Did I loose my mask after a mental break?

Pax said:

My question is, having Recently researched Autism I had a lightbulb moment, is it possible I lost some of my mask during my mental break or healing process? I know I still mask sometimes and to some extent but I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this or thinks this is likely?

In that social camouflaging and personal masking is learnt during childhood, the theatrical cloak, mask and wig set tends to get outgrown and like a suit of armour fragments and falls apart ~ hence some people have midlife crises and second childhoods and all that as the childhood pretence becomes incompatible with the realities of life.

My attempts at camouflaging and masking only ever remained stable for a couple of years, and completely destabilised every four years, in very approximate yearly terms. So the only real camouflaging and masking I do now is on this website and others in terms of anonymising my individuality, which is very useful in terms of studying my previous and relinquished patterns of hiding in plain sight. 

I'm not sure this is exactly what happened this time but you did make me suddenly aware of something. Every 3 to 4 years, usually triggered by some event or other, I'd go through a "broken period and come out the other side a slightly different person each time. I've never looked at it through the lens of it being a deconstruction and reconstruction of the mask, mainly because I wasn't actually aware I was masking, but I think you're right that's what was happening. The difference between those and this time was the mask didn't seem to come back up properly.

I'm not sure this is exactly what happened this time but you did make me suddenly aware of something. Every 3 to 4 years, usually triggered by some event or other, I'd go through a "broken period and come out the other side a slightly different person each time. I've never looked at it through the lens of it being a deconstruction and reconstruction of the mask, mainly because I wasn't actually aware I was masking, but I think you're right that's what was happening. The difference between those and this time was the mask didn't seem to come back up properly.

Pax said:

The difference between those and this time was the mask didn't seem to come back up properly.

The statement that started my sociological considerations on this was, "Act your age ~ not your shoe size!" and I developed rather an aversion to the word 'act' or 'acting' being used instead of 'do' or 'doing' things. The linguistic networks in my head-brain used to get incorrectly mingled causing uncomfortable tension and synaptic crackling in my frontal lobes, although of course pretending to be yourself (or other than yourself) is considered correct and according behaviour in neurotypical society.

One thing though I forgot to mention regarding your statement that:

Pax said:

The problem is my family and friends all seem to think I'm still broken and have approached me saying I don't look right, stare off into space, don't emote correctly, among other comments, and they do things like tell me to cheer up when I'm perfectly happy and the like. 

Is that basically the blank look and failure to emote stuff can be traumatic disassociations otherwise known as fragmentations, which result from the shock of behaving one way as a child ~ and being overwhelmingly forced (verbally or also physically) to behave the way parents, teachers and or other authority figures want instead.    

Psychological and physiological fragmentations tend also to result from birth trauma, and overwhelming parental, familial and social separation anxiety at playgroups, infant school and so on educationally etcetera 'if' one was not appropriately familiarised with and acclimatised to each new sociological environment and atmosphere in turn.

Hence Post Traumatic Shock Disorder (PTSD) or the Complex (C) variant being more common conditions amongst autistic people than allistic people, as it generally takes a lot of verbal and  physical abuse or multitude psychological breakdowns before people realise being autistic might actually be the case, and a different way of life being facilitated or experimented with.

One of the great difficulties of course is that the later the diagnosis arrives for an autistic person, the more entrenched can be the family's previous judgements about their character and the appropriateness of the parts they played in the methodologies of that person's upbringing and later interactions.

So for example: parents that sought to prove that they and their child needed extra help ~ a diagnosis will come as a validation, whereas parents that sought to impose discipline and enforce good character ~ a diagnosis can come as a major invalidation of their parenthood, and in fact their genetic purity if they are as such that way inclined, so things can get as such quite challenging. 

Either way, it is usually very much worth while contemplating the seven stages of grief:

1.) Shock and disbelief

2.) Denial

3.) Guilt

4.) Anger and bargaining

5.) Depression, loneliness and reflection

6.) Reconstruction, or ‘working through’

7.) Acceptance

https://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/blog/2020/10/26/what-are-the-7-stages-of-grief

This can apply just as much for parents having to mourn the loss of their imagined life involving a neurotypical child that is all socially active and all that, just as it can apply for anyone diagnosed as being on the spectrum and hence what is described as the 'diagnostic hangover' ~ which can take about four and half years to go through on average ~ sometimes shorter, sometimes longer.