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?
After decades I have not learned to mask properly. I feel quite bad about it. Over all these decades I have met people who were really nice, but fairly soon I piss them off with out-of-context responses in what would be normal conversation. My friend / family circle consists of me. I would like to somehow join in with others, but that would start by participating in acceptable conversations.
I hve masked for the best part of over 30 years and I have to say even though masking makes it smoother in one off interactions it's not good socially for making long tem friends because when youinnevitably cannot sustain the mask indefinitely they feel like they never really knew you - and they are right- they only knew the mask. Now it's my opinion that it is better to be yourself even if you get rejected a lot because then the people who don't reject you like you for who you really are.But unmasking after so long is really difficult because it's been the habit of nearly a whole lifetime now, I'm trying though.