Published on 12, July, 2020
I’m a woman in my 30s and haven’t yet been diagnosed, and only recently familiar with masking and what it is. The problem is, I feel I have been masking my entire life and now don’t know what I am masking and what is the real me. Any tips on how to work out what I am masking and what is the real me?
I score just over the threshold on the RAADS-R test and the AQ50. However score very high on a masking/camouflaging test. It also makes me wonder, am I actually autistic or am I looking for answers that aren’t there?
I totally get what your saying here, I'm almost 50 and only recently diagnosed, but I can say for certain I've been masking so much since I was a kid and I somehow realised I needed to fake it to fit in, that I can honestly say I barely know how not to , even when I'm alone.
I now know I need to reduce this as it's to our detriment, all that extra stress and thought processing isn't good. But I'm not entirely sure how, I've spent all this time trying to fit in and it's been fairly successful, unmasking seems risky and likely to put me back on the fringes.
Hopefully therapy and education will help, it has done so far for me with many other factors, so maybe that's the answer.
I completely resonate with this. And not sure if this applies to you too, but I have so many “different masks”. So I’m not sure whether one is the real me as such or whether they’re all masks and I haven’t yet found the real me.
I read a comment somewhere recently from an autistic person, who said they didn't have "one mask" , but they go into every different situation working out "who or what they need to be to get through it" so much so that they kind of lost their true self somewhere. It totally described how I've been, Essentially trying to be what everyone wanted or needed or would "accept " for fear of rejection or ridicule....