Masking 2.0

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OMG - this. Yeah, I can't tell you how many times I've explained how I really, really don't like being around people only to have that person say, "Right? We should totally hang out!"

Cause clearly I like being around them because...yeah, I don't know.

Exactly. I find situations like that hard to defuse, because, hmm, what am I supposed to do? If I explain it, it's going to hurt their ego, and humans with hurt ego often become hostile. If I go along with their delusion, I will have to endure "hanging out" with them, or come up with lies to avoid them and hoping they will get bored quickly and leave me alone...

If you were ever to decide to try to meet some of the rare humans with whom you could conceivably be compatible, it sounds like you would need these people to be:

1) Asexual, or nearly so (thus not "always in heat"). Luckily, there does exist a budding (still small) asexuality subculture. (See, for example, the Asexual Visibility & Education Network, which has an online forum.)

2) Committed to not being an emotional "ticking time bomb." To that end, it seems to me that what you might need is not necessarily a "timid" person, but rather -- on the contrary -- someone who is clear and forthright about their needs and feelings, so that there's no need for you to guess and there are no surprises.

There do exist subcultures of people who are committed to clear and forthright communication. One of them that I know about firsthand is the polyamory scene -- probably not your cup of tea.

There also appears to be a small subculture around a communication methodology known as "Nonviolent Communcation" (NVC), which is all about being clear and forthright in a mutually respectful way. Unfortunately, NVC has some aspects that make it difficult for many autistic people, especially for those of us with alexithymia
(difficulty naming feelings). For more details, see my list of links to articles about NVC.

Locally here in the New York City area, I'm now trying to build a cluster of groups of autistic people. Some -- though not all -- of these groups will ask their members to make a commitment to communicating clearly and forthrightly with each other. (In particular our flagship group, the Autistic Peer Leadership Group, asks this of its members, because we regard this as an essential leadership skill in a group of autistic people.)

It is my hope that other people will (eventually, at least) build similar groups in other parts of the country and other parts of the world.

However, of course, if you are just not interested in seeking out people like yourself, it is your right not to do so.

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 26 Jul 2021, 12:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

Thanks, yeah, I've tried asexual forum, they all seemed super normal to me (bunch of manly men and girly girls), but maybe eventually I'll get lucky and find someone interesting.

You are right, that is better description. Guess I used 'timid' because I hate fighting, but if someone is clear and forthright, fighting becomes non issue, since we can always figure out the best solution together.

I had a quick look at NVC and while I'm not a fan of "universal human needs" since I just don't seem to have many of them (not to mention me being very prejudiced about anything 'human'), I do like that it focuses on feelings. In fact, this seems to be one of my gripes with humans. Humans either don't talk about feelings at all, or focus on those that I don't seem to experience (shame and pride for example).

Hmm, maybe that would be a good start for me, to find those who enjoy talking about, well, simple animal feelings, that even I experience? Are there people like that?

I'm sure nonbinary and gender-nonconforming asexuals do exist. A quick Google search turned up this thread on the asexuals forum, in which someone wondered why there are "so many" nonbinary aces.


You might find them within the autistic community, which includes people who experience emotions in a variety of unusual ways.

Heh, I once brought huge wrath upon myself by wondering the opposite, why asexuals tend to be super cis binary (often even het!), since to me, gender only makes sense if one is trying to attract sexy mates with big boobs/pecs/wallets... :3


We'll see, although my cynical side would rather bet money on only finding relatively normal super social party humans trying desperately to fit in and be loved by society...

In just about any group that isn't specifically a group of nonbinary, transgender, and/or gender-nonconforming people, the majority will be "super cis binary" -- although some groups (including the autistic community, and probably including the asexual community too), have disproportionately large minorities of nonbinary, transgender, and/or gender-nonconforming people.


A lot of autistic people do try desperately to fit in and be loved by society ... which brings us back to the topic of this thread, masking! It seems to me that only a minority of us manage to be "super social party humans," though.

Within the autistic community, there's a lot of talk about the harms of (excessive) masking, and a lot of people trying to figure out how to cut down on (excessive) masking and still keep their jobs, families, etc.

And, among people who attend support groups of any kind, you'll likely find a higher proportion of people interested in talking about their feelings than among the general population.

I really don't like hurting peoples feelings. So much so that I've been referred to as co-dependent before which I resent. I don't resent it because I am not co-dependent; frankly, I don't know if I am or not. What I resent about it is how they arrive at that conclusion.

If I find it necessary to talk to an NT, I meticulously prepare what I am going to say, trying to translate it into a format they can understand. It might be useful to think of this as ‘co-dependent communication’ as I am taking responsibility for the listener’s understanding. That, is completely different from taking responsibility for someone's feelings. In the situation I described, I'm translating both what they say and how I respond - not to take care of them, which is a necessary aspect of codependency, but to experience effective communication in order to get my own needs met. If a person I am talking to gets their feelings hurt, then I backtrack - but I do so because they clearly misunderstood me (since I never try to hurt anyone's feelings) and I'm trying to be understood.

Before I became disabled, I spent my career (24 years) as a professional poker player. Banter was an integral aspect of the game, and I became quite proficient at it despite feeling like my soul was floating in a vat of acid as I did. Anywho, people would want to hang out with me regularly and I'd keep making excuses until I couldn't any longer, and then I'd pack up and head for the casinos in Los Angeles, or Vegas, or the Mississippi Gulf Coast, or anywhere they weren't. Then I'd repeat the pattern all over again. It was easy then since I lived out of hotel rooms for a quarter of a century. Now that I don't work, and am stationary, I'm afraid to go out because when I run into someone now - I can't just pick up and leave if they start getting clingy. I didn't have a solution besides running away before - and I don't have one now, so I just avoid the situations.

In at least some cases, I suspect that these people might have been introverts, in which case they might have taken your statement that you "don't like being around people" as an announcement that you are a fellow introvert.

Most introverts don't shun human company altogether, though they do dislike parties, bars, and excessive chit chat, and they do need to limit the amount of time they spend socializing.

So perhaps these people assumed that you might enjoy hanging out briefly with a fellow introvert at, say, a museum, rather than a noisy bar?

I've been following this thread with great interest, though having trouble marshalling my own thoughts about the subject - so my apologies if what follows is just babble.

When my mask was forming, presumably beginning in infancy, was I thinking in terms of "hiding my atypicality from NTs"? No, of course not. I simply would not have categorised the world in those terms, and as far as I was aware, everyone else in the world was doing the same thing - the only mystery was why it seemed to require so much less effort for them. There was also no thought at that age about dividing my traits into basic personality, neurological quirks, mental illness, etc. - no child has that kind of self-awareness or power of reflection, which are usually among the last cognitive skills to develop. Masking any one of those things seemed no different, and still seems no different, from masking any of the others - if I can suppress the profound urge to glossalise or stim, then why not depression? why not physical pain? why not disappointment? why not anything? I can't really decide whether there are multiple masks or just one multi-purpose shape-shifting algorithm. Other times, I wonder whether there's any mask at all, and the facade is all of the "me" that there is.

Until my teens (I guess, my autobiographic memory is pretty shoddy), being masked was indistiguishable from simply being human, and the strange behaviours which sometimes emerged under duress or when isolated obviously could not be part of "me" because I never saw evidence of any such things shown or spoken of in anything but disparaging terms by anyone else - they weren't things which "people" did, so were presumably leakage from some kind of primitive animal part of the brain which becoming civilised was intended to extinguish. Being a bit of a dunce who couldn't hammer them out was no different than other kids struggling with their maths or spelling.

I now think that it's not so much that "I don't know who I am" without the mask, but that the revealed personality is not completely formed - concealed from the world's gaze, and even heavily suppressed when alone, for so long that it never had the chance to thrive, to flourish, to mature. I see now that I suffer from chronic "contact doormat-itus"; my brain has a built in answering service which says "yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir" without me even being conscious that there's even an interaction happening half the time. What value would opinions, beliefs, or "self-improvement" have for a "true" personality which is never allowed to have any agency in the world? There is a "real me" under the masking, and I do recognise it as more "genuine" in some intangible kind of sense, but it seems to be a mere shadow of a wordly-wise adult human, and maybe as unpresentable to the world as going out dressed in diapers and sucking a pacifier.

Like you, I've found lack of human contact due to Covid quite revelatory, and I have spent much more time with my mask down than ever before. I have been making attempts to do this since my diagnosis a few years ago, but it seems to be one of those things that doesn't quite work if done too self-consciously. I have found this to be a very bitterweet combination of hugely, even ecstatically, enjoyable and deeply embarrassing. I have spent hours skipping around like a child in fields of cows, spewing glossolallia, flapping my arms like I'm trying to take off - until a previously unnoticed dog-walker catches my eye, and I think; "what the f**k do I think I'm doing?!".

It's not so much the being caught doing it that bothers me; I know that even my best attempts at masking are actually rather "uncanny valley" (watching video of myself is excruciating); but rather that this exposed personality isn't really compelled to do anything more constructive or "adult" than these childish flights of fancy. I can't see where "me" could really fit anywhere in the world around me, how anyone else could find much in it besides maybe a fleeting moment of entertainment value, nor even much use for in my usual hermit-like existence except a little light anxiety-relief now and then.

Hmm, well, rather more "spewing forth glossolallia" there than I intended. Apologies if it's a rambling mess of self-pity or self-indulgence; but I'll leave it unedited even if just as a warning to others!

Far, far from it.



Amazing! Get out of my head, sir! Whether or not I've been actively engaged with a therapist, I've spent most of my life in therapy - even if it was me doing the work alone. To that end, when difficult memories have emerged, I often imagine me 'sitting' with the 'me' who it happened to - for instance, telling that four year old 'me' that I'm sorry that the event happened to him and that it wasn't my fault. So recently, as evidenced by the fact that I just signed up on WP about a week ago, a lot of stuff has surfaced related to my neuro-diversity. I currently have a wonderful therapist I've been working with for seven years and sent her an e-mail in which I discussed the weird way 'sitting with' this 'me' has transpired. Here's that excerpt:

"I can’t seem to sit with him, without becoming him – or it seems as if I am. There stops being any sense of an adult presence and that includes any memory of the things I’m ‘remembering’. Rather than identifying as an adult man having a memory about an event from childhood, I am completely identifying with the child who is experiencing the event as I’m remembering it, as if it is being experienced for the first time.
This bizarre way of remembering seems crucial in this case because I am remembering these events through the emotional and cognitive lenses I had at the time – prior to developing the persona(s) that masked them. The arrival of these memories, in this way, allowed me to see it, and its impact as it was; rather than how I remembered it after fifty years, or how the person I’ve become perceives it, or remembering it in such a way to support whatever narrative I had come to tell myself and believe. I was a mess. Emotionally, I was barely functioning – partly due to developmental issues, partly due to abuse."

And so, yeah, the idea that the personality is not completely formed - I didn't have or use those words but it perfectly described my experience.



~nods~ I asked myself if I would be willing to go back to the point of personality development in which I found him (present day) and allow him to develop from the point he got stuck at - which is fortunately, a few years past diapers and pacifiers. I surprised myself by tending toward a 'yes'. I'm not there, but the idea is floating around in the grey matter. Obviously, there would be some serious logistical issues - not even sure its possible, and certainly looking for a better way first but...it's on the table.



I'm jealous.



First of all, I'm over-joyed that you aren't all that bothered by being caught; well done! As for the rest... I'm a human being - not a human doing. The world has slots for human doings - not so much for human beings. But you know, and I say this without a hint of malice, the world pretty much has no use for me as I am, only in the way it would have me be. I guess I've gotten sick of behaving in the manner the world would prefer so I can be useful to a society that has no use for me as I am. As for others? I too am a hermit, though my father prefers the word 'recluse' - I know because I hear his unfavorable opinion of that nearly every time we talk. I guess the idea of being someone that someone else will have a use for has passed its expiration date for me.

I am real grateful that you weighed in - I got a lot out of your post, thank you.

Hmm, am I right that people here internalize their masking? That your masking is not simply for survival, but you actually want to be proper super fancy adult humans who fight others for social status and dominance?

I never wanted it. I've been obviously forced to pretend I want, even to family. But I hated every minute of it and I took every opportunity to be alone so I can actually be myself. And this has been my goal since gaining independence, to somehow find myself in an environment where I can be myself.

To give example:

That's basically me. I love being playful, it's just most of the time I'm too afraid to do it because it could get me in trouble.


But that's not. I'm like "Drat, discovered again, hopefully I won't get in trouble, maybe I should have been more carefull..."

The masking being internalized? Yes, definitely that. Wanting to be proper super fancy adult human? No, "want" just doesn't feel like the right word - to "want" something, you have to be clear that there are alternatives which might be preferable and attainable, and until maybe only the last decade of my life, it never seemed that way. It had become ingrained in me that all of my "autistic behaviours" (not that I knew them to be that) were pathological, abberant, a sickness. At times, I genuinely feared that e.g. the compulsions to stim or glossalise were precursors to some kind of dark insanity which might bring my life crashing down if I weren't constantly and anxiously vigilant in suppressing them.

Unfortunately, the way that my periods of genuine mental illness were "treated" encouraged rather than dispelled these fears. Aside from with my most recent therapist (the only one with any autism training), the chronic anxiety and depressive episodes were always seen as being the cause of my autistic traits, rather than being seen as largely the result of me trying to suppress my unidentified autism. Intentionally or not, this encouraged me to view a decrease in autistic behaviours as a positive sign of recovery from mental illness. I did, of course, realise eventually that these therapies were not just ineffective, but damaging my self-esteem to the point of making the mental illness worse - but misread even this as more evidence that I was just a "hopeless case" doomed to descend into insanity at some point.


And that is an attitude which I find very appealing, and something that I'm working on. After nearly half a century of it, the reflex to feel guilty for "indulging myself" is very hard to overcome, even though, rationally, I know that there is no reason that I should feel that way so long as it harms no-one (including, as you suggest, myself if it invites censure from others). Religion has never had a significant influence on my life, but a comparison with Catholic attitudes to sinfulness wouldn't be too far fetched.


Very much the same here, though tempered by the practicalities of obtaining the basic necessities of life. In fact, ever since childhood, I have regularly fantasised about disappearing to an isolated cave somewhere and just "going feral" (very likely that influenced me to take up caving for real when I was a much younger and fitter person - hence my username).

Coda: During my autism assessment I was encouraged to take in essays, poems, and song lyrics which I had written in my teens and twenties for the shrink's consideration. Upon going through them, it soon became clear that, although I knew nothing of autism back then, I had dissected my own psychology very accurately from a pretty young age - you could almost tick off diagnostic criteria verse by verse in some cases. I try not to be a bitter person, but the irony of this still upsets me deeply - for the best part of thirty years I'd had these ruminations dismissed as "cognitive distortions" of which therapists would attempt to disabuse me for the sake of my mental health.

Nonononono. Masking is for survival only.



Yeah, that fear of discovery and getting in trouble for it is still with me. I live alone and my upstairs neighbor will walk across the floor and I freeze, thinking they're going to come downstairs, catch me doing something that I'll get in trouble for, and then I'm in for it. It's not 'them' specifically that I'm afraid of - heck, I have never even seen them, for all I know they're 99 years old and in a wheelchair. But it's just this generalized fear of getting caught doing something and that whatever that something was - I'm going to be in trouble for doing it - even if I'm just sitting there doing nothing. It pervades everything I do.

Ah yes, that difficult balance between minimising traceable life-signs by holding one's breath and the danger of making a much louder sound should the oxygen starvation make one faint to the floor! I'd hazard a guess that you also share my uncanny ability to memorise the precise location of squeaky floorboards!

There is only one in my apartment but five in the upstairs apartment. One in their bathroom, three in their living room and one in their bedroom. The neighbor to my left falls asleep in a chair in front of the television between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. every night. If she's still there at 2 a.m. she stays there all night; if she gets up to go to the bathroom before then, she heads for the bedroom afterwards.

Now that you mention it, I may have noticed.