The "Emulation" analogy

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Howdy all,

On the topic of masking, I'm imagining it as something akin to emulation on a computer platform (this means running non-native code on hardware that can not run it directly). Instead, you must have an "emulation layer" in between the code and the hardware. Because this is less efficient, the hardware must be "more powerful" than the hardware that the code was meant for, to get equal performance.

Therefore, the load on the hardware when running in emulation mode is much higher, perhaps eventually causing overload, overheating and even errors and crashes.

Yes, this is a highly imperfect analogy, but it amuses me, and perhaps some of you, as well.

It's always worked well for me as an analogy.

Yes, this makes sense as analogy. And IQ would be the equivalent of CPU. This is apparently what causes "burnout." ( or overclocking.) I never really understood, "Masking," this might be one of my blind-spots. i just try to blend in, mimicry, like a chameleon, i guess i picked up behavior traits through osmosis, i guess i need acting lessons to be truly proficient at this thing called "masking."

Even before I knew what "masking" was I called what I was doing "emulating" other people. I also heard one of my friends who I suspected as autistic say they "emulate" other people to socialize. I think a lot of autistic people view it like that since that's often how masking can feel.

Masking, emulating, acting.... it all makes me feel so fake and artificial. ya know, small talk, the niceties, all that. I like to be blunt and to the point.

Every person, NT or autistic, "acts" to a certain degree.

I might see a pretty woman, say----and I would feel a desire to express my ardor for her. Obviously, I can't do that, so I pretend I don't even notice her.

"Acting" is part of how we remain civilized. If you want to kick somebody's butt, you just can't go up and punch somebody.

I don't like the analogy too much. It doesn't seem to suit my case. My analogy would include overabundant information being input into the computer, the gratuitous processing capacity consumed to run more programs than the average computer (some of which are forced to run and don't really do anything useful(f**k YOU FACEBOOK, APPLE AND ALL PRODUCERS OF PROPRIETARY PRODUCTS!)), the faults in the cpu, the deficient techs who did a bad job setting up the OS and software, and the deficient power supply.

I always thought of autism as being "a hardware problem, and not a software problem".

Neurosis would be a "software problem".

you're wired differently from NTs. Its in the hardware of the machine.

In contrast neurosis would be a "software problem". A shrink gives you talk therapy, and you learn stuff...like about how your parents made mistakes in "programming" you. So NTs can use talk therapy to rid themselves of the bad software and replace it with good software (ie self education, new ways of dealing with stuff), and be cured of their neuroses. But talk therapy wont cause an autistic to stop being autistic. Though talk therapy tailored to autistics might help us.

And of course you could have both issues, but I digress.

So yes...that your's is a good analogy. And does fit in with my longtime above image of it. you're wired to be autistic, but you trie to act NT, but it takes more effort to run NT software on an autistic machine.

If you're late-diagnosed you're almost certainly also mentally ill from the experience.
If you're early-diagnosed you're somewhat less likely.

This is a good analogy and it's one I use, because the most energy-intensive aspect of my masking isn't minding my manners or dialing back the weird behaviors.

It's taking the natural way I think and would communicate, and having to think really, really hard during a conversation to say things "correctly" by the standards of the particular NTs (though not necessarily NTs, my mom is a heavily masked autistic and very much requires me to speak a certain way to her).

I don't need to do this as hard as the "receptive" party in a conversation - where the other is carrying the conversation and I'm just nodding my head here and there and repeating certain things back to them. My learning how to do this in recent years is why I have better social relationships.

What I struggle the hardest with? When *I* am carrying the conversation, because I must reach down into this deep well of words, and pull up a bucket of words, and lay them all out... and depending upon who I'm talking to... must do it in *their* preferred way of speaking. That means that with some women I must use words like "abundance" instead of "money" for example. It means that about 75% of what I'm going to say is going to be deeply confusing to the other party, and potentially misunderstood, if I don't "compile" everything I am thinking into the words the other person uses. And if I do not do this - almost all of my conversations with non-autistics just go seriously pear-shaped. The worst is that if the person is a heavily "feelings" type I must compile it into this language of Feelings/Shared Experiences, which I do not normally at all think in, or even process *my* feelings in. Communicating is actually really exhausting for this reason if I'm having to "compile." It wears me out fast, and eventually something happens where it's like I start "glitching" and soon I'm more involved in my own thoughts and trying to sort them out than I am paying attention to the person with me. Almost every time I'm trying to interact with someone that involves me thinking through things while I'm speaking, I end up feeling like we go out of sync and we are in two different conversations. How they are hearing me and what they are responding to, is never the point I'm trying to make.

It's better with some allistics than others, some really bright ADHD people are actually really easy to talk to because they can jump ahead and see where I'm going, and fill in the gaps, so that instead of me sending my bucket down into the Well of Words, they are actually meeting me halfway.

And some autistics who aren't very self-aware, are even worse to talk to than some NTs. My mom basically thinks the same way, so compiling into her language isn't an issue, but clamps down on anyone else being autistic around her so I have to mask harder around her than around many other people. Ditto with my autistic ex.

I can do this compiling process with far less exhaustion online. All in all, I barely talk about so much stuff with anyone but my partner, and even he can't follow me much of the time.

I feel like my native language isn't English sometimes.