Published on 12, July, 2020
Tonight I went out with work colleagues for drinks and dinner. This was my first “night out” in a very long time indeed (at least a year).
I knew all the people well except for the partner of one of my colleagues, who I hadn’t met before.
But I was completely unable to mask, despite having done so for years. I was stiff and formal and weird, not the person I would normally be in this situation. So much so that my colleague’s partner seemed to almost take things in hand to look after me. I honestly felt she realised I was autistic and was lovely about it.
But I’m quite distressed at my complete loss of masking. Is this because I haven’t been out for a long time? Because I’ve now had my diagnosis and have changed as a result?
Have any of you experienced a complete loss of masking like this?
Amerantin (former member) said: I was stiff and formal
That sounds like a different form of masking, rather than unmasking. I think that you were too uncomfortable to be able to rely on your 'sociable mask', for want of a better term, so fell back on a very formal mask. If you are very formal and reserved, you are unlikely to make any social faux pas whatsoever, so you are safer.
It’s possible. I was in an unfamiliar situation with at least one unfamiliar person and I had no applicable mental model so i didn’t know what to do. Perhaps minimising any kind of behaviour at all was an unconscious attempt at avoiding mistakes.
It was very unpleasant though.