Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello everyone,
I often get remarks about how people can "barely tell I'm autistic" and this hurts me as I find it harder to connect with other autistic people if I am constantly being distanced from my diagnosis. I have been told that I have been masking since secondary school and I don't really understand the concept but I think a lot of my traits are now unnoticeable, does anyone else experience this and if so, is there any way to unmask?
PSA, I understand that I am in a very lucky position to have such low support needs but I just feel sad that I have lost a large part of myself I had in childhood and would like to get it back :)
Hi Chloe, unmasking seems to be the holy grail after diagnosis, but if we’re adults and have been masking for years it’s often very difficult to tell what is the mask and what is the real us.
However a common consequence is people eventually suffer burnout from the shear effort of masking all the time. I was lucky that I was nearly 50 when it happened to me. Others on here reached that point in their 20s.
Agreed, I've been advised to start stimming when I feel it's necessary and I used to flap my hands when I was younger but was bullied out of it, and now I no longer feel the urge to stim, have a meltdown or anything like that because I'm so used to it being unacceptable that I've supressed the urge too much. I now don't know where to start so it's nice to know I'm not alone, I'm not surrounded by many autistic people other than young children.