masking

Masking is a survival response for us in many ways and to be able to sustain a non-masked presence will require you to either be very confident or to trust those around you not to judge.

There is a good NAS article about masking here:

https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/topics/behaviour/masking

I found it helps to try to observe yourself a bit in situations and try to identify the behaviours you exhibit in company that are not your natural state. These will be the masking behaviours so you can then try to conciously decide which you will not use and can slowly strip these away and be authentic.

It helps to remember that these behaviours were a learned response for a reason - and that is we are judged for behaving "oddly" or different to the social norm, so you can expect for people to pick up on this change in behaviour and either question you about it or change their behaviour towards you because of it.

I found there is a price to pay for unmasking in places like the workplace, so I chose when and where to unmask as a matter of safety.

I also chose what level of masking to adopt as sometimes it just is too much hassle to have people treating you like a danger to them if you are stimming away to yourself. It remains a safety feature to mask.

All that said, even a partial mask helps reduce the energy required so as that supermarket advert would say, "every little helps".

Masking is a survival response for us in many ways and to be able to sustain a non-masked presence will require you to either be very confident or to trust those around you not to judge.

There is a good NAS article about masking here:

https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/topics/behaviour/masking

I found it helps to try to observe yourself a bit in situations and try to identify the behaviours you exhibit in company that are not your natural state. These will be the masking behaviours so you can then try to conciously decide which you will not use and can slowly strip these away and be authentic.

It helps to remember that these behaviours were a learned response for a reason - and that is we are judged for behaving "oddly" or different to the social norm, so you can expect for people to pick up on this change in behaviour and either question you about it or change their behaviour towards you because of it.

I found there is a price to pay for unmasking in places like the workplace, so I chose when and where to unmask as a matter of safety.

I also chose what level of masking to adopt as sometimes it just is too much hassle to have people treating you like a danger to them if you are stimming away to yourself. It remains a safety feature to mask.

All that said, even a partial mask helps reduce the energy required so as that supermarket advert would say, "every little helps".