Masking

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I think a lot of us get by in certain areas by masking our difficulties.

I mask my writing ability by using spell check, typing very slowly (hunt and peck looking at keys) and a lot of correction editing. I am kind of obsessive about it. I sometimes wonder if it would be better to just submit my posts as is.

Do you have stuff that you are able to mask? Do you think sometimes maybe it would be better if people saw what was really there, instead of making it look like you are better at something than you really are?

(I edited this about 6 times)

I mask my insecurity and fear of being emotionally hurt with a very angry, hostile exterior. Not that I'm not angry, but i push that to the forefront for everyone but my most trusted people.

How do you feel that works to your advantage and or disadvantage?

It keeps people at a distance. Which I used to like, and now is one of my biggest obstacles because it's no longer voluntary. So it's been both. It's kept me from being hurt. But it's also kept me from being liked in many cases.

I mask my inability to put sentences and paragraphs together to express myself.
I look things up on the internet to see how people word things and copy other people's way of saying things.
I don't copy people's thoughts and ideas, just ways of saying my own thoughts.
I never finished high school because of this and I never got my associate degree in college because I couldn't get through the required writing class.
I also can't spell, have poor vocabulary and word retrieval and have to keep looking up words I've looked up before to be certain I'm using them the right way.
It takes me a long time to write things.
Internet and spell checks make things easier.

I had to mask my stimming, my stimming involved me throwing myself to the floor or bashing my head on walls, my dad forced me to stop. I also had to mask my Obsessions, i used to talk to everyone, even strangers about it, but now i cant, i still sneak it in conversations though.

I wish i could write better, i use spell check a lot too, and it takes me a long time to type something, even if i type fast, thinking of words is very hard for me and forming them into a sentence is even harder, its apparent in my speech as well, my sister and people at school always used to tease me because my sentences would come out backwords or completely jumbled. I also have difficulty reading aloud and prounouncing words properly. My echolalia helps a lot with that, i just repreat what i want to say over and over again in my head. until im ready to say what i wanna say

When I'm having horrible executive dysfunction I often mentally rehearse things I need to do for ten minutes before I do them. That means if I'm on a bus I will think about how I get off the bus and cross the street.

When I feel like my social skills aren't going to be good I mask them by acting shy. This makes me functionally a shy introvert. When my social symptoms aren't as bad I tend to act like an extrovert and actually gain energy from social interaction. I'm actually an extrovert and I think my depression has been caused by a lack of satisfactory social interactions.

I used to mask my executive dysfunction and sensory issues without realizing it. Then after I got my diagnosis, I've been making the effort to shift from masking to adapting, and I've been functioning much better.

I'd mask executive dysfunction by flat-out refusing to do anything I feared I couldn't do. I wouldn't even try, because usually the consequences of trying and failing were worse than the consequences of refusing. Now, I'm more willing to try, with accommodations to help and a back-up plan for if I fail.

I'd mask sensory issues by just acting like I felt fine until I suddenly hit my breaking point and had a meltdown. Now, I'm more likely to calmly acknowledge the sensory issue long before meltdown, and either ask the person to stop or block my perception of it. For example, I never used to cover my ears in public, but now I do because I'd rather risk people thinking I'm rude or weird for covering my ears than have a meltdown and hurt someone I care about.

A few I can think of off the top of my head, there are likely more I am not remembering, thanks to item A -
A - I ask my amnesia the same way people in the early stages of Alzheimer's / dementia do - with lists. This used to be done on paper, until others found out about it, and I became paranoid that intrusive people would find my notebooks and there was everything about my life, activities, and thought processes in there. They were also evidence of how much I rely on lists. I also started to freak out about what would happen if I lost my notebooks. I would literally not remember anything.
I now list on devices with passwords (phone, computer, iPad) all backed up so if one device is damaged, the lists aren't. Plus a casual nosy person cannot just pick them up and read them without the passwords (I'm aware hacking can be done on these, but the people of concern so far don't have that ability). I appear to be very organised and on top of things - remember appointments, dates, things I need to do, I know where things are, people's names, I have strong trajectories about executive functioning issues, I have all the information. Because it is ALL listed, in every way. The lists have subsets of lists, categories of lists, folders that group different classes of lists, lists sorted by dates, days - the list system would immediately blow my normal cover if I was obvious about it. People who deal with me in functioning ways - such as the caseworker - know I put all my "good ideas" on a note in my phone, and understand that I will refer to that when asked almost anything of a functional nature, but don't know the whole system behind it.

B - I too keep everyone at arms length so they can't be close enough with me to realise what I'm really like. I isolate my worlds. I also refuse to speak in detail about the past, not allowing a cohesive picture of this to be known by anyone. All people get is fragments relevant to the situation in the present, never the whole story. I rely on being vague and people filling in the gaps however is easiest for them to accept. I never correct anyone's assumption about their perceptions. This makes things appear much less screwed up than they are.

C - I mask misophonia with earplugs and headphones. It looks normal enough, and if sound is a problem, I can get away from it this way. I'm also very interested in noise-cancelling headphones, but they're pricey.

D - I mask avoiding eye contact by wearing thick, dark-framed glasses low. I cannot see more than a few inches without glasses so if I look over them, I cannot see but I appear to be making eye contact. That or I position the top frame of my glasses across people's eyes, and look at that. Again, I cannot see their eyes, but it gives a convincing illusion or so I have been told.

E - I mask problems using the phone by writing out everything I need to say beforehand, so I can just read it, along with the answers to several foreseeable diversions. I write down all the answers I get as I get them or I won't process / remember by the time I've hung up.

F - I disappear. If I am nonverbal, nonfunctional, shutdown, not able to comprehend, or am having a problem with anything, especially an emotion, I will isolate until I am at a level where I can seek assistance if need be to fix the problem. No one ever sees me out of control, or at the worst of it. I was notorious for this when I was drinking - no one ever saw me drunk, but my disappearance came to be viewed as a red flag.

I have trouble thinking of what to say and how to organize what I'm saying. In writing, this is well-masked because I can move around, edit things, rearrange text by copy-and-pasting, etc. My typing speed is decent if I'm just copying something, but when I am actually composing, I don't write in a straight line. Alas, with speech, you have to talk in the order people hear.

Not deliberate masking, but in the "I look more skilled than I am" category... I had the good fortune of finding a job that is perfectly tailored to my skill set. So I am doing well in the job department. Before this, I had trouble getting or keeping a job. If this job ends somehow, at least my resume looks better and I have some connections, but otherwise I expect to go back to having the same job problems as before. If I tell people this, they think I am doubting myself too much. My friend who should know how much functioning trouble I have keeps telling me to change jobs because my current one doesn't pay well, and I just think, "Are you nuts?!"

Try the noise reduction headphones. Not as pricey but will mask a lot of sound and still allow you to hear and not be isolated. Safety issues and all.

My mask can be so good that a week after attempting suicide and in the hospital, the staff and other patients all said in groups that they couldn't believe I was there because I seemed 'so together.'

And when it fails, everybody acts like I just murdered someone. "Why did you react that way?" or "I can't believe you just acted that way."

I like it when someone tries to pass off their offensive behaviour when I do react strongly. "I didn't do anything wrong." or some such crap.....yet, they just finished impugning my integrity or put me in bad positions that I'm just not savvy enough to flow with.

But, the impugning my integrity is a real set off.

I would say the biggest things I mask would be my Tourrettes and prosopagnosia.
They are incredibly difficult to mask but... gotta try.
I dislike those things both very much.

I hate the involuntary twitching and spasms, but I can't stop them so I kind of just roll with the punches now. I can't control it.... But I hold it in as much as possible when around others like at work. It's very uncomfortable.
The prosopagnosia is..... harder especially when you're like- who is this man walking my way? Oh, yes, that's my boss oppsies!
I usually say something along the lines of: Oh, you look a bit different today- did you cut your hair? Is that a new coat? Ah, I haven't had my cup of joe this morning almost didn't recognize you there ha. Or just smiling very widely at everyone until I recognize them. Or they say something.
Or other banal excuses. It kind of works.
Then I have executive functioning GALORE! I have no real masking for that... just umm duck syndrome you know float on top paddling furiously underneath the surface. People usually think I have a terrible memory, but then are confused when I remember really small stuff and details. Basically everyone is confused haha.

I concoct my own "scripts" and memorise them well before I go speaking in public to mask my lack of spontanuity.

I have trouble understanding people when they speak (especially if they have an accent, talk fast, or if there is background noise). I've sometimes pretended to be hard of hearing (even though I'm not) or try to do all my communicating via text, IM, or email. If I'm in a noisy setting, I sometimes just sit, smile, and nod, because I don't know what everybody is talking about.

I mask executive functioning problems by using a lot of reminders and notes in my phone, emailing myself lists, putting sticky notes everywhere.

When I go non-verbal (in a meltdown or shutdown), I always just left the room or pretended like I didn't want to talk. The truth was, I had forgotten the words for everything and could only think in pictures.

I have prosopagnosia too, which really sucks if I meet someone in the hallway at work. I'm frantically trying to figure out who they are and asking leading questions in the hopes that they will drop a hint about what projects we worked on before. I also have troubles recognizing people "out of context"--not in their normal habitat, like running into a work colleague at the grocery store, and if they change their appearance, like cutting their hair. I've managed to get pretty good at recognizing voices, though, so if I can keep them talking, I can often figure out who they are.

I mask all the time, doing things that lessen bullying. But I never realized I was doing it (and am still learning all the ways I do it) when I had a job helping people with severe developmental disabilities, and learned how they mask.

Masking exhausts and confuses me. A therapist told me that it was dishonest to mask and that I needed to stop it. She may be correct, but when it keeps me from being bullied so much, and helps me stay employed (though I barely do), it's hard to simply not do it anymore. Plus it's a decades-long habit. Plus I find it ironic that she would tell me that when it's only because I fake enough to stay employed that I have work that supplies my health insurance that allows me to be able to afford to see her.

Anyway, the biggest mask I have is using 3 different alarm, tasks, and calendar reminder apps on my smartphone to run my day so I don't forget things. Also big is that I also pretend I understand people a lot more than I really do. And I pretend things aren't bothering me when they really are.

I can barely string a coherent sentence together on my own (I mean that I cannot think spontaneously). I have had to watch years worth or television and observe NT's interacting in order to script my own responses. I mask my inability to think through scripting and silence.