The Power Of Now - enlightenment
If allistics (non-Autistics) never hear our needs voiced, and never see our struggle, they have no reason to adapt to include us. We must demand the treatment we deserve, and cease living to placate those who have overlooked us.
One can behave in different ways to get different treatment, but demanding a certain treatment leads to opposite effect. People have ingrained beliefs, stemming from their own background and traumas, there are reasons for believing what they believe, even if the beliefs are “overlooking” some groups of people. Telling people that their whole belief systems is wrong will put them on the defence and worse case they’ll find roundabout ways to rationalize why they are good persons regardless (see: This is not who I am).
Unmasking has the potential to radically improve an Autistic person’s quality of life. Research has repeatedly shown that keeping our true selves locked away is emotionally and physically devastating. Conforming to neurotypical standards can earn us tentative acceptance, but it comes at a heavy existential cost. Masking is an exhausting performance that contributes to physical exhaustion, psychological burnout, depression, anxiety, and even suicide ideation.
Conforming to any external standards that go against the core of your self will come at an existential cost, neurotypical or else.
Together, all of this means that Autistic people tend to have the following qualities: We are hyperreactive to even small stimuli in our environment We have trouble distinguishing between information or sensory data that should be ignored versus data that should be carefully considered We are highly focused on details rather than “big picture” concepts We’re deeply and deliberatively analytical Our decision-making process is methodical rather than efficient; we don’t rely on mental shortcuts or “gut feelings” Processing a situation takes us more time and energy than it does for a neurotypical person
Parents or grandparents who themselves have Autism spectrum traits dismiss the child’s complaints, claiming that everybody suffers from the social stress, sensory sensitivities, stomach issues, or cognitive fuzziness they themselves experience.
Or it is universal and everyone does suffer from the social stress, sensory sensitivities, stomach issues, and cognitive fuzziness. It could be that the severity of suffering differs, yet the problems as universal as they are, will be confusing if told “but its different!” In what way is it different?
If we’ve never been in a particular restaurant before, we may be slow to make sense of its layout or figure out how ordering works. We’ll need really clear-cut indications of whether it’s the kind of place where you sit down and get table service, or if you’re supposed to go to a counter to ask for what you like. (Many of us try to camouflage this fact by doing extensive research on a restaurant before setting foot inside.)
Autistic person’s mask tends to be informed by the Autistic qualities they have been trained to hate or fear the most.
Which is why a lot of people fly of the handle when told “you’re like your parents.” Facing our trauma roots is painful.
It takes an extra moment of careful processing to skip the “obvious” (and wrong) answer and provide the correct one. For most allistic people, the default way of thinking is to go with what’s obvious. But since Autistic people do not process information intuitively, we don’t see “obvious” answers to things, and have to carefully break the question down instead.
What unites us, generally speaking, is a bottom-up processing style that impacts every aspect of our lives and how we move through the world, and the myriad practical and social challenges that come with being different.
My acceptance in society is conditional on my behaving respectably and being productive. That’s really a deeply ableist reality, but I shouldn’t pretend it isn’t true. Though having to mask as a desirable, respectable person can be very soul-crushing, it does protect me from physical violence, institutionalization, poverty, and loneliness.
A cynical worldview in my opinion. First of all acceptance in society is too big of a scope. No person will every be accepted by the whole of society. I think we all find acceptance in smaller groups and individuals. And to that end behaving respectably according to the group you wish to be accepted by is the only way to connect. You either choose not to be respectful and gain ultimate individuality, requiring you to be so much more independent. Or you choose to be respectful and gain acceptance in your desired community, allowing less independence but more interconnectedness. You can’t have both.
And you can be accepted without being productive. Being productive will become vital however in providing value. And providing value is the only way to earn bread. If you don’t provide value, you will be let go, you will not be hired, but I doubt your friends and community would just drop communication with you on the grounds of not being productive.
“Everybody is a little bit Autistic,” is a common refrain that masked Autistic people hear when we come out to others. This remark can feel a bit grating to hear, because it feels like our experiences are being downplayed. It’s similar to when bisexual people get told that “everybody is a little bit bi.”
Or it comes from genuine confusion. If it feels like your experiences are being downplayed then maybe this is how it seems to them (that the experiences don’t seem that bad)? Maybe they have not had enough exposure to your problems and perspective to understand your experiences?
However, I do think that when allistic people declare that everyone is a little Autistic, it means they are close to making an important breakthrough about how mental disorders are defined: why do we declare some people broken, and others perfectly normal, when they exhibit the exact same traits? Where do we draw the line, and why do we even bother doing so? If an Autistic person benefits from more flexibility at work, and more social patience, why not extend those same benefits to everybody? Autistic people are a normal part of humanity, and we have qualities that can be observed in any other non-Autistic human. So yes, everyone is a little bit Autistic. That’s all the more reason to broaden our definition of what is deserving of dignity and acceptance.
And therein lies the core of everyone being autistic - a lot of autistic problems are universal, not specific to autistics. So where do we draw the line? How do we differentiate?
Until I was in my mid twenties and realized I was Autistic, I was basically a perpetual adolescent, performing intelligence for praise but mismanaging my personal life and not connecting with anyone in a deeper way.
Losing oneself in work and gearing life towards achieving praise as if it is the main purpose is a surefire way to make sure you don’t have the time, energy, or authenticity for connecting with people deeply.
The more Autistic voices I read and listened to, the less Autism felt like a curse. The shame I felt about my identity began to ebb, and pride in who I was gradually replaced it.
Abled people hated seeing my awkward softness and confronting the fact they might be sensitive and needy in their own ways, too. So they acted like I was invisible, or that my childlike habits were perverse. I learned that feigning maturity would be my sole salvation, the only way to ensure my humanity got recognized.
Tell me not what you love, but what you hate and I will show you who you are. We all tend to dislike, hate, loathe, avoid people that remind us of who we don’t wish to become like.
I had already started to cultivate a grumpy, goth persona to protect me from seeming weak. Instead of showing that I was overwhelmed, my mask told other people to stay far away.
I think for most masked Autistic people, there are key moments in childhood or adolescence where we learn we are embarrassing or wrong. We say the wrong thing, misread a situation, or fail to play along with a neurotypical joke, and our difference is suddenly laid bare for all to see. Neurotypical people may not know we’re disabled, but they identify in us some key flaw that is associated with disability: we’re childish, or bitter, self-absorbed, or too “angry,” or maybe we’re just awkward and make people cringe. Avoiding being seen in these ways becomes our core motivation in life, each day a battle between the heavy armor we wear and the embarrassing characteristics that armor was designed to cover up.
It is not the difference itself that alienates, it is the (usually unsuccessful) attempt to cover the differences that alienate. Display your differences and you will find acceptance.
Masking shapes the fields we work in, how we dress and carry ourselves, where we
The fear of seeming childish wounded me in a profound way, as it does many Autistic folks. One of the major ways abled society dehumanizes the disabled is by calling our maturity into question. “Adults” are supposed to be independent, though of course no person actually is. We all rely on the hard work and social-emotional support of dozens of people every single day. You’re only seen as less adult, and supposedly less of a person, if you need help in ways that disrupt the illusions of self-sufficiency.
Unfortunately true that radical independence is the norm in many western countries nowadays. We could all benefit from more interconnected communities (see: Outliers - extended families, better health outcomes)
My own “childishness” reminded allistic people that much of what we call maturity is a silly pantomime of independence and unfeeling, not a real quality of unbreakable strength.
Autistic people frequently are stereotyped as immature, unintelligent, cold, or out of touch. And each of our masks helps to cover up the Autism stereotypes we felt we needed to resist the most. Behind each mask, there sits a deep pain, and a series of painful beliefs about who you are and what you must never allow yourself to do. Consequently, a big part of unmasking will mean facing those qualities you loathe the most in yourself, and working to see them as neutral, or even as strengths.
Many Autistic people find it challenging to transition between activities. Each change requires a lot of what psychologists call executive functioning, a skill linked to planning and initiating behaviour. Most Autistics find it relatively easy to give a task we enjoy our unbroken attention, but we find it challenging to gear shift.
On the flip side, an Autistic person who has repeatedly been told they are selfish and robotic might instead wear a mask of helpful friendliness, and become a compulsive people-pleaser or teacher’s pet.
In the psychological literature on the subject, Autism masking is said to consist of two classes of behavior: Camouflaging: attempting to hide or obscure Autistic traits in order to “blend in” with neurotypicals. The main goal of camouflage is to avoid detection as disabled. Compensation: using specific strategies to “overcome” challenges and impairments related to disability. The main goal of compensation is to maintain the appearance of high, independent functioning.
A more “severely” Autistic person is not necessarily a person who experiences more interior suffering, but rather someone who suffers in a more disruptive, annoying, or disturbing way.
Many masked Autistic adults struggle to balance full-time work with social lives or hobbies at all because maintaining a conciliatory mask for eight hours per day is just too labor intense to have energy for anything else.
So learn to unmask? Bit by bit!
“Our aversion to rejection and desire to be accepted may make it difficult to know when we are experiencing consent,” he writes, “and when we are trying to conform to social expectations to be liked or to avoid rejection.”
What non-Autistic folks often don’t realize is that Autistic people experience intense sensory input as if it were physical pain.
When you have never been able to move through the world comfortably, you’ll seek relief and meaning where you can get it. For a subset of Autistic people, that means falling into abusive, cultlike communities.
Research shows that most Autistic people have a reduced sense of the body’s warning signals, or interoception.
Her self-destructive habits are also part of her mask: she disarms her chauvinistic male competitors and superficial classmates by seeming cool and wild.
Masking also tends to involve swallowing your anguish in order to keep the neurotypicals around you happy. Complaining about discomfort that no one else is experiencing can make you seem “crazy” or “demanding.” Many of us become quite adept at ignoring pain, just as we neglect our own hunger or thirst.
Controlling environments comes with many complications. Seek change within before trying to force externals to your will (because usually this does not work).
You cannot craft a comfortable or worthwhile life if you don’t know who you really are, or if your self-image is shaped entirely by rules imposed on you by other people.
I thought if I was excelling on paper, and living a cool, glamorous life, there was no way anyone could ever say I was “childish” or “pathetic.”
Coming out proudly about one’s disability and presenting it as a valuable part of one’s identity helped reduce self-stigma’s impact.
Loudly, proudly take ownership of our Autistic identities, the more institutions will be forced to change to accommodate us and others who have been repeatedly shut out.
What’s really important here is to focus on how neurodiversity has brought pleasure, connection, and meaning to your life.
In Autistic self-advocacy circles, the question of whether we’d take a pill that magically “cures” Autism often comes up. The vast majority of people in our community reject that question out of hand, because Autism is a core part of who we are, impossible to separate from our personalities, talents, preferences, and general outlook. We wouldn’t be the same people without it.
Every disappointment or failure teaches us something about what we want, and what is best for us. “Reframe failure as data”
Almost all of the standard measures of time that we now take for granted—the way our hours and days and weeks are structured—are based on a factory model of work. I call this Industrial Time…. There are other ways of thinking about time. Seasonal ways. Cyclical ways. Ancient ways.
Years ago, Sue’s manager learned that by giving her flexibility, the organization gets to benefit from her natural productivity and thoroughness.
Inauthenticity and a forced-seeming social performance rubs neurotypicals the wrong way.
See: What Others Think of You and Leaky Feelings
“My new plan is to put some hooks on the wall right beside my bed, so I don’t have to take even one extra step to hang up clothes that aren’t dirty yet,” she explains. Dirty clothing can go in the hamper, or just be tossed on the floor and gathered up later. This approach keeps Marta’s room reasonably organized, but she doesn’t put stress on herself for not keeping things perfectly organized and clean.
Almost every Autistic person I spoke to has found that in order to build a life that suits them, they’ve had to learn to let certain unfair expectations go, and withdraw from activities that don’t matter to them.
As with every single person!
At its core, both unmasking and radical visibility are about dropping the façade of compliant neurotypicality, and learning to live openly and honestly as oneself.
Sasson’s research found that when participants were told they were interacting with an Autistic person, their biases against us disappeared. Suddenly they liked their slightly awkward conversation partner, and expressed interest in getting to know them. Having an explanation for the Autistic person’s oddness helped the creeped-out feeling go away.
Once again being open and honest about yourself, not attempting to hide behind an uncanny “mask” will result in better connections.
One reason that we may need more sleep than others is just how tiring it is for us to be in the world. Sensory overload, social overwhelm, and the pressures of masking all significantly drain our batteries. This means many of us are not well suited to a nine-to-five job, and keep other hours instead.
I don’t know any neurotypical people who sit at home googling how to pronounce words like bouillabaisse or injera so they don’t seem “weird” at a restaurant. But for Autistics, this level of scripting and pre-planning is normal.
When we accept the unique features and strengths of our communication style, we can also feel a lot less socially inept and disempowered.
When neurodiverse people push for more explicit messaging, everybody benefits. Vague, symbolic communication is harder to parse if you’re Deaf or hard of hearing, an immigrant from a different culture with different idioms, a nonnative English speaker, or a person with social anxiety.
Often it is not possible to express something in such a universal, simple way. Should everyone on the planet speak a single language then? There is a reason why French, a language able to convey a single thing in so many subtle ways, is the language of diplomats. Some things can not be expressed but in specific ways using the ambiguity of the words, symbols, shared culture: removing such complexity is not possible and will not “benefit everyone.”
So, when the conversation seems to have lost the plot and people are talking in circles, I tend to jump into an unofficial facilitator role.
But people shouldn’t do this when autistics ramble on about their special interests? Derailing conversations and talking in circles is something everybody does.
For many Autistic people, including Reese, self-acceptance looks less like flawless and serene self-love and more like a “fuck it, let them deal with it” attitude that helps her shake off the desire to hide. She’s willing to be honest about who she is—even if it scares off potential roommates who would have been a bad fit.
I can also take time to remind myself that I live in a world that exalts hyperindependence to a ridiculous, isolating degree.
This study suggests that much of what researchers consider the “social deficits” of Autism aren’t really deficits at all; they’re just differences in our communication style that neurotypicals don’t adjust to.
Maskers are highly dependent on the opinions and feelings of other people. We bend over backward to make life easy for neurotypicals and the people we care about, we hide facets of ourselves that are distracting, weird, or inconvenient, and we become hypervigilant about tracking people for signs of disapproval. It’s normal and healthy to be considerate toward other people, but masked Autistics tend to devote so much energy to people pleasing that we have almost no cognitive space left to think about (or listen to) ourselves. It also impedes us from connecting with people in a genuine way.
Merely observing a disabled person as an outsider or a pitiable curiosity won’t do much to reduce neurotypical people’s biases. Instead, research suggests that collaborative, extended contact shared between equals is what’s necessary to really change attitudes.
It would benefit all people to have a strong psychoeducation from a very young age.
The redemptive self essentially is an unmasked Autistic self: unashamed of one’s sensitivity, profoundly committed to one’s values, passionately driven by the causes ones cares about, strong enough to self-advocate, and vulnerable enough to seek connection and aid.
Universality of unmasking regardless of neurotype beautifully summarized.