I’ve been starting to open my mind to changing my ideas about masking. A lot of them come from my sister who struggled very heavily with wanting to appear like everyone else and not stand out, so I’m biased based on experience.
At the same time, I recognize that forcing or pressuring people into masking when they don’t understand why would be traumatic to them and ultimately do the opposite of what is intended.
I feel like unmasking should be done in private or around people who will understand it. Unmasking could in theory be done all the time, but not everyone would understand it.
What’s your position on it? Do you mask in public but not in private or around only people who understand it?
I want to work on being more accepting and I have feelings in both directions.
I had been masking all my life until recently. Now I tend to unmask, even in situations where people don’t tolerate my real self. Like in my recent job interviews. I learned it’s better to be weak m unfitting in the eyes of others, than bending myself. If they cannot handle me, they shall go away - I’m not dependent do them.
Masking, in theory I can do it. I’m just so exhausted mentally and physically these days. If I’m in a position where I feel I need to mask, I usually instead withdraw.
I have my own opinion on masking. I don’t feel like I hide my true self and I feel the term ‘masking’ isn’t always the right one, although it might depend on the individual and the situation. The way I see it, it’s all a question of communication, or language; we have our own concept of social communication, one that is not always the same as most people. It gets hard to understand those different than us and also difficult for them to understand us. We can’t expect everyone to understand us, and most people don’t, or won’t. So we change the way we communicate, use another form of language. It’s not always easy and we might sometimes miss the mark, but we are autistic, after all. We can’t understand what we aren’t all the time, it’s just normal. With most people I know, we often find some kind of unspoken middle ground, so to speak, communication-wise. They know me and I know them, we kinda found ways to make it easier for us to understand each other. YMMV, it’s not the same for everyone and I know that; some of us find it harder still to understand non-autistic people and communicate with them, and have a hard time being understood by them. Some of us feel the need to hide and ‘fake’ our way through many social situations. In the end, it’s all about how comfortable we are with acting natural. For me, I find it simpler to adapt the way I communicate than expecting people to understand me. There’s more of ‘them’ than there are of us, in the end we have much more opportunities to study their ‘language’ and adapt to it, than the opposite. To me, it’s the same as traveling to another country without speaking the local language. You can get by, if you’re lucky, but it will be much harder than if you learn the language. There are some words that will give you a harder time, and you’ll fall back to your native tongue, but they can’t blame you for making an effort.
Again, YMMV, as everyone has different experiences; it’s just the way I see things.
My special interests are very special to me (ugh, what a terrible pun. Defo not intended!) and I reserve sharing them for people I trust. That alone is a reason for me to mask.
It’s actually harder for me not to mask than it is to mask a lot of the time, even though my mask is far from perfect. But I’m “out” at work and it’s fine if people realize I’m masking.
I think for me donning the mask is like donning armor to protect things I care about from a majorly uncaring world, and if I unmask around you it’s a sign of trust.
