Clarification Needs to Be Made - The Dangers of Constantly Masking

After stepping away due to one of my post (this one in particular: https://community.autism.org.uk/f/adults-on-the-autistic-spectrum/36798/i-don-t-think-neurotypicals-understand-what-we-autistics-mean-by-accommodate-to-us-who-are-autistic) caused some controversy, I have thought about it for some time and I think a clarification is needed here.

This issue I have a lot of the times is people not being held accountable for their actions, people not making things right and justification for every wrong that a person does to people and somehow finding a way to blame the victim in any way, shape or form. As I have stated I have been through and blamed for a lot of other people’s horrific actions, (as I have pointed out here: https://community.autism.org.uk/f/adults-on-the-autistic-spectrum/36746/does-anyone-else-always-say-sorry-or-is-it-just-me) and even though I am Autistic, I am still a human being who has spent 37 years of his life masking myself to be what everyone wants me to be, pretty much neurotypical ,and at 37 years of putting up with constant abuse, a person gets tired, hits a breaking point and that’s pretty much where I am at when it comes to a lot of the “norms” neurotypicals do, and while yeah generalization is bad and there maybe some good neurotypical people out there, a majority of them are pretty much discriminatory towards Autistic people because of their ignorance and inability to get past old outdated stereotypes of Autism.

For example, many times I have been compared to Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory and while I enjoy the show, I despise a lot of Sheldon’s personality because it is mostly Autistic stereotypical behaviors that he does, for example, he’s not empathetic, very condescending, self-centered/selfish, arrogant, things that have been associated with Autism and yet is the furthest thing from the truth of Autistic people.

And constantly having to mask, even when you’re upset, hurting, feeling misunderstood, unheard, mistreated and everything, it’s just too much at times and it’s a neurotypical thing. There’s been a lot of research that has shown consistently having to mask is detrimental to Autistic people (https://nurselinecs.co.uk/autism/what-are-the-effects-of-autism-masking/) so when you have to conform 24/7 to every single neurotypical person you encounter, who wouldn’t have enough of it? If me wanting to not mask by conforming to the neurotypical games of making life intentionally over complicated, unfair/unequal, having double standards, hypocrisy, discrimination, lying, injustice, things not made right, not holding people accountable, and anything else that is wrong, all of which are a choices that people don’t have to make at all, is a problem because usually that’s when I have an issue because I feel like I am always being forced to conform to things and am unable to be my true self and it just does me more harm than good.

I’m just freaking exhausted and tired of putting up with it and I am tired of masking and conforming all the time. I just wanted to put this out there and I’m going again. I felt that there was a lot misconstrued and people making assumptions about things when I try to explain things the best I can and somehow using an example of things beyond Autistic people’s control, like loud noises, somehow got turned into what my beef was about when the list I had made was actually the biggest issues I have had for years and am getting very tired of being forced to conform to all the time. Anywho, I’ll catch you all later.