This is the last time I’ll see you before Christmas - so Merry Christmas! I hope you have a lovely day, and time to rest and recover afterwards. This video is about ways in which autistic people might mask, not about autistic traits. If you’re wondering if you might be autistic, I have a video about my favourite theory of how autistic minds work, monotropism. Here’s the link!: ruclips.net/video/3mBbOOzhoGQ/видео.html And if you missed my video about the parents pushing their children to perform on Christmas morning: ruclips.net/video/_mBppddBB8w/видео.html See you next week for the last video of the year! Thank you for being here this year ✨🎄
Me: "I don't script conversations. I don't know what you're talking about." Also me: "Okay, so every time I meet someone, I give them a compliment about something they're wearing to break the ice and put them in a good mood." 🤣
i wanted to do that but then i realized it was hard to come up with a spontaneous compliment that was honest. and i didn't want to stare at and assess people every time i meet them lol. any time i successfully notice something i like and deliver the compliment it's like a rush of adrenaline 😂
@@foogriffy For me it just happens to be the first thing I notice - I'm not sure if that's instinct or because I've trained myself into it. But usually it's something like "I love the color of your shirt" or "that's such a pretty necklace" or "your scarf looks so comfy" or "that eye makeup is amazing."
I totally do this. I’m considered super friendly at work because I’m always complimenting people, or smiling as a greeting, or asking how people’s shifts are.
It's hard for me to believe how formal and artificial a behavior can be, that convinces people you are friendly. One structured compliment or the ability to project a warm smile, and you can set up some people's permanent impression of you. For all the talk about rigid thinking in autistic people, these situations make me think that allistic folks have rigid thinking too, it's just in different categories of processing.
I remember that when I was a teen, I told a friend that I felt like I had to wear a mask around everybody and couldn't be my true self. Still took me 20+ more years to get diagnosed with autism. It's kind of surprising how many of us consciously mask while just thinking it's what everybody does.
I said exactly this to three different friends, literally like a decade apart. They had made a comment about how I seem different in different situations, insinuating that I was being fake. I was like yeah, of course I am so that other people will be comfortable and accept me, aren't we all doing that? I would joke it was because I was a Gemini.
YES thank you I’ve never heard another autistic person talk about that… I told family members and therapists, and either people didn’t have a clue what I was talking about and found it really weird or they would say “yeah I mean we all behave a little differently depending on the context etc” thus confirming my suspicions that everyone masked and I was just complaining about nothing. Turns out we weren’t talking about the same thing 😂
@@paulinejulien9191I have experienced that too. I am undiagnosed but has always been the weird kid. No real help when asking for it even just for some advice. I am met with confusion and silence. Even though I am very literal in describing what I am experiencing it seems like I am speaking to them in a foreign language. At 38 I dont know if I will benefit from a diagnosis or not. Maybe just keep being me and let other people do their thing and if anyone has a problem they can come speak to me.
i have tried explaining this to a few people before. i've identified that i have two main modes of function, one where i am silly and goofy and just let the tism run wild, and another where i sort of lock down and gain this really cold exterior, which is the one that i use when i'm in public most of the time. i don't mean to come off as weird or mean, i just don't know how else to properly mask, because putting on any other kind of persona is even nore work than what i already do! i just wish it was easier to be quiet and to stop stimming when i need to.
I remember hearing someone talk about how everyone does this and imagine it's like wearing a different hat: you have one hat for work, another for school, another for hanging out at the club, etc so I also thought everyone did this! Typically all of my relationships were independent, rather than having a group of friends I had a lot of one on one friendships that never really interacted with each other, not by design - it just sort of happened that way 🤷 One day I invited a friend from one place to come with me to meet up with a friend at a bar and she said it was shocking to see how my whole personality went from relaxed & a little odd to straight backed, out-spoken & confident the moment we walked through the bar's entrance. I'd never realized how much I was masking - it was absolutely _exhausting!!!_ And yet, even with as well as it worked (I was _way_ too popular & my confidence made me _far_ too desirable - that sounds like I'm trying to boast or whatever it's called but nope, it's just a fact) I wouldn't go back to that life if you paid me!!! It caused so many problems & I was _always_ exhausted! So glad my wife accepts me as I _really_ am ❤️🫂 Sorry so long, I suck at concise. I'm also too lazy to reread what I've written & make sure I didn't AuDHD my way to another topic entirely ... my apologies if so 😂
It feels like I constantly have one of two things playing in my mind. Either a song is playing, or my mind is throwing me in the middle of some random situation/conversation and I tend to immediately start scripting what I’d need to say if something like that did happen. It gets really annoying, because sometimes I’ll get really emotionally caught up in these imaginary conversations/arguments and it can ruin my mood if I can’t pull myself out of it.
@ I’m also a musician lol music has been a special interest of mine since I joined band in sixth grade. I’m glad I’m not the only one with this specific kind mind that just never seems to be quiet
Hahaha, no way! I’m also a musician and a linguist; during my autism diagnosis, I discovered I have, surprise-surprise, a special talent in languages (I speak 6) and music. I do everything you two described and also do weird and expressive interpretative dances, when I dance, enough to make people stare.
For the scripting part of the video, I have what I call "default phrases". Just like NPC's in a game, I have vague words or small sentences that I can apply for small talk. When people ask me how I'm going or say something about themselves and expect me to comment about it, I have to think of which response to use. Examples are: I'm okay/okay, that's nice, cool, that's sad, tell me more, nice, I'm good/good etc. Really basic and simple things to say but it is enough to the other person to continue talking without judgement.
Same! And sometimes I accidentally snag someone else's phrase, including timing and tone, and then use it to them and they get very confused 😅 it's hard to turn off
my fiancé calls those my 'stock answers'. same thing for when i react too enthusiastically to something he tells me (that he knows i don't actually care about, and that doesn't really warrant a big reaction, like when one of his sportsball teams scores a goal/wicket/touchdown/etc.), he'll say 'oh, that was a stock reaction, wasn't it'.
I'm 47 and just told my mom I'm autistic, she was like "Are you joking?" I survived a law enforcement and military careers... all due to building a persona and living it. It was hard at first, but really became pretty simple. Then I changed careers and my life came crashing down. My life is Hell, and I work from home with very little real responsibility or situations where I can get hurt... never had more stress in my life, thus leading to this understanding.
Its not a surprise, military and police have lots of rules and predicatable routines, autistic folks like that. I found working from home was my salvation following years of workplace abuse for being different. Hang in there, you can do this!
Makes a lot of sense actually. I'm pretty sure my dad was AuDHD (like I am) & he did fairly well in the Air Force & then as a corrections officer. Both very structured jobs with a shared militaristic higherarchy. Also a shared unhealthy coping mechanism. Lots of drinking in both. Which a lot of neuro divergent people (especially undiagnosed) will drink to help with the anxiety in social situations, or just to fit in more with so called normal people.
@rae·tetza1999 My goal is to leverage my veteran suicide prevention job to bring attention to this. A growing group of veterans are leaving service and getting diagnosed, I'll have to see how good these congressional connections really are 🤣
I put myself into a military leadership path in order to force myself into being "fixed." I survived that career, barely, and transitioned to a technical career which was a much better fit. But after 22 years in that job I was behind the promotion curve based on my knowledge and experience. All of the advice I got about getting raises and promotions would have involved significant masking, and I just don't want to do that any more. I retired from that job, fortunately with enough savings to go many years without needing to work. I can take the time to figure out my own path and not get stuck into corporate expectations again.
Because I struggled making friends all my life, around age 15-16 my mom sat me down and told me “if you want people to like you ask questions. People love talking about themselves and oftentimes don’t care about you.” I remember getting that advice and really internalizing it. Lo and behold, it worked. I found that when meeting new people, asking them questions really helped a conversation actually happen and not awkwardly die out.
I wish someone had told me that. I probably came across as self-centered and aloof, because I almost never asked people about themselves (even though I was always open to and interested in listening to people talk about the themselves and things they cared about). I tended to fare best with people who just shared without waiting to see if others were receptive to it (ie. socially oblivious, chronic over-sharers). And then those people seemed to feel like I was a good listener (because I was) and they tended to like me (even if I didn't particularly like them). I think others who were more socially aware were probably put off by me. That's only something I've been realizing since learning I'm autistic, though. My social struggles make a lot more sense now.
But isn't that the whole problem? They don't really care about you. I don't need more aquaintances. I get that it could be useful for a party where you're just doing small talk or maybe networking for work, but it seems fairly unhelpful if you're actually trying to make friends who will care about you...
I, on other hand, manage to somehow overdo it and seemingly come across as cop during an interview 😂 I swear there was a class everyone took and I missed.
"I could be creative and quirky, but I had to be the right kind of weird" - that part hit me like a truck. 🤯 As someone who has always been an artist and works in a creative industry, people assume you would naturally fit in and find 'your people'. Some do, but it's not always the case. Even in creative spaces, there are still levels and social rules. You can be quirky, but you still have to be sociable and have executive functioning skills. If you fail to meet these standards, you will be treated as you would in any other environment. Being artistic does not negate that.
jep - always felt an outsider even in the creative space, too. In my case it might be some overlapping symptoms with CPTSD, or I am a bit on the spectrum, too... for sure I camouflage / mask a lot. Had this you should smile more as a child or don't do quirky things with your left arm (don't know why it was always more the left), it shell hang down like the other... couldn't go hand in hand well, always had the felt need to get off and instead explore my surrounding. Or just being extremely calm and just be like The Watcher. But feeling the pressure I should do sth to interact to somehow fit in, get connected like others do... Did hide behind my camera since I can hold a cam, too, so that I always had sth to do when I didn't know what to talk or so. And jep, learnt that asking questions to connect. What was getting trained even more when I started to work in the press industry... so being always more the Great Listener, turning the attention away from me to the other by questions is sth I know very well, too... 😃 And feeling much exhausted afterwards. Maybe I turn into that oversharer when the moment comes, that I finally know sth to talk about and have that "now it's my turn and I need to get it all said before I have to be the Great Listener again..." 😃 But on the other hand I also have that blank times where I don't know what to ask or talk. I hate the question "What are you thinking right now?" - it causes a kind of pressure that leads to a black hole of thinking just nothing. It just isn't true that there is always sth describable going on in a conscious way. Some therapists thought I would just hide sth, or being shy, but it wasn't the case, it was just that black hole feeling because of a felt pressure, that there should be sth going on... okay, before I now too much go into oversharing... I better stop here😸
@prpmedia9530 I'm sorry to hear that you have C-PTSD. I do too, so I can relate to your experience. I also have ADHD, so I definitely know the feeling of finding it difficult to remain still, and wanting to explore 😆 Yes, I am an amateur photographer so I also hide behind my camera too. But I also just really love capturing people in candid moments, I've always watched other people studying them - I find it fascinating. I, like yourself, had to develop the 'good listener' skill as well, because I find it difficult not to overshare when people ask me questions about myself. Ugh the brain fog and blank spots are horrendous, so frustrating when you want to communicate something but it just feels like it's floating around somewhere in an empty abyss. Have you tried being honest with your therapist, and letting them know that sometimes being put on the spot can throw you off so to allow for you to have some time and space to process the question you are being asked? Thank you for sharing your experience with me! 🌱🌻
@@SOMETHINGTOSLOW I am also bad in sitting still on a chair - I learnt it, of course... but still did move whenever I could, like on chairs in school class, sometimes nearly falling down with it because of that... I love all chairs that provide wipping space because of that 😬 - with therapy - it was somehow a quest that they wait if sth is coming from you... felt a bid like in the movie "Good Will Hunting", sitting and both say nothing.... 🙃 Don't really remember how the talking then started, it is a long time ago, the first round of therapy you can say (longer than 20 years ago). I am in a throwback episode since 2023 now and see same symptoms coming up again or some that stayed low all through are hightened again now. Retraumatized. Thx for sharing your experiences, maybe there is some overlapping with ADHD, too... And a yes for studying others by cam and finding it fascinating... I am a fast adapter because of that, too, that helped in theatre plays, of course... just the shyness wall was and sometimes still is a problem in body language of emotional expression.
As I've said before, my description of masking is by analogy to my left knee. I have a torn meniscus that causes pain in many circumstances. I generally walk with a bit of a limp and sometimes where a brace to reduce stress in directions that hurt the knee. I can, if I choose, forego the brace and force a normal gait. It would look like I have no problem in the knee. But, on the inside, it hurts more to do that and does further damage to the knee. I pay for that later. That's masking, just in "mobility issues" rather than "autism".
I tore my left meniscus in my thirties and had arthroscopic surgery. My father did in his twenties. I’m curious, do you have any signs of hypermobility? I was hypermobile in my shoulders until my forties, and while I don’t think I have EDS, I have wondered if weak cartilage played a role in our knees. (I likely had POTS when I was younger, too.) I’ve since learned that these have a weird tendency to go together, and to be comorbid with autism.
The masking and camouflaging is so hard to explain to people because they always tell me that they see no differences between my different roles until they see me suddenly drop the mask. For example, I was in the middle of a meltdown, and I got pulled aside and reminded that I had say "no" easily, but had to work on hearing "no", then reminded that I had to do a presentation in 2 minutes. I remember pulling myself together, putting on my "captivating presenter" role then blew everyone away for the next 30 minutes. Then when the opportunity came, I left the room and cried in a corner for over an hour. This was the first time I realized I was not okay, and had to find why I always did this kind of thing. Over a year later I got my official diagnosis, and this moment stands out to me as the clear point where I knew I was not just a bad person, and I had to figure it all out.
@RishaBond I am glad you found my story helpful. I share in the hopes that people will see their experiences are shared, because that is what I needed the most when I was first learning about autism. Thanks for your comment because it still reminds me that my experiences are similar to others. I am not alone, and neither are you. 😊
This channel does an amazing job at teaching me my quirks are just autism. For years, i spoke largely in quotes from TV show characters. And while I've grown past that a bit, I still use references to media to make conversation. And let's not forget having long conversations in my head with various people. Merry Christmas, Meg!
I did something similar in that I gave my own internal subconscious a persona and would have very long and detailed conversations with it. That paired with the dysphoria induced disassociation made me think I had DID for the longest time.
I think a lot of kids do that too. It's just that we don't stop doing it because we associate that as been the right thing to say and do because we heard other people doing it growing up.
Same. I told folks in college I’m so funny because I have a team of professional writers writing everything that comes out of my mouth. My knowledge of media is just so broad I can pull from things no one has ever heard before.
As I entered adulthood, I was so certain I had BPD because I completely lost my identity. I had spent the entirety of my puberty learning how to be a normal, somewhat likeable person and then I broke down. I felt like a ghost among my friends who were only my friends because I copied them well enough. I am so sorry to my younger self, I can't believe she had to go through all that just for false acceptance.
Every so often I used to google “how to be like X” character from tv or a movie I saw people liked, and I’d make notes and change my whole self around - my clothes, my opinions, my hobbies, my behaviour, even my voice. Since being diagnosed I was like OHHHHH ok. That’s why I did that.
My accent, body language, facial expressions, sometimes entire personality, shifts depending on which friends I'm with. 😅 I mask, I mirror, I echo. It's gotten to the point where I can't mingle certain friend groups. The most annoying part; it's subconscious and I can't stop. It happens if I listen to the same RUclips channels for too long, I absorb mannerisms and speech patterns like a sponge.
Same if I watch too many videos from the same person or movies featuring a certain character I notice I start mimicking their mannerisms, behaviours, way of talking etc. As a child I did it intentionally and consciously, now as a late-diagnosed adult it doesn’t happen as much and when it does it’s not intentional/unconscious.
Nothing quite like the stress of being with someone and running into someone else you know and not knowing who the f you're supposed to be in this situation (Especially bad if you're non-verbal around one of them)
My brain naturally wants to do that, but when I recognized it as a kid, I worked really hard on stopping it. I’m fiercely individual and couldn’t stand the fact that I was just copying others. Echolelia is still a big stim for me though. I get obsessed with little random phrases and repeat them over and over.
Omg this is so relatable! I’ve been watching a RUclipsr with a very different “accent” than mine and really animated mannerisms, and it’s like my inner voice starts sounding like them and I start doing little things too. It’s completely out of my control 😹 The internalized echolalia doesn’t help lol
Same, I even pick up foreign accents even though I only fluently speak English. It took me a long time to realize that was why certain mixed group interactions were so stressful for me, because I was rapidly cycling through tons of different mirrored communication "modes." "Forget goblin mode, we're going full boggart today!" my brain would say😅
Reminding myself to look interested or happy is so frustrating. I had a friend in hs tell me that she didn't understand why I didn't act excited when I said I was, until she realized I was "quietly exuding happiness".
Learning social skills... This should be a school class! I remember when I was a toddler, and going to school I felt like my brother and the other kids got a book they forgot to give me. When an elective called "Social Studies" came up, I chose it thinking that was the lessons I needed, but found myself disappointed in finding myself in history class. SOCIAL studies... was not what I expected.
My friendship graveyard is a few acres in size and growing. Now that I am finally late diagnosed Autistic, I will seek friendships with others like me who don't like frequent visits and phonecalls etc. 🥰🙃 Blessings on your holidays. I loved this video because I can relate to it and I enjoy your lovely sense of humor.
OMG I was just telling someone that presents stress me out (not just giving - which is also stressful, but receiving!) and he was so confused! And I was like, "Wait does receiving a gift not stress EVERYONE out???" You have to, especially as a child for some reason, "perform gratitude" correctly or you disappoint the other person. Also: on the "one friend" thing - I've been thinking about this a lot lately because at most periods in my life I had what I now think of as an "anchor friend," the one extroverted person who manages to latch onto me and who introduces me to their circle of friends who then sort of become my friends by proxy. Sometimes I am like "Nah I am probably not autistic" and then you make a video and I'm like "75% of this could be ripped straight from my personal diary."
idk about *stress* me out, necessarily, but gifts tend to confuse me in so many ways. what do I get people for birthdays? what do I ask for? what do I do when people give me christmas gifts? birthdays are somewhat reciprocal given everyone has a birthday, but like. what do I do about the fact that everyone insists on giving me christmas gifts when I'm not christian? I realise for them it's theoretically not supposed to be about reciprocity, that it's about the giving and not the getting supposedly, but functionally speaking it is usually reciprocal in a majority-christian society and if I don't participate, I look ungrateful even though I didn't ask for (and sometimes explicitly asked for them to NOT give me) gifts. So, now I have these like. scripts? one year, I got everyone scarves for the winter, since I really like scarves and have a massive collection and know how to find a quality scarf someone else would want to wear after only a few questions, but for a lot of them that was the limit of that idea's usefulness because shockingly most people only want to own one or two scarves (I can't imagine it). I often give people LEGO, since almost everyone I know loves LEGO, including me. if people ask me what I want, I ask for LEGO, if I know that's in budget for them. cause I legit can never think of anything I want, unless I work within a narrow constraint like that. anyways, idk where I was going with this, but yeah gifts are difficult. like, so often I just buy things for people that I know they'd like, and that's just so easy cause it's not for an occasion, when it's an occasion tho it's so difficult to navigate the cultural ritual of the event.
14:55 I definitely understand the "my weird was showing" part, probably too much. Lockdown hit for me during my sophomore year of high school, and by the time we were finally back to in-person schooling, I was a senior. All that time spent at home was time that I didn't feel the constant urge to mask. When we got back to school, I just couldn't do it anymore and the mask shattered. I lost a lot of previously close friends that year. I won't ever know their true internal intentions, but it felt like they were turning me away because they didn't like the real me they were finally seeing. That hurt a lot, and my confidence still hasn't fully recovered from it. It sucks feeling like people can't ever know what you're really like because you know they won't accept what they find.
@@havocsTeacher this used to happen to me heaps with early dating. People would be attracted to my masked self and find my more authentic self not as attractive. I distinctly remember one guy that looked like he was from a 90s boy band saying he thought i was someone he liked but now he’s gotten to know me better he realises I’m not. 🤣😂
45 years old and 99% of what you talked about explains me to a T. i never thought about it until my son was diagnosed with autism and adhd at the age of 6. i see so much of my younger self in him and his mannerisms its undeniable. growing up, and into my 30s i abused alcohol and drugs to socialize and when i found out i was having a child at the age of 32 i stopped abusing alcohol and drugs. omg....the flood of everything came crashing in and i've spent the last 11 years focusing on my son and trying to find myself. i've built a wall up around me and don't let anyone in except my son because i don't do social situations or friendships, or relationships. i have sole custody of my son since he was 2 years old. its always been just me and him because everything and everyone else is completely exhausting. we both was your channel and love it. thank you!
I don't know what's scarier - being bad at masking, or being too good at masking. Adopted a technique where i focused on letting a PART of myself through, depending on the situation. It works... if it's fairly surface level or business related. I get lots of comments on how I am 100% genuine. And it's because I am. I'm just... reserved. But there are times where I really really wish I could fool others, or to just pretend I was fine. It makes business really difficult to disappear into, when I'm going through something rough. A useful tip, if anyone wants it. Find the 2-3 people around you who will listen to a summarized version of what's going on with you. Who will sit and take in the REAL answer to "how are you doing?" Give yourself 30 seconds and make sure to ask the same from them and give them the same courtesy. If you can give the real answer once in a day, privately, it can be easier to give the "social norm" answer other times. It's really when the "norm" becomes the answer 100% of the time that you can feel unseen. At least, that's how it works for me.
16:36 I wish my family had understood my 'cognitive delay' when it came to recieving gifts. Most of my memories of getting gifts were immediately hit with a yell of "Say thank you!!" before I had recognized the importance of the gift, so I became afraid of any kinds of gifts and refused gifts because of the sudden demand to express gratitude that may or may not be authentic.
I’m a terrible gift giver because I assume other people will experience the same stress I do when I receive a gift. I massively overthink the gift to minimize their possible stress.
I often find myself just giving up on trying to unmask because when I mask, it is mentally taxing in itself, but if I try and unmask, I get hyper anxious about if others are judging me or noticing, and I get exhausted anyways. It is a hassle and I am constantly tired from putting in so much subconscious effort.
This is exactly why I spend so much of my life alone. Solitude isn't healthy for neurotypicals, and maybe not for me, idk ... but I'm so much more comfortable.
OMG THE NOT THINKING ABOUT ASKING QUESTIONS IS SO REALLL!!! i always thought that me simply interracting with someone meant me signalling that they can tell me stuff, so when i liked someone in general i'd simply say hi/bye/good morning etc. in a cheery voice and would be confused as to why they didnt ''warm up'' to me and make further conversation. like i genuinely thought i was being extra friendly when i was just being polite lol. plus when people would tease each other i'd get nervous thinking the other person would get mad at them but they'd just laugh and joke around ( the warming up i could never achieve) and in conversations i'd usually just talk about whatever im interested so i wouldnt think of asking questions and ''inviting'' people to talk about what they wanted to talk about. like i forget that people need to be lured in i just go about my day.
This has been my experience exactly. I had no idea I was failing to signal to others that I was interested in what they had to say. I didn't realize you had to ask people to share. Which is kind of funny, because I had learned to wait to be asked myself. I used to share unprompted, then got the impression that everyone found me and my info-dumping annoying, so I shut up and waited for someone to show interest before I would share anything. Which was swinging to the opposite extreme, and probably not great either, as it became really hard to pull anything out of me. It was like my brain just shut down because I didn't feel safe, and then my thoughts and interests just wouldn't even occur to me. It would take a lot of prompting to get me going, but then once I had momentum, I could talk your ear off. I'm still like that, actually.
I recently learned I have a lot of autistic traits and the pieces are coming together. It's nice to learn more about other people having experiences that I thought I was alone to feel.
7:57 "Well enough" is a good answer to "How are you?". It doesn't say you're actually doing *well*, just that you're more or less able to continue living, so it's honest over the whole range of emotional states until "please help" becomes appropriate.
i started using this specific phrase in hs when i first started working, after a trial period of using it in school and finding out that my peers and teachers responded positively to it , at least among other responses
I tend to pause, chuckle a bit, and answer with, "surviving" or "still surviving", if the person is someone I say this to often, ha. Short, accurate, and it does prompt for more conversation if the other person wishes to engage it. Most of the time, they'll respond with the same, because even if they're NT, times are rough for most people at the moment for one reason or another, and who has time and energy for pleasantries? ;P So, we both get an opportunity to sigh, reflect a moment, and either commiserate, rant or move on. 🙃
Every time someone asks me "how's it going?" I always answer with the phrase "it's going" and sort of laugh it off and ask them the same question. It seems to go over pretty well for the most part.
I (suspect) have both autism and DID. I definitely think me being autistic didn't help with the whole dissociative identity thing due to a lot of factors, but the constant masking and assimilation I had to do to survive made my sense of self incredibly fragmented and unstable. I really relate to this video
It must be really difficult to be masking not only autism but also your DID, I have a theory that autistic children are more prone to develop DID so you are definitely not alone. I wish you a lot of healing and a good journey while discovering more about yourself and the other alters in your system!!
This just reminded me that during the first half of my life I expressed myself differently depending on who I was interacting with. It was actually very manipulative. I stopped at one point during an extremely bad patch in my fist marriage and said I’d never lie again - it was extremely liberating. This was decades before I suspected I was autistic.
My dad was always a bit awkward and "quirky" and looking back, I realise a lot of his descriptions of his own childhood and adolescence sound a lot like someone trying to mask autistic traits. He died from a heart attack this year, I wonder if the stress of constant masking was a contributing factor?
damn that just made me realize that could be an aspect of my dad’s heart issues. the doctor has told him for years that he’s way too stressed and he always just says it was me lol. i’m so sorry, i hope you’re doing okay
12:40 this is one of the reasons I bought a ring for myself, it's a subtle way I can stim in public in a way that people either don't notice or don't care enough about to actually bring it up
The beginning hit hard, that’s exactly how I felt, exactly what i remember thinking. “I have to be perfect so I don’t bother anyone else” because if it bothers me then I don’t want to do the same to someone else. But I remember having a defining moment when I was 7, I was already mourning myself “I’ll never learn everything I need to before I die”. Learning about autism has let me be more accepting of myself yet so mad it wasn’t suspected earlier.
My family never accepted my autism. Because of that I went 37years of my life in misery. Was hospitalized against my will twice and lost everything I owned multiple times. I was diagnosed with Asperger's before I was 8. My parents walked out on a diagnosis. Took me 37years of my life to be finally officially diagnosed. Had to pay a lot because the vast majority of psychiatrists and doctors have wrong notions and stereotypes about autism
I was late diagnosed at 52. Masking has been a subconscious part of life. In high school, I had a few groups I interacted with, some for skateboarding, some for theater, some for academics. I had subtly different characters for each, and keeping track of what I could talk about with whom was a never-ending chore. It was awful when I’d talk skateboarding with the drama kids. That didn’t seem to be a mistake the typical kids were making.
1:44. I honestly don’t know what I would do without toilet cubicles. They have saved me from many, many meltdowns and helped me regain enough composure to carry on masking until I can get home. I feel so bad for autistic people who don’t have easy access to them.
@WASDLeftClick we have the same thing in Canada but they were still life savers. My mom joked since I was little that I was The Bathroom Inspector because I immediately headed to the bathroom whenever we went somewhere not home.
As a child, I rarely had a clue how other kids formed an maintained friendship. I've never felt at ease in social situations but thought that I had pretty much learned how to play the game. Only recently (in my fifties), through learning from all you wonderful autistic people so generously sharing your experiences, I have realized how often I'm unsure of what people expect. Also, I know some really interesting people and love to hear their perspectives on life, but I often realize after a conversation that they said a lot that I'd have liked them to say more about, and I spend a lot of thinking through past conversations in order to recognize the points where I would have had a chance to ask questions instead of just giving my perspective. This is just one example of my struggles with social interactions. I also have a hard time ending a conversation - I'm always afraid to be rude if I want to end before I sense that the other part is ready - and then when that happens, it often seems like they have kept on for longer than they wanted. Anyway, I've never thought about this in terms of "difficulties with the rules of social interaction" because I know when to say hello, thank you, etc. and am generally kind and helpful. Which leads me to my point: I'm afraid (not in an emotional sense, just I regretfully suppose) that there are sooo many unwritten rules and clues that I don't even know about. But I wasn't aware of that until recently. I've suspected to be "somewhat autistic" for several years but never done a lot to learn more about it. ADD, on the other hand, made sense to get a formal diagnosis, because there's medical treatment. But the more I learn, the more certain I get that I'm probably not just "sonewhat autistic" but rather "fullblown" and that my chronic exhaustion is to a great extend related to the fact that I've never really learned how to live life on my own terms.
When you talked about the teacher shouting at you for making eye contact at 18:03 , that definitely hit home. My 1st grade teacher would do this to me too, often in front of the class (or within earshot of a classmate). Stuff like that can be really scarring, especially coming from an educator we’re supposed to trust. That’s probably also the reason why I’m always afraid of not making eye contact in conversations now heh
I was abused by my second grade teacher unfortunately due to my autism. The ironic thing is she suspected I was autistic (asbergers at the time) and said as much to my parents in an urge to get me diagnosed. But girls tended to get overlooked. My psychiatrist said there was nothing wrong with me aside from my weird tendency to not make eye contact. 😅 Anyway, main reason I bought it up: this teacher used to get so frustrated with me she’d grab my face and force me to look her in the eye. Honestly with how much that lady manhandled me, she should have been arrested. But my parents didn’t know and I was so brainwashed by her that I felt like I deserved to be abused by her. I ended up becoming a teacher myself. But eventually had to quit because I couldn’t keep up my mask for so many hours. I felt like I was falling apart. I did feel like I was a good teacher but it too so much out of me. Also geez teaching is full of toxic people.
Hey Meg, Just wanted to say what an awesome video this was. I love seeing you come more and more into your own on your channel-it’s inspiring how open and vulnerable you are. These personal reflections you share mean the world, and it truly feels like we’re building a stronger sense of autistic community together. I also really liked how you structured your thoughts around that scientific paper by Laura Hull. Having research as a backbone is such a great way to weave in different perspectives while keeping things grounded in real data. It helps the rest of us learn and grow along with you. Hearing you talk about the pattern you notice-investing so much in relationships and then withdrawing-really resonated with me. I’m sorry you’ve felt guilty about possibly hurting people’s feelings; it’s so easy for us to be hard on ourselves, but remember the double empathy problem. Sometimes neurotypical friends don’t “get” our processing style at that deeper, implicit level. From my own experience, being around autistic peers can feel like a huge relief: there’s less forced effort and more natural understanding, which can reduce that constant need to mask. Your honesty about your ups and downs truly makes a difference for so many of us. Thank you for putting in the time, energy, and love to create these videos-and for trusting us with your story. It’s inspiring, and I hope you know you’re a role model for a lot of folks out here, myself included. Wishing you a wonderful holiday season and hoping you find moments of peace, joy, and real connection. Thank you again for everything you do, Meg. Talk to you soon! -Sam
I always thought I didn't mask, but after watching this video, it made me realise that I do mask. I have had issues communicating with people, especially strangers and often found it hard holding conversations for long without going blank and quiet and I just end up feeling awkward and embarrassed. Sometimes I need a bit of time to process what someone has said before I can respond, if I even know what to say. It can be especially hard for me as due to my general life and interests being different than a lot of people I meet, I feel I can't relate to what they are saying and while I can get a long with people, it doesn't get far due to feeling like I am unable relate to others. For example, I don't have a smartphone only a dumbphone, I don't watch most sports or listen to most modern new music or keep up with trends etc... so I feel I have less to say when people talk about these general subjects and other daily goings on. When I first found out I had Autism in 2019, A woman who helps neurodivergent people helped me understand my Autism and taught me to do things and showed me how to think of what to say to someone when in social situations so I'd find it easier to communicate with others. That helped me hold conversations better and has reduced my social anxiety a lot. When it comes to stimming, I thought I didn't do it, but I realised I do. I sometimes think or read out loud and talk to myself, often in a low volume or a whisper but sometimes a bit louder. I remember when that I used to sometimes randomly blurt out a word or phrase when I was thinking and that would be super embarrassing if anyone heard me. When I was younger, my mum had noticed me talking to myself under my breath where my mouth moves like I am talking and has said that I was talking to myself again and asked if I was OK. I still talk out loud when I am thinking, but not as often and when I am out in public, if people see me do it, I'll usually stop to avoid being awkward or inappropriate and if I am asked about it, I just tell them that it helps me think more clearly or read something better sometimes. Talking to yourself out loud might actually be a sign of high intelligence. I also sometimes sing out loud. Mostly when I am at home but sometimes when I am out walking somewhere. As a child, while I loved music, I used to hate singing and would cringe when I did it, I also would feel anxiety when doing it in public, I couldn't even sing a long at a concert when everyone else was. Now it is the opposite, I sometimes sing more than I talk out loud, but I feel I have to be super aware when I am out in public so I don't accidentally talk out loud or sing/hum, so it is not inappropriate and or makes me just feel awkward or embarrassed.
So much this... I spent my entire life masking without realizing that's what I was doing. I just considered it "trying to fit in". I spent so much of my childhood with a crew cut or short hair because running my hands through my hair is my go to stim and I had no idea that's what it was (my mom just hated me always having my hands in my hair). It took nearly half a century to get my diagnosis because mental health treatment was both prohibitively expensive and stigmatized when I was a child, so I learned to get by the best I could.
I might have to steal that. I have always hated that "How are you?" -thing, but I also totally get that it's something people just say to be polite. There have been times where I've said out loud what I actually think/feel as a response, but that's rarely well received because, well, the people asking don't really want to know 😂 I hate smalltalk and "social etiquette"...
My brain is CONSTANTLY talking to me about what I need to do with my hands, my face, my shoulders, my legs, look at them, look away, look xyz emotion, etc. It’s fking EXHAUSTING and makes me want to never leave my house again.
I've also had trouble with making eye contact so I just look around their eyes or behind the person. Just around the person. I've also noticed that if I'm doing something that requires looking at the task people seem to be happier if I make sure to look at them a few times. (Depending on how long the person talks)
Just got my official diagnosis this week. Learning about masking and scripting helped me realize why Bumblebee was my favorite Transformer and D.Va was my Overwatch main when I played that game. With scripting, I tend to talk in memes and movie/TV/song soundbites at least some of the time (like Bumblebee when his voice module was broken) and with masking, I often felt like I was piloting my life like a mech operator instead of being directly present (like D.Va when she's in her primary tank role). It's been quite a journey figuring this out, and Meg, your channel has been an important part of my journey! So glad to know before I go into my 40's. Thanks, and happy holidays!
I caught myself unconsciously pinching my neck at a party last night. I didn't even know that I did that, or that it was a subtle stim. I thought of you, and smiled. You're great, Meg. 💜
Regarding social mimicry, I have to be mindful to not copy people's accents/cadences that I'm talking with, because they usually think that I'm mocking them. Also, whenever I'm watching House MD, for example, I may involuntarily start limping when I get up to go to the kitchen.
A guy I went to school with had broken his elbow in a bike crash when he was young, and the surgeon had somehow botched his surgery so he can't straighten his arm, and as a result always keeps his arm bend 90 degrees. I've found myself mimicking that arm position without thinking about it several times for no reason at all. Also, he did sometimes walk in a unique way too, and I found that I also walk in the same way still to this day. Prior to meeting him I did none of this. I also noticed that I've picked up several speech things from my social group too which will pop out of the blue from time to time. Often without me noticing it.
I recently got my autism diagnosis finally. And your videos have truly helped me during that process and I’m sure your videos will continue to help me. Thank you for this channel💕
From a very young age people always asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I never knew (they seemed to find that rather strange) and I still don't know. I will be 60 in February. In high school I once thought to myself: "I know what I want to be: a normal person". I always felt I was a bit different. It took almost 40 years before I found out I was autistic and since then I have been slowly learning what that means, but I am still in the process of getting to know the real me, after (subconsciously) suppressing myself all these years in order to fit in. Masking may sometimes help to get through certain situations, but if you do it too much, you can lose yourself and I would not recommend that to anyone.
I’m 26, and I finally got diagnosed with level 2 autism this week! This channel was really helpful for getting ready for my assessment, so thank you! Level 2 autistics can also mask!
I've always felt glad that I grew up with theater because it made it easy to be the "correct character" for different situations. I always thought that was something everyone did. Being a different person depending on where they were or what they were doing, and being in theater just made me really lucky/good at it 😅
I remember making a mind notes to myself about how to adjust my behavior to look normal. I did it since I can remember. I have stopped gradually since discovering I autistic and I’m make myself miserable by masking. I gave myself permission to be weird. Edit: Oh, and I have studied psychology for five years to discover how people work and how to communicate with them😅
that was the reason I got into anthropology. Finding out that there were people who would go to different cultures ,live with them and try to understand what they did and why. It helped alot, though later I was aware of how misused and misdirected these studies could be. I was in it for the learning, for the different points of view, not as a judgement of whether something is better or worse than another. I felt that it was freeing to see that different cultures looked at the same things differently. I hate how these days one can not state that things are different without some kind of value statement being read into it.
preparing responses never works, the conversation never goes the way i planned and i just sit at home afterwards going through that conversation and what i should've said over and over again
The whole eye contact thing messes me up sooo much. I feel soo distracted when looking into someone's eyes that I really can't focus on what they're saying. I got in trouble a lot when I was little because of it, and even received physical punishments for that. I learned that I can just unfocus my eyes slightly and look at the spot between a person's eyebrows. They think I'm looking at their eyes, and I don't get distracted. The only problem with this approach is that I have to remind myself to look away at regular intervals to avoid the person thinking that I'm just staring at them. Also, being unable to finish university because the constant masking became too stressful is very relatable. It's one of the big reasons I couldn't finish either.
oh, i just periodically switch from eyebrows to mouth naturally, as i need to check what their lips are doing every so often to know what they're saying. sometimes I also stare off to the left or right and if i don't move my eyes around off of one spot, eventually the otehr person will slow down, stop, and look in the same direction I am to check if there's something happening lol. i swear i don't do it on purpose, it's just i sometimes forget to jiggle the mouse, metaphorically speaking. but yeah if you want to confuse and disrupt your convo on purpose, look intently to somewhere behind them, but far enough to the side that it clearly isn't them you're looking at. they'll turn to look eventually. I've run away from uncomfortable interactions like this before. I also found out once another thing you can do with eye gaze is if you want to get through a fast moving crowd with as few people bumping into you/doing the weird left left right right dance as possible, you have to stare in the direction you're trying to move. basically, match your gaze vector to your motion vector, and people read that instantly, even when they look like they're not paying much attention to the people around them, and they'll instinctively stay out of your way if they can avoid it. however if you look off to the side, for example perpendicularly to your motion vector, you'll get a lot more of the left left right right dance where they try to go where you aren't going, and so do you, simultaneously.
I was just talking to my 15yo daughter about masking and the effects of doing it. I’m definitely going to rewatch this with her. I wish there was some sort of help I could give her, but I haven’t figured out what to do for myself… My only advice is to remind yourself to relax- it helps me remember that I don’t have to smile so big, laugh so loud, etc, and takes some of the weight off.
The enormous amount of self suppression that goes into conscious AND unconscious masking really does a number on our mental health. We suppress our autism. And then we suppress the anxiety that comes from suppressing our autism. I was trying so hard to get to know people and I was still being described as hard to get to know. Which was confusing, because if someone asked me questions, I was an open book, but I didn’t know how to appropriately volunteer that information without being prompted.
As a child of a mother in welfare from a low socio-economic area, I learned very early on how cruel kids could be and found ways to mask as fast as i could (people in school would have called me an A-type personality because my natural ability to get good grades without trying made me look like a high-achiever so i leaned into that role). I adored theatre and acting because i felt like I was always wearing a mask anyway so slipping into one that belonged to someone else was less of a burden than slipping into my own. My ability to learn without studying hard allowed me to slide through uni and postgraduate studies but never allowed me to feel comfortable making hard choices or taking risks. When i heard about masking for the first time, i thought it was just something everyone did because it had been a practice for so long including having "work me" v "home me" v "going out with friends me" and so may times I've uttered the phrase "I'm super introverted until I get to know/like someone and then I'm the most extroverted person you know" not realising that it was really "i mask super hard until i know it's at least a little safe to be around you and then I'll start to let you peek under the quiet facade when there's less chance of you calling me a freak for my niche interests and rambling comments". I'm waiting on an assessment still, although I've finally had a doctor not just listen but insist that i get assessed because we spoke for 2 hours instead of the usual 5 min "you're polite and put-together so you can't be autistic" sessions I've had before. I've had doctors tell me it's not worth getting assessed because it won't do anything and that I'd made it into my 30s okay (they said this unironically after i walked into their office and started sobbing about how hard everything was and a few minutes before starting me on antidepressants for depression and GAD but sure, being undiagnosed hasn't had any impact at all). So many bits of this video were super relatable even if the circumstances were different.
Thank you for talking about masking, I spent the majority of my life masking my autism and I still have to fight through harmful habits I developed. I hope the awareness you and other people spread make it so other people never have to go through the same thing we have.
I was "diagnosed" as BPD and to this day I never truly felt it was right. It was also done unofficially by a psychologist at the time when I was going through a particularly traumatic time.
Yeah, I started masking already in elementary school. Initially very crudely (mostly just by being quiet and reserved, hiding my stims, and being afraid to take any risks for fear that any move I made would be wrong). But after making a lot of social observations, I started to make some connections and figure out what the expected behaviors were. I began putting on a character in middle school and just feigned a level of confidence I didn't feel. I was terrified of being called weird, but I decided if I just tried to own it and call myself out first, it would spare me the ridicule. Like, I might say or do something potentially weird and then be like, "I know, I'm so weird!" with a smile on my face, like I'm totally at ease with myself and my oddities. And that was surprisingly successful. People stopped treating me like I was this annoying, weird, freak and more like I was just another unremarkable person. But it was very exhausting and felt inauthentic, always having to be conscious of my behavior, body language, facial expression, tone of voice, etc. And then there was always that fear of being rejected if the mask ever slipped and they saw the "real" me. It took a lot of effort and hypervigilance to try and read social situations, as well as mask all of my confusion and anxiety. But I got very good at hiding my distress and appearing confident, even when I was screaming and shaking internally. So so often my internal monologue was like, "oh fuck? What am I supposed to do here? Am I supposed to do [this thing] or is [that thing] the expected behavior? Are people going to criticize me or look at me like I'm a freak if I make the wrong choice?" And then I'd get stuck paralyzed a lot of the time, or I'd find whatever the safest course was and do that, even if it meant completely ignoring what I wanted or needed. Like, if I was hungry/thirsty/needed the bathroom or whatever, but couldn't figure out how to advocate for my needs in a way that came across as natural and normal and situationally appropriate, I'd just suppress it. I tolerated massive amounts of physical discomfort as a result of how paralyzed I'd become by the prospect of speaking up and potentially getting it wrong or upsetting someone. I also put on different masks for different settings. That was more a consequence of trying to adapt to the specific setting than a desire to create multiple characters (which I'm not actually very good at). It was more like, "this is a setting where it is socially acceptable and appropriate for me to be nerdy and quirky" and so I'd adopt that persona, or "this is a setting where I should be quiet and reserved, because I'm not skilled enough to figure out what is or isn't acceptable here" and then I'd do that. What would be awful was if my worlds collided. Like, mixing friend groups, when I'm a different version of me for each of them. It's suddenly like, "wait, which version of me should I be now? If it's right for one group, it's wrong for the other. There's no way to mask correctly." That always felt really awkward and difficult. I've come a long way in my unmasking and self-discovery journey, but I think there's just so much trauma built into my experience, that masking happens automatically. Even if I want to unmask, just being in certain social settings immediately triggers me into adopting a particular persona, out of an unconscious need to feel safe. This was pretty distressing recently, when I was attending my brother's wedding. I had come out as trans last year, though the news probably had not spread to all of my extended family. First thing that happened when I showed up was getting misgendered and deadnamed by my aunt and uncle. I managed to tell them about my name change when they got it wrong, but I didn't have the courage to correct them on my pronouns. I was just massively anxious the whole time and felt myself retreating into an old familiar role, even though I didn't want to play that persona anymore. The idea of actually showing up as myself, though, felt too unsafe. Even though I know it probably isn't actually unsafe. My survival instincts just kick in and I have no choice. Masking is automatic.
This video is kicking my ass, I always thought I was just a weirdo and that my depression and anxiety was just something that came out of the blue. The more I watch your series, the more I think I need to go to a psychologist and really get looked at, lol.
Thanks, Meg, for another relatable and informative video!!! The Psychologist who did my assessment told me I had a "classic presentation" of a high masker. Basically, there weren't any noticeable social deficits during the interview, but under the surface, there was extensive evidence of exhaustion, anxiety, and confusion linked to social interaction. It's still wild to me that all the tricks and rules I follow socially are due to autism, but looking back over a lifetime, it makes SO much sense!!
18:30 I have major problems with the eye contact thing. Usually when people notice they assume I'm being dishonest, or manipulative. When in reality eye contact just makes me feel really anxious, like I'm imminently about to be in trouble for something even if I know that I'm not.
So glad there's a video today! I hate the break of routine when holiday's happen. So it's especially nice today to start my monday morning like any other during this time. :) Thank you
It helped me learn that breaking out randomly in song is totally normal, acceptable, and not at all awkward, lol. No, no, but it did provide an outlet for it and taught me that when I get the urge to do so regularly, I need to embrace the weird and amp it up into a show. ;) It did help with learning how to project, how to talk in the direction of those I want to hear me, how to enunciate, and how to muscle through the anxiety of being the center of attention. The direction you receive from the director and others help you learn how to position your body parts in a "normal" manner and how to use the appropriate expressions. It also helped me just let myself out because everyone was a bit "weird", so you could unmask a bit with less worry. So I totally agree. 😊
@ I thought that being around weird people would help someone learn the mask, maybe even become comfortable with wearing outside the theater. Snapping on the mask even harder maybe a good thing. Of course, this could lead to a lack of genuineness.
@@ThroughTheLensOfAutismew, no. Just no. Horrid take. Sorry. Maintaining a mask is a lot of work. While many of us can never truly rid ourselves of it in social settings (such as around unfamiliar neurotypicals), we should strive to reach a point where we mask as little as possible to improve our quality of life.
For me I learned early that anything I personally like or that makes me feel better is bad to show openly, so masking became simple. Supress, supress, supress. To the point that I now find it actively difficult to openly talk about things that I truly enjoy rather than something more 'neutral'. My interests have become my own private little world I tuck away from others where they cant take it away or mock me for it. While my diagnosis is in its final phase I will be getting it after the new year, im approaching 40 now and it feels quite strange to know that im not just 'that weird one' and that my 'quirks' are a part of something many others experience too
I really relate to you putting effort into friendships only for them to fade away because you can't keep up, like I relate a crazy amount 😭 it's the worst
I've just become a snail 🐌Your videos have been so helpful on this journey to confirming an old diagnosis. AFA Christmas, my office party was Thursday and I feel as though I failed yet another social test. No coworkers really talked to me, the food was yucky (except for cookies), and I never want to go into the office again now 😂I miss my old job where things were more suited to my brain and I was just getting into socializing with my coworkers in a more natural way. 😭😭 Happy Christmas to you and your family, Meg!
I masked my whole life behind my special interest, cooking. I threw myself into being a chef and built a persona. A person I thought I should be. What everyone else thought I should be. I made it everything I was. Ate, slept, dreamed, LIVED being this thing. I’m able to be stand-offish and keep to myself.
I hate opening presents in front of people.. this year I went around being the person to hand out presents, and put all mine to the side not really thinking ahead. I just knew I wasn't ready to open mine because too much was happening around me, and I wanted to open them alone when things had settled a bit. Well I put it off so long that people we're starting to leave when they realized there was still my presents left lol.. this led to everyone in the end wanting to watch me.. just me.. open all of my presents because everyone else opened all theirs together at once. lol It was fine. I've gotten better at reacting but I know I'm awkward. I can't even perceive if I like the gift at the moment because too much is happening. I just try to be as socially acceptable as possible because I care about the people around me and the fact that they put thought in to these gifts. I'm not diagnosed but my daughter is, and we're waiting for my son's assessment. something I remember though is in my early twenty's after I finished highschool I lost all of my best friends and I didn't understand I wasn't making an effort or that an effort was needed, not to mention the crippling anxiety that left me falling apart daily made it soo hard that there was no way I could ever reach out even if I wanted too. I couldn't understand why I struggled to make friends as an adult and the relationships that I did try to make fell apart and never felt deep. and I couldn't do relationships if they weren't "real"
Not autistic but I feel like after elementary school I was placed in a lot of gifted programs, like through middle school it was STEM and in highschool it was magnet, so I was able to find people who didn’t mind as much that I was strange, I remember when I started highschool and was having trouble finding friends that I’d yawn a lot whenever I felt awkward and I mastered the art of fake yawning to give myself time to think of what to say next to avoid awkward silence 😂. I can’t imagine having to monitor myself constantly though I did find myself going ‘that was super weird’ or ‘you can’t do that in public’ but I’m really glad I’ve found a space where I’m more comfortable to be weird especially in school.
I genuinely think one of the reasons I read SO much as a kid (besides escapism✌️) was that it allowed me to look into other peoples minds and see what made them act the way they do, both action and reaction. It's like people watching but with the added benefit of internal dialogue
I don't know if I'm autistic, I've never been diagnosed. Either way I wanna share this. Ever since I was a little kid, I've always played drums on a desk, thighs, air drumming etc. to the point of having bruises on my thighs because of it. I try not to do it amongst people who don't really know me but usually I'm tapping my feet (playing the kick drum) either way unconsciously. The pen thing is also extremely familiar. But I digress. I have two little kids (4M and 2F). I drum to the extent that they're straight telling me to stop 'cause it annoys them. I just thought that was a funny story to share.
Here's a trick I learned with the eye contact, stare at their left eye or third eye/in between their eyebrows. I've found that seems to help people think I'm paying attention meanwhile (like yourself) I'd rather stare off at something else and concentrate on listening.
opening presents in front of people is like walking onto a stage and being expected to give a speech :P for birthdays I tend to leave my gift on their desk the night before after they've gone to bed so they can open in private
We have both ASD and DID so we have something of unique perspective on masking because it has always been much easier for us to mask versus other autistic singlet friends of ours. When we saw one of our friends in the Netherlands we talked about it and it was incredible just how much easier it was (comparatively) for us to just sub-divide out to different alters to cognitive load of masking and understanding social cues and lots of other tasks that collectively allow us to more or less mask as "normal" when we need to. Its to the point where it is very much so second nature and because of the subdivided nature of the task of masking it never overstresses any one alter. We do mask our DID and ASD less as its easier to not whenever possible but if we didn't have to it would be harder but not like so exhausting that we collapse; provided we don't overstep our soft limit of around 150 -250 people (though we can expand to as much as 1200-1400 people for a couple years but that will crash the system).
Do you have any advice on how to reserve your energy while trying to integrate yourself into the world and not get overwhelmed with the expectations of being an adult? It feels like people simultaneously baby me while also expecting way too much, while not answering the questions I have about what I need to do.
I have always observed others to learn how to be charismatic and loved. I can be very successful at it if I have the energy, but it’s like giving a performance. It takes alot out of me. The longer it goes on the more I feel I’m losing myself. Then after a successful encounter I panic. Sure I managed to shine . . . for a minute, but I know I can’t keep it up, i will end up being a big disappointment. I totally relate to letting friendships go by the wayside because its too much work. In my journal I often refer to people as “body snatchers”. because I feel my life force being sucked out of me.
I love repeating old TV jingles. I grew up in theatre also. When I was kid I was very good at acting and could memorize the whole play before we opened the show. Not so much now. Getting people to talk about themselves is a tool I never though of using. When I was in my terrible twos I had a habit of tapping my foot to a rhythm even when sitting on the floor. I also used to fidget with my fingers. I try to remember to fidget sometimes still but my foot is almost always tapping. Needless to say, I enjoy playing drums. Also, I would constantly apologize for things. It took me a few years to stop apologizing. You have an overall relaxed look, mostly in your eyes.
In my teens I got super into the Vampire Diaries( still am)😅 I tend to be quiet and nonverbal and while also having ("high functioning autism") so watching TVD was like a way for me to learn this thing called " socialization" and conversations I've never really had to mask because I don't outwardly portrait any sings of stereotypical autism, unless it's pen clicking or leg shaking 😂 anyway ...I probably wouldn't be where I am now if I hadn't =)
I've described socializing as wearing a series of faces, one of every situation I was in. Having to balance memory of every person I knew to apply to the situation at hand is tiring to no end. I bothers me a bit when people think I'm putting in no effort when I'm burning myself out just trying to have a conversation. I get home and just want to sleep and recover, but then people want me to do more... after years of this, I merged the personas made it a bit easier, didn't have to put as much energy in to remember everything. Most people I know are stumped when they find out I didn't understand humour as a kid. I'm fairly sure people can see the cracks in the mask these days.
I always have a problem expressing emotions when receiving gifts. Because I already know that today is my birthday and there will be a gift and I am not surprised for this. So I always play this emotion of surprise and joy.
Spot on! But the year I turned 49, I got a card with a big preprinted "you're 50 - happy birthday" on it 😂 I do like gifts, but often it's hard to know how to react, so it's really nice to get something where laughter is a proper response :)
Pro tip (😁): For those of you that rehearse & plan conversations - please try not to forget to actually listen to the other person when the real convo takes place! My partner used to plan conversations out and then forget to listen to my responses, she had many one sided arguments before I finally realized what was happening and brought it to her attention 😮😂😢🤷 Luckily we were both committed to our relationship & were both willing to allow one another the space & time to grow & make the changes we wanted to make for _ourselves_ [I stress, the changes each of us made were changes that were wanted regardless of our relationship status - never try to change yourself for someone else, only work on making changes because it's something you want to do for yourself, that way you're happy with the changes even if the relationship falls apart] We just celebrated our 21st Anniversary!!! We met when we were both 21 so we've now been together longer than we were alive without each other 🎉❤️🎉❤️🎉 Sorry so long, I suck at concise! EDIT) I just realized that i failed to make it clear that I was able to figure out that this was what was happening (her planning & rehearsing the conversations prior to having them) because I used to do this same thing and I also caught myself forgetting to pay attention to the other person's side of the conversation --- at which point I realized I needed to stop allowing myself to plan & rehearse conversations/it had become unhealthy (unhelpful?) for me and I chose to stop allowing myself to do it. Hope all this makes sense ... an ad popped up as I was typing and derailed my train of thought so I had to finish it while off the rails 😁
In 8th grade I switched middle schools to attend a magnet school for state identified gifted students. I saw this as my chance to be an entirely different, more “normal” and acceptable person. I wore different clothes, listened to different music, and tried really hard to emulate the people that seemed to be well liked. I absolutely hated it. I attracted friends that I didn’t enjoy spending time with. The breaks between classes went from being a chance to relax a bit, to the most exhausting part of my day. It was intensely draining to socialize with the friends my new persona had made. I lasted about 2 months before switching back to my old middle school. I have not been diagnosed or sought to be evaluated for autism, but so much of my life experience seems to be explained by autism.
Being autistic (and not knowing it) I was regularly told I didn't behave correctly, and so did my own research on what correct behavior was. Unfortunately, we only had two books that had anything to do with "correct behavior" which were American Girl's "The Smart Girl's Guide to Manners" and George Washington's "Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior: in Company and Conversation." Lemme tell you, masking based on etiquette from the late 1700s does NOT make you look neurotypical.
Happy holidays lovely humans. I hope you all are doing well, remember that you don’t need to or have to do what people say in order for them to be comfortable, I hope for everyones health(emotional physical and mental) and goodness during this holiday! Have a lovely time!🪼🪼🪼🪼🪼🪼🪼🪼🪼🪼🪼🪼🪼🪼
I can relate to this masking video. I got in trouble in elementary school for bluntly speaking my mind and not noticing social cues. I also remember not being able to tie my shoes at 8 and my teacher resentful bending down to tie them. When I was around fifth grade, I came to the conclusion that no one liked me the way I was so I decided to be quiet and speak as little as possible. I also tried to dress like everyone else, achieve in school and say the right things when I did speak. As I went through college and young adulthood I spoke more but continued to mask. I thought I was doing a good job until a coworker called me out for some bluntness and social cues I missed. Although I was embarrassed and sad, I realized I needed to stop hiding from my situation and look into an autism diagnosis. I received my diagnosis several months ago at age 35. Now, I am doing my best to accommodate myself such as wearing flare engage earplugs in social gatherings. However, due to masking for around 25 years, I do not know who I am nor how I stem. It will likely take me years to get to know myself as well as fully accept myself. I am glad autism resources are more available then they were in the 1990's, 2000's and even 2010's. I am glad that many of you are beginning your diagnosis journey earlier so that you can better know yourselves and know accommodation options. I don't think it is ever too late to get a diagnosis. Am hoping I can help my mom on her 60's get one soon. I wish all of you the best!
There's no direct link to the topic of the video but thank you for putting a yellow thumbnail for every autism diag/advice/signs videos, it really helps to spot those specific ones between all the videos when I'm searching for some information
I can relate to you SO much and I’m in my 40’s! I had no clue what I’ve lived through my whole life, not ONE clue!! I also have adhd as well. I just found out when my only child, daughter in 4th grade, and just got diagnosed with level 1. I masked constantly and in learning about her I found myself. I would just call my asd as “it”. I would say whatever “it” is causes me to do: and I’d list all the common experiences of level 1 asd. I’m very new to a of this so I’m learning & searching to know as much as I can. Thank you for your channel so much!!!💕
What I hated the most about opening presents as a kid was if I didn't instantly knew what it was. I vividly remember getting a portable CD player from my step grandma and since I didn't know what it was (at that point I was mostly still listening to cassettes) I asked and they made me guess so I was like "Is it a scale?" and from then on I was made fun of for years for mistaking a walkman for a weight scale.
My personal tip for filling up the conversation: (aside from small talk of weather and the other person’s day/week, which are also handy scripts though difficult to facilitate enough interest) ask about what the other person’s hobby/work, and as someone who loves the process of learning, I just treat it as a curiosity stream, genuinely wanting to learn about the details of the knowledge the other person has, and it is much easier to keep finding a question from the responses they give than doing back and forths
Videos like this are the reason I support you on patreon. Many autistics have interesting stories and explanations, but nobody gets them across as well as you can. Pls keep up the good work!
The transition from online schooling to high school was a nightmare for me. I'd spent two years shedding my mask at home, then I had to reconstruct it in a few hours. And my parents ask me why I hated my first two years.
24:22 so real and relatable, these situations are hard to look back on and I started to realise post-diagnosis (recent and late) that I have probably caused some hurt by pulling back. I avoid forming new friendships now because I know this will happen sooner or later, I even forewarned a recent friend but it still seemed to go the same way. Added to the confusion of trying to navigate social situations, it just sucks.
This is the last time I’ll see you before Christmas - so Merry Christmas! I hope you have a lovely day, and time to rest and recover afterwards.
This video is about ways in which autistic people might mask, not about autistic traits. If you’re wondering if you might be autistic, I have a video about my favourite theory of how autistic minds work, monotropism. Here’s the link!: ruclips.net/video/3mBbOOzhoGQ/видео.html
And if you missed my video about the parents pushing their children to perform on Christmas morning: ruclips.net/video/_mBppddBB8w/видео.html
See you next week for the last video of the year! Thank you for being here this year ✨🎄
Merry Christmas to you too!
Merry Xmas megan ❤🎄 💚🦌
Merry Christmas x.
Merry Christmas!!
Merry Christmas 🎄
Me: "I don't script conversations. I don't know what you're talking about."
Also me: "Okay, so every time I meet someone, I give them a compliment about something they're wearing to break the ice and put them in a good mood."
🤣
i wanted to do that but then i realized it was hard to come up with a spontaneous compliment that was honest. and i didn't want to stare at and assess people every time i meet them lol. any time i successfully notice something i like and deliver the compliment it's like a rush of adrenaline 😂
@@foogriffy For me it just happens to be the first thing I notice - I'm not sure if that's instinct or because I've trained myself into it. But usually it's something like "I love the color of your shirt" or "that's such a pretty necklace" or "your scarf looks so comfy" or "that eye makeup is amazing."
I totally do this. I’m considered super friendly at work because I’m always complimenting people, or smiling as a greeting, or asking how people’s shifts are.
It's hard for me to believe how formal and artificial a behavior can be, that convinces people you are friendly. One structured compliment or the ability to project a warm smile, and you can set up some people's permanent impression of you. For all the talk about rigid thinking in autistic people, these situations make me think that allistic folks have rigid thinking too, it's just in different categories of processing.
@@erikd4690 💯
I remember that when I was a teen, I told a friend that I felt like I had to wear a mask around everybody and couldn't be my true self. Still took me 20+ more years to get diagnosed with autism. It's kind of surprising how many of us consciously mask while just thinking it's what everybody does.
I said exactly this to three different friends, literally like a decade apart. They had made a comment about how I seem different in different situations, insinuating that I was being fake. I was like yeah, of course I am so that other people will be comfortable and accept me, aren't we all doing that? I would joke it was because I was a Gemini.
YES thank you I’ve never heard another autistic person talk about that… I told family members and therapists, and either people didn’t have a clue what I was talking about and found it really weird or they would say “yeah I mean we all behave a little differently depending on the context etc” thus confirming my suspicions that everyone masked and I was just complaining about nothing. Turns out we weren’t talking about the same thing 😂
@@paulinejulien9191I have experienced that too. I am undiagnosed but has always been the weird kid. No real help when asking for it even just for some advice. I am met with confusion and silence.
Even though I am very literal in describing what I am experiencing it seems like I am speaking to them in a foreign language.
At 38 I dont know if I will benefit from a diagnosis or not. Maybe just keep being me and let other people do their thing and if anyone has a problem they can come speak to me.
i have tried explaining this to a few people before. i've identified that i have two main modes of function, one where i am silly and goofy and just let the tism run wild, and another where i sort of lock down and gain this really cold exterior, which is the one that i use when i'm in public most of the time. i don't mean to come off as weird or mean, i just don't know how else to properly mask, because putting on any other kind of persona is even nore work than what i already do! i just wish it was easier to be quiet and to stop stimming when i need to.
I remember hearing someone talk about how everyone does this and imagine it's like wearing a different hat: you have one hat for work, another for school, another for hanging out at the club, etc so I also thought everyone did this!
Typically all of my relationships were independent, rather than having a group of friends I had a lot of one on one friendships that never really interacted with each other, not by design - it just sort of happened that way 🤷
One day I invited a friend from one place to come with me to meet up with a friend at a bar and she said it was shocking to see how my whole personality went from relaxed & a little odd to straight backed, out-spoken & confident the moment we walked through the bar's entrance.
I'd never realized how much I was masking - it was absolutely _exhausting!!!_ And yet, even with as well as it worked (I was _way_ too popular & my confidence made me _far_ too desirable - that sounds like I'm trying to boast or whatever it's called but nope, it's just a fact) I wouldn't go back to that life if you paid me!!! It caused so many problems & I was _always_ exhausted!
So glad my wife accepts me as I _really_ am ❤️🫂
Sorry so long, I suck at concise. I'm also too lazy to reread what I've written & make sure I didn't AuDHD my way to another topic entirely ... my apologies if so 😂
It feels like I constantly have one of two things playing in my mind. Either a song is playing, or my mind is throwing me in the middle of some random situation/conversation and I tend to immediately start scripting what I’d need to say if something like that did happen. It gets really annoying, because sometimes I’ll get really emotionally caught up in these imaginary conversations/arguments and it can ruin my mood if I can’t pull myself out of it.
Wow same. I’m a musician so I CONSTANTLY have music playing in my head. If not, I’m scripting something. It’s never quiet. Lol
@ I’m also a musician lol music has been a special interest of mine since I joined band in sixth grade. I’m glad I’m not the only one with this specific kind mind that just never seems to be quiet
Hahaha, no way! I’m also a musician and a linguist; during my autism diagnosis, I discovered I have, surprise-surprise, a special talent in languages (I speak 6) and music. I do everything you two described and also do weird and expressive interpretative dances, when I dance, enough to make people stare.
Wait so there’s people who don’t do that???
Holy cow it feels like I wrote this lol
For the scripting part of the video, I have what I call "default phrases". Just like NPC's in a game, I have vague words or small sentences that I can apply for small talk. When people ask me how I'm going or say something about themselves and expect me to comment about it, I have to think of which response to use. Examples are: I'm okay/okay, that's nice, cool, that's sad, tell me more, nice, I'm good/good etc. Really basic and simple things to say but it is enough to the other person to continue talking without judgement.
I’m the exact same way. It works most of the time lol
Same! And sometimes I accidentally snag someone else's phrase, including timing and tone, and then use it to them and they get very confused 😅 it's hard to turn off
Exactly this.
@@idontwannapickanametho Echolalia!
my fiancé calls those my 'stock answers'. same thing for when i react too enthusiastically to something he tells me (that he knows i don't actually care about, and that doesn't really warrant a big reaction, like when one of his sportsball teams scores a goal/wicket/touchdown/etc.), he'll say 'oh, that was a stock reaction, wasn't it'.
I'm 47 and just told my mom I'm autistic, she was like "Are you joking?" I survived a law enforcement and military careers... all due to building a persona and living it. It was hard at first, but really became pretty simple. Then I changed careers and my life came crashing down. My life is Hell, and I work from home with very little real responsibility or situations where I can get hurt... never had more stress in my life, thus leading to this understanding.
Its not a surprise, military and police have lots of rules and predicatable routines, autistic folks like that. I found working from home was my salvation following years of workplace abuse for being different. Hang in there, you can do this!
I can identify with a lot of that, I too had a not unsimilar trajectory
Makes a lot of sense actually. I'm pretty sure my dad was AuDHD (like I am) & he did fairly well in the Air Force & then as a corrections officer. Both very structured jobs with a shared militaristic higherarchy.
Also a shared unhealthy coping mechanism. Lots of drinking in both. Which a lot of neuro divergent people (especially undiagnosed) will drink to help with the anxiety in social situations, or just to fit in more with so called normal people.
@rae·tetza1999 My goal is to leverage my veteran suicide prevention job to bring attention to this. A growing group of veterans are leaving service and getting diagnosed, I'll have to see how good these congressional connections really are 🤣
I put myself into a military leadership path in order to force myself into being "fixed." I survived that career, barely, and transitioned to a technical career which was a much better fit. But after 22 years in that job I was behind the promotion curve based on my knowledge and experience. All of the advice I got about getting raises and promotions would have involved significant masking, and I just don't want to do that any more. I retired from that job, fortunately with enough savings to go many years without needing to work. I can take the time to figure out my own path and not get stuck into corporate expectations again.
Because I struggled making friends all my life, around age 15-16 my mom sat me down and told me “if you want people to like you ask questions. People love talking about themselves and oftentimes don’t care about you.” I remember getting that advice and really internalizing it. Lo and behold, it worked. I found that when meeting new people, asking them questions really helped a conversation actually happen and not awkwardly die out.
I wish someone had told me that. I probably came across as self-centered and aloof, because I almost never asked people about themselves (even though I was always open to and interested in listening to people talk about the themselves and things they cared about). I tended to fare best with people who just shared without waiting to see if others were receptive to it (ie. socially oblivious, chronic over-sharers). And then those people seemed to feel like I was a good listener (because I was) and they tended to like me (even if I didn't particularly like them). I think others who were more socially aware were probably put off by me. That's only something I've been realizing since learning I'm autistic, though. My social struggles make a lot more sense now.
My problem is I’m never sure what to ask people 😂
But isn't that the whole problem? They don't really care about you. I don't need more aquaintances. I get that it could be useful for a party where you're just doing small talk or maybe networking for work, but it seems fairly unhelpful if you're actually trying to make friends who will care about you...
I, on other hand, manage to somehow overdo it and seemingly come across as cop during an interview 😂 I swear there was a class everyone took and I missed.
They have to know you before they start caring and that takes time.@@ALG3228
"I could be creative and quirky, but I had to be the right kind of weird" - that part hit me like a truck. 🤯
As someone who has always been an artist and works in a creative industry, people assume you would naturally fit in and find 'your people'. Some do, but it's not always the case. Even in creative spaces, there are still levels and social rules. You can be quirky, but you still have to be sociable and have executive functioning skills. If you fail to meet these standards, you will be treated as you would in any other environment. Being artistic does not negate that.
jep - always felt an outsider even in the creative space, too. In my case it might be some overlapping symptoms with CPTSD, or I am a bit on the spectrum, too... for sure I camouflage / mask a lot. Had this you should smile more as a child or don't do quirky things with your left arm (don't know why it was always more the left), it shell hang down like the other... couldn't go hand in hand well, always had the felt need to get off and instead explore my surrounding. Or just being extremely calm and just be like The Watcher. But feeling the pressure I should do sth to interact to somehow fit in, get connected like others do...
Did hide behind my camera since I can hold a cam, too, so that I always had sth to do when I didn't know what to talk or so. And jep, learnt that asking questions to connect. What was getting trained even more when I started to work in the press industry... so being always more the Great Listener, turning the attention away from me to the other by questions is sth I know very well, too... 😃 And feeling much exhausted afterwards. Maybe I turn into that oversharer when the moment comes, that I finally know sth to talk about and have that "now it's my turn and I need to get it all said before I have to be the Great Listener again..." 😃
But on the other hand I also have that blank times where I don't know what to ask or talk. I hate the question "What are you thinking right now?" - it causes a kind of pressure that leads to a black hole of thinking just nothing. It just isn't true that there is always sth describable going on in a conscious way. Some therapists thought I would just hide sth, or being shy, but it wasn't the case, it was just that black hole feeling because of a felt pressure, that there should be sth going on... okay, before I now too much go into oversharing... I better stop here😸
@prpmedia9530 I'm sorry to hear that you have C-PTSD. I do too, so I can relate to your experience. I also have ADHD, so I definitely know the feeling of finding it difficult to remain still, and wanting to explore 😆
Yes, I am an amateur photographer so I also hide behind my camera too. But I also just really love capturing people in candid moments, I've always watched other people studying them - I find it fascinating.
I, like yourself, had to develop the 'good listener' skill as well, because I find it difficult not to overshare when people ask me questions about myself.
Ugh the brain fog and blank spots are horrendous, so frustrating when you want to communicate something but it just feels like it's floating around somewhere in an empty abyss. Have you tried being honest with your therapist, and letting them know that sometimes being put on the spot can throw you off so to allow for you to have some time and space to process the question you are being asked?
Thank you for sharing your experience with me! 🌱🌻
I feel ya!
@@SOMETHINGTOSLOW I am also bad in sitting still on a chair - I learnt it, of course... but still did move whenever I could, like on chairs in school class, sometimes nearly falling down with it because of that... I love all chairs that provide wipping space because of that 😬 - with therapy - it was somehow a quest that they wait if sth is coming from you... felt a bid like in the movie "Good Will Hunting", sitting and both say nothing.... 🙃
Don't really remember how the talking then started, it is a long time ago, the first round of therapy you can say (longer than 20 years ago). I am in a throwback episode since 2023 now and see same symptoms coming up again or some that stayed low all through are hightened again now. Retraumatized.
Thx for sharing your experiences, maybe there is some overlapping with ADHD, too...
And a yes for studying others by cam and finding it fascinating... I am a fast adapter because of that, too, that helped in theatre plays, of course... just the shyness wall was and sometimes still is a problem in body language of emotional expression.
As I've said before, my description of masking is by analogy to my left knee. I have a torn meniscus that causes pain in many circumstances. I generally walk with a bit of a limp and sometimes where a brace to reduce stress in directions that hurt the knee. I can, if I choose, forego the brace and force a normal gait. It would look like I have no problem in the knee. But, on the inside, it hurts more to do that and does further damage to the knee. I pay for that later. That's masking, just in "mobility issues" rather than "autism".
I tore my left meniscus in my thirties and had arthroscopic surgery. My father did in his twenties. I’m curious, do you have any signs of hypermobility? I was hypermobile in my shoulders until my forties, and while I don’t think I have EDS, I have wondered if weak cartilage played a role in our knees. (I likely had POTS when I was younger, too.) I’ve since learned that these have a weird tendency to go together, and to be comorbid with autism.
@jimwilliams3816 i just took a bad fall figure skating. Been running through the treatment options since.
Thank you. This is an excellent analogy.
The masking and camouflaging is so hard to explain to people because they always tell me that they see no differences between my different roles until they see me suddenly drop the mask. For example, I was in the middle of a meltdown, and I got pulled aside and reminded that I had say "no" easily, but had to work on hearing "no", then reminded that I had to do a presentation in 2 minutes. I remember pulling myself together, putting on my "captivating presenter" role then blew everyone away for the next 30 minutes. Then when the opportunity came, I left the room and cried in a corner for over an hour. This was the first time I realized I was not okay, and had to find why I always did this kind of thing. Over a year later I got my official diagnosis, and this moment stands out to me as the clear point where I knew I was not just a bad person, and I had to figure it all out.
Incredibly relatable, thank you for articulating and sharing this.
@RishaBond I am glad you found my story helpful. I share in the hopes that people will see their experiences are shared, because that is what I needed the most when I was first learning about autism. Thanks for your comment because it still reminds me that my experiences are similar to others. I am not alone, and neither are you. 😊
This channel does an amazing job at teaching me my quirks are just autism. For years, i spoke largely in quotes from TV show characters. And while I've grown past that a bit, I still use references to media to make conversation. And let's not forget having long conversations in my head with various people.
Merry Christmas, Meg!
I did something similar in that I gave my own internal subconscious a persona and would have very long and detailed conversations with it. That paired with the dysphoria induced disassociation made me think I had DID for the longest time.
I do this, too
Sokath, his eyes uncovered!
I think a lot of kids do that too. It's just that we don't stop doing it because we associate that as been the right thing to say and do because we heard other people doing it growing up.
Same. I told folks in college I’m so funny because I have a team of professional writers writing everything that comes out of my mouth. My knowledge of media is just so broad I can pull from things no one has ever heard before.
As I entered adulthood, I was so certain I had BPD because I completely lost my identity. I had spent the entirety of my puberty learning how to be a normal, somewhat likeable person and then I broke down. I felt like a ghost among my friends who were only my friends because I copied them well enough.
I am so sorry to my younger self, I can't believe she had to go through all that just for false acceptance.
Every so often I used to google “how to be like X” character from tv or a movie I saw people liked, and I’d make notes and change my whole self around - my clothes, my opinions, my hobbies, my behaviour, even my voice. Since being diagnosed I was like OHHHHH ok. That’s why I did that.
David Tennant was a great one to use as a basis for what it's worth 😆
My accent, body language, facial expressions, sometimes entire personality, shifts depending on which friends I'm with. 😅 I mask, I mirror, I echo. It's gotten to the point where I can't mingle certain friend groups. The most annoying part; it's subconscious and I can't stop. It happens if I listen to the same RUclips channels for too long, I absorb mannerisms and speech patterns like a sponge.
Same if I watch too many videos from the same person or movies featuring a certain character I notice I start mimicking their mannerisms, behaviours, way of talking etc. As a child I did it intentionally and consciously, now as a late-diagnosed adult it doesn’t happen as much and when it does it’s not intentional/unconscious.
Nothing quite like the stress of being with someone and running into someone else you know and not knowing who the f you're supposed to be in this situation
(Especially bad if you're non-verbal around one of them)
My brain naturally wants to do that, but when I recognized it as a kid, I worked really hard on stopping it. I’m fiercely individual and couldn’t stand the fact that I was just copying others.
Echolelia is still a big stim for me though. I get obsessed with little random phrases and repeat them over and over.
Omg this is so relatable! I’ve been watching a RUclipsr with a very different “accent” than mine and really animated mannerisms, and it’s like my inner voice starts sounding like them and I start doing little things too. It’s completely out of my control 😹 The internalized echolalia doesn’t help lol
Same, I even pick up foreign accents even though I only fluently speak English. It took me a long time to realize that was why certain mixed group interactions were so stressful for me, because I was rapidly cycling through tons of different mirrored communication "modes." "Forget goblin mode, we're going full boggart today!" my brain would say😅
Reminding myself to look interested or happy is so frustrating. I had a friend in hs tell me that she didn't understand why I didn't act excited when I said I was, until she realized I was "quietly exuding happiness".
Learning social skills... This should be a school class! I remember when I was a toddler, and going to school I felt like my brother and the other kids got a book they forgot to give me. When an elective called "Social Studies" came up, I chose it thinking that was the lessons I needed, but found myself disappointed in finding myself in history class. SOCIAL studies... was not what I expected.
My friendship graveyard is a few acres in size and growing. Now that I am finally late diagnosed Autistic, I will seek friendships with others like me who don't like frequent visits and phonecalls etc. 🥰🙃 Blessings on your holidays. I loved this video because I can relate to it and I enjoy your lovely sense of humor.
OMG I was just telling someone that presents stress me out (not just giving - which is also stressful, but receiving!) and he was so confused! And I was like, "Wait does receiving a gift not stress EVERYONE out???" You have to, especially as a child for some reason, "perform gratitude" correctly or you disappoint the other person.
Also: on the "one friend" thing - I've been thinking about this a lot lately because at most periods in my life I had what I now think of as an "anchor friend," the one extroverted person who manages to latch onto me and who introduces me to their circle of friends who then sort of become my friends by proxy.
Sometimes I am like "Nah I am probably not autistic" and then you make a video and I'm like "75% of this could be ripped straight from my personal diary."
idk about *stress* me out, necessarily, but gifts tend to confuse me in so many ways. what do I get people for birthdays? what do I ask for? what do I do when people give me christmas gifts? birthdays are somewhat reciprocal given everyone has a birthday, but like. what do I do about the fact that everyone insists on giving me christmas gifts when I'm not christian? I realise for them it's theoretically not supposed to be about reciprocity, that it's about the giving and not the getting supposedly, but functionally speaking it is usually reciprocal in a majority-christian society and if I don't participate, I look ungrateful even though I didn't ask for (and sometimes explicitly asked for them to NOT give me) gifts.
So, now I have these like. scripts? one year, I got everyone scarves for the winter, since I really like scarves and have a massive collection and know how to find a quality scarf someone else would want to wear after only a few questions, but for a lot of them that was the limit of that idea's usefulness because shockingly most people only want to own one or two scarves (I can't imagine it). I often give people LEGO, since almost everyone I know loves LEGO, including me. if people ask me what I want, I ask for LEGO, if I know that's in budget for them. cause I legit can never think of anything I want, unless I work within a narrow constraint like that.
anyways, idk where I was going with this, but yeah gifts are difficult. like, so often I just buy things for people that I know they'd like, and that's just so easy cause it's not for an occasion, when it's an occasion tho it's so difficult to navigate the cultural ritual of the event.
14:55 I definitely understand the "my weird was showing" part, probably too much.
Lockdown hit for me during my sophomore year of high school, and by the time we were finally back to in-person schooling, I was a senior. All that time spent at home was time that I didn't feel the constant urge to mask. When we got back to school, I just couldn't do it anymore and the mask shattered.
I lost a lot of previously close friends that year. I won't ever know their true internal intentions, but it felt like they were turning me away because they didn't like the real me they were finally seeing. That hurt a lot, and my confidence still hasn't fully recovered from it. It sucks feeling like people can't ever know what you're really like because you know they won't accept what they find.
@@havocsTeacher this used to happen to me heaps with early dating. People would be attracted to my masked self and find my more authentic self not as attractive. I distinctly remember one guy that looked like he was from a 90s boy band saying he thought i was someone he liked but now he’s gotten to know me better he realises I’m not. 🤣😂
45 years old and 99% of what you talked about explains me to a T. i never thought about it until my son was diagnosed with autism and adhd at the age of 6. i see so much of my younger self in him and his mannerisms its undeniable. growing up, and into my 30s i abused alcohol and drugs to socialize and when i found out i was having a child at the age of 32 i stopped abusing alcohol and drugs. omg....the flood of everything came crashing in and i've spent the last 11 years focusing on my son and trying to find myself. i've built a wall up around me and don't let anyone in except my son because i don't do social situations or friendships, or relationships. i have sole custody of my son since he was 2 years old. its always been just me and him because everything and everyone else is completely exhausting.
we both was your channel and love it. thank you!
I don't know what's scarier - being bad at masking, or being too good at masking. Adopted a technique where i focused on letting a PART of myself through, depending on the situation. It works... if it's fairly surface level or business related. I get lots of comments on how I am 100% genuine. And it's because I am. I'm just... reserved. But there are times where I really really wish I could fool others, or to just pretend I was fine. It makes business really difficult to disappear into, when I'm going through something rough.
A useful tip, if anyone wants it. Find the 2-3 people around you who will listen to a summarized version of what's going on with you. Who will sit and take in the REAL answer to "how are you doing?" Give yourself 30 seconds and make sure to ask the same from them and give them the same courtesy. If you can give the real answer once in a day, privately, it can be easier to give the "social norm" answer other times. It's really when the "norm" becomes the answer 100% of the time that you can feel unseen. At least, that's how it works for me.
16:36 I wish my family had understood my 'cognitive delay' when it came to recieving gifts. Most of my memories of getting gifts were immediately hit with a yell of "Say thank you!!" before I had recognized the importance of the gift, so I became afraid of any kinds of gifts and refused gifts because of the sudden demand to express gratitude that may or may not be authentic.
I’m a terrible gift giver because I assume other people will experience the same stress I do when I receive a gift. I massively overthink the gift to minimize their possible stress.
@@danwebber9494I'm a terrible gift giver because I'm always broke, hehe...
I often find myself just giving up on trying to unmask because when I mask, it is mentally taxing in itself, but if I try and unmask, I get hyper anxious about if others are judging me or noticing, and I get exhausted anyways. It is a hassle and I am constantly tired from putting in so much subconscious effort.
This is exactly why I spend so much of my life alone.
Solitude isn't healthy for neurotypicals, and maybe not for me, idk ... but I'm so much more comfortable.
OMG THE NOT THINKING ABOUT ASKING QUESTIONS IS SO REALLL!!! i always thought that me simply interracting with someone meant me signalling that they can tell me stuff, so when i liked someone in general i'd simply say hi/bye/good morning etc. in a cheery voice and would be confused as to why they didnt ''warm up'' to me and make further conversation. like i genuinely thought i was being extra friendly when i was just being polite lol. plus when people would tease each other i'd get nervous thinking the other person would get mad at them but they'd just laugh and joke around ( the warming up i could never achieve) and in conversations i'd usually just talk about whatever im interested so i wouldnt think of asking questions and ''inviting'' people to talk about what they wanted to talk about. like i forget that people need to be lured in i just go about my day.
This has been my experience exactly. I had no idea I was failing to signal to others that I was interested in what they had to say. I didn't realize you had to ask people to share. Which is kind of funny, because I had learned to wait to be asked myself. I used to share unprompted, then got the impression that everyone found me and my info-dumping annoying, so I shut up and waited for someone to show interest before I would share anything. Which was swinging to the opposite extreme, and probably not great either, as it became really hard to pull anything out of me. It was like my brain just shut down because I didn't feel safe, and then my thoughts and interests just wouldn't even occur to me. It would take a lot of prompting to get me going, but then once I had momentum, I could talk your ear off. I'm still like that, actually.
I recently learned I have a lot of autistic traits and the pieces are coming together. It's nice to learn more about other people having experiences that I thought I was alone to feel.
7:57 "Well enough" is a good answer to "How are you?". It doesn't say you're actually doing *well*, just that you're more or less able to continue living, so it's honest over the whole range of emotional states until "please help" becomes appropriate.
i started using this specific phrase in hs when i first started working, after a trial period of using it in school and finding out that my peers and teachers responded positively to it , at least among other responses
I tend to pause, chuckle a bit, and answer with, "surviving" or "still surviving", if the person is someone I say this to often, ha. Short, accurate, and it does prompt for more conversation if the other person wishes to engage it. Most of the time, they'll respond with the same, because even if they're NT, times are rough for most people at the moment for one reason or another, and who has time and energy for pleasantries? ;P So, we both get an opportunity to sigh, reflect a moment, and either commiserate, rant or move on. 🙃
Every time someone asks me "how's it going?" I always answer with the phrase "it's going" and sort of laugh it off and ask them the same question. It seems to go over pretty well for the most part.
@moriahallestad2071 Ahhh. I used to do that one as well. Never any issue. :)
“I’m here” is my response because that always feels like a legit success to me.
I (suspect) have both autism and DID. I definitely think me being autistic didn't help with the whole dissociative identity thing due to a lot of factors, but the constant masking and assimilation I had to do to survive made my sense of self incredibly fragmented and unstable. I really relate to this video
It must be really difficult to be masking not only autism but also your DID, I have a theory that autistic children are more prone to develop DID so you are definitely not alone. I wish you a lot of healing and a good journey while discovering more about yourself and the other alters in your system!!
oh shit us too 🤝
Thats what we were thinking! If we didnt have autism we wouldn’t have DID thats for sure. Good luck on your journey
This just reminded me that during the first half of my life I expressed myself differently depending on who I was interacting with. It was actually very manipulative. I stopped at one point during an extremely bad patch in my fist marriage and said I’d never lie again - it was extremely liberating.
This was decades before I suspected I was autistic.
My dad was always a bit awkward and "quirky" and looking back, I realise a lot of his descriptions of his own childhood and adolescence sound a lot like someone trying to mask autistic traits. He died from a heart attack this year, I wonder if the stress of constant masking was a contributing factor?
Autistic people definitely have more heart issues because of stress. I’m sorry for your loss 💔
Yeah, we generally have a much shorter life expectancy on average. 😢
damn that just made me realize that could be an aspect of my dad’s heart issues. the doctor has told him for years that he’s way too stressed and he always just says it was me lol. i’m so sorry, i hope you’re doing okay
12:40 this is one of the reasons I bought a ring for myself, it's a subtle way I can stim in public in a way that people either don't notice or don't care enough about to actually bring it up
The beginning hit hard, that’s exactly how I felt, exactly what i remember thinking. “I have to be perfect so I don’t bother anyone else” because if it bothers me then I don’t want to do the same to someone else. But I remember having a defining moment when I was 7, I was already mourning myself “I’ll never learn everything I need to before I die”. Learning about autism has let me be more accepting of myself yet so mad it wasn’t suspected earlier.
My family never accepted my autism. Because of that I went 37years of my life in misery. Was hospitalized against my will twice and lost everything I owned multiple times. I was diagnosed with Asperger's before I was 8. My parents walked out on a diagnosis. Took me 37years of my life to be finally officially diagnosed. Had to pay a lot because the vast majority of psychiatrists and doctors have wrong notions and stereotypes about autism
I was late diagnosed at 52. Masking has been a subconscious part of life. In high school, I had a few groups I interacted with, some for skateboarding, some for theater, some for academics. I had subtly different characters for each, and keeping track of what I could talk about with whom was a never-ending chore. It was awful when I’d talk skateboarding with the drama kids. That didn’t seem to be a mistake the typical kids were making.
1:44. I honestly don’t know what I would do without toilet cubicles. They have saved me from many, many meltdowns and helped me regain enough composure to carry on masking until I can get home. I feel so bad for autistic people who don’t have easy access to them.
@WASDLeftClick we have the same thing in Canada but they were still life savers. My mom joked since I was little that I was The Bathroom Inspector because I immediately headed to the bathroom whenever we went somewhere not home.
I am not diagnosed but so many of your shows especially this one hits so very close to home. I am working on getting tested thanks to you.
As a child, I rarely had a clue how other kids formed an maintained friendship. I've never felt at ease in social situations but thought that I had pretty much learned how to play the game. Only recently (in my fifties), through learning from all you wonderful autistic people so generously sharing your experiences, I have realized how often I'm unsure of what people expect. Also, I know some really interesting people and love to hear their perspectives on life, but I often realize after a conversation that they said a lot that I'd have liked them to say more about, and I spend a lot of thinking through past conversations in order to recognize the points where I would have had a chance to ask questions instead of just giving my perspective.
This is just one example of my struggles with social interactions. I also have a hard time ending a conversation - I'm always afraid to be rude if I want to end before I sense that the other part is ready - and then when that happens, it often seems like they have kept on for longer than they wanted.
Anyway, I've never thought about this in terms of "difficulties with the rules of social interaction" because I know when to say hello, thank you, etc. and am generally kind and helpful.
Which leads me to my point: I'm afraid (not in an emotional sense, just I regretfully suppose) that there are sooo many unwritten rules and clues that I don't even know about. But I wasn't aware of that until recently. I've suspected to be "somewhat autistic" for several years but never done a lot to learn more about it. ADD, on the other hand, made sense to get a formal diagnosis, because there's medical treatment.
But the more I learn, the more certain I get that I'm probably not just "sonewhat autistic" but rather "fullblown" and that my chronic exhaustion is to a great extend related to the fact that I've never really learned how to live life on my own terms.
When you talked about the teacher shouting at you for making eye contact at 18:03 , that definitely hit home. My 1st grade teacher would do this to me too, often in front of the class (or within earshot of a classmate). Stuff like that can be really scarring, especially coming from an educator we’re supposed to trust.
That’s probably also the reason why I’m always afraid of not making eye contact in conversations now heh
I was abused by my second grade teacher unfortunately due to my autism. The ironic thing is she suspected I was autistic (asbergers at the time) and said as much to my parents in an urge to get me diagnosed. But girls tended to get overlooked. My psychiatrist said there was nothing wrong with me aside from my weird tendency to not make eye contact. 😅
Anyway, main reason I bought it up: this teacher used to get so frustrated with me she’d grab my face and force me to look her in the eye. Honestly with how much that lady manhandled me, she should have been arrested. But my parents didn’t know and I was so brainwashed by her that I felt like I deserved to be abused by her.
I ended up becoming a teacher myself. But eventually had to quit because I couldn’t keep up my mask for so many hours. I felt like I was falling apart. I did feel like I was a good teacher but it too so much out of me. Also geez teaching is full of toxic people.
Hey Meg,
Just wanted to say what an awesome video this was. I love seeing you come more and more into your own on your channel-it’s inspiring how open and vulnerable you are. These personal reflections you share mean the world, and it truly feels like we’re building a stronger sense of autistic community together.
I also really liked how you structured your thoughts around that scientific paper by Laura Hull. Having research as a backbone is such a great way to weave in different perspectives while keeping things grounded in real data. It helps the rest of us learn and grow along with you.
Hearing you talk about the pattern you notice-investing so much in relationships and then withdrawing-really resonated with me. I’m sorry you’ve felt guilty about possibly hurting people’s feelings; it’s so easy for us to be hard on ourselves, but remember the double empathy problem. Sometimes neurotypical friends don’t “get” our processing style at that deeper, implicit level. From my own experience, being around autistic peers can feel like a huge relief: there’s less forced effort and more natural understanding, which can reduce that constant need to mask.
Your honesty about your ups and downs truly makes a difference for so many of us. Thank you for putting in the time, energy, and love to create these videos-and for trusting us with your story. It’s inspiring, and I hope you know you’re a role model for a lot of folks out here, myself included.
Wishing you a wonderful holiday season and hoping you find moments of peace, joy, and real connection. Thank you again for everything you do, Meg. Talk to you soon!
-Sam
I always thought I didn't mask, but after watching this video, it made me realise that I do mask. I have had issues communicating with people, especially strangers and often found it hard holding conversations for long without going blank and quiet and I just end up feeling awkward and embarrassed. Sometimes I need a bit of time to process what someone has said before I can respond, if I even know what to say.
It can be especially hard for me as due to my general life and interests being different than a lot of people I meet, I feel I can't relate to what they are saying and while I can get a long with people, it doesn't get far due to feeling like I am unable relate to others. For example, I don't have a smartphone only a dumbphone, I don't watch most sports or listen to most modern new music or keep up with trends etc... so I feel I have less to say when people talk about these general subjects and other daily goings on.
When I first found out I had Autism in 2019, A woman who helps neurodivergent people helped me understand my Autism and taught me to do things and showed me how to think of what to say to someone when in social situations so I'd find it easier to communicate with others. That helped me hold conversations better and has reduced my social anxiety a lot.
When it comes to stimming, I thought I didn't do it, but I realised I do. I sometimes think or read out loud and talk to myself, often in a low volume or a whisper but sometimes a bit louder. I remember when that I used to sometimes randomly blurt out a word or phrase when I was thinking and that would be super embarrassing if anyone heard me. When I was younger, my mum had noticed me talking to myself under my breath where my mouth moves like I am talking and has said that I was talking to myself again and asked if I was OK.
I still talk out loud when I am thinking, but not as often and when I am out in public, if people see me do it, I'll usually stop to avoid being awkward or inappropriate and if I am asked about it, I just tell them that it helps me think more clearly or read something better sometimes. Talking to yourself out loud might actually be a sign of high intelligence.
I also sometimes sing out loud. Mostly when I am at home but sometimes when I am out walking somewhere. As a child, while I loved music, I used to hate singing and would cringe when I did it, I also would feel anxiety when doing it in public, I couldn't even sing a long at a concert when everyone else was. Now it is the opposite, I sometimes sing more than I talk out loud, but I feel I have to be super aware when I am out in public so I don't accidentally talk out loud or sing/hum, so it is not inappropriate and or makes me just feel awkward or embarrassed.
Hey! ❤ Fellow talks-to-themselves! Never thought of it as stemming but I definitely do that all the time too!
So much this... I spent my entire life masking without realizing that's what I was doing. I just considered it "trying to fit in".
I spent so much of my childhood with a crew cut or short hair because running my hands through my hair is my go to stim and I had no idea that's what it was (my mom just hated me always having my hands in my hair).
It took nearly half a century to get my diagnosis because mental health treatment was both prohibitively expensive and stigmatized when I was a child, so I learned to get by the best I could.
i always answre "how are you" with - alive
im always alive whenever I answer that
My go-to is: well enough, yourself? It's vague and moves the ball out of my court.
I might have to steal that. I have always hated that "How are you?" -thing, but I also totally get that it's something people just say to be polite. There have been times where I've said out loud what I actually think/feel as a response, but that's rarely well received because, well, the people asking don't really want to know 😂
I hate smalltalk and "social etiquette"...
My brain is CONSTANTLY talking to me about what I need to do with my hands, my face, my shoulders, my legs, look at them, look away, look xyz emotion, etc. It’s fking EXHAUSTING and makes me want to never leave my house again.
Facts. It's so tiresome to mask and try to mimick neuronormativity
I've also had trouble with making eye contact so I just look around their eyes or behind the person. Just around the person. I've also noticed that if I'm doing something that requires looking at the task people seem to be happier if I make sure to look at them a few times. (Depending on how long the person talks)
Just got my official diagnosis this week. Learning about masking and scripting helped me realize why Bumblebee was my favorite Transformer and D.Va was my Overwatch main when I played that game. With scripting, I tend to talk in memes and movie/TV/song soundbites at least some of the time (like Bumblebee when his voice module was broken) and with masking, I often felt like I was piloting my life like a mech operator instead of being directly present (like D.Va when she's in her primary tank role). It's been quite a journey figuring this out, and Meg, your channel has been an important part of my journey! So glad to know before I go into my 40's. Thanks, and happy holidays!
I caught myself unconsciously pinching my neck at a party last night. I didn't even know that I did that, or that it was a subtle stim. I thought of you, and smiled.
You're great, Meg. 💜
Regarding social mimicry, I have to be mindful to not copy people's accents/cadences that I'm talking with, because they usually think that I'm mocking them.
Also, whenever I'm watching House MD, for example, I may involuntarily start limping when I get up to go to the kitchen.
A guy I went to school with had broken his elbow in a bike crash when he was young, and the surgeon had somehow botched his surgery so he can't straighten his arm, and as a result always keeps his arm bend 90 degrees. I've found myself mimicking that arm position without thinking about it several times for no reason at all. Also, he did sometimes walk in a unique way too, and I found that I also walk in the same way still to this day. Prior to meeting him I did none of this.
I also noticed that I've picked up several speech things from my social group too which will pop out of the blue from time to time. Often without me noticing it.
I recently got my autism diagnosis finally. And your videos have truly helped me during that process and I’m sure your videos will continue to help me. Thank you for this channel💕
From a very young age people always asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I never knew (they seemed to find that rather strange) and I still don't know. I will be 60 in February.
In high school I once thought to myself: "I know what I want to be: a normal person". I always felt I was a bit different. It took almost 40 years before I found out I was autistic and since then I have been slowly learning what that means, but I am still in the process of getting to know the real me, after (subconsciously) suppressing myself all these years in order to fit in. Masking may sometimes help to get through certain situations, but if you do it too much, you can lose yourself and I would not recommend that to anyone.
I’m 26, and I finally got diagnosed with level 2 autism this week! This channel was really helpful for getting ready for my assessment, so thank you!
Level 2 autistics can also mask!
I've always felt glad that I grew up with theater because it made it easy to be the "correct character" for different situations. I always thought that was something everyone did. Being a different person depending on where they were or what they were doing, and being in theater just made me really lucky/good at it 😅
I remember making a mind notes to myself about how to adjust my behavior to look normal. I did it since I can remember. I have stopped gradually since discovering I autistic and I’m make myself miserable by masking. I gave myself permission to be weird.
Edit: Oh, and I have studied psychology for five years to discover how people work and how to communicate with them😅
that was the reason I got into anthropology. Finding out that there were people who would go to different cultures ,live with them and try to understand what they did and why. It helped alot, though later I was aware of how misused and misdirected these studies could be. I was in it for the learning, for the different points of view, not as a judgement of whether something is better or worse than another. I felt that it was freeing to see that different cultures looked at the same things differently. I hate how these days one can not state that things are different without some kind of value statement being read into it.
preparing responses never works, the conversation never goes the way i planned and i just sit at home afterwards going through that conversation and what i should've said over and over again
The whole eye contact thing messes me up sooo much. I feel soo distracted when looking into someone's eyes that I really can't focus on what they're saying. I got in trouble a lot when I was little because of it, and even received physical punishments for that. I learned that I can just unfocus my eyes slightly and look at the spot between a person's eyebrows. They think I'm looking at their eyes, and I don't get distracted. The only problem with this approach is that I have to remind myself to look away at regular intervals to avoid the person thinking that I'm just staring at them.
Also, being unable to finish university because the constant masking became too stressful is very relatable. It's one of the big reasons I couldn't finish either.
oh, i just periodically switch from eyebrows to mouth naturally, as i need to check what their lips are doing every so often to know what they're saying. sometimes I also stare off to the left or right and if i don't move my eyes around off of one spot, eventually the otehr person will slow down, stop, and look in the same direction I am to check if there's something happening lol. i swear i don't do it on purpose, it's just i sometimes forget to jiggle the mouse, metaphorically speaking. but yeah if you want to confuse and disrupt your convo on purpose, look intently to somewhere behind them, but far enough to the side that it clearly isn't them you're looking at. they'll turn to look eventually. I've run away from uncomfortable interactions like this before.
I also found out once another thing you can do with eye gaze is if you want to get through a fast moving crowd with as few people bumping into you/doing the weird left left right right dance as possible, you have to stare in the direction you're trying to move. basically, match your gaze vector to your motion vector, and people read that instantly, even when they look like they're not paying much attention to the people around them, and they'll instinctively stay out of your way if they can avoid it. however if you look off to the side, for example perpendicularly to your motion vector, you'll get a lot more of the left left right right dance where they try to go where you aren't going, and so do you, simultaneously.
I was just talking to my 15yo daughter about masking and the effects of doing it. I’m definitely going to rewatch this with her. I wish there was some sort of help I could give her, but I haven’t figured out what to do for myself… My only advice is to remind yourself to relax- it helps me remember that I don’t have to smile so big, laugh so loud, etc, and takes some of the weight off.
The enormous amount of self suppression that goes into conscious AND unconscious masking really does a number on our mental health. We suppress our autism. And then we suppress the anxiety that comes from suppressing our autism. I was trying so hard to get to know people and I was still being described as hard to get to know. Which was confusing, because if someone asked me questions, I was an open book, but I didn’t know how to appropriately volunteer that information without being prompted.
As a child of a mother in welfare from a low socio-economic area, I learned very early on how cruel kids could be and found ways to mask as fast as i could (people in school would have called me an A-type personality because my natural ability to get good grades without trying made me look like a high-achiever so i leaned into that role). I adored theatre and acting because i felt like I was always wearing a mask anyway so slipping into one that belonged to someone else was less of a burden than slipping into my own. My ability to learn without studying hard allowed me to slide through uni and postgraduate studies but never allowed me to feel comfortable making hard choices or taking risks. When i heard about masking for the first time, i thought it was just something everyone did because it had been a practice for so long including having "work me" v "home me" v "going out with friends me" and so may times I've uttered the phrase "I'm super introverted until I get to know/like someone and then I'm the most extroverted person you know" not realising that it was really "i mask super hard until i know it's at least a little safe to be around you and then I'll start to let you peek under the quiet facade when there's less chance of you calling me a freak for my niche interests and rambling comments". I'm waiting on an assessment still, although I've finally had a doctor not just listen but insist that i get assessed because we spoke for 2 hours instead of the usual 5 min "you're polite and put-together so you can't be autistic" sessions I've had before. I've had doctors tell me it's not worth getting assessed because it won't do anything and that I'd made it into my 30s okay (they said this unironically after i walked into their office and started sobbing about how hard everything was and a few minutes before starting me on antidepressants for depression and GAD but sure, being undiagnosed hasn't had any impact at all). So many bits of this video were super relatable even if the circumstances were different.
Thank you for talking about masking, I spent the majority of my life masking my autism and I still have to fight through harmful habits I developed. I hope the awareness you and other people spread make it so other people never have to go through the same thing we have.
I was "diagnosed" as BPD and to this day I never truly felt it was right. It was also done unofficially by a psychologist at the time when I was going through a particularly traumatic time.
Yeah, I started masking already in elementary school. Initially very crudely (mostly just by being quiet and reserved, hiding my stims, and being afraid to take any risks for fear that any move I made would be wrong). But after making a lot of social observations, I started to make some connections and figure out what the expected behaviors were. I began putting on a character in middle school and just feigned a level of confidence I didn't feel. I was terrified of being called weird, but I decided if I just tried to own it and call myself out first, it would spare me the ridicule. Like, I might say or do something potentially weird and then be like, "I know, I'm so weird!" with a smile on my face, like I'm totally at ease with myself and my oddities. And that was surprisingly successful. People stopped treating me like I was this annoying, weird, freak and more like I was just another unremarkable person.
But it was very exhausting and felt inauthentic, always having to be conscious of my behavior, body language, facial expression, tone of voice, etc. And then there was always that fear of being rejected if the mask ever slipped and they saw the "real" me. It took a lot of effort and hypervigilance to try and read social situations, as well as mask all of my confusion and anxiety. But I got very good at hiding my distress and appearing confident, even when I was screaming and shaking internally. So so often my internal monologue was like, "oh fuck? What am I supposed to do here? Am I supposed to do [this thing] or is [that thing] the expected behavior? Are people going to criticize me or look at me like I'm a freak if I make the wrong choice?" And then I'd get stuck paralyzed a lot of the time, or I'd find whatever the safest course was and do that, even if it meant completely ignoring what I wanted or needed. Like, if I was hungry/thirsty/needed the bathroom or whatever, but couldn't figure out how to advocate for my needs in a way that came across as natural and normal and situationally appropriate, I'd just suppress it. I tolerated massive amounts of physical discomfort as a result of how paralyzed I'd become by the prospect of speaking up and potentially getting it wrong or upsetting someone.
I also put on different masks for different settings. That was more a consequence of trying to adapt to the specific setting than a desire to create multiple characters (which I'm not actually very good at). It was more like, "this is a setting where it is socially acceptable and appropriate for me to be nerdy and quirky" and so I'd adopt that persona, or "this is a setting where I should be quiet and reserved, because I'm not skilled enough to figure out what is or isn't acceptable here" and then I'd do that. What would be awful was if my worlds collided. Like, mixing friend groups, when I'm a different version of me for each of them. It's suddenly like, "wait, which version of me should I be now? If it's right for one group, it's wrong for the other. There's no way to mask correctly." That always felt really awkward and difficult.
I've come a long way in my unmasking and self-discovery journey, but I think there's just so much trauma built into my experience, that masking happens automatically. Even if I want to unmask, just being in certain social settings immediately triggers me into adopting a particular persona, out of an unconscious need to feel safe. This was pretty distressing recently, when I was attending my brother's wedding. I had come out as trans last year, though the news probably had not spread to all of my extended family. First thing that happened when I showed up was getting misgendered and deadnamed by my aunt and uncle. I managed to tell them about my name change when they got it wrong, but I didn't have the courage to correct them on my pronouns. I was just massively anxious the whole time and felt myself retreating into an old familiar role, even though I didn't want to play that persona anymore. The idea of actually showing up as myself, though, felt too unsafe. Even though I know it probably isn't actually unsafe. My survival instincts just kick in and I have no choice. Masking is automatic.
This video is kicking my ass, I always thought I was just a weirdo and that my depression and anxiety was just something that came out of the blue. The more I watch your series, the more I think I need to go to a psychologist and really get looked at, lol.
Thanks, Meg, for another relatable and informative video!!! The Psychologist who did my assessment told me I had a "classic presentation" of a high masker. Basically, there weren't any noticeable social deficits during the interview, but under the surface, there was extensive evidence of exhaustion, anxiety, and confusion linked to social interaction. It's still wild to me that all the tricks and rules I follow socially are due to autism, but looking back over a lifetime, it makes SO much sense!!
18:30 I have major problems with the eye contact thing. Usually when people notice they assume I'm being dishonest, or manipulative. When in reality eye contact just makes me feel really anxious, like I'm imminently about to be in trouble for something even if I know that I'm not.
So glad there's a video today! I hate the break of routine when holiday's happen. So it's especially nice today to start my monday morning like any other during this time. :) Thank you
This is why I think theater and performing arts training is helpful for autistic people.
It helped me learn that breaking out randomly in song is totally normal, acceptable, and not at all awkward, lol. No, no, but it did provide an outlet for it and taught me that when I get the urge to do so regularly, I need to embrace the weird and amp it up into a show. ;)
It did help with learning how to project, how to talk in the direction of those I want to hear me, how to enunciate, and how to muscle through the anxiety of being the center of attention. The direction you receive from the director and others help you learn how to position your body parts in a "normal" manner and how to use the appropriate expressions. It also helped me just let myself out because everyone was a bit "weird", so you could unmask a bit with less worry. So I totally agree. 😊
Theater had the opposite effect for me honestly, being around so much oddity and weirdness made me snap the mask on harder.
@ I thought that being around weird people would help someone learn the mask, maybe even become comfortable with wearing outside the theater. Snapping on the mask even harder maybe a good thing. Of course, this could lead to a lack of genuineness.
@@ThroughTheLensOfAutismew, no.
Just no.
Horrid take. Sorry.
Maintaining a mask is a lot of work. While many of us can never truly rid ourselves of it in social settings (such as around unfamiliar neurotypicals), we should strive to reach a point where we mask as little as possible to improve our quality of life.
For me I learned early that anything I personally like or that makes me feel better is bad to show openly, so masking became simple. Supress, supress, supress. To the point that I now find it actively difficult to openly talk about things that I truly enjoy rather than something more 'neutral'. My interests have become my own private little world I tuck away from others where they cant take it away or mock me for it.
While my diagnosis is in its final phase I will be getting it after the new year, im approaching 40 now and it feels quite strange to know that im not just 'that weird one' and that my 'quirks' are a part of something many others experience too
I really relate to you putting effort into friendships only for them to fade away because you can't keep up, like I relate a crazy amount 😭 it's the worst
I've just become a snail 🐌Your videos have been so helpful on this journey to confirming an old diagnosis.
AFA Christmas, my office party was Thursday and I feel as though I failed yet another social test. No coworkers really talked to me, the food was yucky (except for cookies), and I never want to go into the office again now 😂I miss my old job where things were more suited to my brain and I was just getting into socializing with my coworkers in a more natural way. 😭😭
Happy Christmas to you and your family, Meg!
I masked my whole life behind my special interest, cooking. I threw myself into being a chef and built a persona. A person I thought I should be. What everyone else thought I should be. I made it everything I was. Ate, slept, dreamed, LIVED being this thing. I’m able to be stand-offish and keep to myself.
I hate opening presents in front of people..
this year I went around being the person to hand out presents, and put all mine to the side not really thinking ahead. I just knew I wasn't ready to open mine because too much was happening around me, and I wanted to open them alone when things had settled a bit. Well I put it off so long that people we're starting to leave when they realized there was still my presents left lol.. this led to everyone in the end wanting to watch me.. just me.. open all of my presents because everyone else opened all theirs together at once. lol
It was fine. I've gotten better at reacting but I know I'm awkward. I can't even perceive if I like the gift at the moment because too much is happening. I just try to be as socially acceptable as possible because I care about the people around me and the fact that they put thought in to these gifts.
I'm not diagnosed but my daughter is, and we're waiting for my son's assessment.
something I remember though is in my early twenty's after I finished highschool I lost all of my best friends and I didn't understand I wasn't making an effort or that an effort was needed, not to mention the crippling anxiety that left me falling apart daily made it soo hard that there was no way I could ever reach out even if I wanted too. I couldn't understand why I struggled to make friends as an adult and the relationships that I did try to make fell apart and never felt deep. and I couldn't do relationships if they weren't "real"
Not autistic but I feel like after elementary school I was placed in a lot of gifted programs, like through middle school it was STEM and in highschool it was magnet, so I was able to find people who didn’t mind as much that I was strange, I remember when I started highschool and was having trouble finding friends that I’d yawn a lot whenever I felt awkward and I mastered the art of fake yawning to give myself time to think of what to say next to avoid awkward silence 😂.
I can’t imagine having to monitor myself constantly though I did find myself going ‘that was super weird’ or ‘you can’t do that in public’ but I’m really glad I’ve found a space where I’m more comfortable to be weird especially in school.
I genuinely think one of the reasons I read SO much as a kid (besides escapism✌️) was that it allowed me to look into other peoples minds and see what made them act the way they do, both action and reaction. It's like people watching but with the added benefit of internal dialogue
I don't know if I'm autistic, I've never been diagnosed. Either way I wanna share this. Ever since I was a little kid, I've always played drums on a desk, thighs, air drumming etc. to the point of having bruises on my thighs because of it. I try not to do it amongst people who don't really know me but usually I'm tapping my feet (playing the kick drum) either way unconsciously. The pen thing is also extremely familiar. But I digress. I have two little kids (4M and 2F). I drum to the extent that they're straight telling me to stop 'cause it annoys them. I just thought that was a funny story to share.
Here's a trick I learned with the eye contact, stare at their left eye or third eye/in between their eyebrows. I've found that seems to help people think I'm paying attention meanwhile (like yourself) I'd rather stare off at something else and concentrate on listening.
I'm 48 and you are making me think of masking throughout my life from childhood to now. You remind me of me with child. Merry Christmas Meg🎅🎄🥰
opening presents in front of people is like walking onto a stage and being expected to give a speech :P for birthdays I tend to leave my gift on their desk the night before after they've gone to bed so they can open in private
We have both ASD and DID so we have something of unique perspective on masking because it has always been much easier for us to mask versus other autistic singlet friends of ours. When we saw one of our friends in the Netherlands we talked about it and it was incredible just how much easier it was (comparatively) for us to just sub-divide out to different alters to cognitive load of masking and understanding social cues and lots of other tasks that collectively allow us to more or less mask as "normal" when we need to. Its to the point where it is very much so second nature and because of the subdivided nature of the task of masking it never overstresses any one alter. We do mask our DID and ASD less as its easier to not whenever possible but if we didn't have to it would be harder but not like so exhausting that we collapse; provided we don't overstep our soft limit of around 150 -250 people (though we can expand to as much as 1200-1400 people for a couple years but that will crash the system).
Do you have any advice on how to reserve your energy while trying to integrate yourself into the world and not get overwhelmed with the expectations of being an adult? It feels like people simultaneously baby me while also expecting way too much, while not answering the questions I have about what I need to do.
Sorry I wish I had solutions but I’m still figuring it out myself 😅
I have always observed others to learn how to be charismatic and loved. I can be very successful at it if I have the energy, but it’s like giving a performance. It takes alot out of me. The longer it goes on the more I feel I’m losing myself.
Then after a successful encounter I panic. Sure I managed to shine . . . for a minute, but I know I can’t keep it up, i will end up being a big disappointment.
I totally relate to letting friendships go by the wayside because its too much work.
In my journal I often refer to people as “body snatchers”. because I feel my life force being sucked out of me.
I incredibly relate to that.
Merry Christmas Meg.
As always, thank you.❤
I love repeating old TV jingles. I grew up in theatre also. When I was kid I was very good at acting and could memorize the whole play before we opened the show. Not so much now. Getting people to talk about themselves is a tool I never though of using. When I was in my terrible twos I had a habit of tapping my foot to a rhythm even when sitting on the floor. I also used to fidget with my fingers. I try to remember to fidget sometimes still but my foot is almost always tapping. Needless to say, I enjoy playing drums.
Also, I would constantly apologize for things. It took me a few years to stop apologizing.
You have an overall relaxed look, mostly in your eyes.
In my teens I got super into the Vampire Diaries( still am)😅 I tend to be quiet and nonverbal and while also having ("high functioning autism") so watching TVD was like a way for me to learn this thing called " socialization" and conversations I've never really had to mask because I don't outwardly portrait any sings of stereotypical autism, unless it's pen clicking or leg shaking 😂 anyway ...I probably wouldn't be where I am now if I hadn't =)
Yeah, i relate. Its kinda like gaslighting yourself until you can't and the mn the inevitable crash.
I've described socializing as wearing a series of faces, one of every situation I was in. Having to balance memory of every person I knew to apply to the situation at hand is tiring to no end. I bothers me a bit when people think I'm putting in no effort when I'm burning myself out just trying to have a conversation. I get home and just want to sleep and recover, but then people want me to do more... after years of this, I merged the personas made it a bit easier, didn't have to put as much energy in to remember everything. Most people I know are stumped when they find out I didn't understand humour as a kid. I'm fairly sure people can see the cracks in the mask these days.
I always have a problem expressing emotions when receiving gifts. Because I already know that today is my birthday and there will be a gift and I am not surprised for this. So I always play this emotion of surprise and joy.
Spot on! But the year I turned 49, I got a card with a big preprinted "you're 50 - happy birthday" on it 😂
I do like gifts, but often it's hard to know how to react, so it's really nice to get something where laughter is a proper response :)
17:24 after we found out I’m autistic a few months ago, my mom is allowing me to open my gifts by myself from now on :D
Pro tip (😁): For those of you that rehearse & plan conversations - please try not to forget to actually listen to the other person when the real convo takes place! My partner used to plan conversations out and then forget to listen to my responses, she had many one sided arguments before I finally realized what was happening and brought it to her attention 😮😂😢🤷
Luckily we were both committed to our relationship & were both willing to allow one another the space & time to grow & make the changes we wanted to make for _ourselves_
[I stress, the changes each of us made were changes that were wanted regardless of our relationship status - never try to change yourself for someone else, only work on making changes because it's something you want to do for yourself, that way you're happy with the changes even if the relationship falls apart]
We just celebrated our 21st Anniversary!!! We met when we were both 21 so we've now been together longer than we were alive without each other 🎉❤️🎉❤️🎉
Sorry so long, I suck at concise!
EDIT) I just realized that i failed to make it clear that I was able to figure out that this was what was happening (her planning & rehearsing the conversations prior to having them) because I used to do this same thing and I also caught myself forgetting to pay attention to the other person's side of the conversation --- at which point I realized I needed to stop allowing myself to plan & rehearse conversations/it had become unhealthy (unhelpful?) for me and I chose to stop allowing myself to do it. Hope all this makes sense ... an ad popped up as I was typing and derailed my train of thought so I had to finish it while off the rails 😁
Im 28 and was recently diagnosed. This channel has been so beyond helpful!!
In 8th grade I switched middle schools to attend a magnet school for state identified gifted students. I saw this as my chance to be an entirely different, more “normal” and acceptable person. I wore different clothes, listened to different music, and tried really hard to emulate the people that seemed to be well liked.
I absolutely hated it. I attracted friends that I didn’t enjoy spending time with. The breaks between classes went from being a chance to relax a bit, to the most exhausting part of my day. It was intensely draining to socialize with the friends my new persona had made.
I lasted about 2 months before switching back to my old middle school. I have not been diagnosed or sought to be evaluated for autism, but so much of my life experience seems to be explained by autism.
Being autistic (and not knowing it) I was regularly told I didn't behave correctly, and so did my own research on what correct behavior was. Unfortunately, we only had two books that had anything to do with "correct behavior" which were American Girl's "The Smart Girl's Guide to Manners" and George Washington's "Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior: in Company and Conversation."
Lemme tell you, masking based on etiquette from the late 1700s does NOT make you look neurotypical.
Happy holidays lovely humans. I hope you all are doing well, remember that you don’t need to or have to do what people say in order for them to be comfortable, I hope for everyones health(emotional physical and mental) and goodness during this holiday! Have a lovely time!🪼🪼🪼🪼🪼🪼🪼🪼🪼🪼🪼🪼🪼🪼
I can relate to this masking video. I got in trouble in elementary school for bluntly speaking my mind and not noticing social cues. I also remember not being able to tie my shoes at 8 and my teacher resentful bending down to tie them.
When I was around fifth grade, I came to the conclusion that no one liked me the way I was so I decided to be quiet and speak as little as possible. I also tried to dress like everyone else, achieve in school and say the right things when I did speak.
As I went through college and young adulthood I spoke more but continued to mask. I thought I was doing a good job until a coworker called me out for some bluntness and social cues I missed. Although I was embarrassed and sad, I realized I needed to stop hiding from my situation and look into an autism diagnosis. I received my diagnosis several months ago at age 35.
Now, I am doing my best to accommodate myself such as wearing flare engage earplugs in social gatherings. However, due to masking for around 25 years, I do not know who I am nor how I stem. It will likely take me years to get to know myself as well as fully accept myself.
I am glad autism resources are more available then they were in the 1990's, 2000's and even 2010's. I am glad that many of you are beginning your diagnosis journey earlier so that you can better know yourselves and know accommodation options.
I don't think it is ever too late to get a diagnosis. Am hoping I can help my mom on her 60's get one soon. I wish all of you the best!
There's no direct link to the topic of the video but thank you for putting a yellow thumbnail for every autism diag/advice/signs videos, it really helps to spot those specific ones between all the videos when I'm searching for some information
I can relate to you SO much and I’m in my 40’s! I had no clue what I’ve lived through my whole life, not ONE clue!! I also have adhd as well. I just found out when my only child, daughter in 4th grade, and just got diagnosed with level 1. I masked constantly and in learning about her I found myself. I would just call my asd as “it”. I would say whatever “it” is causes me to do: and I’d list all the common experiences of level 1 asd. I’m very new to a of this so I’m learning & searching to know as much as I can. Thank you for your channel so much!!!💕
What I hated the most about opening presents as a kid was if I didn't instantly knew what it was. I vividly remember getting a portable CD player from my step grandma and since I didn't know what it was (at that point I was mostly still listening to cassettes) I asked and they made me guess so I was like "Is it a scale?" and from then on I was made fun of for years for mistaking a walkman for a weight scale.
6:00 it's Maurice Moss! So cute
My personal tip for filling up the conversation: (aside from small talk of weather and the other person’s day/week, which are also handy scripts though difficult to facilitate enough interest) ask about what the other person’s hobby/work, and as someone who loves the process of learning, I just treat it as a curiosity stream, genuinely wanting to learn about the details of the knowledge the other person has, and it is much easier to keep finding a question from the responses they give than doing back and forths
Videos like this are the reason I support you on patreon. Many autistics have interesting stories and explanations, but nobody gets them across as well as you can. Pls keep up the good work!
The transition from online schooling to high school was a nightmare for me. I'd spent two years shedding my mask at home, then I had to reconstruct it in a few hours. And my parents ask me why I hated my first two years.
You inspire me so much!!
Thank you, i'm already waiting for the unmasking video!
24:22 so real and relatable, these situations are hard to look back on and I started to realise post-diagnosis (recent and late) that I have probably caused some hurt by pulling back. I avoid forming new friendships now because I know this will happen sooner or later, I even forewarned a recent friend but it still seemed to go the same way. Added to the confusion of trying to navigate social situations, it just sucks.