Published on 12, July, 2020
Does this make any kind of sense to anyone?
For me, society seems to be present me with a choice
1. Act normal, uptight and be accepted on the surface, as a walk down the street, but feel depressed, isolated because I have internally obliterated some of the essential quirky parts of my character.
2. Relax, act a bit quirky, and have people avoid me in the street, and be treated like some kind of rapist, mad animal or wierd alien sub-species.
From my own perspective, it seems that people outside have this extra, unnecessary layer, that is like an armed militaristic assault vehicle designed to convince people of their social status - it makes them seem fake, uptight and often rather reactionary, even if they identify as progressive or left wing, because they can't see past their social conditioning needs, that they push in my face at every possible mimenf. If I try to conform to their behaviours of physical uptightness, pushing out my personality like some kind of armed militaristic assault vehicle then my body has to become extremely tense indeed, it's like I'm absorbing all their uptightness, and externally I seem to go to the extreme of their behaviour and often appear robotic or irritable or unreasonably idealistic.
So, that's my dilemma either become robotic or be treated like a potential alien-weirdo-rapist.
Sound familiar, or not?
WiredDifferently said:2. Relax, act a bit quirky, and have people avoid me in the street, and be treated like some kind of rapist, mad animal or wierd alien sub-species.
You would have to have some pretty way-out stims to make people walk across the road to get away from you - what are you doing that is so different to the neurotypicals?
I found that you don't need to mask to behave exactly like them - mostly just a dialling down of the obvious issues is enough to stop startling them and to save you energy from having to mask so hard.
The confidence from being maybe 90% authentic is self reinforcing I find - just avoid singing out loud to whatever you are listening to on your phone, don't point and stare at people, maybe keep facial tics or changing expressions to a minimum and you can pass for normal.
Since we are a minority in a 95-97% neurotypical world then I think we should try to make an effort not to upset the NTs. It would be nice if we didn't have to do it, but if we know our behaviours scare people then we should take some responsibility to learn to dial it back - in my opinion.
It doesn't take much to find that sweet spot between being full on yourself and full on masked, but whether you have the willpower to keep doing it is down to you.
Sorry to be rude, Iain but this is utter crap.
The N.T.'s ALWAYS sniff you out after a time.
And once they do the word gets around: "You know that guy? There's somethng "off" about him..."
My doctor refused point blank to test me for Autism until I insisted, having taken the online test myself at home. so I guess I "mask" as "normal" at first meeting well enough. But as soon as I get into a "social" situation such as work or training etc. Where there's a bunch of normies, I end up getting the shitty end of the stick.
And don't forget I had no idea until a couple of years ago that I was Autistic, and all the normies could tell me was that "i wasn't quiet right in the head" or "you don't do the right things".
Specific accusations of misconduct were very rare, the vagueness of it was what I couldn't understand...
I agree I Sperg, we cannot be anyone but ourselves and we shouldn't have to be, NTs could just not speak in coded ways and say what they mean but they choose not to for their own comfort at our exclusion. We aren't responsible for their pathological need for social cohesion at cost to their own integrity and they unrealistically expect people to know what the issue is without actually telling them.
Iain said:It doesn't take much to find that sweet spot between being full on yourself and full on masked, but whether you have the willpower to keep doing it is down to you.
It's not willpower Iain, it's energy. I've never known a fellow autist to be able to mask well if at all after a bad night's sleep. And that's not how tics work, the more you try suppress them the more they will come out. Everyone masks to a degree but the extent ND people are expected to is inherently harmful and none of us should have to damage ourselves for the convenience of others, we have as much right to exist as our true selves and take up space as anyone else.