Autistic camouflaging/masking paper

Thank you. I read with much interest.

Masking is a concept I've struggled with. I like to think that I just bumble about life being me and could not quite conceive of this "mask" I sometimes took off at the door. I cheerfully sat in my assessment and said I didn't think I did that.

But it seems masks are only sometimes stuff consciously done to fit it. I can see now it's also the alternative strategies used to navigate the social world; all the ones I thought everybody used before I learned NTs have other mysterious means of knowing what's going on around them and what to do with it. Doesn't mean you are necessarily 'play acting' your way through life, does it?

I realise this is a little researched area, but this makes clear now that 'masking' is a range of approaches, not all of them are conscious and not all of them involving a different face to the world as such.

I get it now. My strategies work, but they are hard work. No wonder I get tired.

Thank you. I read with much interest.

Masking is a concept I've struggled with. I like to think that I just bumble about life being me and could not quite conceive of this "mask" I sometimes took off at the door. I cheerfully sat in my assessment and said I didn't think I did that.

But it seems masks are only sometimes stuff consciously done to fit it. I can see now it's also the alternative strategies used to navigate the social world; all the ones I thought everybody used before I learned NTs have other mysterious means of knowing what's going on around them and what to do with it. Doesn't mean you are necessarily 'play acting' your way through life, does it?

I realise this is a little researched area, but this makes clear now that 'masking' is a range of approaches, not all of them are conscious and not all of them involving a different face to the world as such.

I get it now. My strategies work, but they are hard work. No wonder I get tired.

I am sure that some of the strategies described in the paper are also used by neurotypicals in situations where they feel socially anxious. However, there are a number that are autistic-specific, and, of course, autistic people are socially anxious far more frequently. A much greater proportion of the strategizing employed by autistics is conscious and intellectually-based than is the case for neurotypicals. As you say, all this effort makes socialising disproportionately tiring for us.