sports when they clearly would rather be doing something more imaginative. 

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