Published on 12, July, 2020
Hey, I've been reading a few books (including "Untypical" by Pete Wharmby which has been recently released) and read a lot about masking, particularly in relation to girls and women.
Thing is, I don't mask so I find this a bit of a mystery. I cannot hide any of my traits or emotions, and when I read of girls sitting and watching how others interacted and copying people's social cues, I'm baffled. How did they do this? As a child I played by myself and was according to other people 'totally in my own world'. I couldn't copy other people's behaviours to fit in if I tried.
I do wonder sometimes if my life would be easier if I could mask - to be able to pass as normal when there's someone you need to impress who will only respect you if you appear to get the social code.
But I've also seen how damaging masking has been to my autistic friend who was late diagnosed - in these last few years I'm only starting to see the 'real her' because she's been masking the whole time.
Are there autistic people here who don't mask?
Not a girl but I am very observant and I weaponized my pattern recognition to retroactively learn social skills for lack of having naturally occuring ones. The problem is after you mask long enough it's hard to take it down because it becomes an unhealthy (tiring is the least of it) habit to keep it up 24/7. The mask isn't %100 effective though and sometimes it slips. Like you can tell when a drink has a sweetener in it rather than actual sugar.