Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi all, would appreciate your thoughts on this.
As a recently diagnosed older person, I am now starting to realize, after reading a lot of other People's stuff on this site, that I have been masking more or less my whole life.
Some say you should drop the mask now that you know you have as, and show your real self.
I have given this a lot of thought over the last few days, and I'm not sure if it's a good idea- for me anyway.
The masking I've developed over the last 50 years or so seems to get me bye, and is more or less socially acceptable (when I can keep it up, which is most of the time)
But when I really look at the 'real' me, I don't think it would be a good idea to show myself.
The real me doesn't seem to like others (in the main), and can be mean spirited, shy and recluse and judgemental.
Is this real me what autism is?
If so should I carry on with the masking, and try to subdue the real me?
Does anyone else think this
After 60+ years of living as a nerdy, eccentric, 'normie' I've come to the conclusion that the average neurotypical spends almost as much of their lifetime masking as we do. They behave in very different ways in different circumstances. Is the Tom or Sally you know at work the same person as the one they are in church? at home? at the in-laws. Is the barrister keen to have her Abba collection on show when her colleagues come around for dinner? Which one of these selves is their real self? Is an authentic self even a reality? Do they get as tired doing it as we do? No idea now that it seems I've never just been one of the weirder members of the NT tribe. (off topic side note: maybe I should have guessed I was somewhere on the spectrum when all the 'aspie' students were always placed in my math / science classes on the basis that I seemed to "understand them way better than the rest of us do"?)
Sounds like that would make sense, putting them in your class.
I wonder if aspires somehow recognise each other on some subconscious level?
Sometimes you do meet people that you immediately bond with, and now I've started looking at this through the aspire lense, I think a lot of them could be on the spectrum