Autistic Masking: How to Find the True 'You'

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DISCLAIMER: Taylor Heaton is not a licensed psychologist or specialist healthcare professional. Her services do not replace the care of psychologists or other healthcare professionals. Please note that Taylor can’t take any responsibility for the results of your actions, nor any harm or damage you suffer as a result of the use, or non-use of the information available through her website, YouTube Channel, or social media accounts. Please use judgment and conduct due diligence before taking any action or implementing any plan or practice suggested or recommended by Taylor Heaton or Mom on the Spectrum. Please note that Taylor doesn't make any guarantees about the results of the information you may apply from her website, YouTube channel, and/or social media accounts. Taylor shares educational and informational resources that are intended to help you succeed in navigating life as an autistic adult. You nevertheless need to know that your outcome will be the result of your own efforts, your particular situation, and innumerable other circumstances beyond Taylor's knowledge and control.

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You are a beautiful person worthy of love!

#actuallyautistic #momonthespectrum #autisticadult

[stefb]

You can put me in any environment/groups and I will fit in perfectly. Whether it’s with addicts, baby’s, celebraties, schoolmoms, in a school, castle, shop, it doesn’t matter. I’m late diagnosed and 69, and mastered the maskingskills to absolute perfection. And now that I know I’m on the spectrum I very slowly start to understand what I’m doing, trying to avoid doing it. But I really have no clue who I am and what I like, where I belong. And to be honest that’s a very lonely existence.

[relentlessrhythm]

A good piece of advice that I was given: Don't do things you don't want to do.

I don't carry on useless conversations when I don't feel like it and I don't act super bubbly in group gatherings like I used to. I'm not perfect but am making progress.

[deltatranslation]

The only time I truly feel “in my element” is when I’m totally immersed in music

[samamsterdam]

I've often masked by mimicking things from other people that I thought was cool. What I discovered is that the rules of society are not the same for everybody. More than one time I heard a popular person say something and everyone laughed. When I said the very same thing later the very same people who laughed for the popular people corrected me as if I said something wrong. I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

[saltoftheegg]

In 2020 I discovered BTS and I went down the most intense hyperfixation wormhole I've ever been down. I felt so much shame because I had just turned 30 and I was into this group that everyone told me was for kids. Before I even discovered I was autistic, the joy they gave me constantly was enough to help me stop masking so much. I realized that if I could survive admitting to people that I liked kpop, I could survive making a few more changes in my life that might not be socially acceptable. I started wearing the bright colours I liked and focused more on comfort than fashion. I discovered new things about my sexuality and gender identity and I had some great tunes to listen to all the while! I'm not as into them as I used to be but I'm still all-in on kpop in general and I'm happier than ever!

[meta]

The sad thing is, I think I've been dismissing my needs for so long, forcing myself to do all the things that I don't want to do that I got used to them (or rather, disassociating every single day)

[Bethany.Loveday]

Flow dancing in private really helps me. Not worrying about how I look or about my moves, just moving to the music however my body wants, it feels liberating, fun and helps me reconnect with my body.

[sueannevangalen]

I definitely find that just being aware of the brain/body disconnect is slowly helping to reopen the connection. I'm sure I don't always remember to be mindful of this, but when I do, my autistic self tends to emerge. Last week, my husband and I were in our car on the first really warm day of the season. The sun was very powerful and to make matters worse, the A/C in the car was not working properly, so there was cool air blowing on the driver's side and hot air blowing on me (on the passenger side). It was HOT. Not Texas hot, I'm sure, but hot. I do not do well in extreme heat (or cold). We stopped outside my boys' school because we were picking them up to take them to therapy and I noticed I wanted to be moving. My body was sort of shouting, "Get up! Now!" So I got out and started pacing back and forth in front of the school, in full view of some of the classrooms. I didn't think about that until later, thankfully. It was very memorable because I came away from the whole incident thinking, "I think the real me made an appearance today." It seems really weird to think that pacing around in front of a school was an expression of "the real me." But it's a start. 😊

[catherinecummins]

Imagine being on the cusp of your seventh decade and waking up to the realization of a whole lifetime of autism + CPTSD. I feel like a child opening up seventy years of birthday gifts. Each new thing I discover about myself, helps me answer questions long asked about my past experiences.

At age 57, I realized I had CPTSD and that I qualified for criminal injuries compensation. I then used that monetary award for EMDR treatment. This therapy focuses on helping the brain track from left side to right which stimulates its ability to reprocess traumatic events. To me it felt like opening a closet packed full of boxes and then one by one, discovering the boxes are empty.

I am finding unmasking similar. I focus on living authentically, being grounded in my body, in learning the names for the feelings I am experiencing, in observing and heeding my body's cues. It is such an intense voyage of discovery, but instead of the boxes being empty, they are full of exciting discoveries about myself to take out and try on. In the past months, I emptied my clothes closet and filled it with only the clothing I like to wear and am now experimenting with used clothing bought online in styles, fabrics and colours my autistic self loves. If I make a mistake and hate my choice, I just wash it and resell it.

Every day I celebrate a birth day because I am learning who I really am and gifting myself with doing and saying the things that are authentic. Like the Skin Horse in the children's classic THE VELVETEEN RABBIT, though worn and shabby I am becoming really real.

[karlahuntsman]

I am 53 and finding this channel is a godsend! I have labeled myself all my life as “quirky “…in my childhood I was called “gifted” but I knew there was more and it was frustrating not to get the help I needed. I am certain that I am ASD/ADD but I am finding it hard to take the next step to formal diagnosis and maybe it really doesn’t matter. It is hard because others think I am doing so well but they have no idea how much I struggle just to get through the workday (I teach college) where I have to be around people all day. I get home and my body is exhausted but my brain is running a million miles an hour replaying conversations and interactions and trying to process them.

I find that I am most unmasked when I interact with my 3 year old grandson. We can authentically play and imagine and I feel a freedom that I don’t get with adults. At the same time, I find that I can’t do it for very long. I don’t know if it is an attention span issue or an issue of limited energy, but I have to switch gears and get him involved with something else after 20 or 30 minutes so that I can take a break. Fortunately he is understanding that grandma gets tired and goes right along with the flow.

[oldschoolcars]

I am at 2:40 and I am laughing. Thank you. At 68, after recovering from a grueling 6 hour neuropsych exam, I just got the news: ASD with ADHD! I am laughing at my own predicament: here is this nice young woman telling me she might have a tough time unraveling 3 decades of masking and I have nearly 7 to think about!? Since I am so new to this idea I have not even sat to contemplate " what to do" and I am chuckling that I have been given this at this late date while resisting the "what ifs" one could engage in while also realizing for the first time that these gifts came from my parents at least one of whom was similarly affected, and, they had to struggle with me and with themselves while completely ignorant of either condition. So will this all be my new "special interest"? Not sure yet, but I thank you for the videos and for the acco.paniment as I go through my learning.

[shannonfields]

I write poetry to cope. This is what it feels like to be me trying to escape the mask.

When the stress is this great,
I want to retreat into myself and be me.
Not the me I am around others Or my boss
Or my co-workers,
But the me I am when I am alone With the crickets and the birds
In the evening when the dusk-to-dawn light comes on.
I want to be the me before I was named,
In that moment between birth and the nurse
Asking for my name to create a birth certificate.
The me that is like an electron when it is not observed, a quantum field when it has not collapsed,
A being of probability but no definite position or place, Existing in the foreground and the background and all Around you, but unnoticed.
The me that I am when I am not measured.
Quiet.
Self-aware.
In the corner in a chair.
Alone.
Without the expectation to be anything. Clay, unformed.
Only me.
Just Me.

[kittygartland]

Thank you so much for this video! !!! My 15 year old daughter has said "how can my friends know who I am if I don't even know who I am "😢 She hasn't talked to her friends about being autistic, she is always masking with them and is exhausted after hanging out for long periods of time. Watching your videos really helps me understand what my daughter has to go through daily !!!

[passaggioalivello]

I think demasking could be an overwhelming experience, because I don't know who I really am, especially after a life where everyone repressed the real me since I was born. I have to learn how to be myself, like a baby that discovers the world for the first time.

[rachael]

OH MY F*CKING GAWD. I needed this like right now. This video is the Universe speaking to me and I have goosebumos!!!

I'm 47 and I am finally, *FINALLY* setting myself free from masking this very week and I have never felt more free!!

[MsTinkerbelle]

My family says it’s like meeting a whole new person…they feel a little guilty because they didn’t realize my whole being (except with my parents and brothers) was masking in front of nuerotips. It feels so freeing to just be me…thank you for this video. It’s difficult being the only person in your family like this, it’s exhausting lol

[narutogoldylocks]

For me i think dancing has been one of the only things where I truly feel connected to myself. It is very weird to think about it now because I have not felt or seen that side of me for many many years. But I did dance in high school (mostly contemporary but we learned various styles & basics), and something about it once you get to the point where you just do the dance from muscle memory & you don’t have to think about it…. It’s like all of a sudden you’re not thinking. You’re just doing & feeling the emotion of the dance. I miss that a lot. I’ve been looking for adult dance classes in my area for quite some time but haven’t been lucky

[zyris]

When I was a kid I had this mental image that I was a wizard standing alone on the top of a hill with my huge beautiful black horse with his flowing mane. Looking down into the valleys below between the hills, there was the town, with it's little houses, little roads, little trees, little cars, little factories, little town hall, little school and little church, and in the houses were the families with their TV's and sofa's and dining tables and children and pets, all doing much the same things day after day. And as long as that kept happening, everything was kind of okay.

I was able to go down into the town and move around invisibly, doing what I needed to do without them noticing. But I was not one of them. And I could melt away into the night anytime I wanted. I had bigger things to take care of elsewhere. I liked that feeling.

As I grew up, I always related to characters like Gandalf, Leonardo Da Vinci, Galileo, Merlin, Rafiki (Lion King), Spock, Edison, James Watt, Richard Trevithick, John Fowles, Carl Sagan, and so on. I never told anyone until many years later because I figured they would say I was being egotistical. They would not understand. It didn't matter because they had no need to know anyway.

[Richardythefunnyone]

I went true the same.
I got a late diagnose.
And i have a like identity crisis.
And it is a hard proces

[jbrubin]

Unfortunately I had been shamed for many years but I’m learning to embrace it. Despite the negative environment and it’s really helping me.
Also I quite literally cleaned out my closet, one of the first things I did. I was judged for it but it too was very helpful.
Getting rid of a bunch of stuff I didn’t really like, but purchased because I thought I ‘had to’. Now I’m focusing on me, not trying to make others happy.
Edit- Oh I forgot, those sensory videos on here I’ve found to be very soothing and a way for me to feel safer spending the time I need alone with my brain.