Autistic Masking Explained | Examples of Why You DON'T Always Realize We're Autistic

hey folks welcome back to the life autistic we're gonna talk oh my gosh we're over here yeah you know when daredevil like before he gets his real mask you know he just kind of has it over okay that's not gonna work and this isn't gonna work either so you guessed it we're gonna talk about autistic masking what it really is a little bit about what it is and maybe dispel some of these misconceptions here all right just quick walk about here if you're new to the channel old the channel whatever really appreciate you liking and subscribing so you're the first to know when we've got new episodes based on the sounds of my children they're excited about that as well so there's two main things that i'm hoping we can cover throughout the course of this video one it's not just a mask it's many masks and two later on to the end i'll share probably the most important mask that i've got to wear as an autistic person hang tight for that one but first let's cover some of the basics so if you come across any autistic ally neurodivergent person actually autistic at all on social media or the internet or maybe you've looked it up but you've probably seen something about this concept of autistic masking and this isn't really a common term that you know neurotypicals use i didn't really use it much growing up and it wasn't until later that they learned oh my gosh i've been doing this almost my entire life hey we're outdoors why not so in a nutshell masking is a set of behaviors that we have to intentionally or unintentionally adopt suppress or enhance to kind of fit into what we perceive as social norms there's a lot of these in a way it's a way of acting normal to where we don't really let our autistic attributes hang out there in the open why well you can guess why some of that stuff's a little weird and people don't like it so we kind of internalize it and hide behind a little of these masking behaviors whether we should do this or shouldn't again it's a different video i'm just hoping we can unbox what it is and what it looks like so you know what we're up to so we're gonna cover three three things that you know people can misunderstand about masks so one one so one masks are weighty they're inconvenient have you tried going outside in this pandemic era lately you probably know that it does feel intrusive our masks can definitely range from lightweight to very heavy weight for different reasons on their own two it's not always a cutesy thing you'll see a lot on like tic toc in other places that it's basically just stim suppression or listening to a favorite song like a normal person or caring about your business without like actively stimming i mean that's that's well and good but that really only captures a very thin slice of what masking is to some autistic people to be fair my masking is my own autistic mask mine are not others we don't we don't share masks okay it's not always a really fun cute sort of thing sometimes it's critical for our social survival and then the third is that it's not always about suppressing a mask isn't always there to dampen attributes sometimes it's enhancing them so imagine like h2 is a luchador i wear a mask to bring more energy or add some more fuel to a fire or to project things further kind of like now my natural state isn't super high energetic sometimes i'm masking throughout a video and maintaining eye contact which is both a difficult thing to do and two difficult masks to wear but here we are so one of my most common masks is the eye contact mask i don't know how regular people do it and i know it's something people are coached on but actually sitting through and maintaining eye contact without it looking awkward weird remembering to blink that's difficult and i'm intentionally wearing and projecting a mask that makes me think internally okay i'm making eye contact with this person i've gotta maintain it i've gotta look and just find ways to suppress that dread and anxiety and everything i feel when i'm trying again to pass as normal so it's extremely difficult so if you do find you know an autistic person me making pretty good eye contact with you it's even less natural than it is for other people and sometimes you just gotta break it muse look at your feet bounce around on your heels a bit eye contact is definitely a big form of masking for many of us autistic people one of my other masks is kind of like an anti-fidget mask you guess you could call it an anti-fidget suit of armor i do a lot of meetings on camera and i'm lucky enough to get out of doing these in person near my desk i have an assorted collection of things that you would consider fidgety items it's like this notepad for example like i'll leave through it combine it with this clip which i'll kind of bend i'll run through a callous on my fingers occasionally sometimes i'll click and clip it to my notepad and kind of just press the uh i press the little buttons here i don't even i don't even know what this is i don't do a lot with paper another favorite that i got a lot of flack for was my pens or in this case an apple pencil and i'd adopt a weird habit of taking a drag of my pen people would call it my inca team but this is also a fidget so if i'm really more of my open autistic self with somebody that i trust i'll just kind of grab this and you know noodle around with it a lot more pronounced than i would with somebody where i've just gotta put on the anti-fidget mask and just nod and listen and find something else to do with my hands so maybe it's more like handcuffs or air pods i love these and if you don't have a case of air pods i mean just the satisfying click sound that they make [Music] it's just perfect it's again a nice little fidget and it's practical i like the way it runs and grooves along my hand when i try to close it and last but not least is something that i had to move away it's this everspin top which will literally spin for about 10 minutes straight it's pretty spectacular but i would just spin this during meetings and then it would rattle like in the middle of a meeting because i'd forgotten it spun it so it has this interesting little groove this ruby tip so again i should probably put some of my fidgets and stem toys away from my desk but this is who i am and i don't want to mask that all day but not fidgeting i mean that's its own autistic mask right off the bat and then we talked about again the h2 luchador or whatever some masks are more high-energy projections typically i'm not i'm not a high-energy kind of guy i i tend to stay pretty mellow so it's easy for me to kind of maintain that neutrality but bringing up and ratcheting up my energy level i mean that takes a mask all on its own i've actually gotten way too many good positive compliments and great feedback about my skills as a presenter because i really do a good job of engaging my audience bringing a lot of people in making great activities and really being able to compellingly speak to people it's exhausting that is a tough mask i don't like being in that wrestling ring all the time couple weeks ago i had to do these presentations back to back to back it is hard to be an autistic luchador masked magician wrestler whatever bringing a lot of that firepower it gets exhausting for us autistic people that is again not my natural state and i know it's draining because it's an energy expense but when it's a kind of autistic energetic output that's unnatural but again it's funneled through that mask where you're like painting a smile on it or something that's definitely one so again it's not always suppression sometimes it's active projection so yeah if you're in one of my presentations just know i got a good hunter mask going and i just can't keep it up for hours on end so give me a break and you know how autistic people have special interests and obsessions that they never stop talking about yeah i've got them but i have a mask too that basically shuts my mouth when i'm around people where i just don't go at length on my latest obsessions and special interests anymore yeah when it came to battlebots season three like one of the more understated elements of winning that competition and kind of why christian carl barr did as well as he did was due to the fact that he emphasized reliability and he knew that you didn't really need an active weapon in order to you know earn a win in most matches i mean that's kind of why minions succeeded so well because of its super reliable drive train it didn't need a self-writing mechanism as much as other robots did because he could simply out drive most other competitors so yeah that's a tough one but i intentionally have to go into conversations almost with like the clamp that kind of pinching mask pinch to where i'm intentionally masking by not talking about my special interests and boring you all to death because i i kind of want you to talk to me again in some cases or if i don't hey i'm going to go at length about battlebots and you're just going to have to sit through it the circular saw was basically just a wash and they're just for sparks and tricks but peace i mean so at the end of the day it begs the question why do we mask or protection it's to limit exposure it's to kind of preserve what little social energy stressors all that that we can bring to any given day for example here's a mask that i have to put on pretty much every single morning and i'm not i'm not perfect and i try to be a good dad and a good husband and a good father but every morning i'll tell you what it can be an absolute wreck trying to get rid groggy kids and my wife out the door to get everybody to school and it's it's hard because you know little children don't always want to wake up they don't always want to eat their donuts and cereal for breakfast i have a five month old she's very unpredictable and when everybody's stressed or crying or both or sleep depraved it's it's taxing i just want to scream i want to be the one to lose it i want to be the one who can also cry and stomp and yell and just blow up but i don't i mask that that's an iron mask that i i kind of have to wear i need to do that for my family's sake for everybody's sanity is it easy no but is it essential absolutely you know i want my family to look at me as a as a husband and a dad who can manage it and can take care of it so yeah i've gotta wear a complete lead iron mask for about an hour every morning no matter how crazy or cranky everybody feels because it's necessary gotta do it i've gotta withstand that heat get things done get them all out the door safe sound happy dressed fed yeah i think that about covers it so there is one more mask that you know as a kid i really didn't know how to put on or how to wear but as a dad well [Music] so yeah being touched and manhandled and kid handled that's kind of a mask too i don't always like it sometimes i get overcrowded we are doing tricks and sometimes it's a little bit exhausting but you know what this is one of the most essential masks that i put on i'm happy to be a superhero with this i want to be a super dad yeah it's not exactly my natural element but it's unnaturally good do you like shaky back rides yeah multiple babies at once it's the dad life right you get used to it you mask up so that's it that's the many masks of autism and many many more that others wear others share that i don't wear nor do i share but these are mine and yeah the touch one uh that's that's an important one it's a great human connection for me his dad for me as a husband i mean that's that's essential but anyway thanks so much for tuning in i hope this was helpful i'd love to hear your feedback and comments on ways that you've either you know found ways to cope with masking or have taken the autistic mask off i mean that's awesome good for you otherwise thanks so much looking forward to your feedback be sure to like and subscribe blah blah all that good stuff cheers i mean when it came to super heavyweights they were notoriously unreliable so that's basically all you needed there wedge like with multiple treads it's the same reason why overkill also did well in the heavyweight class mauler who famously failed when he tried to knock out kilohertz they had to balance this a lot differently

Channel: Hunter Hansen - The Life Autistic

Views: 2,949

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: hunter hansen, the life autistic, hunter hanson, asd, autism, autistic

Id: cdVs5ceuEVQ

Length: 11min 49sec (709 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 11 2020