Testimonial from a master level masker. Advice, tips and techniques.

This is NOT your normal post. I'm trying to teach and educate. I'm passing on loads of stuff. Some well known. Some not well known. Some new stuff. During this, i'll use strange terms and ways to describe certain things. I know it's not the usual way to refer to some of this but its what fits me and is more comfertable for me to cope with. Because some of this can mess your head up. You have to be careful. I actually feel that some of this describes it much better anyway. Also some of the things im about to explain sound insaine but read what im saying closely. It's actually logical progression and advancement. It makes perfect sense you can step it up to these levels and unlock all this. I can even show you how i've learned to "cure" some of my social problems/debilitations and the freeky messed up stuff that happens now because of that. I took it too far and now can't shut it off lol. Also i have dysgraphia. Don't be a grammer nazi. I know my spelling and grammer are terrible. Can't do much about it. Also i'm genius level. Highly gifted. Official recorded iq of 148, recorded by my psychiatrist through a standard iq test. That iq is what helped me figure out and piece together some of the things im about to explain. Just bear with me and keep an open mind. And yes i have a pdoc because i have more than just autism. I also have comorbities.



I'm 45. I'm an undiagnosed autistic. Been avoiding diagnosis all my life. My pdoc does know but he wont force me at my age if i don't want to be diagnosed. Don't need the help tbh or that black mark following me around. I'm high functioning. Way up at the high end of the spectrum according to my pdoc. That's all i know. I know a lot but i don't know everything. I'm still learning. I've known what i am since i was 5. I'm a conscious masker and mimicker. An insaine masker and mimicker. You have no idea. Yes i know mimicking is supposed to be a part of masking but in me they are broke appart and i keep them seperated in my head as 2 seperate skills. Tbh the way i learned them did that by default anyway. That allowed me to develop and train my mimicking skills as a seperate entity. It allowed me to grind and take my mimicking to insaine levels. You wouldn't believe how much you can actually mimic and all the possibilities there is. Its a real rabbit hole. I have 40 years experince doing this to get to this level and figure all this out. Put it this way. I have 3 different masking techniques/types of mask i use. Yes 3, you read that right. I'm also aware of a fourth masking technique called reverse masking that my son uses. I'll explain that one later. It's messed up. Born out of hatred of neurotypicals. I learned about and developed those masks for use in various circumstances. I also have a much better answer to the masking problem you all face. The mental health collapse and the autistic burnout. My mums masking technique she taught me. Partial masking. Read this full post and ill explain it all in great detail. The logic and the steps behind it. If you have enough control over your masking skills like i have, you can do this easily. Once i explain it it will make perfect sense and you will be wondering why you haven't already figured this out because its so simple. I've been able to walk through my entire life and have only been accused of being autistic once. That's because if you talk to me, you wouldn't think i was autistic thanks to my masking skills. The only people who know im autistic are the ones i've decided to tell openly. I've learned loads from my kids that way. I've learned not to hide it as much any more. Yes be warry but don't go to those extreme panicked hiding levels. Don't go either end of the extremes. The true answer is always the middle ground. The secret principle to partial masking. My son taught me that the secret to coping with autism is acceptance. Of who and what you really are and learning to embrace yourself. Don't be afraid or ashamed, pure rock it. We all have insaine skills, talents and potential. If people don't like it and are judgmental, then they're not the type of people you want in your life. Get rid of them. It's that simple. There ARE people out there who are understanding, tollerant and non judgmental. In my experience, making neurotypical friends is easy, it's maintaining those friendships thats hard. Why? Because you can't hide it forever. Eventually they see what and who you are and all of a sudden they don't want to know you any more. That's because you have been hidding secrets, stealing parts from them and basically lying to them all along. That's why my son taught me to be honest almost from the start. Why would you want to go through life worried about what other people think of you any way? That's a horrible way to live your life. I know this from experience but ive finally broke free from all that. Join our "we don't give a damn" club. Besides if you show those neurotypicals just how skilled and tallented you are from the start, it seriously impresses them. I give them a demonstraition of my mimicking skills. Absolute 100% mirror duplicates of various social groups i've mimicked over the years on a level no neurotypical actor could ever achieve. Neurotypical actors would pay insaine sums of money to learn to pull of what i do, not that its possible for them. If they don't believe it's mimicking it at least shows you as the most insaine actor they have ever laid eyes on.


This is my current diagnosed comorbities. Yes my comorbities are fully diagnosed. Just not the actual autism behind them. I got the brunt end of it this way tbh.

Bipolar disorder (mood disorder NOS) - The reason i have a pdoc. Started as cyclothymia/early onset bipolar at age 6 then stepped up to full bipolar in my mid 30s

ADHD

Dysgraphia - Can only write in block capitals plus my handwriting, spelling, grammer etc are atrocious

Speach impediment. - Almost perfectly hidden using mimicking.



Mimicking:

At the age of 5 i started school and was immediately refered to a speach therapist for a speach impediment. A very strange and unusual speach impediment. The speach therapist almost immediately told my mum she believed i was autistic because this immpediment was not the normal lisp or stammer or anything like that. I was having problems forming certain words in my mouth properly.  Words using "sh" and "ch". She did insist it would be an easy fix. WRONG. After months of trying she failed. By this point she was going nuts with my mum insisting im definatly autistic but my mum ignored her. Truth is my mum pretty much suspected by this point although she was on the fence about me. She was autistic herself. She just couldn't do anything about it. Wasn't allowed. Family issues. Her side of the family put heavy preasure on us to hide it. Discrimination and prejudice. It's complicated. As a last hail mary that speach therapist taught me a trick she called "mirroring". She taught me it in 4 simple steps a kid could understand. Pay attention, watch, listen and copy. She told me to use my teachers as they speak proper english, not slang or dialect. Was told to tell them what im doing, why im doing it then shaddow them for a while "mirroring" their speach patterns... Yeah she just taught me mimicking. She just turned on concious mimicking in me at the age of 5. This was in the mid 80s. I'm not sure if they knew what autistic mimicking was back then so god knows how she knew how to teach me this. But it worked. Within a week my speach impediment was pretty much gone. It's not really. Just i learned how to hide it using speach patterns i mimicked from my teachers and other people around me. To this day that impediment is still there. I can do it at will. Also if i start drinking beer, it suddenly starts slipping out me, much to the delight of my kids, horrible little monsters that they are lol. But it got me thinking and experimenting. Was wondering how many other things i could "mirror". The answer shocked the hell out me. Just about everything about the people in front of me. Attitudes, pieces of their personalities, social traits, accents, dialect, facial expressions, gestures, posture, body language and even certain skills like banter etc. That's how i learned my banter. You can even mimic their clothing styles, music tastes and tv preferences. You can mimic it all piece by piece over time then put it all together to acuratly mimic entire social groups. You can literaly dress up like them, slip into character and blend right in with them like a chameleon. They widely accept you as one of their own. From this you then demonstrait your insaine memory retention skills. What i call mass acumulation of knowlege. Thousands of parts i have mimicked, when its apropriate to use them, when its not, all the different variations of that part you can do, all the different combinations of those parts you can do. You MUST vary the parts you mimic. If you don't, those neurotypicals can see what you are doing and they will tell you to stop copying them but if you vary it just slightly then those neurotypicals can't see what you are doing. So yeah you learn loads of different variations and combinations of these parts you mimic. That is the possibilites of mimicking. That's the rabbit hole. All that information stored in my head in one massive database. I'm able to access it instantly and its perminant. I never forget for some reason. How the hell am i able to do that to that degree? I have gotten to this point where i have this unique ability that no neurotypical could ever accomplish. I use this as a training drill. Every other morning, when im sitting in bed with my first cup of coffee and smoke, i visualise my personality and social structure in my head. I empty it all out then think "who do i want to be today?". Then i access my database of parts and restructure myself. I can change my personality, attitude and social structure at will and no it's not a mental health issue. I do it intentionally as a training drill and for fun tbh. Change things up a little and shock the people around me. I then maintain that character for at least 2 days before swapping it out again. That is what you can achieve through mimicking if you know what you are doing and have decades to practice, learn and mimic parts. Take this warning though. Keep reverting back to your origional state every now and again or you will start to forget who you origionally were and thats when you end up messed up in the head. Another warning. My mum told me she refused to mimic. She said that it was a moral decision. That us mimickers are morally bankrupt. That we go through life stealing parts from people without their knowlege or concent. However my argument to that is if you tell the people around you that you can do it before you start doing it, then it's not a moral issue anymore.



The 4 masking techniques:

I don't know why i can do this. I can read peoples emotional states in their eyes. Sad eyes. Happy eyes. Angry eyes etc. Its all about their shape and the reactions in them. Insaine observation skills tbh. So i caught my mum out masking, bang to rights. How can she be so happy and cheery when her eyes are so sad? Yeah i can see clean right through those masks. You can mask everything bar your eyes. I even do it to my pdoc. Because he wears a little neurotypical professional mask during his job. I delight in making that mask slip on him. Well i keep asking him to take it off and he wont so i just toy with him lol. Should have seen how shocked my mum was and how desperate she was to learn how i can catch her masking out like that. My mum said this part of me is supposed to be impossible for autistics. Even for almost all neurotypicals. I didn't mimic it. I was born with that ability. I then instantly mimicked my mums masking and started firing it straight back at her. Cycling through many faces and moods to act the fool and try and cheer her up but she ended up looking at me horrified. That was her finally off the fence. That was her she now accepted me as autistic. That's how i started masking properly. After i learned mimicking. That's why both are seperate in my head. And these are the masking techniques i've learned over the years.

Full masks:

What you all do. Don't have to explain this one. You already know it. Just you also know it's pitfalls. Its drains you heavily and messes with your head because you are masking so much about yourself and walking about prettending to be something you are not all the time. Tbh these are only of any use under certain circumstances. Job interviews for example.

Partial masking:

This is the correct way to mask in this day and age. My mum described it like this. That us autistics swing from one exteme to another once we realise how bad we are. We knee jerk and panic thinking we have to hide everything. That's wrong. In this day and age, the world is becoming more tollerant. Weird is everywhere now and more acceptable. Tbh since my mum described this, its got even better. There's people out there who identify as foxes and such for crying out loud. So yeah a little autistic weirdness is not a big deal. Stop masking everything. Just the essentials. A little social mask. A fake face in other words. Suppress your emotional state if you have to as well. But only if you have to. And suppress those little autistic obssesions back. Not fully. Just don't rabbit on about them constant. Keep those social scripts going as well and add a little mimicking to the mix and let the rest hang out. No one cares now if youre a little weird and querky. That's actually on trend atm. That means youre not masking anywhere near as much so it doesn't drain you anywhere near as fast. You can keep it on for much longer. Also youre letting enough of yourself out that it doesn't mess with your head anywhere near as bad because youre still getting to be yourself to a degree. That's it. It's that simple. It's always been that simple. And trust me you can keep these partial masks on for days or weeks at a time without doing any major damage.

Titan mask:

I developed this myself to mask my bipolar episodes but it can be used to mask severe emotional states caused by things like the death of a loved one. Bipolar is a mood disorder. Bipolar depression is the most brutal, severe known mood state to man. When combined with autism it leaves you in a hysterical emotional state. You are in exteme pain and agony. The problem is im stuck like that for several months and i have to hide away at home out of public view when im like that. Yet i can't hide away forever though. Always there are points i need to go to the shop for example to get essentials food and tobbaco. Problem is if i go out in that state those people can see that and they overreact. I get loads of unwanted attention and possibly even an ambulance phoned if they see me like that even though its just emotional and im still sane and logical. A waste of hospital time in other words. So i mask it using these heavy durable masks i call titan masks. It adjusts my posture (depression makes your posture slump). It adjusts my facial expressions, suppresses those brutal emotions and keeps me calm and steady looking. I walk down that town to tesco like that and to outward appearences i look like the most normal person out there. Hell i even have the cheek to put a little cocky grin on my face. But reality is inside im in screaming emotional pain and agony. I'm just doing an amazing job at masking it all from public view. Titan masks don't last long though. 15-20 mins max. Because of how severe this stuff is that you are masking. It drains you very fast.  I just get to tesco and am nearly home when that mask starts to disintigrate. I have to pull it off there and then or im hitting autistic burnout. Thats me, i'm exposed for all to see. But no matter. I'm nearly home when that happens so i get away with it. Just stuck for a while avoiding using masking and mimicking to let myself recover but thats no big issue as im already back in my house hiding away out the road and ive had the sense to buy enough to last a long time with most things (apart from perishables)

Reverse masking:

My sons messed up technique. When he was a little kid going through his autism assesment, it took years. Me and my ex wife were going nuts. We eventually found out the problem was there was infighting between the group of proffesionals. They couldn't agree on how bad he really was. Some insisted he was very severe. Some insisted he was quite mild. Eventually they did settle and diagnosed him with aspergers syndrom which me and my ex wife agreed with. We couldn't understand at first why they were making him out to be severe because he wasn't like that with us at any point. Yes he made strange little noises and voices for fun and did strange little things for fun but he always talked open and normally to us. But then we started seeing it. When he was out in public. A neurotypical would say something to him or ask him something. All of a sudden his autism would get 10 times worse. He came across as severely debilitated. He wouldn't talk to them, look at them or answer them. He ignored them and rabbited on about everything and anything apart from what he was just asked. We asked the psychologist what was wrong with him. She sudgested that he was retreating into some kind of protective bubble... No he wasn't. A few years back i had a long conversation with him about autism and was talking to him about this. He suddenly had this cheeky grin on his face and started laughing. This is what he explained to me. I kid you not. This is not a joke. He calls neurotypicals "normies" and said he hates "normies". Has no time for them. So he uses his mask in reverse. Instead of trying to hide his autism, he uses it to amplify it. Make it much much worse. He makes himself so bad it repulses those "normies" and gets rid of them quick. It's makes them stop talking to him and back off and go away. He's doing it deliberatly to be anti social with them. That was me. Mind blown. I didn't even know it was possible to use a mask like that but he does it on a regular basis. It was him that taught ME how to come to terms with my autism and accept it and stop hidding it. Because he's never once attempted to hide his or do any of the things we all do. He knew for years i was autistic and just didn't say anything. Said he was wating years for me to come to terms with it so he could finally talk to me about it properly and explain that i don't need to worry about what "normies" think about me. That boy is nuts. I know loads of autistics and he's the only one i know whos like that.



How i cured some of my social debilitations, learned some social skills and the messed up concequences of that:

I had this huge debilitation that was crippling me socially. When i entered a social situation, i couldn't read people. I couldn't read their intentions. Couldn't read the room. Couldn't follow the conversation properly. Couldn't hit my social cues. I didn't have the social skills necessary to do this. I was flailing around blind in the dark. The only feedback i had was being able to read the emotional states in their eyes but that was little help. Id end up messing up and next thing i would see the flash of anger in their eyes and i would back off in a panic knowing id just messed up. This was really bad for me. It crippled any attempts at forming a social life. But im very clever and i know there is more than one way to skin a cat. I had this ingenious idea. If my social skills for this are broken then just find another way to get to the same information. So i started studying psychiatry, body language (led to me being able to mimic body language) and police interigation techniques. I know what that stuff teaches you. Everything from nervous ticks to eye shapes to body language and all sorts. It teaches you to read people in extreme ways... and it bloody worked. It was pure genius. All of a sudden i could read everyone like a book. And hello, all those social skills i was missing just suddenly fell into place and now i read everything perfectly and even hit every social cue. It helped cure this part of it for me. But it didn't stop there. The following is in auto pilot. I have no way of switching this off now. I swung from one extreme to the other. It is highly intrusive and disturbing! Now when i look at people not only can i see their emotional state in their eyes but i can see so much more. If theyre nervous. If theyre lying. If theyre hiding secrets. If theyre prettending to be nice. Hints of alterier motives and all sorts. If i ask you a question, i can see what your answer is going to be before you say anything based on your reactions. I can see it at all times in everyone i talk to. It all jumps out at me and i can't stop it. Also what i call my sherlock holms trick. When i look at some people these little details about them jump out at me. Just tiny little details that most people would miss. But not me. Suddenly my head does this mental gymnastics thing and starts throwing up images in my head of who this person is, what their personality is, how they live their life etc. I get intricate personal details about them just by looking at them. It's not quite as fancy as sherlock holms but its just the same thing. I have no way of stopping this from happening. My insaine observation skills going to town again. So get this. I looked into this. Apparently many scholars believe sherlock holms was wrote as being autistic. That he had clear autistic traits. No stop being neurotypical! Think 3 dimensionally. It was the author, arthur conan doyle who was autistic. Only an autistic would know about these things in the detail he uses in those stories. And yes there is clear autism traits in sherlock holms. Read one of those books and you will see what i mean. It takes one to know one.


That's about it for now. Tbh ive been here for almost 8 hours writing this all down because of my dysgraphia. Ive been at it overnight and now im shattered. There is more but my heads not thinking straight now. I need my bed. Just i know the stuff i'm saying sounds messed up but believe me it is all 100% true and you can learn alot from what ive just posted.