Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi all,
I have a very customer-facing job, and pre-lockdown was able to mask whilst at work fairly successfully, though it was exhausting at times. I have the advantage of spending a lot of the day by myself as well, and so was able to use this time to "recharge" before going back into the customer-facing environment. Over lockdown my role has been predominantly at home doing meetings over Skype/Zoom/Teams etc., but now that I'm working face-to-face more and more I feel like I've regressed massively. Masking seems to take orders of magnitude more effort than it did before lockdown. I realise that this could probably be put down to lack of practise, but it is concerning me.
Has anyone else had this experience? Please tell me it's not just me...
Female autistics mask, males don't in general. Its not just you its common among female autistics. Might even occur in males but its much less frequent
I don't really agree with that - anyone with any self-awareness starts masking directly they realise they don't fit in - normally starting in school to hide in plain sight and avoid bullying. Girls are better at it - it's why they don't get diagnosed until much later.
I developed my mask at around 12 - directly I spotted the senior school environment was not the nice, friendly place that junior school was. It was suddenly well over 1000 kids - and most from some pretty unsavoury estates. I measured that a big, extrovert persona was the safest option - the bullies prefer quieter kids to pick on.
By being 'big' and being open about the things I was doing, I attracted other kids interested in similar things (RC planes & boats & cars). These people have been my life-long friends - Im totally convinced they are all undiagnosed aspies too - the software engineer, the senior pilot, the engineering company owner....