Donald Morton wrote:
Masking comes at a cost, at least for me. After 50+ years of masking to get along in my career, social, and family life came the meltdown. Years of self-medicating and over indulgence came crashing down on me. That was 15 years ago and today I live my life authentically as just a guy who happens to have Asperger's. Contented.......
I'm still working on the "living authentically", but I certainly agree that the cost hasn't been worth it the long-run. I've lost probably half a dozen jobs now due to having completely burned out. As mentioned previously, it was usually taken to be depression, and the inappropriateness of the treatments for that often prolonged the burn out (counselling can certainly be a beneficial thing, but not when my communication circuits have blown a fuse and I just need a break from humans).
The other problem is that one cannot mask only one's "autistic traits" - one's true personality, ambitions, and passions end up behind the mask too. I always felt like I was just presenting a cardboard cutout version of myself to the world, and no-one out there knew who I really was - I wasn't even sure that I knew myself. I learned to never have strong opinions about anything nor to hold them strongly, never to reveal my emotions, to always sit on the fence and speak in vacuous ambiguities, lest I inadvertently "out" myself.
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When you are fighting an invisible monster, first throw a bucket of paint over it.
27 Oct 2019, 8:04 am
