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Rebecca asked me to write more about ‘masking’, so this article is in response to that question.

When you discover, later in life, that you’re autistic, it makes sense that the glue which holds your mask in place has had plenty of time to set.

You may have not even realised that you do mask. You might think “Isn’t masking just deliberate deception? I’m not dishonest, I couldn’t possibly mask.”

And then a colleague asks you a question. You meet their eyes, start counting “1…2…3…4…5” in your head, then look away. You haven’t heard what they have said, you were too busy trying to hold their gaze for the appropriate length of time, but you respond to them with a stock phrase you have memorised for these situations, in a sing-song voice that is absolutely not your own.

But that can’t be masking, surely? Everyone does these things, right? Everyone forces themselves to make eye contact despite it making them feel physically sick. Everyone puts on a fake voice when speaking to people they are not close to. Everyone has a list of phrases they have memorised as being appropriate in various situations.

Nope.

The difference between a neurotypical person trying to fit in, and an autistic person masking, is nuanced, but fairly easy to distinguish. The neurotypical person is not autistic, so they are not trying to hide, consciously or subconsciously, their autistic traits. I can only speak for myself here, but when I masked, I did it to suppress the behaviours that came naturally to me that others found odd, or that obviously produced negative reactions from those around me. (This means that there are most likely things I did or still do that stem from my autism which wind people up, but I’ve simply never noticed. It is in some ways quite a scary thought, but now I am in the process of accepting myself as I am, I’m trying to feel more neutral about it.)

I have never really made an attempt to be exactly like other people, but rather, I have tried to blend into the crowd and stay out of the spotlight. Unless, of course, it came to academia and reaching professional ‘goals’, in which case I found that overachieving worked really well as a mask, until it didn’t.

Overachieving is a form of masking - by Ren Riley

Head girl energy is literally just autism

I don’t think any autistic person is out to ‘deceive’ anyone. Masking is an act of self-preservation.

There are plenty of behaviours I have masked over the years, either consciously through gauging people’s reactions, or subconsciously, as if my body itself was trying to keep me safe, because as the famous book says, the body keeps the effing score doesn't it.

I want to make clear, before I list these out, that masking is not inherently a positive or a negative thing. It is a survival instinct. If you mask, and it works for you and your mental health, more power to you. If you don’t, and that works for you, then fantastic. Different strokes for different autie folks.

Also, a polite reminder. This is just my own unique experience of autism. Yours might be totally different to mine. Everyone’s experience is valid.

I unmasked and no longer knew who I was - by Ren Riley

Taking off the mask as an autistic person to find no one there is frightening

Here’s my list of behaviours I have masked over the years.

Eye Contact

I’ve already mentioned the hell that is eye contact. Apparently if you don’t look people in the eye this means you are untrustworthy, shifty, suspicious. Although I understand that eye contact can feel visceral and vulnerable, the reason why I dislike it is quite practical; I find it very challenging to think of words and get words out of my mouth in coherent sentences while simultaneously looking at another person. This means maintaining eye contact, viewing facial expressions, and processing all of that visual information can be immensely off putting. I tend to speak to people by looking up at the ceiling, talking to my eyelids or looking simply away from the person when I’m talking, and then making eye contact when they are talking.

I used to force eye contact at all times. It meant I used to get in my own head a lot and make very little sense when speaking to people. People used to call me ‘shy’. I call it being ‘speech jammed’, because it feels like I don’t have enough processing power to converse and read people at the same time.

Voice

My natural voice is either very monotonous and flat, or extremely animated and inappropriately loud, depending on the situation or my mood. I’ve been called out for both. To counteract any accusations that I looked or sounded sad/tired/angry, I used to turn up to my previous workplaces speaking and acting with the hyped-up energy of a children’s television presenter. 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. As regular readers will know, I actually don’t have this kind of energy, and certainly can’t maintain it, without fully burning out. Gross.

Topics of Conversation

I learned quickly in my first office job that I had to take part in small talk, otherwise I was consigning myself to the loneliness I felt in school and at university. Small talk literally hadn’t dawned on me as a way to ingratiate yourself and make friends until I was in my early twenties (obligatory comment - ‘Why did no one notice I was autistic until I was 29?!’) So I learned to ask people about their families and what they did at the weekend. I even used to come prepared with a scripted anecdote if someone asked me about how my weekend was.

Also, there was no room for talking about my special interests with people I did not know well. They would humour me to start with, but then you could tell that they thought my interest in the Beach Boys was maybe a bit much, and shut the conversation down. So I would keep my special interests, and that rich inner world that us autistic folks tend to have, hidden away.

Wanted: A Special Interest - by Ren Riley - Wavy Thoughts

I'm currently without a special interest and it sucks

Having a Big World

This probably needs to be its own post one day. What I mean by ‘having a big world’ is succumbing to the pressure from other people to go to places and have experiences purely because everyone else has them. Upon learning that I hardly ever went on holiday, I was told “Go abroad!” so many times, but every instance that I have gone on holiday abroad I have ended up in a melted down wreck at the airport or hotel.

This also applies to a whole array of aspects of life as a grown up that I am just not cut out for. Like I said, I’ll probably write more about this in detail in the future.

I did these things because other people said I should do them. I tried to be like these people, it didn’t work for me, it made me upset and I blamed myself.

Divorcing yourself from the guilt of “I should be doing this…” is one of the greatest things you can do for your mental health as an autistic person, I swear.

Pushing over the limit

I’ve written about this loads already, but this is one of the main ways I mask my autism, even now. It’s subconscious and I’m really trying hard to teach myself to stop. Not abiding by my routines, not protecting what little energy I have, pushing, pushing, pushing until I burn out badly. All because I want to ‘be like everyone else’.

'Slow Down' - a phrase I'm trying to understand

It is one the essentials to ensure recovery from autistic burnout, but how do I actually do that?

So there you have it, the main ways I have masked, and in some cases, continue to mask. I plan to post more about masking, how I have gone about unmasking, and the upsides and downsides. Let me know if you’d be interested to read it.

My goal with Wavy Thoughts is to hopefully provide you with another space to celebrate our diversity whilst recognising that autism is a thread which binds us together in community.

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Until next time,

Ren