A Mask For The World

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Thank you Data
My programs at first were copies of others.
It's risky but rewarding to share me.
Even more risky when I'm off stage in "quote" real life.

A cross happens when I present at mental health conferences.
My favorite was Ordinary people helping ordinary people with extraordinary issues.
My favorite comment was "your light presentation was more Pithy than the keynote address.

Interesting last few posts here

I, like most, have a mask I wear. The difference I feel is most of the people that admit to having a mask put it upon themselves. I am 42 years old but feel like a child trapped in an adult body. I did not chose to alter my behaviors to fit into society but the powers that be in my life beat me into submision to, if you will have the mask fashioned upon me. If I went with my natural behaviors I was punished. Over time I simply learned what was ok and what was not. It was not ok to cover ones ears in a movie theather, not ok to softly bump ones head against the wall when upset, not ok to hit ones head when something does not make sense and as a very small child, not ok to use signs and gestures to communicate when spoken language was just beyond my grasp.

I remember the teachers reactions to me, it was the early 1980's, I had very few language skills(forced through years of speech therapy), I had next to no social skills (my temper scared even the bravest of my educators), I had no idea how to calm myself down from even the simplest of upsets. I refused to enteract with my classmates, I kept sneaking into the early childhood special needs room during recess (they didn't judge me, the teachers there actually tried to understand me and help me understand myself and my feelings) the children there could learn from me and I from them, plus the teachers were able to help me make some of the connections that I just seemed to miss. My regular teachers were at a loss of how to reach me. By the second week in the class they had cleared out a corner of the coat closet in the room as my place to get away and calm down where I could still hear the lesson being taught. I often spent most of my day in the closet, if I did not want out they had no way of getting me out, I learned very quickly in the first grade that if I placed my back on the wall and my feet on the right part of the door it could not be opened by any outside force. I would even miss lunch on many occassion. The fact that my many outbursts did not get me expelled from the tiny rural school now has me amazed, I figure they just did not have anywhere else they could send me and by law I had to be in school. Not a single teacher escaped my "wrath", one unfourtunate teacher decided that it was just lack of focus that kept me from learning like the other kids and placed a ticking timer on my desk during the multiplication times test. I remember only being able to focus on that awful ticking and so I took that stupid timer and with aim that would make any softball coach proud pitched it at the teacher's face. I broke his nose. He took full blame for the instance but deep down I knew I should have taken another route or just sat there until it stopped.

Outside of school the mask was forced upon me by my adoptive mother. She would physically and verbally "correct" me in very abusive ways. It was easier to mirror the actions of others than be hit and yelled at around the clock. The mask I wore until just a few years ago was not even one of my own making.

I still did not fit in enough. By the time I hit 20 the doctors had decided that I was Bi-Polar. I do not understand how they could have possibly came up with that! All they could see is sometimes I was like everyone else and other times I was completly different. They placed me on one medication after another, with each one they recieved counter indicated reactions, each and every one of them made me want to take either my life or the life of someone else (I never acted on these desires but went to the doctors and told them my thoughts and put up with the multiple hospitalizations). Now that I refuse to take mood stabalizers I no longer have those impulses. It was just a week ago that my current doctor said that they were going to reconsider my diagnosis. One small step for medicine on giant step for me. With that comes finding the "new" diagnosis. I have figured out about 5 years ago the truth about me, I have Ausperger's Syndrome. I am ok with that. If during the early 80's I had recieved the testing required I may have been elsewhere on the Autism Spectrum.

In the past 5 years, that is 5 years with no Psych In Patient Hospitalizations, I have given in to some comfort habits that make life among "Normal" people easier. I put my earplugs in before getting on the city bus or entering a store. I keep a backpack of emergency items for comfort if I go off the deep end in the grocery store or Walmart. Not unusual for me to miss my stop and have to take another loop of the bus or trolley to get to my destination because I had to loose myself in a game on my tablet or phone. I carry a small comfort item that parents are very familiar with, a Wubby, a tiny square of blanket, often with an animal on it and almost always with a satin back on it. I will not leave home without it. If it can't be found when I need to go, I just don't. I cannot, will not talk to adults that I do not know, but will talk to children, young children. They do not scare me like adults do, most parents understand that I will not hurt their child, I never make a move to touch a child, in fact I make point to keep my distance. If a child approaches I simply tell him or her that they need to stay by mommy or daddy. I had to find a way to suppliment my SSI income so I went back to a hobby I had as a child, I relearned how to do balloon animals and I do them every weekend in a local park, during the summer months I pick up a few days during the week as well. About 70% of the parents now know that I am "On the Spectrum", even with this they are comfrotable with their children being with me, at times leaving the older of them at my stand while they go a few minutes away to get money from the stroller or their spouse. Children seem to find a "Oneness" in me, I am bigger but still a child inside and they see it. Since removing the mask that was placed upon me and coming out to the parents of my customers about 30% of my repeat customers are also on the spectrum and their parents ask if I can spend a little extra time with them and the tips I recieve for my balloons are always way higher from those parents. I guess they see me as a success case. I am not so sure, it is fun watching these young children learning how to fit in the environments they are placed in and what they need to make it easier. To have a role model that is not afraid to use tools in public I think may help. Often parents will even ask me what can be done to make a certain situation easier on their child. I will give suggestions but remind them that even if it works for some, it will not work for all because we are all so very unique. How I wish I had been born in this era, that I hadn't been beat into acting normal as a small child, not to have had my fingers smacked when I developed my own sign in a desprate attempt to communicate. My earliest memory of being told something from mommy is "Stop playing with your fingers! Use words! What do you want?" Today I still use sign along with verbal language, it comes without thought.

My appologies if this entry seems to ramble or wander. Those are just a few of my issues. To the younger ones on this site be glad that you are growing up when you are, to the older ones like me, wear your social battle scars with pride, you pulled through for another day. I am so glad to have found Wrong Planet. It could not have a better name as I have often felt that I was born into the Wrong Universe, somewhere in the great beyond there is a whole planet of people that are just like me and I would be normal there.

My mask covered up anger through quiet, reading and occasional sarcasm.
Home confusion was expressed in rage to quiet to reading to physical fitness. The latter also was in public and school. Team sports were out. Individual like swimming - wrestling - ping pong were in.
In college air hockey was added.
So was theater random noises and excelling at school.

I identify with this a lot, and I think it describes the experience of many women/girls with AS. It has become more urgent for me to retain the mask because I am physically ill and thus a lot more vulnerable. The people around me tend to be either very empathetic or disordered, not much in between, and I've come off badly against a few psychopaths because my defence mechanisms and perception are lowered due to tiredness. Those few who are attracted to me are interested in the 'perky, quirky' version of me that is my attempt to seem neurotypical, but run a mile when they discover the real me.

I get that feeling. MY parents say that in order to function around some people without putting them off, I have to act normal (aka not the way I usually act). Play their little game, talk the way they talk. Whenever I do something that is just me being me that they feel is somehow "rude" to the people listening they get angry. Sometimes calling me selfish, claiming I don't want friends. It is very frustrating to have to be someone I'm not. To always constantly worry about every little thing I say. I even find myself asking my friends sometimes "do you think they're mad? Did I say something wrong?" Worse, whenever I bring this up, they often say, "it could be worse. At least you're not such and such." I know other people have it worse than me. That does not make me happier to pretend to be anyone but myself.

I have read that once you meet one person with Autism, you have met one person with Autism. This means that we can't generalize about this disability. All autistics are different. I don't think it is fair to assume that all autistics are weird. I think some can very well act and look like everyone else. And I would also say this: Just because someone is weird doesn't mean they have autism or any other psychological disability. They may be weird, just because they are weird. Besides, I don't think it is fair to even castigate someone who is weird, whether he has autism, or doesn't have autism.

I don't think that those in the autism community should blame all of their problems on their condition. It might be comforting at some level to know that your problems are caused by this disability, but this just might be a tiny part of the problem.

There is one final thought: We all wear masks. This isn't just an autism thing. Everyone does this.

I do think most Autistics need to wear a mask more often and thier masks are "heavier" and more suseptible to "falling off" then trypical people thus making Autistics candidates for burnout.

Most people wear masks because it's a necessity to getting along in life. It's part of having different roles and having different kinds of relationships with people. Things you do at home, you don't do at work or school, things you do around adults you don't do around small children, the way you relate to your coworkers is not how you relate to your boss, the way you relate to your friends is not the same as how you relate to your spouse. It's normal to mask things and to have different personas, and it's part of being able to interact with people and negotiate the social world.

The difference for people who have neurological problems or mental disorders, is we can be impaired in our ability to understand what is required in different situations, impaired in our ability to switch between these different roles, and in general have a lot more "odd" behaviors to mask - odd to other people but not necessarily to ourselves, which takes a lot of remembering. We can be so different from other people that it's hard to even find a way to relate to them at all, so we just mask for the sake of masking, rather than being able to use it as a way to interact with people. We can get very rigidly stuck in our masks, or when we least expect it the mask can fall off and leave us exposed.

When I first started working, I had an interesting way to choose what how to react.

I would ask myself What would _______ do. The ____ was not Jesus, it was a colleague.

Fast forward 40 ish years, I do it less AND folks (surprisingly still especially to me) ask me what would I do.

for better or worse, I don't care about other people sufficient to even think of trying to hide it anymore. I yam what I yam.

For those that do care about some, (I do) it is difficult when unkind or in necessary truth is said by this "Reader and Righter"

Right is not always synonymous with happy.

Identity politics poisons basic human compassion. People are individuals.

Here here

Right, your neurology has absolutely nothing to do with how you turn out. It has zero effect on how you develop, on personality, on behaviour. My brain has nothing to do with who I am as a person.

^^^^
This