• Welcome to Autism Forums, a friendly forum to discuss Aspergers Syndrome, Autism, High Functioning Autism and related conditions.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Private Member only forums for more serious discussions that you may wish to not have guests or search engines access to.
    • Your very own blog. Write about anything you like on your own individual blog.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon! Please also check us out @ https://www.twitter.com/aspiescentral

“Camouflaging” of Autistic Traits (Masking) linked to internalizing symptoms such as anxiety and depression

This topic has really got me thinking today, and I would like to share a little more because it has deeply impacted my life.

I have masked heavily throughout my life, but this has also been in combination with not understanding autism. Now, I am much more free to choose when to wear a mask, and when not to, and I am just beginning to understand what the differences are.

As a young girl, my experience was rejection and confusion from the world. Even if it wasn’t outright rejection and cruelty, as I did have a trauma free childhood, it was my perpetual status as being too sensitive, misunderstanding things, and not feeling the attachment to other people that get many people through difficult emotions.

As such, the mask developed on its own. The ability to camouflage and the reasons for doing so feel innate. I perceived the world around me as hostile, and so my survival instinct kicked in to become the chameleon. There is safety in not being noticed as opposed to being noticed as a problem or a defective child.

So the mask developed on its own in a way. And it was so effective for me that it persisted until I was in my late 30s. It was just a few years ago that I could even begin to understand that there was a difference in what was beyond the mask and that which is behind the mask.

It is difficult to begin to dissolve such a critical survival tool; it feels inherently dangerous to participate in the world as just me. I am proud of my survival skills to become the chameleon, but it has left me with a serious lack of true identity. It’s like Batman, donning his costume for too long, getting confused between who is Bruce and who is the Batman. I have spent my life in so many different personas and even though all of them were somehow a piece of authenticity, none of them were the whole, true picture. There was always yielding to others’ ways.

It takes great courage to open your eyes at 42 years old and begin the process of learning my identity as a young teenager would. I don’t know that I have this courage, but I do feel strengthened by my participation here on the forum. There is an awakening that needs to happen, a morning for chances lost that the real rodafina was crushed beneath the world. It’s just that the world wasn’t actively doing the crushing. It was more that I do not trust the world, and so I crawled beneath the biggest, safest boulders, and did the crushing myself.
Rodafina, you have just described me to a T as well, thankyou for sharing that, I needed it more than anyone could know xxx
 

New Threads

Top Bottom