The unspoken struggles of being a high masking Autistic

let's talk about that post-socializing processing so I'm sure a lot of you guys can resonate with this but this was one of the most prominent autistic experiences in my own Journey when you're diagnosed later in life there is this whole process of trying to bring awareness to what your masks are things that you just kind of unconsciously but at the same time consciously did but for your whole life you just thought that those were aspects of yourself while you seemingly kind of learn to unconsciously suppress your autistic self and learn how to try to live life in a neurotypical way for a lot of other people out there who are late diagnosed like me are usually people who are high masking so there's this particular thing that I've noticed about myself and I feel like a lot of other high masking autistics out there can also resonate with this and it's this whole experience of analyzing yourself the social situations that you are just in the conversations you had the scripts that you were following in those interactions and just kind of analytically studying the way that you performed in those interactions and trying to point out the things that went over smoothly and correctly and the things that didn't really go over as well I want to talk about this experience because I feel like if we don't bring awareness to this thing that we do we can tend to go through life putting ourselves down again and again without really knowing that we are doing that I think a part of this video is not only to talk about this right I just want to have like a casual conversation about what it's like to go through this but I also want to talk about ways that we can do this in a more healthy way perhaps where we don't have to put ourselves down as much or in certain moments when do you have to draw that line with over analyzing what you could have done what you should have done a little bit too much and when to kind of lay that to rest and just give yourself some reprieve so this is something that I've always done throughout my whole life to a very intense extent because I was such a high masking person throughout my whole life I think that's part of the reason why I wasn't diagnosed until later and I think a big contributor to that is that process of analyzing and studying yourself in these social situations after the fact when I work with my one-on-one clients I notice that this is something that other people experience pretty heavily as well not just me it makes sense there's objective things to it there's subjective things and I always like to kind of analyze all the different ways that we are affected by a certain type of behavior so objectively I think this makes a lot of sense right in the context of autism and socialization I feel like a lot of high-masking people we tend to come up with a huge book full of social norms different types of tonalities what they mean different types of facial expressions what they mean how to interpret different types of people in different contexts what are the appropriate ways you should respond and how you should interpret what are the appropriate ways to communicate what you need to communicate in order to be interpreted correctly with this specific person and in in social situations a lot of the times we have that Rolodex at the ready in order to flip through and interact in real time right and I feel like a lot of us can get really smooth at this to a certain extent I'm not saying it's easy right it always comes out a detriment to yourself after the fact you may feel completely burnt out you may be non-verbal I feel like what we don't talk enough about is what is the effects to those of us who can actually appropriately interact in social situations let's say probably eight out of ten times because we put ourselves in these high stress situations in our own head to make every interaction go over smoothly I feel like socializing has always been such a polarizing experience for me because of this very thing that I do in my head every single time on one hand there's a big part of me that craves connecting with other people that craves talking to other people there's also that side of me that gets genuinely objectively exhausted interacting with people because I have to be so on top of it in order to go through that interaction and then there's that after part right that after part is what I really wanted to talk about today so usually after interacting with people I noticed that I tend to go into my head during that burnout phase of post interaction and burnout phase usually for me nowadays lasts for about a few hours so for the rest of the day I may not be able to really interact much or put thoughts together as smoothly I just need to mentally take a break from everything back then for much of my life usually following interactions I would be burnt out for weeks on end so I wouldn't be able to socially interact with anyone for weeks I wouldn't be able to do anything I would have really bad executive dysfunction and I would just kind of only be able to lay around and turn to Mush until I could charge my batteries back up and go back out into the world of course since bringing awareness to me doing this Behavior I've made a conscious effort to not analyze myself as much but it is a part of being autistic because you have this need to understand whether or not you have to make those social adjustments in the future that is just an objective part of life that I think you know even non-autistic people have to go through so I think it's just like a humanistic trait to want to empathize for other people and want to make sure that you're doing your best to make every interaction something that you could feel proud of I've come to notice that there's many times where I'm running errands by myself or I'm just doing some sort of task by myself at home and my mind will naturally wander into past interactions that I've had and analyzing how that interaction went how I responded trying to figure out whether or not my response is appropriate whether or not my response is something I'm happy with so for example if I'm going through a past interaction in my head and I actually responded in a way that was appropriate and in a way that I could feel good about I'm like okay that was really good I'm proud of myself for that I'm proud of what I did I'm proud of how I feel I'm proud of how I made this other person feel but there's also many times where I beat myself up over my responses and that part is really hard there's so many times where I think about the ways that I should have responded and I think about how I didn't respond that way because it doesn't come naturally to me or I just don't think I could pull it off in the way that I want I would want it to come off in scenarios where I didn't respond appropriately because I genuinely didn't know those scenarios I I kind of cringe at because I could get into that mindset of like oh I should have known but usually I could kind of stop myself there and be like Irene you just didn't know it's that simple you know now move on with your life it's like that initial cringe I feel like when you're just like oh my God how did I not see that in the moment I'm cringing because if I put myself in that person's shoes and I witnessed my response I would have felt bad or like you know you start to go over that whole process but one thing that I struggle the most with is more so when I'm analyzing the ways I should have responded and how I want to respond but realizing that I am just not capable of responding that way that is the part that I really have a hard time with and this isn't for every autistic person right but for me personally a part of my autism is just having a general monotone flat affect right my tone of voice doesn't really change from this no matter what mood I'm experiencing my facial expressions don't really change much outside of this and smiling and there's many times during social interactions where I find myself wishing that I was just more expressive if I'm not careful and I'm in that analyzing phase of post-socialization I could start to genuinely beat myself up over just not being able to be the person that is I guess more socially acceptable throughout my life and even to this day I struggle with watching other people be super expressive and bubbly and getting into so much detail about it too oftentimes I watch people interacting and I get so lost in almost the technicalities of how they're interacting I analyze their facial expressions I analyze their body gestures I analyze the tonality of their voice I even analyze the way they put their sentences together and their responses together and of course this is such an autistic way of viewing and analyzing another person right and how they just naturally interact because to that person it's just them responding to the world around them but for me it's like almost a science or a math and I'm just like how do they do that and how do I emulate that can I even emulate it I think because Society oftentimes idealizes and worships uh more charismatic type of Personality a more bubbly extroverted type of personality I can start to really feel low about myself because I feel like I'm just the complete opposite of that right I often find myself when I'm in spaces with other people or even within my interpersonal relationships feeling like I am a Debbie Downer and not for any other reason than just who I am naturally and how I carry myself but I feel this deep sense of ineptness to be someone that other people want to be around and there's been many moments in my life where I've tried to emulate that type of personality type I've tried to make my voice be a little bit more bubbly and I've tried to make my facial expressions be a little bit more expressive and if I were to think back to those moments I feel like it just never came across right I feel like in high school it kind of just came across as being ditzy for example I was always just that light-hearted person that wouldn't be the butt of the joke that was my way of lightening up my portion of an interaction but I feel like a lot of people ended up perceiving me as this ditzy person when in reality I was almost probably more hyper aware of everything going on underneath the surface than everyone else As I Grew into my early early 20s in college I feel like my new mask was just trying to be more authentic to myself and not be the butt of the joke so I wanted to be more respected but I didn't know how to be more light-hearted or more charismatic without that ditziness and so I would end up trying to attempt to be a lot more energetic but then it wouldn't come across right because my voice is just like down here and then I would try to add inflections to it but it would still be down here with the inflections and it just was not natural and I would notice it in the moment because when I heard myself talking I would be like oh that did not sound how I wanted to sound like you know things like that and I feel like that's always been such a struggle for me as an autistic woman is feeling a disconnect between what I'm feeling inside and what ends up coming out and being perceived by others and that could feel very helpless a lot of the times if I could come up with a metaphor for this it's like what's inside maybe green and what comes out maybe orange and so everyone perceives that orange color in reality you are feeling green you think to yourself what do I have to do in order to get other people to see this green and oftentimes the perfect combination to get that green across is probably five different connectors and colors to get that green across let's say for a neurotypical person when they feel green green comes out right it's that easy it's just this one streamlined connector from inside to outside I feel like a lot of the times for autistic people if we're feeling green inside it's never a straight shot it's always like multiple different connectors so I would have to use blue and yellow in order to get green out and that whole thing is so confusing especially when you start to get into all these more complex type of interactions let's say you have five different colors going on inside imagine each color has two to five different lines and so all of a sudden you're balancing all of these different lines in order to convey what you need inside out it just feels so impossible and all of these things get mixed up in the process and that part could feel so frustrating after the fact and analyzing how you should socially interact and how you did socially interact is just such a tiring experience altogether the whole topic of camouflaging is such a Charged topic because on one hand a lot of people say that it's almost a luxury to be able to camouflage because a lot of if other autistic people who aren't able to camouflage have to suffer the consequences of that right whereas those who are more High masking and more capable of camouflaging can have the luxury of blending in and out of society how they want to it's almost like that's a tool accessible to that person into that population versus inaccessible to another population it's interesting because I feel like within that topic the only people who get frustrated about it is neurotypical loved ones of the autistic person I feel like I don't really see other autistic people feeling bitterness or resentment towards other autistics who can mask in camouflage it's usually like a loved one who's neurotypical and they feel resentment that their autistic loved one can't do something whereas another autistic person can and then they want to go in and express their bitterness through invalidating the high masking autistic population and that is always going to be a conversation right because there is a lot of unspoken experiences of high masking autistic people that have yet to be talked about and I feel like we're only on the precipice of bringing up that type of conversation because I feel like now we're in a day and age where a lot of high-masking autistics are finally getting diagnosed and we're starting to see oh my God there's almost a lost population of autistics that are now being discovered I feel a deep need to speak on that experience the struggles of being a high masking autistic and when I speak on it I'm not trying to invalidate anyone I'm trying to say hey all of our experiences are valid there is so much pressure when you are high masking in order to fit in there is so much self-loathing that comes with it and self-criticizing oh I got emotional just talking about that now when you feel like you have what you need in order to analyze yourself critique yourself fix yourself you never get a break in your own mind you really never get a break you kind of learn to live life knowing that you cannot show up as you are and as you want to you will always need to go into your head go into the webs of trying to convey what is inside outwardly the best that you can and that is if you are trying to honor yourself in your authenticity there's also a lot of people out there who suppresses themselves and their authenticity so much so that that part of themselves is not even there anymore it is fossilized underground never to be found or accessed in that moment a lot of the times because you analyze yourself so much you end up holding yourself back from connecting with others too because it's almost like you can never win or you just don't have it in you anymore to put that much brain work into simply having a conversation with the person there's been so many times where I play out a conversation or a scenario in my head before it even happens and this is part of the scripting process right where I just play out the interaction over and over again in different varieties of responses and I almost try to play out the consequences of certain responses in my head as well trying to predict how the person's going to respond we're trying to predict how someone's going to interpret me based off of my previous experiences with them or my knowledge and interpretation of them only to get to a point where I get completely brain fried because there's some spots in the script where I can't fill in the blank because I don't know if I'm interpreting things correctly or I don't know if my responses are going to be appropriate and then I ultimately think to myself I just need to avoid this interaction altogether because I don't know know if it's going to play out correctly or be something I could be proud of it's exhausting to have to go through that process it's very lonely too because you end up alienating yourself from the world because you feel incapable of being perceived by the world the other day I was driving to the grocery store and I randomly played back a scenario in my head of an interaction I had with someone a long time ago and I don't even consciously do this it just happens right and I played it back in my head and I had this realization that my response could have been interpreted another way I had this sinking feeling in my stomach where I was like oh my God this whole time I thought that that interaction was pretty good and smooth and I moved on from it but now that I look back on it and I put myself in their shoes and I interpret my responses in all these different other ways they could have interpreted my responses to be negative and what if they did is that why we're not talking right now and if they did interpret it incorrectly how can I make up for it the next time I see them but I don't even know if that's necessary because I don't know if they interpret it poorly but I guess that's a possibility and I start to cringe and I start to panic and I start to feel bad about myself this is just one of the many scenarios in which I post analyze myself and it doesn't even have to happen right after the interaction it could happen after the interaction but it also kind of haunts me unconsciously even months later or years later I'll like think back to these random moments where I'm like wait I didn't do that correctly I don't think I did that correctly and my heart truly feels for myself and my clients when I see that we're all doing this you know post socialization analyzing of ourselves because I feel like that's our attempt at trying to be as self-aware as possible because there's the other aspect of autism that is more commonly talked about which is autistic people are oblivious to social cues autistic people can come across as selfish or narcissistic because we only view things from our perspective and we don't take other people into account autistic people don't know how to empathize autistic people don't know how to consider other people and that is a real part of autism I feel like I struggled a lot with that as a child being perceived in that sort of selfish way and I kind of go over that in my video where I go over my Elementary School report cards in the second trimester he wrote Irene I am worried about your behavior and how you treat others I am worried about your attitude towards school and learning I can only help you if you are willing Irene you need to control your talking and be aware of other children's feelings I am worried about how you treat others you need to treat people nicely if you are going to have friends though Irene was cooperative in class she had a tendency to speak her mind which bothered some teachers she encountered and alienated some classmates a lot of the feedback that my teachers gave me was basically how selfish I was and how I didn't consider other kids and I feel like for a lot of high-masking autistic people we become over accommodating I feel like we even take ourselves out of the equation we only bring ourselves back in when we have to scrutinize ourselves and fix ourselves it's really sad if you think about it you have to think to yourself is there a way to be self-aware is there a way to consider other people without completely putting yourself down and de-centering yourself from your own life I think a great way to try to approach this is to always check in with yourself and see how you feel about things and do what feels right to you as long as you feel right with your intentions as long as you feel good about how you want to translate that to another person there comes a time where you just have to lay that to rest yes if there's something you said or did that doesn't sit right with you and upon analyzing it you're like oh next time I want to change it by all means go through that processing and apply it but if you start to go into all these scenarios of trying to interpret how others are perceiving you in all of these different unspoken scenarios that is when things start to get unhealthy because you're no longer thinking about things from your own mind you're trying to almost put your mind into their body which is just impossible right and perceive you from all these different scenarios that all may not be true right it's just all of these negative perceptions of yourself being played out and projected onto this other person I want you guys to get used to understanding that all you have control over is yourself what you do with your life and your actions if you could feel good about what you did and what you said and how you carry yourself then that is all you can really do if someone has an issue with you if someone misinterpreted you it is their job to come to you and talk about it with you sort it out with you and for you to then clarify to them that wasn't my intention I'm sorry I made you feel that way this is what my actual intention was of course there's ways that you can open things up and open up that conversation to allow that person to feel more comfortable to come to you you know if you feel like maybe there is some sort of tension there you could say hey are we okay I know sometimes I could come across a certain way just wanted to check in and see if there's any sort of thing that bothered you and we could clear the air in that sense there are totally ways where you can open up that door for them right if they aren't comfortable confronting you directly but if they continually say there's nothing wrong if they continually don't bring anything up to you it's not your job to try to figure out what is wrong it is not your responsibility to take care of their perception of you their interpretation of you it is not your job to carry the weight of their emotion right it only becomes part of your job when they bring it to you and as someone who loves them and cares about them you are in there holding that emotion with them and figuring it out together and navigating those emotions together but it should never be something that solely lands in your lap and is your job so let me ask you guys do you guys analyze your social interactions after the fact and how is that process for you is it just a very objective experience or do you guys find yourself beating yourselves up during that processing and also does it feel like physically exhausting to you when you do analyze your interactions after the fact because I know for myself I used to get physically exhausted when I would just lay there and think about all of the social cues I missed or all of the ways that I responded poorly because it could have been misinterpreted in a certain way I used to just sit there and literally beat myself up and get physically drained from that whole process and I want you guys to also write how can you start to be easier on yourselves in this processing from here on out what are ways you can start to integrate empathy and re-center yourself in that process other than that thank you guys for tuning in with me this week I will see you on next week's video don't forget to take care of yourselves bye guys thank you

Channel: The Thought Spot

Views: 102,266

Keywords: asd, autism, autistic, actuallyautistic, autismawareness, autismacceptance, onthespectrum, neurodiversity, neurodiverse, nd, adhd

Id: uyQZcioe8BA

Length: 26min 38sec (1598 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 07 2023