“I Like My Masked Self Better Than My Real Self – Whoever That Even Is”

Written by Alex*

“It was such a relief when I was identified as Autistic. My whole life, feeling like an alien from another planet, suddenly made sense. I no longer thought of myself as lazy, stupid, or a failure. I felt like I had come home.”

– said me, absolutely, categorically never. I cannot relate to any of the lived experience accounts I have read which share some variation of this sentiment.

This major difference in self-perception from that of other late-identified Autistic women has been one of the hardest things for me to reconcile. Does it mean I’m not Autistic? (Cue incessant circling around the central issue of “Am I, or am I not” – a cycle of doubt and rumination which is itself undoubtedly diagnostic). Why, when other newly minted Autistics seem to be screaming their joy from the rooftops, am I not sharing the feels?

I think the answer includes internalised ableism, a complete lack of personal insight, privilege (of race and socioeconomic position) and, perhaps most importantly, ingrained masking. My mask, as a people-pleasing, unfailingly polite person, has been instrumental in realising my dreams. My mask also conceals a shameful little underbelly of maladaptive coping mechanisms.

“And I would have got away with it, if it weren’t for you meddling kids” – ubiquitous final words of Scooby Doo villains as their masks are ripped off …

There is a little disclaimer at the bottom of the DSM-V criteria, about “symptoms” only becoming evident where demands exceed capacity. It bit me on the backside, hard, when everything finally caught up with me and my little house of cards toppled.

For a long time, in the process of untangling and demystifying my identity (a work in progress, one I am unsure will ever be complete), I liked my masked self better than my real self (not knowing who the latter was, but being intimately acquainted with the former, as, after all, I had carefully curated her).

My masked self is a boss. She is tailored to meet the requirements of the situation at hand, at the top of her career game, well-groomed, and evokes great responses from others. Her only real failing is a complete lack of sustainability. Her battery life is abysmal and she needs a lot of downtime between outings. And she has decompensated now that she exists in a world where paid work cannot be an all-consuming special interest, with the addition of children who add their own executive dysfunction and scaffolding requirements to the mix.

The mask has been largely decommissioned. It still comes out of the wardrobe sometimes, but is more often superseded by radical acceptance of my children and of myself, as I can no longer conceal my differences. I run late, and may need to leave early. Manners and other social norms may not be enforced in my parenting. I am undeniably quirky, and won’t bother to hide it unless I need to, for my job, my social comfort, or my safety.

Lacking insight, I have had to tease out my masking behaviours, painstakingly and explicitly. I realised there are certain things I do, to maintain what I consider to be the right amount of politeness and an illusion of social competence. Things like using “respectful” body language when interacting with superiors, overusing other people’s names, and rehearsing for medical appointments or other situations where I might find myself on the spot, knowing that the social anxiety of the situation renders my higher cognitive processes inaccessible.

I am hyperaware of how my body moves in space, the swing of my arms, the length of my stride, with the feeling of being constantly observed and the imperative to look purposeful at all times, in any public space.

I morph such that the “me of the moment” adopts the mannerisms, vocal intonations and opinions of my companions.

For me, masking can manifest as nonsensical levels of compliance. I will never forget the childhood horror of being handed a mouldy sandwich by my neighbour (surplus from his wife’s canteen work and intended to be fed to the ducks on our walk). Thinking he had given me the sandwich to eat, I somehow forced myself to take a bite and profess that it was delicious. This earned uproarious hilarity from my neighbour and older sister. Their misinterpretation of my motivation as undiscerning greed was much more upsetting than having to swallow the mouthful of toxic sandwich. As a child, I also hid my discomfort during painful medical procedures to the point that I would faint, earning me the accolade of being “stoic”.

In my teenage years, I knew that it was weird that I loved the Victorian era and National Trust buildings, and that all of my English assignments were written with the cadence and eccentrically cumbersome adjectives of a Jane Austen novel. I furtively and shamefully played with my Barbie dolls when I knew I was “too old”– they were housed in a chest of drawers, made up inside as a secret palace.

For all my obvious straight-lacedness, as a nerdy high achiever on the debating team, I was also passionate about alternative music and pop culture, and felt tortured that no one could see the much cooler “real me”. I couldn’t have possibly expected them to, since even I didn’t know who the real me was. I assumed this identity confusion was a typical experience of adolescence, except that it persisted into adulthood.

I wish more people realised that a major problem with masking is that of internalising significant sensory and/or emotional stress which is only revealed once the mask can be safely removed.

I would love to see an ending to the refrain of well-meaning but unenlightened teachers everywhere, that of “They are fine at school”. This rhetoric delays identification of Autistic children and further denigrates parents who are already at their wits’ end.

And yet, the mask remains an important component of our arsenal. The mask can confer safety via conformity or camouflage. It can be absolutely key to certain types of achievement, employment and standards of living, in a society with a currency of social expectations. We must teach our children the utility of the mask, without making them feel intrinsically defective; without denying them knowledge of their underlying identity or subsuming their needs. They need to know when they are masking and why; and when, where and with whom it is safe to remove the mask. And, most importantly, a cliched concept eternally relevant to children of all neurotypes, and especially in this relentless age of social media counterfeit, we must help them to know, and to like, their true self better than any Insta-perfect illusion.

* The author has chosen to publish under a pen name. Many of our writers only feel safe disclosing their Autistic identity to a select few due to the enduring stigma and prejudice faced by Autistic individuals. We hope by sharing their stories, together, we can help dismantle this stigma and one day, achieve true Autism acceptance.