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Compulsive liar or masking? What should I do?

chocobo

I'm a 24 year old woman, recently diagnosed with ASD. Up until about 6 years ago, my life has complicated. I was abused when I was 13 and it continued for a long time after that which resulted in a lot of treatment for my mental health. 6 years ago, I escaped and am re-building. I'm now okay - better than okay - have a wonderfully *normal* life and am looking forwards.

Probably a few years ago those close to me noticed how much I was lying, like compulsively lying about extremely simple things that were very harmless. An example would be what I ate for lunch - if I had a sandwich, I would lie about the type of sandwich it was. It's so silly, I know I'm safe, I have just been trying to get use to not making up the ideal response to every question or confrontation. But also I've always rehearsed responses to questions, writing a mental script for conversations and thinking of nice, normal responses. When I was diagnosed, of course they did account for my past, but the practitioner did say it sounded a lot like 'masking'.

Is there a way to stop masking so much? It would be nice if I had an on/off switch because its useful at work, but at home it's really exhausting and unnecessary most of the time. It also makes me feel bad as I feel like I am deceiving people who I am actually comfortable with... but it's just out of habit.

  • It's exhausting because it's unnatural. It sounds like you created a hyper-vigilance to survive. A compulsive liar will manipulate language because, from their understanding, language is flexible and has no fundamental ground. They don't feel they lie in a moral sense. 

    What you may be starting to uncover are layers of Trauma. Learning to decipher between what is trauma and what is innate autistic-wiring can be a long, but good process. It took me 10 years from the first time someone recognised I couldn't identify emotions to having a eureka moment about what that really meant. And then another 10 later I learned the term Alexithymia. 

    At some point I decided the only way forward was to integrate who I was internally with how I wanted to be and be perceived externally. I wanted my internal self + words/actions to have a continuity. But I also didn't want to betray the parts of me which were still growing and taking form. I didn't want to just be raw (we have skin to cover our vulnerable organs), so learning to create aesthetic with who I am in an "authentic" sense meant being intentionally protective of my internal self which might need applied principles or rules for being, creating boundaries and not allowing just anyone to experience the real me. This is a very different way of being than hiding or lying or pretending. At core, it is a matter of learning to embrace wisdom and diplomacy for the sake of kindness to the self and kindness to others. Just as, to an opposite extreme, harsh and overbearing it can be to peer deep into the soul of someone who demands you look them in the eyes,

    There is a difference between being particular with what I chose to share with others and 'hiding'. Intentionality and understanding is key. As is all the ingredients for navigation. For me the process is always working on my strengths and understanding my limits (I talk about these a lot, they're so helpful) and working toward becoming the version of myself I like. This is a life-long commitment. 

    Allow yourself to slowly let go of your scripts as your ready, they may have been with you a long time. Be your own theatre company and see if you cannot forge a re-write. Words are not so fluid for us, but we can learn better ones with more precise meaning and find it an easy over-coding. If you have a vivid imagination, you can try even visualising a particular script, say this sandwich, and letting a pigeon fly off with it or even consume it. Just that imagery might be enough to find in the moment you end up not answering immediately, but pausing for a second to respond, which makes a massive difference. 

    If you haven't seen them, perhaps some of the Aucademy videos might be helpful. https://aucademy.co.uk

  • It's survival instict making us mask, Yo Samdy Sam talks about complications caused by masking https://youtu.be/9lugR8NaPiM 

    Being aware is a first step to have more control over it