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Masking: are we any good at it?

Ben

Since re-reading Gilly Knitter's thread 'What does unmasking look like'  I've been a bit lost in thought........

Until two or three years ago I'd never come across the term 'masking', and upon hearing it immediately thought 'I do that'...  but now find myself wondering if I've been any good at it.

In everyday work and play I've never fitted in and am sure that others have noticed; in fact many have been abrupt and quite rude about it. So maybe I'm not as good at masking as I first thought..... or does the mask slip a little?

I really don't know.

Ben

  • My wife thinks that masking makes me seem more weird, not less, as I'm mostly just completely silent when masking. She thinks if I unmasked with people, as I do with her, and just say what I want to say, people will find me more "normal" even if they don't agree with/understand everything I say.

  • in reply to DeSpereaux

    Yeah, at this point I don't particularly care if NT folks walk away from a conversation with me thinking that I'm odd. I'm not responsible for their feelings, they are.

    It's different if I've accidentally come across as rude or harsh, but when they just automatically go "eurgh, WEIRD" that's not really a problem with me!

  • I had a good mask going (subconsciously) all my life. Two occasions where it slipped enough to be noted. One is when I opened up "was more myself" with another observant human being and the other was when I cracked or had an "Autistic burnout" but I didn't know it at the time, it just meant that my tolerance for maintaining a social persona went down to zero.

    Since knowing about masking and AS, I have been able to maintain it better, although I found that if anybody suspected it during that "brief down time", they were more observant and looking for it so it meant more effort to sustain it etc.

    Masking is part of my life as I am choosing not to share this with people.

  • in reply to battybats

    I often found that appeasing the Neurotypical need to have everyone conform, is more than they are worthy of, explaining why you deserve to be afforded equal respect is casting-pearls-to-swine at a certain point..

  • Masking is also referred to as compensating and camouflaging, masking is just the illusion of competency, exposure to special interest is how autistic individuals best get competency.  
    The worse part about it is that, masking can draw from your pool of energy, it can distract you from excellence. The mask often slips with exhaustion and overload.

  • I seem to be in a bit of a grey area with my masking. I mask well enough that people refuse to believe I'm autistic, but there's still something 'off' about the mask that results in people finding me annoying or weird. I suspect that's quite a common experience.