In any film, whatever the plot, someone is on a journey to find out who they are. Yes, even in Cars 2, where all the people are cars.
I remember reading a comment at work about bringing your whole self to work. I thought to myself, “How can you *not* bring your whole self to work?” I have never woken up on a Tuesday morning and considered leaving my ankles or eyebrows at home.
Ah, but there goes my autistic mind thinking literally again. I think the comment was about being authentic and comfortable in the workplace. However, it’s not as simple as that for me as an autistic person. I have learnt that being my true, authentic self is likely to lead to misunderstanding, marginalisation, exclusion, and trauma.
So, when people say, “Be yourself!”, what I hear is, “Be yourself…but not like that!”
This is where autistic masking comes in. Paul Micallef (Autism From The Inside) says that masking is “a strategy to appear more normal…to mask our difference so that no one notices.” An example of masking is hiding atypical interests. So, for me, that would be not talking at length about autism because I know how much it can turn people off (thank you if you’ve read this far).
Kieran Rose (Autistic Advocate) said that masking is “actually about protecting oneself by giving others what they want and expect to see.” Masking is about making *other people* more comfortable and it is a trauma response. After years of being mistreated, autistic people learn that, by masking and being noticed as little as possible, they can minimise the chances of more bad treatment.
However, constantly masking comes at a cost. Kieran Rose also said that “the mask becomes a near permanent projection and uses up an enormous amount of energy to sustain itself… Autistic masking has direct links to the poor mental health outcomes in the autistic community.”
What would prevent the need for masking? A tolerant society? A society that embraces neurodiversity? Yes, in theory. But for those autistic people who have been masking for years, and who live in the shadow of trauma, it’s extremely difficult to stop masking. It would mean letting our guard down and being even more vulnerable in a world that is not designed for autistic people.
Masking is about survival. It is not a form of acting that autistic people do to pass the time. It is not an enjoyable or wicked deception. If any deception is happening, it’s happening within the minds of autistic people who believe they are neurotypical. I was so good at masking for 40 years, I didn’t even know I’m autistic.
As Dr Hannah Belcher said: masking “stops us developing our true identities.” When watching any film, even Cars 2, we root for the main character to find out who they really are. We’re all the main character in our own lives, but autistic people are reading a script in a foreign language just so they can get to the end without being hurt.
Photo credits: Brook Cagle & Edilson Borges at Unsplash
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