Masking and the Self

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I have been attempting to mask and change my behaviors for so long I think most people would assume I am NT. I know enough to think maybe being more of myself might help me with relating to others, but I don't know how to do it anymore. I've completely lost sight of what I want to do or say or even think, and instead I immediately censor myself and pick my reaction from the menu I've built for myself. I can't be me anymore, but I feel like the person I've built around myself was a bad decision.

Does anyone else have this problem? I don't know if I'm making a lot of sense.

Yes. I ranted a little about the same thing as a reply earlier (to my own post).

I literally just came across this article earlier, and added it to the end of my post.

http://www.aspiestrategy.com/2012/05/hi ... dults.html

I want to print it out and staple it to some faces.

If you have a hard time appearing like a normal NT, why not try to appear like an NT with Avoidant or Schizoid Personality Disorder. That might be of some benefit to you, depending on the goal that you're trying to achieve. I don't think there are many negative stereotypes associated with those disorders, and they're not considered disabilities. I think I could pass off perfectly fine as an Avoidant with some tourettism. Maybe I'll adopt that as my new condition, considering the amount of negative attention that Asperger's has gotten. I probably have AvPD co-morbid with AS anyways.

I didn't fully realize that I was anything other than NT until the age of 45 - I knew I was different, but I had come to think of myself as simply 'different' in an eclectic sense. I felt I was just deeper and smarter than the average dullard and that's why I felt rather alienated and had such a hard time understanding why the rabble thought the way they did. At the same time, I felt I had adopted enough of their customs and behaviors that they were probably much less aware of my 'differentness' than I was myself.

Once I was officially diagnosed and began to study my condition in more depth, I had a gradual epiphany, in which I realized that I had been fooling myself much more efficiently than I had ever fooled the people around me. They might not have ever entertained the conscious thought that I had a mental disorder (though that's quite possible), but they always knew without a doubt, that whatever I was, I was not one of them.

In fact, I began to discover, to my own humiliation, that many of the people I worked with over the years had actively talked behind my back about how strange I was. I recall at least one incident in which the D-Bag who was firing me specifically gave as a reason "you're just out of touch with the rest of us" - which I thought (and still feel) was more true of him than it was of me, but the point is, my oddness stood out to others far more pointedly than I had ever realized.

All that said to illustrate the fact that because of our disability, we are not capable of ever judging accurately, how our behavior appears to others. One of the primary symptoms of autism is the inability to intuit what others are thinking or feeling. Just when you think you've got the Neurotypical act down pat - you probably aren't pulling it off nearly as well as you think you are.




You are making perfect sense. We are under tremendous pressure all our lives to blend in, march in step, be like everybody else and though it's a tremendous psychological effort, we have to keep up that facade as best we can, to minimize the abuse we get from the NTs around us who are cruelly unforgiving of those of us who struggle against an invisible disability.

They cut us no slack - zero tolerance for anyone who looks fairly normal but doesn't follow the unspoken protocols. And of course, there's no handbook, so we have to figure it out as we go and keep holding that mask up and pretending we know what the hell is going on. It takes a lot of effort to do that day after day and it eats away at your soul never being able to relax and just be who you really are. After a while, you're not entirely sure you remember what the real you is like anymore.

One of the positives of official diagnosis is the freedom to finally be able to say "Screw it, I'm not doing that anymore, because it goes against my disabilities as a handicapped person and I just don't HAVE to." Unfortunately, there's so much ignorance regarding Autism Spectrum Disorders, most NTs just view that as an excuse, but screw them. I'm tired, dammit, I played theirgame my entire life, it's gotten me nowhere and I'm just not doing it anymore.

For me, it is part of growing up. I am autistic. What have learned over time is etiquette in specific situations. I have no way learned how to be NT. However, when I was a teenager and in my earlier 20's I tried to project a "normal" identity. I had alter egos. My teenage alter ego was a "gangsta", which was ridiculous because I was captain of the academic team. Everybody saw how ridiculous it was except me. That alter ego landed me in jail and rehab. After I got clean, I was Mr. Nice Guy, a prep. I tried to be whatever Kentucky society found acceptable (except I couldn't change my skin color). Today, about to turn 30, I know who I am. I am finally finding acceptance of who I am and confidence in who I am. I conform to society when necessary but look for people who accept me as I am, people I can be myself around. I know when I am wearing a mask and that mask is only skin deep. My personality is my personality no matter what situation I am in.

Amen. I'd have used more swear words, but yes, this perfectly sums up perfectly where I'm at right now.

I've had friends mention they could no longer tell my actions from those of NTs, but I can. Contrary to the popular opinion here, I don't think I've been faking anything; merely learning by example and iterating my choices on the basis of my interests. If you continue to see your day-to-day happenings as an act, I think you'll notice sometime that this 'act' becomes more cohesive the more it's practiced. Case in point, computer simulations. New mechanisms rarely see mass-production until they've been rigorously tested by a physics engine far beyond the parameters of their uses, so it stands to reason that you've been rehearsing the means to an end for your actual goals, regardless of how repressed you may have felt. That's what I'm finding out about me lately...

It's important for us to learn NT skills, just to keep our heads above water. I'm glad I've begun to learn how to change certain behaviors. (There were things about social interactions that I just didn't know and I had to have my therapist literally tell me what to do or say in certain situations.)

However, I have to face the fact that no matter how many skills I learn, no matter how much I make eye contact, talk about the weather, try to fit in with my peers, I will always come off as odd, because I am. I am still learning to find that balance between altering my behavior and being true to myself.

Interesting article. I'm one of the people who can't pretend to be NT. I'm not even sure why that is. My sensory issues? My recently under medicated ADHD? My mood disorder symptoms? Some type of personality disorder? Or is just because I really only know how to talk about my current interests? I just can't seem to control my behaviour or monitor social situations very clearly.

This seems an even stranger thing to me than what most NTs do.

I thinking "masking" is a skill that all people do, regardless of being AS or whatnot; we all do it to some extent in order to survive in social situations. I appear pretty "typical" when you first see me, because I've managed to overcome a lot of my little quirks; but 5 minutes of conversation with me and people definitely notice that something is different. People never know what to think about me.

I've been obsessed with so many things over the years that it's given me a library of information to pull from in any given situation.

"Oh, you're into hot cars?" Let me pull from my car experiences library.
"Politics?" Let me pull from my politics library
"You're into AFL?" (Australian Football League) "I barrack for the Giants. Someone has to win the wooden spoon, eh?"

I literally do not care about most of that stuff, and if the conversation goes beyond a few minutes, I'll run out of things to say. My inner library is a great masking tactic, but it's bloody exhausting to maintain all that information and keep it up to date.

Now that I know for certain what I am, I'm wondering whether to retire the library altogether, and as you say "be true to myself".