Unmasking

[wildeabandon]

Since I got the autism diagnosis I've been trying to reflect on the things that I do to mask, or pass as neurotypical, so that I can make a more considered decision about whether I want to continue doing them and in what circumstances. But it's quite complicated, because I've been doing it for the better part of four decades, and it's now very difficult to pick apart "this is subconcious masking, but still comes with a cost", "this is actually my natural behaviour", and "this is just part of human social behaviour and is something that has a cost for neurotypicals as well, but we all do it to make interactions run more smoothly".

I'm going to talk a bit about where I've got to so far, but before I get to that, something that I would find useful is comments from other autistic people (or people who think they might be autistic but haven't pursued a formal diagnosis) about the things that you do to mask, or things that you have done in the past but don't do any more.

So, I'm going to start with the stuff that I don't do, (which is of course all the stuff that gives me imposter syndrome about my diagnosis, but I think I'm more likely to work through that by acknowledging it that ignoring it). I don't have much in the way of sensory issues to mitigate. I sometimes find that I'm more aware of and distracted by background noises than other people, but actually a lot of the time I tune them out quite effectively (I think this might be a benign interaction with the ADHD, where the hyperfocus from the one brainweird mitigates a symptom of the other.) I don't stim, or at least, I'm not consciously aware of a drive to do so, although I've seen other autistic people talking about starting to do so deliberately post-diagnosis and finding it soothing, so I may explore that when I'm feeling socially overloaded and see what happens. I don't find eye-contact painful or unpleasant, although I do find that when I'm talking to someone who isn't a close friend I can become hyper aware of it, which is a bit stressful.

I do, and this is something I only realised last night, flap. Or at least I do when I'm alone and suppress the urge when I'm not. I'm probably going to stop that suppression.

When I'm interacting with people I have a constant calculation going on in the back of my head about whether what I'm about to say is appropriate to the context that I'm in and the level of intimacy I have with the people I'm interacting with. This is pretty tiring, and the amount of work it takes correlates strongly with the number of people in the conversation and inversely with how close to them I am. I don't think I could choose to stop doing this even if I wanted to (and I probably don't want to) but I would like to continue to reduce the frequency with which I'm in situations where it's particularly hard work.

I find it difficult to pretend that my emotional response is other than what it is - things like appearing interested when I'm bored, hiding when I'm irritated, damping down excessive enthusiasm. I suspect this is something that everyone finds a bit challenging, and I don't actually know whether it's harder for me than for NTs, but I think it might be. I think this is probably something I still want to do sometimes, especially in professional contexts, but I might want to try to do it less in social contexts, particuarly with people I can trust to gently tell me if I'm becoming abrasive.

I find one particular kind of task-switching very difficult indeed. It was actually when I discovered that this was a common autistic trait that I first started to wonder if I was actually autistic rather than just socially incompetent. I'm fine with multi-tasking between lots of similar activities - so when I'm cooking, for example, I can manage several threads at once. What I find really painfully jarring is turning social mode on and off. This means that if I'm in the middle of something and someone interrupts me then it takes all the self-control I have not to snap at them to leave me alone. It also takes me quite a while to get back to whatever I was doing after an interruption, but because I can do that transition at my own pace it's not unpleasant, just time consuming. This is occasionally a difficulty at work, but actually in my current role I don't get interrupted very often and interactions with colleagues are generally instigated by me, so again, I can do the transition at my own pace. It's definitely something to be aware of for future roles though. Mostly when I'm in social situations it's not a problem because I have social mode permanently on, so the main place where it comes out is at home when I'm doing my own thing and Ramesh (or less frequently Robert) wants something. It used to be one of the biggest causes of conflict in the relationship with Ramesh, and although we've got a lot (really a lot) better at managing it now, I think there might be some small tweaks we can make that would improve things even further.

I'm really bad at remembering names and also somewhat faceblind. Generally I try to cover for this and find some way to be reminded of their names and who they are without letting on that I've forgotten. I think I might try being more willing to admit that I've forgotten, and perhaps say explicitly that it's an autism thing. I think I might also ask Mthr Alice if we can reinstate the board of photos of members of the congregation, but this time with name labels, because church is very definitely the environment where I most often catch myself thinking "I've known you for months, and you've told me at least three times, how can I have forgotten your name?"

I find turn-taking in conversations with more than one other person a mystery. Especially because as far as I can tell, the norms about when it's okay to interrupt and when it's okay to ignore someone interrupting you and just keep on talking vary massively from group to group and from context to context. I read recently on twitter that neurotypicals do quite a lot of the communication about whose turn it is to speak using eye-contact, which is clearly just cheating. How much I mask this already depends on how comfortable I feel in a group, so I think with my close friends I don't worry too much about the rules, and probably sometimes come across as quite interrupty, but I think also we have a fairly interrupt-friendly norm, so its not too abrasive. (I would be interested in other people's perceptions of me in this regard.) With less familiar social situations I mostly mask by just not saying anything. Which is effective, but also makes socialising in groups even less appealing, because I can't really participate. In work and similar contexts I mostly stay quiet, and hope that that buys me enough social capital than it doesn't matter too much if I speak out of turn when I've got something important that I need to say. I don't think I particularly want to change strategies here, except again by minimising the frequency with which I'm in the situations where it matters.

There are a couple of circumstances that sometimes make me unreasonably anxious - unfamiliar social situations where I think there might be rules that I haven't understood, and being asked to make a decision (generally a fairly inconsequential one) where on some level I suspect that there's a right and a wrong answer and I will be judged if I make the wrong one. Sometimes I mask these by plowing on through the anxiety which is invariably deeply unpleasant, but I've often found that if I say "No, I don't want to do that", then a few moments after I've given myself permission not to, I become able to do it without feeling anxious about it. Brains are weird, but I think I'm going to try and take that particular flavour of anxiety as a sign that I don't have to do a thing (unless it's a thing I really do have to do, but it mostly isn't.)

Gosh - that got quite long. Possibly that's just because I'm over-explainy and went into excessive detail about actually small things, but probably my imposter syndrome should take note... I've got some more stuff to think about that's more to do with choosing to avoid difficult social situations, and why I'm finding it quite challenging even though I'm confident that it's the right choice, but that can wait for another post.

Comments

[ewt]

I read this.

I have not noticed you interrupting, but I am told I am also a very interrupty person and so I might not notice? I feel like interruptions are less of a problem in written formats.

I also struggle with names and would find a names-and-faces board at church massively helpful. There were people at St A's whose names I did not reliably know after seven years, and it was partly because by the time I got done with the organ and de-cassocking, people had already formed into groups, but it was partly because I just can't do that thing.

I am at a point now where I consider walking to be a sort-of stim, and while it's difficult to untangle the effects of exercise and the effects of stimming, I wonder whether running fills a similar function for you.

[wildeabandon]

I will speak to MthrA about arranging a names & faces board.

You may very well be onto something with the running.

[kaberett]

- flapping is stimming!
- I am really unhappy about how much I've retreated from visibly stimming - rocking, flapping - because of other people being shitty about it. I don't tend to notice in the moment but there are definitely long-term costs associated with the suppression.
- A & I are doing a lot of work on trying to be More Aware of when we're acting like we're expecting the other person to be On Duty, by burbling happily but intermittently about whatever it is we're doing/thinking about (because I like this person! I want to make social noises at them! I'm happy and want to share it!) in a way that is really interrupting/disruptive; we're experimenting with saying "hey, I wanna go apply sustained concentration to $thing for a bit, I'm happy being in the same room as you and being gently in contact but if you want to talk to me can you do it by IM? and howsabout we check in in about half an hour and see how we're doing?" I can probably make more words about how we're navigating this, if prompted.
- yep, these days if I'm introducing myself to people I'm expecting to see repeatedly, in a social rather than academic setting, but without strong context cues I tend to (try to) say "and, by the way, I'm faceblind - I don't even recognise my mum when she gets a haircut - so if you wouldn't mind reintroducing yourself to me when we start up conversations in future I'd really appreciate that!" or, when I've not managed that and I clearly need to stop Just Covering For It, doing the terribly apologetic "I'm really sorry but..." thing, again often using my mum as an example. (Which is a thing I can do to Particular Humourous Effect because my family apparently has a fairly distinctive skull shape, so when my mum first cut her hair I stopped recognising her... but when it all fell out I started recognising her again but only from behind because That One Cousin With Alopecia had got me used to having those characteristics ping as "family!")
- turn-taking in conversations: out of interest, do you find this equally difficult in wholly allistic/mixed/wholly autistic groups? Because I tend to find conversation is just Easier when it's onlyother autistics involved.

[wildeabandon]

- flapping is stimming!
That is one of those things that is very obvious when you say it, and I'm now not sure why I'd been categorising it differently.

Most of the time when R & I are bumping into the mode-switching thing it's when we're in seperate rooms and he comes in to ask a question, or when we're on public transport together and both reading and he wants to share or discuss something that he's just read, so it probably needs slightly different techniques.

I probably need a slightly different script, as I'm not quite that faceblind, but enough that it combines unhappily with the names thing. But it probably is a good idea to come up with a script so I'm not having to figure out a suitable phrasing on the fly.

I'm not entirely sure about the different groupings, as I rarely spent time in groups of more than two or three that are entirely autistic, but it probably isn't entirely a coincidence the groups of closest friends where I find conversation much easier have a very high concentration of autistics, and the allistics have more autistic traits than average.

[halojedha]

Ahhh, these posts are so interesting (and relevant to my not-yet-diagnosed self) so thank you for writing them.

it's now very difficult to pick apart "this is subconcious masking, but still comes with a cost", "this is actually my natural behaviour", and "this is just part of human social behaviour and is something that has a cost for neurotypicals as well, but we all do it to make interactions run more smoothly".

Gosh yes, I know exactly what you mean, my self-diagnosis process has been complicated by an awful lot of this. It's really tricky. And different people might well recognise different traits/behaviours as allistic or autistic depending on who you ask.

The thing about task switching into and out of social mode is very familiar. Leo and I are trying to cultivate stringent conversational consent practices and scripts at home to avoid derailing each other's flow, given we both work from home. And even just to not distract each other when one of us in the middle of a domestic task. Happy to talk more about our strategies if you like.

Thanks for sharing, I hope this process of reflection results in affirming what works for you and improving what doesn't!

[wildeabandon]

It is indeed tricky, although I'm definitely feeling as though I have a lot more clarity than I did a couple of weeks ago - it's been bloody hard work and last week I spent a lot of evenings doing very little and yet still feeling pretty exhausted, but I think it's mostly going to get easier from here on in.

I would definitely be interested in any strategies you have around not breaking each other's flow.

[hilarita]

As a 95%+ probably autistic person, I recognise a lot of this. I also suppress like mad, and I didn't really notice until I hung out more with people where I don't need to suppress. It does take a huge toll on my energy though. I can usually pass at turn-taking enough to not make most people think I'm hideously rude, but it does take a lot out of me. I fake eye contact frequently - for eye contact, I have two modes normally: 1) eye contact is horrible and should be banned, or 2) stare at the eyes of my interlocutor until they get really uncomfortable and flinch away.
Unfamiliar social situations or lots of people I don't know are also super draining. I have persuaded work that all-hands meetings should come with name badges, for those of us who are terminally confused by names.

Er, masking for a friend

[hairyears]

I'm really bad at remembering names and also somewhat faceblind.


You have no idea how much 'masking' I do for this.

The answer is to look for pretty run-of-the-mill mnemonic exercises that develop associative memory in general, and the necessary name-face-person associations that you need in order to function in society.

So look for trivia associated with a person. Look for *linkages* - where do you meet them, with whom, for what activity?

The bare text of the LJ friendslist is astonishingly effective as a tool for building name-to-name linkages that describe a person's interests, cliques and origins.

That context-based linkage-building effort will get you to a level in which you can at least associate their name successfully when you're in the settings where you usually interact with them...

Recalling a memory - and linking things with an associative memory - is always easier in a context like a place, or a regular social event: but very difficult outside it.

So you need get to work with building linkages out of generic trivia: and one trivial fact or whimsical falsehood *will* stick to two or more facets of them - name, face, person - one among dozens or even hundreds of trivial things that run through your mind when you encounter them.

I won't tell you who it is that I mentally associate with hoovering; but I can always see *the person* hoovering the hallway, and the fact that it's pointless to hoover a tiled hallway floor plays out a pun on their written name.

I discovered later that their partner's name is a commercially-successful brand of vacuum cleaner: well, that's one more name-and-person sorted, then.

One or more puns, visual or verbal, will stick to two or more facets, and form an associative memory.

...One of the dozens or hundreds of puns *that you cultivate the habit of thinking* when you see them, and observe a distinctive phrase, feature or gesture that goes with each of the facets that you need to link up.

Also... Faces are useless as an identifier, but expressions are very distinctive indeed: talk to a cartoonist about how few dots and lines with a biro completely capture a personality that way.

Practice with a biro and sign each post-it-note sketch with their name (or social media handle) until you don't even have to take out a pen to have mentally and mnemonically done it.

I strongly recommend that you do *not* replicate my habit of composing a Limerick for people you meet: I did that for every member of the Bethnal Green Ki-Akido Club and they were, without exception, utterly filthy.

Perfect in meter and rhyme but... Filthy.

I'm like that, but it's not necessarily a good thing.

Re: Er, masking for a friend

[wildeabandon]

That does sound like an enormous amount of work - considerably more than my erstwhile strategy of just avoiding using someone's name until someone else does and pretending to recognise them and make non-committal noises until I can figure out where I know them from.

I think on the whole moving to just admitting that I don't remember/recognise is going to make life easier though.

Re: Er, masking for a friend

[hairyears]

You may be right that disclosure is a better bet.

In some company, it is.

Elsewhere, you're 'othering' yourself, and I'd want to be very, very sure that none of the normal group behaviours towards outsiders are in play, let alone the more toxic ones.

And how do you find out in advance?

Your approach might still work: but it requires an exceptional fluency and confidence in your social skills, which might be even more effort to achieve than the limited but dependable gains of mnemonic exercises.

Overall, I'd say that disclosure is healthier, in many more ways than either of us fully realise; and it's viable if you start from a strong base of supportive and accepting social relationships among friends and colleagues.

Re: Er, masking for a friend

[wildeabandon]

I think it's less confidence in my social skills, and more in my social capital. If it turns out that othering myself in an environment brings out toxic behaviour, that's useful information that is not an environment I'm willing to be in.

[rosefox]

I'm fine with multi-tasking between lots of similar activities - so when I'm cooking, for example, I can manage several threads at once. What I find really painfully jarring is turning social mode on and off.

OH. Thank you for putting it this way! This explains why X would so much rather I send a Slack PM saying "by the way, it's trash night" or "a funny thing happened to me today" than say the same thing walking past them while they're sitting on the couch with their laptop. Online social mode isn't taxing for them in the same way as in-person social mode. (I respect their preference regardless, of course, but it's helpful to me to know why they have it.)

[wildeabandon]

Heh. Glad to be able to be helpful. Yes, online interactions feel very different to me; partly because they're somewhat asynchronous, so I can control the transition, but also because I don't need to turn on nearly as many interpretative widgets.

[zz]

the "don't be weird" and "this is how (un)popularity works" bullying and conventions displayed on tv in childhood were so effective that I internalised them to the point of feeling uncomfortable around a certain level of stereotypically autistic behaviour, because i was afraid of being seen as guilty by association and (further) ostracised.

[wildeabandon]

Ouch - that sounds pretty rough, but very understandable. I think I probably got a lot of protection from absorbing too much of that kind of messaging by determinedly leaning into my weirdness, but there definitely were a few people when I was an undergrad who made me feel pretty uncomfortable with their harmless but loud social ungracefulness, which looking back reads fairly autistic, and I wonder now how much of my discomfort was seeing echoes of my pre-teen self.

[highlyeccentric]

I'm really appreciating this. I've been reading a lot about adult diagnosis and masking lately, and like you feeling very ??? impostory, because I... can't really identify much masking that I do. Some of that is because I have just... barrelled on with a Quirky Persona. No one has ever questioned me kitting or crocheting in class, for instance (even when I'm teaching), and if anyone comments I've just said it's for anxiety / to stop me twitching and getting distracted. But then, I would not actually struggle to function without that - it's a minor improvement, not crucial.

I *do* have major trouble with social norms, turn taking and register when outside of Australia - it's most marked in my second language (and that's something everyone finds hard, but my difficulty with social situations in French is way out of sync with my linguistic capacity), but I even have trouble talking to The English, especially in professional settings, in a way that I don't with Australians.

[wildeabandon]

I'm glad that you're finding some of my noodlings of use. The more I think it, the more it feels as though for me masking is lessabout changing my behaviour within a situation in order to appear more neurotypical, and more about hiding how much it's costing me to have the interactions at all. And reading other accounts suggests that that's far from unique.

[jack]

*hugs* I hope it's good to talk it through like that. I am grateful, I always find it really fascinating hearing how people describe some experience in some level of detail, and realising what I'd not realised or what I'd taken for granted.

FWIW, I don't spend that much time with you, but what you say rings very true -- but for better or worse I don't think it was ever obvious to me, presumably because I almost always see you when you're "on", when you seem gregarious and friendly and socially ept :)

I'm also interested to compare my experience, because I think I'm not autistic but I think I have *something* going on. I fidget, but don't flap (I hope being able to do so more openly is good!) I don't feel like I have feelings and actions I need to suppress round people. Or rather, I feel like I've always tended to just check out and assume that nothing I can say will be interesting to other people, but it doesn't feel like I'm *masking*, the interaction I *do* have feels like me, and I feel like I've a normal amount of noticing if other people are interested or not interested.

What I have noticed is finding it incredibly hard to switch streams. If I've planned to do one thing today, I find it very hard to switch to another thing, even if the other thing is actually very enjoyable. I find it very hard to cope with thinking I understood something and discovering I got it wrong. And I almost always find friends' who are autistic complaints about how such-and-such just doesn't make sense very sympathetic. But my annoyance is much less intense, and I don't think I get on with friends who are autistic with less friction than non-autistic friends do, if anything, maybe worse.

I think the turn taking thing is going to need a separate post.

[shreena]

I don't think I have autism but I do a couple of masking things regularly:

When I write work emails, I check them over again before sending to add in something at the start like "hope you're well/had a good Christmas/whatever" because it just doesn't occur to me otherwise.

I found baby and toddler group casual chit chat really hard so I observed for a while and now consciously work through a list of things to say- e.g. I try to find something nice to say about their child (ig their is awful, maybe their clothing instead)

I think of this stuff as normal but I am not sure it is

[shreena]

On social mode - some of my friends really like being in the same room but not interacting. I hate this so much! I find it hard even with Ben. I like to be on my own or with people and interacting with them. Basically I need to know which mode I am in.

[wildeabandon]

Sometimes I can enjoy that, but it depends a lot on what I'm doing, because it does basically mean keeping the social mode switched on the whole time. I can enjoy doing something with my hands but that doesn't require very much brain whilst listening to conversations going on around me, but I don't like reading in the same room as someone else.

[wildeabandon]

The having to prepare scripts in order to manage standard expected social interactions is definitely a very familiar feeling, and I do the same thing with work emails.

I observed to Mark the other day that it's probably not exactly coincidence that one of my favourite ways of socialising involves having an actual literal script in front of me telling me what to say :)

[naath]

When I agree to meet strangers for work in busy places I now say 'I'm faceblind (ish, but photo to human is hard) and just plain short sighted; I'm purple, you spot me', it does by and large work quite well (I think being so obvious helps)