You can’t be all things to all people. Sounds obvious, right? Yet it seems like for many of us late-discovered autistic folks, this was, and still is, the pattern of our lives. We are acutely aware of our shortcomings, our failures and weaknesses. We aren’t like the others, and the others know it. To stop them from perceiving us as the weirdos we are, we decide the best course of action is to simply be the nicest, most affable, helpful little angel anyone could ever ask for. We are the ultimate teacher’s pet. Yes sir, no sir, three bags full, sir. (For my non-UK readers, I don’t quite know the root of this saying, but it’s very British and I love it).

If I do absolutely everything you ask me to, you will have no need to mock me. If I use my keen pattern-spotting abilities to anticipate what you will need, I will please you and you will get off my case. If I please you, and you, and you, and you, nothing will catch fire. If the fire were to rage, soon you will all be alight with the suspicion that I am an oddball. There is a risk that you would gang together and call me out publicly on how there is just something really off about me.

So this is how it goes for years. As a kid, this chronic people-pleasing inevitably facilitates the student-librarian-to-Head-Girl pipeline (shout out to the myriad autistic head girls across the world who have no idea why they can’t connect socially, so find their connection and validation through the approval of teachers).

As an adult, this can look like biting off more than you can chew. You are out to please everyone and anyone. It isn’t enough to struggle up the corporate ladder, always fighting with the small talk and unwritten social rules needed to survive in an office. Day in and day out battling through everything in the hope you hear a few vaguely positive words from your manager. You offer to go to extra curricular work-related events. Maybe it’s a networking event once a week, where you convince yourself that if you make it a regular thing it will work the same way exposure therapy works.

The more I talk to people, the less shit I will be at it.

You want to please everyone at this event. I will laugh at your lame jokes, I will ask questions about your life even though guaranteed I will never speak to you again and this exchange of information is ultimately meaningless. But in the moment I want to elicit a smile, encourage you to give me your business card and for you to take my own so I can go skipping back to the office to let my manager know that I was a Big Girl who spoke to people and did a good thing.

Maybe you want something other than work in your life so you try dating, a relationship, starting a family. Maybe it’s a hobby. Whatever it is, you absolutely have to be the best in the world at it, or else those around you will suspect you. Suspect you of what, no one can tell. You don’t know you’re autistic, they don’t know you’re autistic. And yet.

It’s as if neurotypicals can smell neurodivergence.

All this people-pleasing is a mask. It is a well-known component in many an autistic person’s armoury. It also expends your energy like nobody’s business. You can mask for a set amount each day at work. You can mask on your dates. You can mask for an evening event. But when you go home, you crumble. No sooner you turn the key in the front door lock, you can feel the life drain from your face. I got through another day, you think, as your mind like a sand castle disintegrates, slipping through your fingers and into the kitchen sink.

Spinning plates is tiring. Spinning extra plates that other people do not see is exhausting. Something has to give. You have to stop living to please other people. And to do that, you must start to remove the mask. Not completely, particularly if you do not feel safe to. But you can experiment to see how it feels, to feel the breeze on your face. Don’t push yourself too much. Fulfill your job responsibilities and nothing more, no more going ‘above and beyond’. You’re entitled to just ‘be’.

Without the mask of people-pleasing, you have to prepare your weary mind for the fact that shame will come rushing down the mountain and envelope you until you can’t breathe. You’ve been running from shame your entire life. Without getting them onside, you run the risk of them finding out about you. Taking off the mask necessitates the need to get familiar with the feeling of shame. Shame is a whole beast in and of itself, and one I will write about more in future posts.

In the meantime, it pays to be a little selfish. We don’t have to bend over backwards just to get through the day without being perceived as anything other than totally normal. Who wants to be normal, anyway?