You don't have to mask

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I think you can have successful social interactions and make friends without "masking".

An analogy in business is when people say "Instead of focusing on making money, focus on learning skills and creating value because, that in turn, will make you the money".

It's a similar concept with socializing. Instead of focusing on what you can do to gain approval or achieve X end result. Just focus on providing value/happiness to peoples lives. And your social goals (whatever they are) will eventually come.

Socially, I would just focus on:
* Listening to the other person
* Asking them about their interests
* When they talk about something they're interested in, ask them questions about it
* Be aware of their emotional state
* If they're uninterested in a topic, stop talking about it.
* Genuinely care about them

etc.

It's kind of a chicken and egg thing and it depends a lot on the specific traits.

Also, isn't most of that stuff masking?

All of that IS masking if it doesn't happen naturally or innately for a person.

You mean genuinely caring about another human being?
And making the conversation two-sided rather than only talking about your own interests?

How is that masking?

Masking is when one had to give space for them, rather than them making one for themselves because there are no stupid NT rule presumptions.

That's the issue I observed whenever I interact with NTs -- they don't interrupt enough except flat out say they don't want it.
They have this damnable etiquette of whens and how to say XYZ, which is an aspect that I never seem to master, no matter the practice.


I want someone to info dump on me.
I'll info dump on them. They'll info dump back -- I'd like it.
And if they don't like it, it meant they cannot keep up with me, it meant that the interaction is incompatible.


To onlookers, it looked like two or more people one-upping one another.
But that's because said onlookers have presumptions of what socializing "should" look like.

Last edited by Edna3362 on 05 Dec 2023, 8:28 am, edited 1 time in total.

If any of this was genuine, we'd already be doing it. And this isn't a 2-sided conversation, it's 1-sided, just in the other direction and this stuff takes a massive amount of energy. Lately, it's a particular struggle to maintain eye contact, but with your advice, now it's a lot more work than just remembering that I'm supposed to be looking at the person that's speaking.

I would accept that all of your bullet points, if adopted, would probably improve your social interactions. But don't say it is not masking, because it is. If it wasn't, why would an autistic person have to be told these things?

There are different kinds and degrees of "masking," some of which are more unnatural and more arduous than others.

Everyone masks, to one extent or another. But some kinds of masking are much more detrimental to the masker's mental health than others.

I distinguish between two kinds of "social skills":

1) Blending in with NT's, purely for the sake of appearing "normal." This category includes things like trying to force oneself to imitate culturally mainstream rhythms of eye contact. Attempts to do this can be very counterproductive to actual, meaningful communication, as satirized in the following video:



2) What I call autistic-friendly social skills -- the kinds of skills autistic people would need just to get along with each other even if there were no NT's in the world, hence no pressure to conform to NT norms. These are both much less arduous and more productive, and include things like genuinely listening to other people (as opposed to trying to look like one is listening).