I tend to think of it as a computer. Due to a difference in hardware or software, *his* manners.exe programme is a pretty lowkey one, like the calculator or the calendar, maybe. Normal, everyday - occasionally he might need to consciously refer to it.
For *us*, BEFUCKINGNORMAL.exe is taking up 60% of the CPU at any time, your fan is going CRAZY, it's making a noise and you know your system's going to emergency shutdown at some point, but you need to keep this programme running. You might only be able to have one programme open at a time. Maybe you've also got a mental illness like OCD which acts like a computer virus (because of high co-morbidities), throwing ten pop-ups a second at you, or corrupting your data. But that is already running on a computer which has completely different specs to everyone else.
Hahaha, I'm so glad it helps! I know it's such a stereotype, to compare autistic people to computers or robots, but it's an extended metaphor that my psychiatrist first suggested to me (the OCD bit) that I've found really helpful.
I think it's fine as long as we compare the allistics to computers, too. I've often said: "imagine being a Mac in a world of PCs and then being constantly berated for not doing the same tasks *in the same way* as a PC would."
I really like your analogy, but would, for my personal use, flip it as a PC nerd, because to me, PCs are so straightforward, tidy and organized and Macs drive me apples and bananas because I find them obtuse, impenetrable, and prioritizing style over substance lol to each their own!
I think of us (or myself, anyway) as more of a Raspberry Pi, because of the extent to which we have to construct our own operating system versus being able to use an off-the-shelf operating system. I don’t know if that resonates with anyone else, but having set up multiple Raspberry Pi’s, there’s just way more stuff that you have to research and figure out and manually install using the command line interface, versus plug and play.
Wow, I would say an RPi is the extreme end, compared to a ready-to-boot PC. Except when you start low in the stack and create your own layers….shoot, that also explains where autism is *beneficial*, albeit more work to get to where BeFuckingNormal.exe can even run! RPi has flexibility in peripherals, too! Can build your own from way out in left field and still run BeFuckingNormal.exe but damn, it’s a lot of preparation to get there.
I think I'm just an android phone that's slowed down by just a whole lot of unhelpful bloatware that's always running in the background, and I can't uninstall or delete it.
Some stereotypes are a lot of nonsense and hyperbole wrapped around a grain of truth- I have dyscalculia and avoid math and logic stuff like Dracula avoids garlic, and even I framed my issues in computing metaphors before I know they were autism. I and quite a few of my Autistic pals identified HARD with Data fron ST:TNG growing up, too- sometimes Alexithymia makes me feel like I am Data going through the motions of a creative hobby rationally in search of an elusive, abstract *something*. It just makes so much sense for some of us, lol
The variance of our respective experiences is so wild and very interesting!
I love Seven of Nine, and also related to her in that way! I didn’t watch Star Trek until I was a grown up lol. I grew up around 7 boys all diagnosed with adhd and even an almost mute cousin who was diagnosed with autism as an adult, and no one thought to test me for anything so I just struggled through life and now live 5,000 miles away from everyone. Having that extra support means everything.
We are almost done with the whole series. My wife got me watching it after she did a few episodes. I have been learning about Autism this whole time and once her character was introduce - I spent a good portion laughing interally about how much I related to her. I grew up on TNG and Data was my favorite. He also had a cat :)
Saaaammme! BEFUCKINGNORMAL.exe is the mic drop of my life! My husband is a software engineer, I’m going to share this with him because we'll both get a chuckle out of it 🥹.
I'd also add learned social behaviour is natural for NT but not for us because that is where our deficit/disability comes in. It’s not intuitive for us to look at someone and go oh hey mom is teaching us manners, but it’s hard to understand the point when you’re missing key pieces of information. I liken it to an IKEA manual, some of the pages are missing, or misprinted, or in the wrong order, in another language, etc., so you’re having to spend extra time trying to put this piece of furniture together. Sometimes you get it, sometimes it’s like meh, it resembles a chair, it’ll do.
I have a similar analogy. Neurotypical people have installed social.exe that is ingrained in their OS, runs in the background with little CPU. While my autistic brain does not have social.exe, and instead relies on a series of linked excel workbooks I built myself. There are formulas, macros, and pivot tables that draw on tens of thousands of rows of social data in dozens of tabs I have complied and analyzed myself over my lifetime. I study people and compile the data conciously. It takes a lot of CPU and breaks down every so often.
You made me laugh out loud for real when you said, “Linked excel workbooks” I have to work with someone else’s excel file with a bazillion pivot tables and it drives me crazy trying to figure out why worksheet 1 did some thing or another. Funny! ETA: changed to workbooks
Damn, I've been using the other computer analogy but this is even more accurate! I'll use both from now on, this is literally exactly how I learned how to "Human" lol
I would upvote this a million times if I could. This describes what I have dealt with. The amount of information I have had to compile and must access just to make it through one social interaction is exhausting. No wonder I'm so tired all the time.
This is similar to how I describe it. I usually say it’s like I’m missing some software that everyone else has, and it’s basic and usually comes with the hardware but somehow I missed part of it. So it’s a constant running of a separate program and that takes extra effort and energy that others don’t even have to think/worry about, which leads to me sometimes overheating like overused laptop so the fan is running loud and then sometimes Im shutting down lol.
I read an analogy that you’ve just said perfectly here!
Imagine being a windows machine but nothing runs quite right, everyone else’s machines seem to be perfect but for some reason you’re lugging along and struggling, no programs work right but you muddle through. Then one day you realise you’re a mac!
Haha, I'd put it the other way around though! Macs have more of a focus on style and design and are more popular, while PCs seem clunkier and cold and uncool, but can get into the really gritty details. 😆
Oh, autism is totally UNIX. An obscure OS that only programmers have heard of, that secretly actually runs all the important infrastructure.
It can do anything really efficiently, by using very raw access to the data, without all that abstraction getting in the way. For this reason, most people (as in non-programmers) find it pretty overwhelming even when they do see it. (Much like how our sensory data seems to be less filtered.)
Its interface can be customised to be pretty much anything, though you have to painstakingly configure it to do so, and normally it's very basic. (Like masking -- you *can* make it look like another OS, but it takes great effort to do so, and it's too clunky to fool anyone because it was never designed to look good. It's a hack built upon a kludge for something that's supposed to be unseen and secretly doing all the work.)
"UNIX is user-friendly. It's just choosy about who its friends are."
[niche interest tangent; please disregard if you're just here for discussion on masking]
> "UNIX is user-friendly. It's just choosy about who its friends are."
This is my first time seeing that line and I love it! I'm dreading the possibility of being "forced" onto Win11 and if I can find a distro I think I'll be satisfied with, Linux is definitely on the proverbial table. I used Ubuntu a while back, but some programs were only available on Windows (courtesy of my university's IT department, not because they wouldn't work) so I eventually deleted the unused boot partition.
For any fellow curious folks, that line is an anonymous quote in *The Art of Unix Programming*, which is available on [archive.org](https://archive.org/details/ost-computer-science-the_art_of_unix_programming-1).
Totally get this point. I found it funny really mostly because in the last 2 years I’ve moved over to Mac from windows, as tech support and soon to be information security. Since I moved to Mac I’ve discovered my autism, so it suits me to a T 😂
I'm not just autistic but I have really slow processing speed (I have been officially tested) and I always tell my husband that I run on Intel Celeron and that I can't load any faster and he's overwhelming me with commands.
I’m autistic, adhd, and ocd. This feels like such a good description. I constantly feel like I don’t have the like…cpu power? To run even BEFUCKINGNORMAL.exe because my ADHD and my OCD keep throwing up popups and system errors and oh look minesweeper! And they pull up so much extraneous other crap that the whole system shuts down and needs to be rebooted. Then I try to run BEFUCKINGNORMAL.exe again and it all starts over. This happens until I cry or meltdown or both. I cry every day and I meltdown at *least* once a week still and I’m 40 and I work from home. If I had to go into the office and take public transport again (I cant drive, I know how but my meds make my already not great spatial awareness so bad I’m legally not allowed to do it) I would melt down probably 4 to 5 times a week. It used to be once a day, the second I got home from work. Sometimes it’s been while I’ve been at work. This was all pre-diagnosis too so I was suffering in silence and didn’t know why. I just assumed I was broken. It’s what everyone had told me my entire life after all. Thank you for this. I feel…just…better knowing I’m not alone.
This is fucking brilliant. Also stealing.
Literally every interaction I’ve had so far at work today, I’ve walked away feeling like “OHMIGOD what the fuck is wrong with me why am I like this”. Like the simplest things like a guy trying to figure out how a door opened, and a coworker complimenting my pants. My responses are just so wrong and awkward and terrible. I’m 40 years old. It’s just so exhausting.
I feel this in my core, lol. Just yesterday I came upon some people from work who I had just met earlier that day, but we hadn’t really *talked* talked, just sort of said hi and acknowledged each other as knowing each other from coworkers knowing each other, etc.
I ran into them in the middle of a project somewhere I wasn’t expecting to see them, and it was like my brain went totally sideways, and regular human interaction wasn’t possible. I don’t even know what goofy, awkward, nonsensical pleasantry I blurted out, but I’m pretty sure it was some combination of “pleasant surprised laugh” + “HHHMMMWOWDIDNTKNOWYOUGUYZZWORKEDHEREAROUNDALSOTOOHAHAHA OK” or something 😂😂😂😂🫠🫠🫠.
Walked off muttering “WHY AM I LIKE THIS” 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️.
Before I understood what was going on with me, I used to call my hodgepodge of cognitive workarounds, processes and social subroutines /RUN_HUMAN.EXE. There were many internal system messages about stack overflow and low memory. Never did get the damn thing out of beta.
I described it as being a normal car that looks like a racecar, and forcing yourself to perform like a one. The wheels start coming off and the car falls apart slowly, you know the car won't be able to carry you much longer but you have no choice
This computer analogy is wayyyyy better
That is a brilliant description it definitely catches how much information we're constantly processing that NTs don't have to because it's just part of who they are...?
Yeah this makes WAY more sense to me. I don't get the imaginary audience effect even a little bit
I often feel like a computer that was fed code with an unknown value. I can't parse it, so I just do nothing (or crash!) and return a runtime error
Slight tangent but I love that we are living in the age of computer analogies. Brains have never had such a well-understood analogous thing in our everyday lives!
I also use computer analogies to frame things for my husband! Like I'll tell him that I'm running low on RAM today or some plans are hard for me to change because I can't overwrite the existing info.
Because when you're applying "learned manners", these become second nature so you don't have to think about it. Like breathing or blinking. But masking never becomes second nature, it isn't instinctive and it's typically something people are very conscious of.
I compare it to driving a car. Most people (me included) eventually drive using muscle memory. But some people always drive as if they're still learners, thinking about everything they're doing - now I change gear, now I check mirrors, do I have enough space to get through there, now I indicate, now I move out, now I take my foot off the accelerator, now I check mirrors again.
Masking is like that. It's exhausting.
My lived experience is different (which is to say, not any more valid than yours, just different) where masking is absolutely second nature to me. I don't know how unmask, or really who I am fundamentally sans mask. I was taught by my peers at a young age that I'm a fundamentally disgusting and repulsive person, and I still deeply feel that if I don't mask, I will be "found out" as that repulsive child.
I have no idea where my mask stops and my personality begins. While it means that masking doesn't take conscious effort (just a fuckton of subconscious effort), it also means I live within a complete crisis of self identity.
This. It's like you're me when I was in my 20s. It was like a crisis of identity. I had no explanation or understanding of what I was feeling. For 5 years or so, I worked on figuring out what it is I like and want to be identified with if people think of me.
So now I've been working with myself over the last 10 years to develop my unmasked personality and I still feel like a blank imposter about it most of the time. Like who am I to change who I'd been to these people and expect them to still love me and want to be around me. Internal monologue is such a bitch sometimes.
It has definitely thrown some people for a loop. But I do feel less like my brain is caged for good behavior on a regular basis.
And I hear you on the self identity crisis I went through that and had pretty much a complete mental breakdown when I was left on my own when my family went out of state for a week and had to build start building myself back up starting with the only thing I knew for sure which were my diagnosis and eventually after a couple months of constantly pondering it in the back of my head I figured out a description of the kind of person I want to be and that became the stepping stone for starting to build and figure out who I actually am other than my mask.
I will say this it helps if you have a group of people who are new in your life and I personally would say finding them online is best that you can completely drop all of your filters drop your mask and not worry about being as weird or whatever they're going to think you are because you can filter them out or they can filter themselves out of your life really easily online you can go through all these different stages of do we get along can they deal with this part of me did they if they stop talking to you it doesn't really matter you don't know him all that well before you ever meet them and incorporate them in your actual real life.
The friends that I've met online and gone through all those the stages of elimination to get to the people who actually like me for who I am and they realize that who I am online is actually who I am it's not just some online persona like for most NTs, they are the only part of my life where I don't ask anymore and occasionally they'll even call me out when I come into a conversation and I still haven't dropped the mask from a real world conversation into a conversation with them but nobody in my prior life gets me unmasked and the only these people who are new in my life are the ones who actually know me unmasked get no filter of what comes out of my mouth or what I'm thinking and it's actually been really liberating because there's a couple people who when they have questions or comments or what not they'll just spit them right back out just like I do my thoughts and having an NT friend that does that I have got to say that is an absolute godsend you always want one that will just ask whatever is on their mind say whatever's on their mind will be blunt will be honest without worrying about hurting your feelings will actually say what they mean and oh it is such a mental physical emotional psychological probably even religious relief!
My skin is also second nature to me but that doesn't mean that I'm not constantly processing all the what ifs and all the possible scenarios for every single little teeny tiny thing I do it's just not an actual words and the forefront of my mind but it's definitely taking up about 75% of the rest of my mind...
Fuck, that’s how I still drive
I’d say masking is second nature to me in some ways and not in others. I’m very conscious of my eye contact, body language, and interruptions. I’m less conscious of… idk, my tone maybe? I don’t even know
Weirdly enough, I first started thinking I could be autistic after watching myself on national television (and trying not to mess up!)
I think for me, it's about feeling like I'm performing at all times. Which is not to say that how I feel, what I do or how I act isn't genuine, but I'm constantly thinking about how I translate that into an interaction in a way that's appropriate for any given setting or relationship.
For example, a friend of mine in a group chat recently shared some shit news she'd had. I felt sad and sorry and angry for her that this was a situation she now had to deal with. But I have to *really think* about how I express those feelings. Naturally, I have no idea what words to use, how to act, what facial expression to have, what will make a person feel better, in that situation, and I have to actively think about each little detail to get it as right as possible.
I think people read me as coming off a little affected (not sure if they actually twig that specifically, or whether it's just "she doesn't feel quite like the rest of us"). What I feel is completely genuine, it's just that how to express it to others is very difficult to me.
Omg, I have been on national television in my country, and I went viral for something completely irrelevant autism-wise (one of my body parts). But one thing that a lot of people said was that I seemed really calm, tranquil in an anxious situation, considerate, friendly and smiley.
But it was all masking. I was in a state of absolute *terror*. But I was giving exactly the same performance as usual, just with a wider audience. I was already used to consciously controlling my facial features, my expressions, my intonation.
I definitely come off as pretty affected too, and more so the more of my mask that I drop! I speak like an Edwardian or an android, no in-between. 😭
>I think for me, it's about feeling like I'm performing at all times. Which is not to say that how I feel, what I do or how I act isn't genuine, but I'm constantly thinking about how I translate that into an interaction in a way that's appropriate for any given setting or relationship.
I have said this *exact* thing before. The "it's still genuine, but" has always been difficult for me though because I didn't know how to finish the sentence. Thank you for finishing it for me.
Omg feeling like everything is a performance is such a relatable way to put it. It's like I've been running lines for a show every day of my life. Trying to plan in advance, every single conversation so I at least have that as a contingency plan if my improvisational skills fail once the curtain lifts. In my mind it really does feel like practice for a school play or some such thing...like the whole.world will have the capability to witness my potentially dramatic failure and there are mean teenage girls around every corner waiting to pounce and mock me at my first misstep.
Exactly. It's a reality TV competition, and nobody told you the rules while everyone else has been well-prepared. And you're left with the distinct feeling that if (when) you fuck up, people online are *absolutely* going to make memes about it.
And like everyone is in a group chat except you, this always seems to happen at my workplaces. I somehow never get invited to the secret “fun” work group chat, just the official one with all the stress lol.
Wooooow. This hit me hard. My sisters have a group chat with my one female cousin, and not me. Like, why??? I don't understand 😭
(To be fair, I am also in a group chat with all of them, and also just my sisters... But it is rarely used. And the ones with just me and my sisters makes sense because we're siblings.)
I feel like they have this group chat just to talk about things I wouldn't "get"
And so you try to make your own but everyone knows they’re home made and wonders why you didn’t just buy yours, so they look at you weird all the time and you don’t know why because your home made one fits fine.
Yes! And the homemade tees you made were with fabric paint, but every day the ink drips or fades and so every morning you have to re-do it. And throughout the day you need to keep fixing and getting out your fabric paints and touching it up, and it’s exhausting trying to keep your shirt looking the same as everyone else’s.
And every time the popularity votes come back, you seem to be at the bottom no matter what you do, and you can’t figure out why people don’t like you and what you’re doing wrong.
Plot twist: you think you figured it out because last week you did well with the popularity votes but you’ve gotten too comfy and forgot there were secret rules and this week the votes came back and you’re actually getting kicked off the island
Hmm, I got into theatre as a kind and one time, a theatre teacher was trying to explain how to embody a character by saying “just BE the character, don’t be YOURSELF, WATCHING YOURSELF be the character.”
And I realized I’d been “watching myself be the character” in my real life forever? Practicing vocal inflection, consciously crossing and uncrossing my legs to appear “casual,” practicing looking at the bridge of peoples noses because I was afraid of getting caught being “creepy” looking at their earrings or tattoos or clothes instead, absorbing every etiquette tip from Dear Abbey or Ann Landers, developing specific “personalities” for each friend group, being unable to focus in class because I caught myself “fidgeting” (probably stimming) in class or called out by the teacher and then ALL OF MY ENERGY goes towards suppressing it and I can’t focus on the lesson
It never occurred to me that this sort of thing might be effortless to other people.
I feel like I am living inside my head at all times, piloting a clumsy cyborg Megazord robot around while painstakingly overthinking every move and rationalizing that everyone must also feel this way?
I like the piloting a robot analogy. Like sometimes you do it flawlessly and blend in and sometimes you’re putting out weird smoke and noises while existing and even if you think “It’s exactly the same as what they’re doing” you’re trying not to overheat and it’s being noticed. But the hard part to see is, most people don’t actually care. They’re thinking, “oh that robot is extra smokey today…. Well anyways me, me, me” while you’re freaking out as the temperature is rising in your cockpit.
> And I realized I’d been “watching myself be the character” in my real life forever? Practicing vocal inflection, consciously crossing and uncrossing my legs to appear “casual,” practicing looking at .............. being unable to focus in class because I caught myself “fidgeting” (probably stimming) in class or called out by the teacher and then ALL OF MY ENERGY goes towards suppressing it and I can’t focus on the lesson. It never occurred to me that this sort of thing might be effortless to other people.
All of this. I feel all of this so deeply. There's tears in my eyes rn. It's so nice to be here with people who seem to be absolutely feeling the same way about how much effort just existing really takes most days.
...and conversely, as much as it never occurred to me that it might all come effortlessly to other people, once I realized I was different, It never occurred to me that all of this you've said might exist inside of another person.
It's almost maddening to have thoughts like "don't fidget with your hands or look down while you're talking, people are going to think you're lying about something if you're not making eye contact and standing still."
Dear Abby's are my favorite.
I do stare at peoples accessories and tattoos or clothes. Once someone in an elevator was like "oh do you like my pants?" And I was thinking "oh man! They caught me staring!! Ughh!" And I snapped back into normal... I smiled and started performing normal person again.... oops. Just lost myself staring at the print on your pants. 😂 UGHHH
Ohhhhh yeahhh I only realized in my late 30s that people probably think I’m like, a weird pervert? Because when I’m listening I “turn my ears on” and my eyes got into “screensaver mode” and I’m LISTENING and then I’ll “come to” and realize I’ve been staring at someone’s boobs or something 😳🫣 and then I’ll have to try super hard to look in their eyes and make it seem like I wasn’t checking them out because I was zoning out and trying to get my ear closer to their mouth to hear and I was accidentally looking down their shirt for the whole conversation!!!
I also turn my ear to someone so I don't have to look at their face. And I nod. Bummer about the boobs just being in the line of sight. I look at people's shoes.
It’s not comprehending the nature of indirect language and embedded social cues. When someone tells me their name there is actually an embedded question in there: “what’s yours?” In fact someone may only offer their name to get yours. My bf noticed when ppl were doing this I would just say “ok” because I genuinely didn’t care what their name was and was just thinking “alrighty good to know I guess?” It’s a lack of social signaling from us and not understanding the social signals. It’s taking in 40+% more sensory information that their brains tune out automatically. It’s much more but that’s a start. Masking is turning off parts of yourself and dialing up others and being other-focused to our own detriment. It’s being flat or easily excitable when NTs are usually in the middle energetically. It’s being perceived as uninterested because of having a stoic face when we are listening intently and actually care.
And the related rule is: if someone wishes you “Happy birthday,” you must respond, “Thank you” instead of being silent or “OK.” I got publicly shamed for not understanding that when I was a kid. So now being wished happy birthday actually gives me some anxiety that I won’t respond right in words or tone.
I get this, it's a statement they were saying at you because it's traditional, it doesn't make you feel grateful per se, they're not doing something nice for you etc, so why would saying thank you be obvious? I guess the broader rule is to say thank you to any sentiment of positive wishes for you, like "I hope your interview goes well" or "have a nice day" or "enjoy your meal".
But the rule doesn't apply to Merry Christmas... Infuriating
And people that ask you insincere questions to indicate their own wants instead of openly expressing them, I.e.:
-are you cold? (Meaning: I am cold and suggesting the temperature be adjusted)
-are you hungry? (I am hungry)
-are you okay? (I feel uncomfortable about something and I won’t accept any answer that isn’t “no”)
Then they’re frustrated when you answer the question they asked instead of responding to what was unsaid. It’s so confusing.
I literally just figured this out less than a year ago at my big age after sitting and analyzing and trying to cognitively understand why I was constantly being treated passive aggressively. Shortly before that, I’d just started recognizing what passive aggression even was because I was taking everything that people would tell me at face value, and then I would be confused as to why their actions weren’t lining up with whatever they told me.
After being called inconsiderate for the millionth time, I started explaining the situations to a counselor, and based on our conversations and me revisiting my memories of them, it makes sense.
It wouldn’t matter that I would ask them directly if they were cold, or if they were hungry, because they would say no, but they would expect me to still bring them food or adjust the temperature because that would be the “nice“ thing to do even though I already offered sincerely, and they turned me down. It makes literally zero sense.
I’ve used the analogy that masking is like speaking a second language. No matter how well you’ve learned the second language, it’s never as *fluent* in your head as your own tongue. Translating everything 24/7 and reading all the different cultural signals takes a ton of mental energy, a constant conscious effort that native speakers don’t have to make.
And yeah, in high stakes situations that can feel like giving a speech in a second language on national television where you’ll get eviscerated for any mistake. 😵💫
No wonder the battery drains so quickly.
It's like being on national television, but nobody told you your lines, and you showed up 3 hours late because you couldn't figure out why you were so uncomfortable earlier. (It was the clothing tags)
I have similar metaphor, except mine is an actor on a stage, playing all the parts, in super Old English (so you understand some of it, but a good chunk just sounds like Shakespeare mumbo jumbo) , 24/7. All the pressure, stress and anxiety of not messing up, the changing of masks to suit the role, the risk of the audience criticizing you for not playing it just right. The only time you get to relax is when you're off stage (i.e. alone or when trusted people), but you feel like you can't break character even offstage because you have to go back on stage again anyways.
Omg I never really realized about the changing of the masks. It's like a mental costume change when switching between groups of people. Like a shape-shifter shaking off the last form they took and becomig a new one.
Yep! I realized in college that I act completely different around family, friends, classmates, coworkers, etc. You play a different role that best suits the situation.
When I am in certain spaces (public, group of people that I’m not super close with) I can physically feel eyes looking at me, when I’m turned away. It’s a feeling I’m unable to shake but it’s become to intrinsic and second nature to me. I maintain my posture, hand position, facial expressions. I make sure not to stare too long at anyone, or speak too loud. Masking is like whoever is up in my brain has the strings on me like I’m a puppet, and I must be “normal”. It’s exhausting, truly truly exhausting. Nothing better than coming home and letting go of it all
The eyes omg the eyes 😭
Trying not to imagine what they're whispering to each other about me while I mentally coach myself how to act like a person in a setting. Lol. It's exhausting
And the eyes are there because they’re trying to figure you out. Something is slightly off and they can’t always tell what it is, so they’re scrutinizing and staring and watching and whispering when they’re in groups. It’s unsettling.
I think an added layer is also the fact that I think YEARS later, that was so cringe and remember every detail and thing said leading up to the social "mistake", what others must have thought of me, etc. And I expect others to remember just as vividly. So it doesn't go away it just adds onto all of the other ways/things said/ that perhaps other people might laugh off but to me it hurts that I couldn't "do right" to create a snowball of "wrong" experiences (things in quotes are bsed on conventional social paradigms). I'm trying to have more integrity as Autistic, this is me but I'm finding myself just avoiding most experiences unless it is absolutely a safe place, like total Pride flags everywhere is a good sign to me, even though I'm cishet, like places where they are ubertolerant everyone's just gonna be chill no matter what I say/do.
I actually love his question. He’s really thinking deep trying to understand.
My husband and I have discussed this in depth as well - what is the line between masking and partaking in the social contract that makes the species work? The way I see it, society doesn’t have a set structure of what norms and manners should be. You can live lots of different places with lots of different people and have completely different expectations of what is the acceptable behavior.
At an individual level, it is a negotiation of acceptable terms. At a societal level, it is random. The former, an autistic person can get. I live in a shared space with this person therefore we should come to agreement on how to coexist with a set of rules. These are often referred as manners at a household level. The latter, is masking. I must constantly adapt to every person and their expectations that are not mutually agreed upon and I have to perpetually guess by an unspoken set of expectations that can be absolutely arbitrary and often contradictory across people in the same setting. I then ‘perform’ as a person as opposed to be myself.
I love this! Yes! I think this is why as I get older, I find myself more resistant to going out in public or new social situations. I never know what to expect or what will be expected of me, and I'm so tired of having to try to anticipate what the rule set is.
To me the key is, I learned the manners but I don’t understand them so I get them wrong a lot. It’s more like trenching a pet to do tricks on command. They will do it in those specific scenarios but they don’t really know why and they can’t then figure out how to apply them in other situations correctly or when not to.
I recently saw Fern Brady (comedian from the UK) describe it as “always speaking in a foreign language all day that you’re never going to be fluent in” and that resonated with me.
I'm about to meet my brother for a chat , and finally explain how I feel. I've come up with the following, he wears a prosthetic leg, and I'm gonna put it to him like this " imagine if you told someone that you were missing part of you leg and they looked at you in your suit leaning on the bar and said , that's funny you look like you have two legs , my leg once fell asleep on a plane , feels awful doesn't it" would he want to bother to try and explain to that person why it's not the same or just withdraw from them?
Live tv, yep. And everyone is tuning in whether through the tv or in person. I always have the feeling of being perceived. It isn’t ego. It’s just an overwhelming sense of all eyes being on me and I can’t escape it. Whether I’m getting groceries or in my car driving.
Everything I do to act "normal" socially is a manual process. None of it is automatic. Everything, ex. smiling, is an intentional process: observe others, analyze the situation based on my observations, make a decision to smile, do the smile thing, observe the consequences to see if that was the "right" smile, etc.
It never becomes second nature. It takes time, and thought, and effort, all the time, every time, and I can still sense that I have done it wrong 30% of the time anyway based on reactions, so now I feel guilty and ashamed and imagine all the ways these people are going to talk about me behind my back later. Also I'm exhausted from the smallest interaction.
Rinse repeat until you decide never to leave your house again.
And then the responses to your attempts are to be called weird or creepy or seen as intimidating, scary, or suspicious. Lots of effort for very little pay off. Then you wonder why you do it because it does nothing for you and you don’t really understand why you’re doing it for others to begin with.
I think there's a few things at play here... like the difference between not being "rude" and not being "weird". It's important to try to not be rude to people, but at the same time it's healthy to openly be yourself where it's safe to do so.
Another thing is that even if you don't want to be rude, what constitutes being rude or not can be very specific on context, in a way that we tend not to pick up on. For example, many of us lie less than neurotypical people, which theoretically should be politer, but there's more nuance to it than that, and it's often ruder because it's generally seen as polite to e.g. tell a comforting lie instead of a harsh truth (I'm starting to gather this is only considered manipulation if doing so benefits you, and it's seemingly generally assumed that neurotypical people consent to comforting lies).
So I'm probably often rude *accidentally*, without knowing what I did wrong. If I explain what I said later on to my partner, she can usually tell me a politer way of saying the same thing, that in hindsight makes sense, but would never have occurred to me in the moment. Realising I'm autistic has been, for me, partially a case of realising just how often I accidentally hurt people, even those I love.
So I guess that often, it's less like applying learned manners, and more like trying to apply unknown manners that no-one will teach you because they don't believe you haven't figured it out yourself yet. It's like trying not to accidentally offend people in a second language that has a lot of double entendres, and no-one will tell you what they are.
As for the anxiety, yeah, I get just as anxious going out or having a video chat with co-workers as I do giving a talk on stage. I'm actually better at the latter, as it's more obvious when it's my turn to speak and what I'm expected to say. There's far less blindsiding where e.g. I'm trying to be helpful but that's seen as very rude in itself because the person I'm trying to help is higher socially ranking than me. I guess on stage, the rules are simpler.
If you don't know how to socialise properly, I think there's actually more chance to mess up and accidentally offend people offstage than on.
The lying part is especially difficult for me to fully wrap my mind around because I find lying rude in the first place so when I find that people have told me “little comforting lies“ I lose a lot of respect and trust in them because I see that as manipulative and unnecessary. I also don’t understand the desire to be lied to. It comes across a bizarre to me.
I know I come across as bizarre to allistic people, but they come across as bizarre to me also.
Yes, exactly! I think there might well be different standards for "autistic politeness" as in "I respect you enough to always tell you the truth, no matter what, which you'll surely benefit from in the long run" and "allistic politeness" as in "Well 'obviously' there are some uncomfortable truths about you that I'm too polite to acknowledge because I don't want to make you feel bad right now".
Similarly, I find it frustrating when people don't actually answer my questions, whereas a lot of allistic people seem to find it rude when I *do* answer the questions they ask me. I think not only do I find it very hard to spot rhetorical questions, I also ask questions that are *usually* asked rhetorically, and they don't realise that I don't do that.
I completely agree with that. To your point about answering the question that is asked, I’ve noticed this a lot with my very literal thinking, and taking things at face value. Not only do people get upset when I answer the question that they ask, they get upset when I don’t answer the unasked question. The subtext, and the implication that I have no idea is there.
It makes them think that I’m being rude or ignoring them or intentionally being difficult when I have no idea that they’re trying to communicate through hints and suggestions that aren’t even clear to me.
This is also somewhat related, but I also find that the literal thinking tends to be an issue because the things they’re saying are not actually what they mean. If anything, what they mean is the opposite of what they say, but I don’t realize that I’m supposed to have an inverter in my brain to filter out and glean meaning from the opposite of everything they say. It’s not only confusing, but it’s a lot of extra work. The language is supposed to be hints, implications, and opposite what’s said—but only most of the time and at random.
For example, I have offered people food before or to buy them something from a store I was going to, and they would say no to be “polite” but they actually wanted me to bring them something or to insist they take it. I didn’t know that, so I just took their ‘no’ as the sincere answer and didn’t bring them anything, and then it caused drama with them later, accusing me of being selfish,inconsiderate, and gossiping about me. I’m “bad“ for not understanding or picking up on their doublespeak even though I made the attempt and sincerely asked them in the first place. That to me is bizarre.
I guess I’m just saying that I get along better with people that don’t play these games.
> For example, I have offered people food before or to buy them something from a store I was going to, and they would say no to be “polite” but they actually wanted me to bring them some thing or to insist they take it.
Oh lordy, this winds me up no end, yeah. Such unnecessary drama caused by "politeness".
There's this idea of [Ask Culture vs. Guess Culture](https://ask.metafilter.com/55153/Whats-the-middle-ground-between-FU-and-Welcome#830421). "Hey, can I have one of your doughnuts please?" vs. silently fuming at not being offered a doughnut (or in this case, not being offered one a second time after declining something they want "to be polite").
If you're an Ask person and you want something, you just ask for it, and that's apparently rude to the Guess person. If you're an Ask person and you offer something, and a Guess person says they don't want it, and you believe them and don't offer it a second time (because why would you?!), that's apparently also rude to the Guess person.
Some allistic people are Ask people, and some are Guess people, depending on the culture they were raised in.
Where it gets especially interesting and relevant is that I'm pretty sure a *lot* of autistic people are inherently, *neurologically* Ask people. We tend to look for a literal interpretation first, and if we find one, that's the one we'll assume, rather than the other way around.
There are no rulebooks we can read to explicitly, systematically explain to us the unwritten rules of how many times to offer something before believing the other person's telling the truth about not wanting it, because it's culturally dependent, and it's *unwritten*. Allistic people only know by copying each other at an unconscious level without trying. Try explaining we have a disability that doesn't do that for us automatically, and see who believes you! (OK, that last bit's sarcasm -- it probably wouldn't go well.)
Personally, I can't stand being offered the same thing multiple times in one visit, it's like they don't believe me, and I really don't lie! But I won't tell them that it's really annoying me, which is my attempt at being polite... probably not a sufficient one, but I don't know what else I can do.
I've been tempted for a while to get some business-style cards printed up saying something like "I tend to take things literally" because if the context is a card you spend time, effort, and money designing and getting printed up, the person you're showing it to might realise you're not joking or making up an off-the-top-of-your-head excuse when you say you really didn't realise what you were supposed to do -- that it's something that happens to you very often, consistently and persistently. But I scarcely talk to allistic people enough for it to be worth my while.
You sound more sociable than me that you're talking to allistic people enough to have these issues, so that's something!
I am an ask person culturally and neurologically, so this wasn’t a huge issue until I started being around more guess people and that was a huge culture shock and still doesn’t make sense to me because I don’t understand how you’re supposed to anticipate people’s wants with zero input or context.
I get along much better with ask people in general because they’re a lot more direct. I don’t like being offered the same thing repeatedly either but I don’t find it frustrating I guess because I get that they’re just trying to be nice, but I didn’t think they would think I was rude for saying no thank you.
I’m only “sociable” to the extent that it’s necessary for my career and education. If I had my way, I’d honestly be a recluse because I’m not a fan of people in general 😭
For what it's worth, I realise you're a good person who, like me, is pretty oblivious to much of this subtext. You're not doing it on purpose, you're genuinely unaware of all the unwritten rules and implications.
I've written a bit about this -- intellectually, I now understand the concepts of [saving face](http://notebook.zoeblade.com/Saving_face.html), [implicatures](http://notebook.zoeblade.com/Implicature.html), [pragmatics](http://notebook.zoeblade.com/Pragmatics.html), and so on -- but knowing that they theoretically exist doesn't help me to spot them in practice, out in the field. People can explain to me what I did wrong later on, and in hindsight it will make sense to me that that's an even better way to put it (if slightly less accurate), but I can't possibly guess what to do right in the moment.
As another example... I now realise people don't usually make random observations, so much as they compliment and insult each other. So if you *do* make an observation, it will probably be interpreted as one of these. And to try to gauge whether you like something or not, the listener won't listen to your words, they'll listen to your tone of voice and watch your facial expressions.
If you're not performing these, they'll interpret you as unhappy, and therefore interpret what you're talking about as what you're unhappy about. So saying "That was nice" deadpan will make them think you're being sarcastic, even if you're not. They give more weight, when it comes to working out your emotional state and thus the emotional context of what you say, to *how* you say it rather than *what* you say.
I'm not sure how to remember to perform tone of voice while simultaneously remembering what to say. I'm not even sure how to explain that I don't naturally perform tone of voice, in a way allistic people will believe me. So people misinterpret me as complaining all the time, and there doesn't seem to be much I can do about it.
The real kicker is that if you try really hard to perform tone of voice, but you overdo it and exaggerate it too much, then they'll interpret that as sarcasm too. You can't overdo it, just as you can't underdo it. It's very tricky to try to get right.
Thank you for the links!
We’re definitely on the same page about that and I’m in the same boat. I’m conceptually aware of these behaviors and that people are doing these things, but I don’t always spot them, and when I do spot them, I don’t always understand what they are supposed mean. At best, I’ll recognize that’s something is off. I can tell that I’m missing something, but I don’t know what that something is.
I hadn’t even thought about random observations, but after reading your description, that makes a lot of sense, and definitely provides some clarity on some of the experiences I’ve had with others when I’ve made innocuous observations and also insight into what I thought were innocuous observations from others that turned out to be insults.
This explains a lot. I have a fairly flat affect, especially around people I don’t know or don’t trust. I’m frequently accused of being sarcastic and insincere. I’m also called cold, intimidating, hard to read, and stuck up because I don’t perform as much as people think I should. I also don’t pay attention to others in the way that they seem to pay attention to everyone else. Because I’m in my own world instead of “playing the game” so to speak and I prefer my own company to theirs, I’m the source of “group disharmony” a lot of the time. Even with groups I didn’t realize existed.
I seem to have the opposite assessments of others intentions because I don’t listen to their tone or expressions because I just assume they’re insincere. I’m also accused of complaining or being aggressive when I ask questions for clarification or to help me understand the rationale behind something. Asking “why?” Is pointed and rude. I’ve just taken to being selectively mute and telling people that I’m shy to avoid them pressuring me into interacting with them which ultimately devolves into these dynamics. It seems to be more hassle than it’s worth, so I tell people that I’m shy so that I can analyze them in peace until I determine whether they’re safe or not.
I like to describe it as:
You wake up on a stage, the lights are on you, you're in a costume you've never seen before, the scene has been set, the actors are in place, and the audience is waiting for you to say your line.
You don't know what the play is about, or who any of the characters are. You don't even know what line you're supposed to be responding too. All you can do is look at what you're wearing and the set design and how the characters are all positioned and try to guess your lines.
Having to memorise lines is hard. Having to ad lib them without any context, and without being detected, is even harder.
It's not just manners or putting on a professional face. It's failing to pick up on the unspoken communication rules that are not taught by society. No matter how much you pretend/mask, ect, it's never good enough, and you screw up eventually. When you're sick or tired, stressed, everything falls apart. I like the pine cone analogy. If you asked someone to carry a pine cone in their hand, they'd probably be like. Yeah, that's not hard at all. After all, it's not heavy. Now, say you can never put it down again. That's what autism/adhd is like to me.
I always feel like I'm flipping through the "manners" rolodex in my brain & there's no flexibility to it so if someone goes even slightly off-script I end up desperately flipping through the rolodex in a mad panic trying to find the card with the closest response & hoping it isn't weird.
https://preview.redd.it/cc4nlclsk9vc1.jpeg?width=490&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b0914d1e2e6d58b3a747b0d672f5c400495fd3fe
Something like video game dialogue options like this go through my brain. And I just pick one until I run out and then when I do run out, I internally freeze and panic
The example I picked was just random, but I moreso mean the more general ones where you can reply or ask random questions.
Love this comparison and the others on this thread. I’ve been feeling so alone in my struggles lately. It feels good reading experiences from other people who think and feel like me.
It would be like being dropped in a foreign country with no prior information about social norms and a vague understanding of the language. No matter how much you try to understand the cultural expectations and practice them, you still somehow fail.
I think that there is an attentional component that could help some with understanding.
Autists attend to things differently than NTs.
Our brains are unable to ‘turn down’ the attention given to (the sensitivity toward) certain stimuli, whereas other stimuli do not get the appropriate level of attention.
That is why background music can be super distracting or the tags on our sweater can drive us mad. Also, that may be why social cues are often missed, etc.
This attention issue is in the form of both too much attention as well as too little.
Now imagine the degree of this too much/too little attention being turned right up to the top. Always feeling raw and defended, always feeling like the spout is running dry.
There is a sense of being constantly sensorily defensive. Day in and day out for decades.
AUDHD here. Yes! I like this analogy.
I also feel like I'm constantly trying to solve a puzzle.
I think the difference is he has an intuitive understanding of social expectations as a baseline, and he was also taught manners.
I do not have an intuitive understanding of this. Navigating most social situations means I need to try to figure out how to act, and there's a lot of unspoken rules that people just know without being directly taught. There's a lot of brain power involved for me, and I often get it wrong.
Then, in addition to trying to figure it all out in monitoring my behaviors, like stimming, urges to run, jump, balance on things, look at bugs, etc. And it's hard to gauge the appropriateness of this and how much I should hinder my natural urges.
For instance, I nannied for several years and didn't have to worry about this. Last year i worked as a school social worker. And I would run from the main building to the "pod" bc it's faster than walking. Then I realized like oh crap.... adults dont run just because it's faster, but I'd take off without even thinking about it. It's not harming anyone, but often work environments value "optics" so it's difficult to tell the level of inappropriateness of my behavior.
Lord thats a good description.
Okay so for like me it's like an unpredictable amusement park ride. At some points in the ride you get some calm and smooth sailing, aka the days where my AUDHD is calm and lets me function and do my work. Then all of a sudden there is some sort of Jump Scare, like there is a sudden drop, or something pops out at you, or theres suddenly bumpy terrain.....those are the days my AUDHD doesn't let me function. And sometimes you don't know when the ride changes.
I’ll hold the door open for anyone and everyone, I’ll let cars get in line first, I’ll do my best to never interrupt someone speaking, I’ll apologize, and admit when I’m wrong, I just may be doing all of this with a neutral look on my face appearing either too intense or too casual. I’ve got the manners we all learn, but when I speak I’m much less likely to sound typical. That could be due to less concern about conforming to “girl tones” or other regional dialect choices or trends. It could be about whatever connects in me that doesn’t connect in you, and vise versa.
Yes some of it is the intensity felt. Some of it is what’s going on inside while performing normally. Some of it is how I may sound like a robot even if my intentions are full of blooming daisies and I may sound firm even if my feelings are full of grace. There is an expression/communication difference that is most prevalent.
If it were just manners, that would be fine. I like having a script to follow for social encounters with strangers (not that allistics even bother to follow them half the time) because it's easier than trying to mask through a "real' conversation. Saying "please" and "thank you" is not hard; it's so easy that I probably overdo it to the point of being annoying!
Masking is also remembering how to hold your arms so that *you're not showing anxiety but also so you're not accidentally touching any part of your body that someone might perceive as rude but also not pointing (even by accident) but also not crossing your arms because that's closed off but if you leave your arms hanging people get uncanny valley because "no one" stands like that even though you do (except for when your [likely but undiagnosed because your doctor stops listening the second they see "anxiety" in your chart] comorbid hypermobility makes your shoulders hurt) but if you put your hands in your pockets (if you even have them) then that could be rude because either you're fidgeting (which people hate for some reason) or you're touching your body (which people hate for some reason) or they might feel threatened because what if you have a weapon so you don't do that either and now we're walking and when I walk one arm swings and the other hangs straight but when I do that people make weird comments about it so I have to remember to swing both arms but now I'm doing it too hard and I look like I'm jogging which people extra hate because I already walk kind of fast--*
If that was exhausting to read, imagine having it run through your head for every single muscle in your body every time you aren't alone. Those spiralling thoughts are represented as a mess of a run-on sentence because that is the level of buzzing I feel in my head just trying to *walk through the grocery store without talking to or bothering anyone.* It's not not even in words, but it's still consuming brainpower. Constantly.
It takes conscious effort on my part to make "appropriate" facial expressions, and I'm pretty sure I'm still fucking it up. It is considered rude in my area to walk past a person without looking up at them, giving a little smile, and moving on, but my "hello fellow person, I see you there and am acknowledging your existence" smile is a grimace and I've started doing a nod instead but I think it might be weirding people out more.
And even when I'm alone, I feel like I'm constantly being watched and judged for every little slip-up. It got better when I was living completely alone, but the second I was back to living with others--it doesn't matter if I'm alone in my room with the door shut, or even alone in the house, I feel like I have to perform "Normal-Personhood" 100% of the time. I wish I could just turn it off because it's *exhausting*. The sense of constantly performing can't really be escaped unless I am *completely* alone for an extended period of time.
Thirty-some-odd years of constant passive-aggressive comments about your appearance and behavior--no matter how closely you've followed the rules you've been taught--will do that to you.
It gets worse because as I've been working on unmasking, I've realized that a big part of my frustration in social situations is that people don't consistently follow the Rules that I've constructed in my head to make sense of societal norms. I get just mad at people who are struggling *just like me* for not following the (made-up and mostly bullshit) rules as I do at people who are actively being mean, and that's not fair to anyone.
Manners are being polite, and nice.
masking is trying hide being what feels like being "not human"
masking is a disguise, meant to keep you safe but ultimately hurting you in the long run. Shoving down who you really are, to make others feel safe and comfortable at the cost of your own comfort and sometimes your own stability.
Masking is hiding that your a moth amoung butterflies. Still beautiful and great but different from everyone else.
Masking, is a cover over your face that hurts to wear but feels like danger to take off.
Everyone is watching to see who is different, some want to help but others see a target. Just like celebrities on TV have fans and haters, we neuro divergent have safety(loved ones trying to understand and help) and danger(strangers or people we know, who don't care or understand or don't even care to understand)
Manners are are not putting your elbows on the table, masking is hiding who you are and what you need to survive.
These are the best ways I could think to explain. I grew up in a house that forced me to hide all my neuro divergent tendancies or be punished for be punished for existing. It sucks. there is a huge difference between the two, it's not always this bad for everyone, but because I never learned to take the mask off or take breaks from it, I now deal with generalized anxiety (everything makes me anxious or panic) and depression.
I don't want sympathy, I just want people to understand what we go through.
I watched Full House and wondered how they saw in through the side of their kitchen and assumed everyone must be watching through the side of my kitchen. Watching movies like the Truman Show also felt like how my daily life is except instead of talking to the producers in the sky, you’re talking to God or the Universe or what have you.
Everyone else is all tuned into the same radio station, all dancing and bopping along together, and I spin my dial constantly but only get static or snippets of the songs. And I spend so much time and energy freaked out because I'm always spinning the dial, so I'm kinda stressed about it all.
It's like being on national tv having to perform a set of instructions that change based on an arbitrary schedule. It's not one thing you learn and then it gets easier through your life. It's like speaking in a rotating set of foreign languages so that even if you can theoretically understand, nothing can ever settle in enough to not be an extreme effort.
i s2g this analogy fits so well. when i was 13/14 i was starting to realise for the first time how social hierarchies work (like how some kids at school were considered cool whereas others were considered weird for no reason i could really understand) and it made me hyper aware of all the little things that other people did and that i did, generally and especially socially, and i’m pretty sure that’s when i actively and intentionally started masking too. at some point around that time i also watched the truman show for the first time and because i had no language to describe the feeling that i was different from everyone else i legitimately developed a kind of paranoia that my life was a real world version of that movie and that everyone else was watching my every step and knew all my deepest secrets because they were being broadcast for everyone to see. so i 100% agree with that comparison your bf made
edit: i also just rmred another analogy i saw recently that rang true to me which was a clip by hannah gadsby where they said that being autistic surrounded by nts is like being in a room full of drunk people and you’re the only one who is sober and vice versa lmao
it’s not the actual prescribed social rules that are the problem (although some people do miss out on that growing up, and i feel for them fr). it’s the *implied* rules that allistics seems to pick up on as they grow up. sarcasm, humor, emphasis, changing definitions of words. things that haven’t yet been tracked in an ever evolving world. sometimes it’s fun to discover them, but more often than not the stakes invariably end up much higher because socializing is taking part in an interconnected web of communication. when we mess up, the repercussions are real—people can bully, take advantage, sabotage our places in the social world, or otherwise exploit our difficulties within this ever evolving paradigm. it’s hard to keep track of things that are actively moving in real time when our minds are best equipped for fixating on things set in place in detail.
personally, i think growing up autistic feels like being a rock that’s thrown into a river, being expected to swim, and yet waiting for time to slowly erode you into sand (i do like the tv analogy though, but i think that’s more specific to the social anxiety that often comes along with autism).
i dont know but for me - its like he just learned manners and can use them if he feels like it. his ability to function is not overly affected by the environment he is in, he just can.
but if im in a situation where im stressed, the music is loud, the lights are harsh, people are coming up to me asking me questions and im getting overwhelmed - my brain is full. the ram is overwhelmed. my fan is whirring. there is no more energy, computing space to add in "manners." im just trying to grit my teeth and survive. my brain cant think, i cant function.
Here's my masking analogy:
Each person is a type of screen-based technology (laptop, TV, etc). Whenever people are around each other, a film or TV show plays on each person's screen.
Everyone within a shared culture owns a similar media library (aka "cultural norms"). In any given situation, NTs are instinctively able to choose appropriate content to display.
Humans are varied, so there are Macs and PCs, but also TVs with blu-ray players, and DVD and laserdisc players, and VHS and Beta machines, and so on.
Then, there's us.
What are we?
We have the same stuff in our media libraries.
We learned all the scripts and the storylines.
So.
1. We look around to see which shows or films the people around us are playing.
2. We crouch down low behind our screens.
3. We proceed to perform a puppet show version of the same shows and films and hope no one notices that our "tech" is the puppet show.
We do puppet shows.
For me, good manners doesn't come with anxiety. Masking comes with anxiety.
My level of anxiety over trying to make sure I:
- say the right thing
- do the right thing
- have the right facial expression
- have the right tone
- laugh in the right place
- make the appropriate socially acceptable comments
- give appropriately socially acceptable answers
- ask the appropriately socially acceptable follow up questions
- don't info dump
- pretend I understand things other people obviously understand but are totally opaque to me
- avoid doing the things that help me focus like doodling or drawing
while knowing that I am:
- missing critical parts of communication that are obvious to others but are opaque to me
- not understanding when I come across badly and being unable to course correct
- putting people off without knowing what it is I do that causes this
- likely coming across in a way that is rude and abrupt without meaning to
is at:
- 100% in every interaction I have with another human being at work because I have been fired or left with no choice but to resign because I don't fit in or I'm "rude". The above is every interaction at work, even when I'm not actively speaking in a meeting, I still have to make sure I'm existing in a way that doesn't put people off if they observe it.
- 50-80% in other infrequent or brief interactions like dealing with real estate managers, doctor office staff, cashiers, wait staff etc.
I have few friends because after all of the above, I have no spoons left to mask and at some point I just want to be who I am without having to pretend to be something else.
My immediate family hate me with the fire of 1000 suns because I can't mask around them any more. When I was younger I was constantly being punished and I never knew what for. My parents would tell me "you should just know, we shouldn't have to tell you." I was constantly called a liar and mistrusted. When I was 13/14 I used to go to the town library after school and get a McDonalds cheeseburger on the way home. My parents thought I was hanging out with bad kids and taking drugs and punished me for it. I was at the library reading.
I'm in my 50's. I never got married or lived with anyone because relationships require a high level of masking for me and it's impossible to maintain for more than a few months. I could not possibly have considered having children due to the sensory overload and the amount of people I'd have to interact with while trying to mask.
From what I understand, the body language and communication style of autists is as opaque to allistics as theirs is to us, however, as they are the majority, we are expected to adapt to their ways.
I have barely scratched the surface but I will try not to info dump any more ;-)
Since I was a kid and watched Truman show I was like omg that's me. And literally would wonder if people would remember this or that and worry people were pranking me bc that was the thing in the early 2000s.
But omg Truman show was life changing and i am so happy at the end... we don't know what he does or if he finds his friend or his tv dad. He's just existing and we don't know. I wish my life felt like that.
I would compare masking as acting all day long and lying about who you really are :(. (Because lying takes a lot of mental energy) (this is how I understand masking)
Being late diagnosed, I related to the character Egg in the movie BoxTrolls, he was raised to be like BoxTrolls and thought he was one, everyone treated him like he was just a little different or bad at things instead of letting him know why he feels so different and struggles so much.
If he'd been raised around other humans or had known he wasn't a tall box troll things could have been better for him.
Also the way he socialized was pretty relatable. Lol.
I do like that! It captures the anxiety side of it very well good for him!
Masking for me would be pretending to be someone I'm not but to the point where I've done it so much it becomes habit and I no longer Know who I Am anymore actually.... I guess kind of like acting you create this persona that ticks all the required boxes for people to accept you in the general culture you live in and it's not real but you've lived it so much that anytime you're in an unfamiliar situation or what not it just turns right back on whether you want it to or not and you fall back into being this person who is essentially just an act..
Severity and clarity. Manners are clear, regular and only affect a small portion of my communication. With masking it’s not explicit where it’s “needed”, is highly situational and affects a huge portion of my communication. Also with manners I feel like having too much isn’t as quickly to be noticed compared to masking. Idk if that makes sense but that’s my experience
This is actually such a good way to word it. I always feel like I'm on a spotlight, what's okay and what's not okay for me? Everything is different. It's a weird feeling.
My VERY terrible attempt to describe autism is to tell a NT to do this: Set an alarm for once every hour you're awake. Every time it goes off, add a pebble to your shoe, another too- tight rubber band to your arm, and turn a new radio or TV channel on (so after 12 hours there's 12 different things playing, 12 rocks in your shoes, 12 noise distractions), also turn the volume up on each, and turn one more light on. Now act like none of that is happening and do your daily chores/ errands/ work. Also, everyone is in on a joke except you, but you have to laugh and smile convincingly enough that no one else KNOWS you're not in on it.
I have a recurring dream that kind of sums it up. I’m driving at night (already very stressful for me) and I can’t figure out how to turn my lights on or slow down. The roads are twisty and I’m just hanging on for dear life and trying to guess which way to crank the wheel. Occasionally I see other cars. Their lights are on and they’re driving normally, but I am so terrified that I am going to accidentally hurt one of the “normal” drivers… or myself.
I've been working on this in therapy this month because this shit started early for me. I have an unfortunate formative memory at the age of 3 that I've been reformatting and recontextualizing, and what I've gotten out of that process has really helped my anxiety.
NT's don't remember the same way we do. You know the thing where we keep feeling something touching us - cloth, a bug, a sunburn or scratch - and NT people can literally forget that feeling after a short while?
Amazing. Astonishing. Fascinating.
And guess what. It works for awkwardness too. They literally forget. They brush it off, focus on the things they just wanna focus on, and move on with their lives.
They literally forget. That we broke a social rule of some sort. They've already forgotten it. How? I don't know. NT magic. But we're not the center of attention for all of the NT folks around us every second of every day! We're not. They literally don't think that way. We do. We're projecting, probably. That thing where people assume everyone thinks the same way they do? Yeah, we can do that too sometimes.
I've relaxed kind of a lot after realizing the value of remembering this NT fact about memory. It just works differently than mine, and that's real nice actually.
**I think for NT people there is a continuous feedback loop socially if things are working well.** The feedback loop for social interactions if you are neuro divergent is fractured. What would come naturally especially with practice for an NT person (go socialize with work friends - say) feels like a constant challenge. Neuro diverse masking involves constantly theorizing about what worked and what did not because it is too hard to be sure. Social cues are mysterious and require vigilance and caution and feels exhausting. **A tightrope walk with no sense of equilibrium.** comes to my mind - how would you even???
**Work example:** You do your job at work and have this secondary skill to constantly attend to - 2 jobs at once. Plus, some NTs are masters of this stuff: schmoozers! Schmoozers use that stuff to get ahead at work - rather than the job they were hired to do. They try to trip others up socially with their superior schmoozing abilities for entertainment - and they get promoted by flattering the boss, getting others to do their work, being charming - effortlessly (but often underperforming at what they were hired to do). Their feedback loop is in hyperdrive. Schmoozers also have a smoke screen that fools people - they may even fool themselves into thinking they are effective employees, when in fact they are master schmoozers. A schmoozer can use of all your spoons up if they decide to - quickly. It requires you to mount a reliable defense system in your social skills - a time waster for NTs - exhausting if ND! Do you want to socialize with work 'friends' (or anyone else?) after a week of this??? Additionally, as an ND person, it may be hard to identify the schmoozers in the crowd of people who are simply just being ordinary polite, appropriate, work people and doing what NTs do to feel comfortable, connect, be polite, friendly and scratch their own itches.
It feels like you're on a reality tv show where the contestants live together but also rank each other every week. They say they like you and enjoy your presence but you get ranked last every single week.
And they reassure you that they do like you but if that's true why are you ranked last every single time?
I saw an amazing TikTok that explained this perfectly. The answer is that it's the rules that we're not taught that are a struggle that we're just expected to know. Consider having him watch this: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTLPKpFgv/
I tend to think of it as a computer. Due to a difference in hardware or software, *his* manners.exe programme is a pretty lowkey one, like the calculator or the calendar, maybe. Normal, everyday - occasionally he might need to consciously refer to it. For *us*, BEFUCKINGNORMAL.exe is taking up 60% of the CPU at any time, your fan is going CRAZY, it's making a noise and you know your system's going to emergency shutdown at some point, but you need to keep this programme running. You might only be able to have one programme open at a time. Maybe you've also got a mental illness like OCD which acts like a computer virus (because of high co-morbidities), throwing ten pop-ups a second at you, or corrupting your data. But that is already running on a computer which has completely different specs to everyone else.
Oh my god I felt so overwhelmed just READING this because it was the absolute perfect explanation!! I lol’d at BEFUCKINGNORMAL.exe 😭😭😭
Hahaha, I'm so glad it helps! I know it's such a stereotype, to compare autistic people to computers or robots, but it's an extended metaphor that my psychiatrist first suggested to me (the OCD bit) that I've found really helpful.
I love (and am stealing) BEFUCKINGNORMAL.exe 😆
Lmao, I'm glad you enjoyed it! 😆 FAN GO BRRRR
😆
I think it's fine as long as we compare the allistics to computers, too. I've often said: "imagine being a Mac in a world of PCs and then being constantly berated for not doing the same tasks *in the same way* as a PC would."
I really like your analogy, but would, for my personal use, flip it as a PC nerd, because to me, PCs are so straightforward, tidy and organized and Macs drive me apples and bananas because I find them obtuse, impenetrable, and prioritizing style over substance lol to each their own!
Saaaame. But because of my job I’m stuck using a Mac...
Ughhhh sorry to hear it.
Hahaha thanks
I think of us (or myself, anyway) as more of a Raspberry Pi, because of the extent to which we have to construct our own operating system versus being able to use an off-the-shelf operating system. I don’t know if that resonates with anyone else, but having set up multiple Raspberry Pi’s, there’s just way more stuff that you have to research and figure out and manually install using the command line interface, versus plug and play.
Wow, I would say an RPi is the extreme end, compared to a ready-to-boot PC. Except when you start low in the stack and create your own layers….shoot, that also explains where autism is *beneficial*, albeit more work to get to where BeFuckingNormal.exe can even run! RPi has flexibility in peripherals, too! Can build your own from way out in left field and still run BeFuckingNormal.exe but damn, it’s a lot of preparation to get there.
I'm just not familiar enough with technology to be aware of things like that 😅
I think I'm just an android phone that's slowed down by just a whole lot of unhelpful bloatware that's always running in the background, and I can't uninstall or delete it.
I use this comparison too. One is not better than the other. They're just running on different systems.
Some stereotypes are a lot of nonsense and hyperbole wrapped around a grain of truth- I have dyscalculia and avoid math and logic stuff like Dracula avoids garlic, and even I framed my issues in computing metaphors before I know they were autism. I and quite a few of my Autistic pals identified HARD with Data fron ST:TNG growing up, too- sometimes Alexithymia makes me feel like I am Data going through the motions of a creative hobby rationally in search of an elusive, abstract *something*. It just makes so much sense for some of us, lol The variance of our respective experiences is so wild and very interesting!
I identified really hard with Seven of Nine on Voyager while growing up. Her exploration of humanity really helped me on my own journey.
I love Seven of Nine, and also related to her in that way! I didn’t watch Star Trek until I was a grown up lol. I grew up around 7 boys all diagnosed with adhd and even an almost mute cousin who was diagnosed with autism as an adult, and no one thought to test me for anything so I just struggled through life and now live 5,000 miles away from everyone. Having that extra support means everything.
We are almost done with the whole series. My wife got me watching it after she did a few episodes. I have been learning about Autism this whole time and once her character was introduce - I spent a good portion laughing interally about how much I related to her. I grew up on TNG and Data was my favorite. He also had a cat :)
I keep meaning to get to Voyager- Heard It's aged pretty well.
Yes, very interesting! I’m sure it’s strongly correlated with the areas of the brain that developed differently.
Saaaammme! BEFUCKINGNORMAL.exe is the mic drop of my life! My husband is a software engineer, I’m going to share this with him because we'll both get a chuckle out of it 🥹. I'd also add learned social behaviour is natural for NT but not for us because that is where our deficit/disability comes in. It’s not intuitive for us to look at someone and go oh hey mom is teaching us manners, but it’s hard to understand the point when you’re missing key pieces of information. I liken it to an IKEA manual, some of the pages are missing, or misprinted, or in the wrong order, in another language, etc., so you’re having to spend extra time trying to put this piece of furniture together. Sometimes you get it, sometimes it’s like meh, it resembles a chair, it’ll do.
I have a similar analogy. Neurotypical people have installed social.exe that is ingrained in their OS, runs in the background with little CPU. While my autistic brain does not have social.exe, and instead relies on a series of linked excel workbooks I built myself. There are formulas, macros, and pivot tables that draw on tens of thousands of rows of social data in dozens of tabs I have complied and analyzed myself over my lifetime. I study people and compile the data conciously. It takes a lot of CPU and breaks down every so often.
This is beautiful. xD
Oh this is wonderful. God I love this group.
I love this analogy
Yes, exactly!
You nailed it!!!!
You made me laugh out loud for real when you said, “Linked excel workbooks” I have to work with someone else’s excel file with a bazillion pivot tables and it drives me crazy trying to figure out why worksheet 1 did some thing or another. Funny! ETA: changed to workbooks
Damn, I've been using the other computer analogy but this is even more accurate! I'll use both from now on, this is literally exactly how I learned how to "Human" lol
I would upvote this a million times if I could. This describes what I have dealt with. The amount of information I have had to compile and must access just to make it through one social interaction is exhausting. No wonder I'm so tired all the time.
Oh my god
As someone who works in accounting, I feel this!
I saved your comment. Thank you for this.
This is similar to how I describe it. I usually say it’s like I’m missing some software that everyone else has, and it’s basic and usually comes with the hardware but somehow I missed part of it. So it’s a constant running of a separate program and that takes extra effort and energy that others don’t even have to think/worry about, which leads to me sometimes overheating like overused laptop so the fan is running loud and then sometimes Im shutting down lol.
Yes, exactly! Like the basic programme that comes with a printer. Except we have to write the code ourselves and boot it up every time.
Yes lol!
Damn it. ::opens Visual Studio::
Yes, love this. Man I needed these insightful wonderful comments today, thank you
Remember the blue screen of death? Old Windows issue. It would just stop. Turn blue and reboot.
I read an analogy that you’ve just said perfectly here! Imagine being a windows machine but nothing runs quite right, everyone else’s machines seem to be perfect but for some reason you’re lugging along and struggling, no programs work right but you muddle through. Then one day you realise you’re a mac!
Haha, I'd put it the other way around though! Macs have more of a focus on style and design and are more popular, while PCs seem clunkier and cold and uncool, but can get into the really gritty details. 😆
Oh, autism is totally UNIX. An obscure OS that only programmers have heard of, that secretly actually runs all the important infrastructure. It can do anything really efficiently, by using very raw access to the data, without all that abstraction getting in the way. For this reason, most people (as in non-programmers) find it pretty overwhelming even when they do see it. (Much like how our sensory data seems to be less filtered.) Its interface can be customised to be pretty much anything, though you have to painstakingly configure it to do so, and normally it's very basic. (Like masking -- you *can* make it look like another OS, but it takes great effort to do so, and it's too clunky to fool anyone because it was never designed to look good. It's a hack built upon a kludge for something that's supposed to be unseen and secretly doing all the work.) "UNIX is user-friendly. It's just choosy about who its friends are."
And you have to look up the syntax every time because you can never remember the commands. 😂
This!
You're so fucking right. I stand happily corrected.
[niche interest tangent; please disregard if you're just here for discussion on masking] > "UNIX is user-friendly. It's just choosy about who its friends are." This is my first time seeing that line and I love it! I'm dreading the possibility of being "forced" onto Win11 and if I can find a distro I think I'll be satisfied with, Linux is definitely on the proverbial table. I used Ubuntu a while back, but some programs were only available on Windows (courtesy of my university's IT department, not because they wouldn't work) so I eventually deleted the unused boot partition. For any fellow curious folks, that line is an anonymous quote in *The Art of Unix Programming*, which is available on [archive.org](https://archive.org/details/ost-computer-science-the_art_of_unix_programming-1).
lol totally unix
Totally get this point. I found it funny really mostly because in the last 2 years I’ve moved over to Mac from windows, as tech support and soon to be information security. Since I moved to Mac I’ve discovered my autism, so it suits me to a T 😂
I'm not just autistic but I have really slow processing speed (I have been officially tested) and I always tell my husband that I run on Intel Celeron and that I can't load any faster and he's overwhelming me with commands.
I’m autistic, adhd, and ocd. This feels like such a good description. I constantly feel like I don’t have the like…cpu power? To run even BEFUCKINGNORMAL.exe because my ADHD and my OCD keep throwing up popups and system errors and oh look minesweeper! And they pull up so much extraneous other crap that the whole system shuts down and needs to be rebooted. Then I try to run BEFUCKINGNORMAL.exe again and it all starts over. This happens until I cry or meltdown or both. I cry every day and I meltdown at *least* once a week still and I’m 40 and I work from home. If I had to go into the office and take public transport again (I cant drive, I know how but my meds make my already not great spatial awareness so bad I’m legally not allowed to do it) I would melt down probably 4 to 5 times a week. It used to be once a day, the second I got home from work. Sometimes it’s been while I’ve been at work. This was all pre-diagnosis too so I was suffering in silence and didn’t know why. I just assumed I was broken. It’s what everyone had told me my entire life after all. Thank you for this. I feel…just…better knowing I’m not alone.
This is fucking brilliant. Also stealing. Literally every interaction I’ve had so far at work today, I’ve walked away feeling like “OHMIGOD what the fuck is wrong with me why am I like this”. Like the simplest things like a guy trying to figure out how a door opened, and a coworker complimenting my pants. My responses are just so wrong and awkward and terrible. I’m 40 years old. It’s just so exhausting.
I feel this in my core, lol. Just yesterday I came upon some people from work who I had just met earlier that day, but we hadn’t really *talked* talked, just sort of said hi and acknowledged each other as knowing each other from coworkers knowing each other, etc. I ran into them in the middle of a project somewhere I wasn’t expecting to see them, and it was like my brain went totally sideways, and regular human interaction wasn’t possible. I don’t even know what goofy, awkward, nonsensical pleasantry I blurted out, but I’m pretty sure it was some combination of “pleasant surprised laugh” + “HHHMMMWOWDIDNTKNOWYOUGUYZZWORKEDHEREAROUNDALSOTOOHAHAHA OK” or something 😂😂😂😂🫠🫠🫠. Walked off muttering “WHY AM I LIKE THIS” 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️.
This made me chuckle because you captured it so perfectly
befuckingnormal.exe made me join this group. I say this to myself every single day.
Haha, glad you liked it, hi!
Before I understood what was going on with me, I used to call my hodgepodge of cognitive workarounds, processes and social subroutines /RUN_HUMAN.EXE. There were many internal system messages about stack overflow and low memory. Never did get the damn thing out of beta.
I described it as being a normal car that looks like a racecar, and forcing yourself to perform like a one. The wheels start coming off and the car falls apart slowly, you know the car won't be able to carry you much longer but you have no choice This computer analogy is wayyyyy better
That is a brilliant description it definitely catches how much information we're constantly processing that NTs don't have to because it's just part of who they are...?
My CPU is overclocked and I desperately need new thermal paste or I’m going to melt.
My befuckingnormal.exe came from temu
Yeah this makes WAY more sense to me. I don't get the imaginary audience effect even a little bit I often feel like a computer that was fed code with an unknown value. I can't parse it, so I just do nothing (or crash!) and return a runtime error
Slight tangent but I love that we are living in the age of computer analogies. Brains have never had such a well-understood analogous thing in our everyday lives!
I got that virus and BEFUCKINGNORMAL.exe takes so long to kick in that I kinda stand out.. that fan is working hard. Brilliant description
This is a fantastic analogy and I read it aloud to my partner.
and then BEFUCKINGNORMAL.exe freezes and you can’t figure out what to do next so you guess.
I also use computer analogies to frame things for my husband! Like I'll tell him that I'm running low on RAM today or some plans are hard for me to change because I can't overwrite the existing info.
Love this analogy!
That hits for sure!!
This rings so true for me… 😩
This is an absolutely brilliant explanation!!!!
I wish I could give this an award omfg
Omg this is on point!!
Omg, describing ocd as popups is so real, I've always described it this way
Because when you're applying "learned manners", these become second nature so you don't have to think about it. Like breathing or blinking. But masking never becomes second nature, it isn't instinctive and it's typically something people are very conscious of. I compare it to driving a car. Most people (me included) eventually drive using muscle memory. But some people always drive as if they're still learners, thinking about everything they're doing - now I change gear, now I check mirrors, do I have enough space to get through there, now I indicate, now I move out, now I take my foot off the accelerator, now I check mirrors again. Masking is like that. It's exhausting.
My lived experience is different (which is to say, not any more valid than yours, just different) where masking is absolutely second nature to me. I don't know how unmask, or really who I am fundamentally sans mask. I was taught by my peers at a young age that I'm a fundamentally disgusting and repulsive person, and I still deeply feel that if I don't mask, I will be "found out" as that repulsive child. I have no idea where my mask stops and my personality begins. While it means that masking doesn't take conscious effort (just a fuckton of subconscious effort), it also means I live within a complete crisis of self identity.
I know you already know this, but it's probably healthy to hear more often: *you're a good person*.
This. It's like you're me when I was in my 20s. It was like a crisis of identity. I had no explanation or understanding of what I was feeling. For 5 years or so, I worked on figuring out what it is I like and want to be identified with if people think of me. So now I've been working with myself over the last 10 years to develop my unmasked personality and I still feel like a blank imposter about it most of the time. Like who am I to change who I'd been to these people and expect them to still love me and want to be around me. Internal monologue is such a bitch sometimes. It has definitely thrown some people for a loop. But I do feel less like my brain is caged for good behavior on a regular basis.
And I hear you on the self identity crisis I went through that and had pretty much a complete mental breakdown when I was left on my own when my family went out of state for a week and had to build start building myself back up starting with the only thing I knew for sure which were my diagnosis and eventually after a couple months of constantly pondering it in the back of my head I figured out a description of the kind of person I want to be and that became the stepping stone for starting to build and figure out who I actually am other than my mask. I will say this it helps if you have a group of people who are new in your life and I personally would say finding them online is best that you can completely drop all of your filters drop your mask and not worry about being as weird or whatever they're going to think you are because you can filter them out or they can filter themselves out of your life really easily online you can go through all these different stages of do we get along can they deal with this part of me did they if they stop talking to you it doesn't really matter you don't know him all that well before you ever meet them and incorporate them in your actual real life. The friends that I've met online and gone through all those the stages of elimination to get to the people who actually like me for who I am and they realize that who I am online is actually who I am it's not just some online persona like for most NTs, they are the only part of my life where I don't ask anymore and occasionally they'll even call me out when I come into a conversation and I still haven't dropped the mask from a real world conversation into a conversation with them but nobody in my prior life gets me unmasked and the only these people who are new in my life are the ones who actually know me unmasked get no filter of what comes out of my mouth or what I'm thinking and it's actually been really liberating because there's a couple people who when they have questions or comments or what not they'll just spit them right back out just like I do my thoughts and having an NT friend that does that I have got to say that is an absolute godsend you always want one that will just ask whatever is on their mind say whatever's on their mind will be blunt will be honest without worrying about hurting your feelings will actually say what they mean and oh it is such a mental physical emotional psychological probably even religious relief!
My skin is also second nature to me but that doesn't mean that I'm not constantly processing all the what ifs and all the possible scenarios for every single little teeny tiny thing I do it's just not an actual words and the forefront of my mind but it's definitely taking up about 75% of the rest of my mind...
Another perfect example!!! 🤯 Thank you! These are so good
Fuck, that’s how I still drive I’d say masking is second nature to me in some ways and not in others. I’m very conscious of my eye contact, body language, and interruptions. I’m less conscious of… idk, my tone maybe? I don’t even know
Weirdly enough, I first started thinking I could be autistic after watching myself on national television (and trying not to mess up!) I think for me, it's about feeling like I'm performing at all times. Which is not to say that how I feel, what I do or how I act isn't genuine, but I'm constantly thinking about how I translate that into an interaction in a way that's appropriate for any given setting or relationship. For example, a friend of mine in a group chat recently shared some shit news she'd had. I felt sad and sorry and angry for her that this was a situation she now had to deal with. But I have to *really think* about how I express those feelings. Naturally, I have no idea what words to use, how to act, what facial expression to have, what will make a person feel better, in that situation, and I have to actively think about each little detail to get it as right as possible. I think people read me as coming off a little affected (not sure if they actually twig that specifically, or whether it's just "she doesn't feel quite like the rest of us"). What I feel is completely genuine, it's just that how to express it to others is very difficult to me.
Omg, I have been on national television in my country, and I went viral for something completely irrelevant autism-wise (one of my body parts). But one thing that a lot of people said was that I seemed really calm, tranquil in an anxious situation, considerate, friendly and smiley. But it was all masking. I was in a state of absolute *terror*. But I was giving exactly the same performance as usual, just with a wider audience. I was already used to consciously controlling my facial features, my expressions, my intonation. I definitely come off as pretty affected too, and more so the more of my mask that I drop! I speak like an Edwardian or an android, no in-between. 😭
Being on live national television while acting and trying to remember all your lines and movements. And I speak like an Edwardian too omg 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
I’m so curious about what you went viral for
>I think for me, it's about feeling like I'm performing at all times. Which is not to say that how I feel, what I do or how I act isn't genuine, but I'm constantly thinking about how I translate that into an interaction in a way that's appropriate for any given setting or relationship. I have said this *exact* thing before. The "it's still genuine, but" has always been difficult for me though because I didn't know how to finish the sentence. Thank you for finishing it for me.
Omg feeling like everything is a performance is such a relatable way to put it. It's like I've been running lines for a show every day of my life. Trying to plan in advance, every single conversation so I at least have that as a contingency plan if my improvisational skills fail once the curtain lifts. In my mind it really does feel like practice for a school play or some such thing...like the whole.world will have the capability to witness my potentially dramatic failure and there are mean teenage girls around every corner waiting to pounce and mock me at my first misstep.
This exactly. You have to overthink every interaction or you'll somehow screw it up.
And then it magically happens anyway!
Exactly. It's a reality TV competition, and nobody told you the rules while everyone else has been well-prepared. And you're left with the distinct feeling that if (when) you fuck up, people online are *absolutely* going to make memes about it.
And all the other competitors are wearing matching competition t-shirts / uniforms and you don’t even know where they got them from.
And like everyone is in a group chat except you, this always seems to happen at my workplaces. I somehow never get invited to the secret “fun” work group chat, just the official one with all the stress lol.
Wooooow. This hit me hard. My sisters have a group chat with my one female cousin, and not me. Like, why??? I don't understand 😭 (To be fair, I am also in a group chat with all of them, and also just my sisters... But it is rarely used. And the ones with just me and my sisters makes sense because we're siblings.) I feel like they have this group chat just to talk about things I wouldn't "get"
I feel that way too. And I have seen evidence of being left out of social events.
me too lmfao
And they're too scratchy
And so you try to make your own but everyone knows they’re home made and wonders why you didn’t just buy yours, so they look at you weird all the time and you don’t know why because your home made one fits fine.
Yes! And the homemade tees you made were with fabric paint, but every day the ink drips or fades and so every morning you have to re-do it. And throughout the day you need to keep fixing and getting out your fabric paints and touching it up, and it’s exhausting trying to keep your shirt looking the same as everyone else’s.
Omg, true. Everyone else has matching uniforms!
Make memes about it 😭 so real
And every time the popularity votes come back, you seem to be at the bottom no matter what you do, and you can’t figure out why people don’t like you and what you’re doing wrong.
Plot twist: you think you figured it out because last week you did well with the popularity votes but you’ve gotten too comfy and forgot there were secret rules and this week the votes came back and you’re actually getting kicked off the island
This!!!!
Hmm, I got into theatre as a kind and one time, a theatre teacher was trying to explain how to embody a character by saying “just BE the character, don’t be YOURSELF, WATCHING YOURSELF be the character.” And I realized I’d been “watching myself be the character” in my real life forever? Practicing vocal inflection, consciously crossing and uncrossing my legs to appear “casual,” practicing looking at the bridge of peoples noses because I was afraid of getting caught being “creepy” looking at their earrings or tattoos or clothes instead, absorbing every etiquette tip from Dear Abbey or Ann Landers, developing specific “personalities” for each friend group, being unable to focus in class because I caught myself “fidgeting” (probably stimming) in class or called out by the teacher and then ALL OF MY ENERGY goes towards suppressing it and I can’t focus on the lesson It never occurred to me that this sort of thing might be effortless to other people. I feel like I am living inside my head at all times, piloting a clumsy cyborg Megazord robot around while painstakingly overthinking every move and rationalizing that everyone must also feel this way?
I like the piloting a robot analogy. Like sometimes you do it flawlessly and blend in and sometimes you’re putting out weird smoke and noises while existing and even if you think “It’s exactly the same as what they’re doing” you’re trying not to overheat and it’s being noticed. But the hard part to see is, most people don’t actually care. They’re thinking, “oh that robot is extra smokey today…. Well anyways me, me, me” while you’re freaking out as the temperature is rising in your cockpit.
> And I realized I’d been “watching myself be the character” in my real life forever? Practicing vocal inflection, consciously crossing and uncrossing my legs to appear “casual,” practicing looking at .............. being unable to focus in class because I caught myself “fidgeting” (probably stimming) in class or called out by the teacher and then ALL OF MY ENERGY goes towards suppressing it and I can’t focus on the lesson. It never occurred to me that this sort of thing might be effortless to other people. All of this. I feel all of this so deeply. There's tears in my eyes rn. It's so nice to be here with people who seem to be absolutely feeling the same way about how much effort just existing really takes most days. ...and conversely, as much as it never occurred to me that it might all come effortlessly to other people, once I realized I was different, It never occurred to me that all of this you've said might exist inside of another person. It's almost maddening to have thoughts like "don't fidget with your hands or look down while you're talking, people are going to think you're lying about something if you're not making eye contact and standing still."
Dear Abby's are my favorite. I do stare at peoples accessories and tattoos or clothes. Once someone in an elevator was like "oh do you like my pants?" And I was thinking "oh man! They caught me staring!! Ughh!" And I snapped back into normal... I smiled and started performing normal person again.... oops. Just lost myself staring at the print on your pants. 😂 UGHHH
Ohhhhh yeahhh I only realized in my late 30s that people probably think I’m like, a weird pervert? Because when I’m listening I “turn my ears on” and my eyes got into “screensaver mode” and I’m LISTENING and then I’ll “come to” and realize I’ve been staring at someone’s boobs or something 😳🫣 and then I’ll have to try super hard to look in their eyes and make it seem like I wasn’t checking them out because I was zoning out and trying to get my ear closer to their mouth to hear and I was accidentally looking down their shirt for the whole conversation!!!
I also turn my ear to someone so I don't have to look at their face. And I nod. Bummer about the boobs just being in the line of sight. I look at people's shoes.
It’s not comprehending the nature of indirect language and embedded social cues. When someone tells me their name there is actually an embedded question in there: “what’s yours?” In fact someone may only offer their name to get yours. My bf noticed when ppl were doing this I would just say “ok” because I genuinely didn’t care what their name was and was just thinking “alrighty good to know I guess?” It’s a lack of social signaling from us and not understanding the social signals. It’s taking in 40+% more sensory information that their brains tune out automatically. It’s much more but that’s a start. Masking is turning off parts of yourself and dialing up others and being other-focused to our own detriment. It’s being flat or easily excitable when NTs are usually in the middle energetically. It’s being perceived as uninterested because of having a stoic face when we are listening intently and actually care.
And the related rule is: if someone wishes you “Happy birthday,” you must respond, “Thank you” instead of being silent or “OK.” I got publicly shamed for not understanding that when I was a kid. So now being wished happy birthday actually gives me some anxiety that I won’t respond right in words or tone.
I get this, it's a statement they were saying at you because it's traditional, it doesn't make you feel grateful per se, they're not doing something nice for you etc, so why would saying thank you be obvious? I guess the broader rule is to say thank you to any sentiment of positive wishes for you, like "I hope your interview goes well" or "have a nice day" or "enjoy your meal". But the rule doesn't apply to Merry Christmas... Infuriating
You can always say, happy (whatever day of the week) and people smile.
And people that ask you insincere questions to indicate their own wants instead of openly expressing them, I.e.: -are you cold? (Meaning: I am cold and suggesting the temperature be adjusted) -are you hungry? (I am hungry) -are you okay? (I feel uncomfortable about something and I won’t accept any answer that isn’t “no”) Then they’re frustrated when you answer the question they asked instead of responding to what was unsaid. It’s so confusing.
Omg I didn’t even know that was a thing 🫨
I literally just figured this out less than a year ago at my big age after sitting and analyzing and trying to cognitively understand why I was constantly being treated passive aggressively. Shortly before that, I’d just started recognizing what passive aggression even was because I was taking everything that people would tell me at face value, and then I would be confused as to why their actions weren’t lining up with whatever they told me. After being called inconsiderate for the millionth time, I started explaining the situations to a counselor, and based on our conversations and me revisiting my memories of them, it makes sense. It wouldn’t matter that I would ask them directly if they were cold, or if they were hungry, because they would say no, but they would expect me to still bring them food or adjust the temperature because that would be the “nice“ thing to do even though I already offered sincerely, and they turned me down. It makes literally zero sense.
This one is a brain tickler…I’ll need to think back & ponder
The name thing-so many times this has happened to me until I finally realized! I had to make a rule up in my head for it.
I’ve used the analogy that masking is like speaking a second language. No matter how well you’ve learned the second language, it’s never as *fluent* in your head as your own tongue. Translating everything 24/7 and reading all the different cultural signals takes a ton of mental energy, a constant conscious effort that native speakers don’t have to make. And yeah, in high stakes situations that can feel like giving a speech in a second language on national television where you’ll get eviscerated for any mistake. 😵💫 No wonder the battery drains so quickly.
Yes, this is a really great analogy, and one I used in my own assessment!
It's like being on national television, but nobody told you your lines, and you showed up 3 hours late because you couldn't figure out why you were so uncomfortable earlier. (It was the clothing tags)
I have similar metaphor, except mine is an actor on a stage, playing all the parts, in super Old English (so you understand some of it, but a good chunk just sounds like Shakespeare mumbo jumbo) , 24/7. All the pressure, stress and anxiety of not messing up, the changing of masks to suit the role, the risk of the audience criticizing you for not playing it just right. The only time you get to relax is when you're off stage (i.e. alone or when trusted people), but you feel like you can't break character even offstage because you have to go back on stage again anyways.
Omg I never really realized about the changing of the masks. It's like a mental costume change when switching between groups of people. Like a shape-shifter shaking off the last form they took and becomig a new one.
Yep! I realized in college that I act completely different around family, friends, classmates, coworkers, etc. You play a different role that best suits the situation.
Shakespeare got it right "All the worlds a stage..."
When I am in certain spaces (public, group of people that I’m not super close with) I can physically feel eyes looking at me, when I’m turned away. It’s a feeling I’m unable to shake but it’s become to intrinsic and second nature to me. I maintain my posture, hand position, facial expressions. I make sure not to stare too long at anyone, or speak too loud. Masking is like whoever is up in my brain has the strings on me like I’m a puppet, and I must be “normal”. It’s exhausting, truly truly exhausting. Nothing better than coming home and letting go of it all
The eyes omg the eyes 😭 Trying not to imagine what they're whispering to each other about me while I mentally coach myself how to act like a person in a setting. Lol. It's exhausting
yea. i need a wfh job.
And the eyes are there because they’re trying to figure you out. Something is slightly off and they can’t always tell what it is, so they’re scrutinizing and staring and watching and whispering when they’re in groups. It’s unsettling.
I think an added layer is also the fact that I think YEARS later, that was so cringe and remember every detail and thing said leading up to the social "mistake", what others must have thought of me, etc. And I expect others to remember just as vividly. So it doesn't go away it just adds onto all of the other ways/things said/ that perhaps other people might laugh off but to me it hurts that I couldn't "do right" to create a snowball of "wrong" experiences (things in quotes are bsed on conventional social paradigms). I'm trying to have more integrity as Autistic, this is me but I'm finding myself just avoiding most experiences unless it is absolutely a safe place, like total Pride flags everywhere is a good sign to me, even though I'm cishet, like places where they are ubertolerant everyone's just gonna be chill no matter what I say/do.
I actually love his question. He’s really thinking deep trying to understand. My husband and I have discussed this in depth as well - what is the line between masking and partaking in the social contract that makes the species work? The way I see it, society doesn’t have a set structure of what norms and manners should be. You can live lots of different places with lots of different people and have completely different expectations of what is the acceptable behavior. At an individual level, it is a negotiation of acceptable terms. At a societal level, it is random. The former, an autistic person can get. I live in a shared space with this person therefore we should come to agreement on how to coexist with a set of rules. These are often referred as manners at a household level. The latter, is masking. I must constantly adapt to every person and their expectations that are not mutually agreed upon and I have to perpetually guess by an unspoken set of expectations that can be absolutely arbitrary and often contradictory across people in the same setting. I then ‘perform’ as a person as opposed to be myself.
I love this! Yes! I think this is why as I get older, I find myself more resistant to going out in public or new social situations. I never know what to expect or what will be expected of me, and I'm so tired of having to try to anticipate what the rule set is.
To me the key is, I learned the manners but I don’t understand them so I get them wrong a lot. It’s more like trenching a pet to do tricks on command. They will do it in those specific scenarios but they don’t really know why and they can’t then figure out how to apply them in other situations correctly or when not to.
I recently saw Fern Brady (comedian from the UK) describe it as “always speaking in a foreign language all day that you’re never going to be fluent in” and that resonated with me.
Truman Show gang rise up
I'm about to meet my brother for a chat , and finally explain how I feel. I've come up with the following, he wears a prosthetic leg, and I'm gonna put it to him like this " imagine if you told someone that you were missing part of you leg and they looked at you in your suit leaning on the bar and said , that's funny you look like you have two legs , my leg once fell asleep on a plane , feels awful doesn't it" would he want to bother to try and explain to that person why it's not the same or just withdraw from them?
Live tv, yep. And everyone is tuning in whether through the tv or in person. I always have the feeling of being perceived. It isn’t ego. It’s just an overwhelming sense of all eyes being on me and I can’t escape it. Whether I’m getting groceries or in my car driving.
and there’s the extra burden of having to continually check other people’s language and body signals for signals we need to course correct.
Everything I do to act "normal" socially is a manual process. None of it is automatic. Everything, ex. smiling, is an intentional process: observe others, analyze the situation based on my observations, make a decision to smile, do the smile thing, observe the consequences to see if that was the "right" smile, etc. It never becomes second nature. It takes time, and thought, and effort, all the time, every time, and I can still sense that I have done it wrong 30% of the time anyway based on reactions, so now I feel guilty and ashamed and imagine all the ways these people are going to talk about me behind my back later. Also I'm exhausted from the smallest interaction. Rinse repeat until you decide never to leave your house again.
Couldn’t agree more 🫡
yep my thoughts exactly
And then the responses to your attempts are to be called weird or creepy or seen as intimidating, scary, or suspicious. Lots of effort for very little pay off. Then you wonder why you do it because it does nothing for you and you don’t really understand why you’re doing it for others to begin with.
I think there's a few things at play here... like the difference between not being "rude" and not being "weird". It's important to try to not be rude to people, but at the same time it's healthy to openly be yourself where it's safe to do so. Another thing is that even if you don't want to be rude, what constitutes being rude or not can be very specific on context, in a way that we tend not to pick up on. For example, many of us lie less than neurotypical people, which theoretically should be politer, but there's more nuance to it than that, and it's often ruder because it's generally seen as polite to e.g. tell a comforting lie instead of a harsh truth (I'm starting to gather this is only considered manipulation if doing so benefits you, and it's seemingly generally assumed that neurotypical people consent to comforting lies). So I'm probably often rude *accidentally*, without knowing what I did wrong. If I explain what I said later on to my partner, she can usually tell me a politer way of saying the same thing, that in hindsight makes sense, but would never have occurred to me in the moment. Realising I'm autistic has been, for me, partially a case of realising just how often I accidentally hurt people, even those I love. So I guess that often, it's less like applying learned manners, and more like trying to apply unknown manners that no-one will teach you because they don't believe you haven't figured it out yourself yet. It's like trying not to accidentally offend people in a second language that has a lot of double entendres, and no-one will tell you what they are. As for the anxiety, yeah, I get just as anxious going out or having a video chat with co-workers as I do giving a talk on stage. I'm actually better at the latter, as it's more obvious when it's my turn to speak and what I'm expected to say. There's far less blindsiding where e.g. I'm trying to be helpful but that's seen as very rude in itself because the person I'm trying to help is higher socially ranking than me. I guess on stage, the rules are simpler. If you don't know how to socialise properly, I think there's actually more chance to mess up and accidentally offend people offstage than on.
The lying part is especially difficult for me to fully wrap my mind around because I find lying rude in the first place so when I find that people have told me “little comforting lies“ I lose a lot of respect and trust in them because I see that as manipulative and unnecessary. I also don’t understand the desire to be lied to. It comes across a bizarre to me. I know I come across as bizarre to allistic people, but they come across as bizarre to me also.
Yes, exactly! I think there might well be different standards for "autistic politeness" as in "I respect you enough to always tell you the truth, no matter what, which you'll surely benefit from in the long run" and "allistic politeness" as in "Well 'obviously' there are some uncomfortable truths about you that I'm too polite to acknowledge because I don't want to make you feel bad right now". Similarly, I find it frustrating when people don't actually answer my questions, whereas a lot of allistic people seem to find it rude when I *do* answer the questions they ask me. I think not only do I find it very hard to spot rhetorical questions, I also ask questions that are *usually* asked rhetorically, and they don't realise that I don't do that.
I completely agree with that. To your point about answering the question that is asked, I’ve noticed this a lot with my very literal thinking, and taking things at face value. Not only do people get upset when I answer the question that they ask, they get upset when I don’t answer the unasked question. The subtext, and the implication that I have no idea is there. It makes them think that I’m being rude or ignoring them or intentionally being difficult when I have no idea that they’re trying to communicate through hints and suggestions that aren’t even clear to me. This is also somewhat related, but I also find that the literal thinking tends to be an issue because the things they’re saying are not actually what they mean. If anything, what they mean is the opposite of what they say, but I don’t realize that I’m supposed to have an inverter in my brain to filter out and glean meaning from the opposite of everything they say. It’s not only confusing, but it’s a lot of extra work. The language is supposed to be hints, implications, and opposite what’s said—but only most of the time and at random. For example, I have offered people food before or to buy them something from a store I was going to, and they would say no to be “polite” but they actually wanted me to bring them something or to insist they take it. I didn’t know that, so I just took their ‘no’ as the sincere answer and didn’t bring them anything, and then it caused drama with them later, accusing me of being selfish,inconsiderate, and gossiping about me. I’m “bad“ for not understanding or picking up on their doublespeak even though I made the attempt and sincerely asked them in the first place. That to me is bizarre. I guess I’m just saying that I get along better with people that don’t play these games.
> For example, I have offered people food before or to buy them something from a store I was going to, and they would say no to be “polite” but they actually wanted me to bring them some thing or to insist they take it. Oh lordy, this winds me up no end, yeah. Such unnecessary drama caused by "politeness". There's this idea of [Ask Culture vs. Guess Culture](https://ask.metafilter.com/55153/Whats-the-middle-ground-between-FU-and-Welcome#830421). "Hey, can I have one of your doughnuts please?" vs. silently fuming at not being offered a doughnut (or in this case, not being offered one a second time after declining something they want "to be polite"). If you're an Ask person and you want something, you just ask for it, and that's apparently rude to the Guess person. If you're an Ask person and you offer something, and a Guess person says they don't want it, and you believe them and don't offer it a second time (because why would you?!), that's apparently also rude to the Guess person. Some allistic people are Ask people, and some are Guess people, depending on the culture they were raised in. Where it gets especially interesting and relevant is that I'm pretty sure a *lot* of autistic people are inherently, *neurologically* Ask people. We tend to look for a literal interpretation first, and if we find one, that's the one we'll assume, rather than the other way around. There are no rulebooks we can read to explicitly, systematically explain to us the unwritten rules of how many times to offer something before believing the other person's telling the truth about not wanting it, because it's culturally dependent, and it's *unwritten*. Allistic people only know by copying each other at an unconscious level without trying. Try explaining we have a disability that doesn't do that for us automatically, and see who believes you! (OK, that last bit's sarcasm -- it probably wouldn't go well.) Personally, I can't stand being offered the same thing multiple times in one visit, it's like they don't believe me, and I really don't lie! But I won't tell them that it's really annoying me, which is my attempt at being polite... probably not a sufficient one, but I don't know what else I can do. I've been tempted for a while to get some business-style cards printed up saying something like "I tend to take things literally" because if the context is a card you spend time, effort, and money designing and getting printed up, the person you're showing it to might realise you're not joking or making up an off-the-top-of-your-head excuse when you say you really didn't realise what you were supposed to do -- that it's something that happens to you very often, consistently and persistently. But I scarcely talk to allistic people enough for it to be worth my while. You sound more sociable than me that you're talking to allistic people enough to have these issues, so that's something!
I am an ask person culturally and neurologically, so this wasn’t a huge issue until I started being around more guess people and that was a huge culture shock and still doesn’t make sense to me because I don’t understand how you’re supposed to anticipate people’s wants with zero input or context. I get along much better with ask people in general because they’re a lot more direct. I don’t like being offered the same thing repeatedly either but I don’t find it frustrating I guess because I get that they’re just trying to be nice, but I didn’t think they would think I was rude for saying no thank you. I’m only “sociable” to the extent that it’s necessary for my career and education. If I had my way, I’d honestly be a recluse because I’m not a fan of people in general 😭
For what it's worth, I realise you're a good person who, like me, is pretty oblivious to much of this subtext. You're not doing it on purpose, you're genuinely unaware of all the unwritten rules and implications. I've written a bit about this -- intellectually, I now understand the concepts of [saving face](http://notebook.zoeblade.com/Saving_face.html), [implicatures](http://notebook.zoeblade.com/Implicature.html), [pragmatics](http://notebook.zoeblade.com/Pragmatics.html), and so on -- but knowing that they theoretically exist doesn't help me to spot them in practice, out in the field. People can explain to me what I did wrong later on, and in hindsight it will make sense to me that that's an even better way to put it (if slightly less accurate), but I can't possibly guess what to do right in the moment. As another example... I now realise people don't usually make random observations, so much as they compliment and insult each other. So if you *do* make an observation, it will probably be interpreted as one of these. And to try to gauge whether you like something or not, the listener won't listen to your words, they'll listen to your tone of voice and watch your facial expressions. If you're not performing these, they'll interpret you as unhappy, and therefore interpret what you're talking about as what you're unhappy about. So saying "That was nice" deadpan will make them think you're being sarcastic, even if you're not. They give more weight, when it comes to working out your emotional state and thus the emotional context of what you say, to *how* you say it rather than *what* you say. I'm not sure how to remember to perform tone of voice while simultaneously remembering what to say. I'm not even sure how to explain that I don't naturally perform tone of voice, in a way allistic people will believe me. So people misinterpret me as complaining all the time, and there doesn't seem to be much I can do about it. The real kicker is that if you try really hard to perform tone of voice, but you overdo it and exaggerate it too much, then they'll interpret that as sarcasm too. You can't overdo it, just as you can't underdo it. It's very tricky to try to get right.
Thank you for the links! We’re definitely on the same page about that and I’m in the same boat. I’m conceptually aware of these behaviors and that people are doing these things, but I don’t always spot them, and when I do spot them, I don’t always understand what they are supposed mean. At best, I’ll recognize that’s something is off. I can tell that I’m missing something, but I don’t know what that something is. I hadn’t even thought about random observations, but after reading your description, that makes a lot of sense, and definitely provides some clarity on some of the experiences I’ve had with others when I’ve made innocuous observations and also insight into what I thought were innocuous observations from others that turned out to be insults. This explains a lot. I have a fairly flat affect, especially around people I don’t know or don’t trust. I’m frequently accused of being sarcastic and insincere. I’m also called cold, intimidating, hard to read, and stuck up because I don’t perform as much as people think I should. I also don’t pay attention to others in the way that they seem to pay attention to everyone else. Because I’m in my own world instead of “playing the game” so to speak and I prefer my own company to theirs, I’m the source of “group disharmony” a lot of the time. Even with groups I didn’t realize existed. I seem to have the opposite assessments of others intentions because I don’t listen to their tone or expressions because I just assume they’re insincere. I’m also accused of complaining or being aggressive when I ask questions for clarification or to help me understand the rationale behind something. Asking “why?” Is pointed and rude. I’ve just taken to being selectively mute and telling people that I’m shy to avoid them pressuring me into interacting with them which ultimately devolves into these dynamics. It seems to be more hassle than it’s worth, so I tell people that I’m shy so that I can analyze them in peace until I determine whether they’re safe or not.
I like to describe it as: You wake up on a stage, the lights are on you, you're in a costume you've never seen before, the scene has been set, the actors are in place, and the audience is waiting for you to say your line. You don't know what the play is about, or who any of the characters are. You don't even know what line you're supposed to be responding too. All you can do is look at what you're wearing and the set design and how the characters are all positioned and try to guess your lines. Having to memorise lines is hard. Having to ad lib them without any context, and without being detected, is even harder.
My therapist asked why I like scripts. You described some reoccurring nightmare here.
It's not just manners or putting on a professional face. It's failing to pick up on the unspoken communication rules that are not taught by society. No matter how much you pretend/mask, ect, it's never good enough, and you screw up eventually. When you're sick or tired, stressed, everything falls apart. I like the pine cone analogy. If you asked someone to carry a pine cone in their hand, they'd probably be like. Yeah, that's not hard at all. After all, it's not heavy. Now, say you can never put it down again. That's what autism/adhd is like to me.
I always feel like I'm flipping through the "manners" rolodex in my brain & there's no flexibility to it so if someone goes even slightly off-script I end up desperately flipping through the rolodex in a mad panic trying to find the card with the closest response & hoping it isn't weird.
https://preview.redd.it/cc4nlclsk9vc1.jpeg?width=490&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b0914d1e2e6d58b3a747b0d672f5c400495fd3fe Something like video game dialogue options like this go through my brain. And I just pick one until I run out and then when I do run out, I internally freeze and panic The example I picked was just random, but I moreso mean the more general ones where you can reply or ask random questions.
This is a great example because, much like real life, choosing any one of these options will be perceived as rude or "off" by the other person 😂
This is why I have a deep seated fear of being perceived in any capacity lololol
Love this comparison and the others on this thread. I’ve been feeling so alone in my struggles lately. It feels good reading experiences from other people who think and feel like me.
It would be like being dropped in a foreign country with no prior information about social norms and a vague understanding of the language. No matter how much you try to understand the cultural expectations and practice them, you still somehow fail.
Most people are just blissfully ignorant to 90% of what goes on around them. I envy it sometimes
It made me realize what “ignorance is bliss” means 😭
I think that there is an attentional component that could help some with understanding. Autists attend to things differently than NTs. Our brains are unable to ‘turn down’ the attention given to (the sensitivity toward) certain stimuli, whereas other stimuli do not get the appropriate level of attention. That is why background music can be super distracting or the tags on our sweater can drive us mad. Also, that may be why social cues are often missed, etc. This attention issue is in the form of both too much attention as well as too little. Now imagine the degree of this too much/too little attention being turned right up to the top. Always feeling raw and defended, always feeling like the spout is running dry. There is a sense of being constantly sensorily defensive. Day in and day out for decades.
I found a poem I wrote a while back and one line was “too alien to take you home,” about feeling chronically “other” from everyone around you.
I refer to myself as an alien like every day 😭♥️
Yes, it always feels like everyone else is on a group chat except for me. They all got the memo. We wear pink on Wednesday. Or whatever.
AUDHD here. Yes! I like this analogy. I also feel like I'm constantly trying to solve a puzzle. I think the difference is he has an intuitive understanding of social expectations as a baseline, and he was also taught manners. I do not have an intuitive understanding of this. Navigating most social situations means I need to try to figure out how to act, and there's a lot of unspoken rules that people just know without being directly taught. There's a lot of brain power involved for me, and I often get it wrong. Then, in addition to trying to figure it all out in monitoring my behaviors, like stimming, urges to run, jump, balance on things, look at bugs, etc. And it's hard to gauge the appropriateness of this and how much I should hinder my natural urges. For instance, I nannied for several years and didn't have to worry about this. Last year i worked as a school social worker. And I would run from the main building to the "pod" bc it's faster than walking. Then I realized like oh crap.... adults dont run just because it's faster, but I'd take off without even thinking about it. It's not harming anyone, but often work environments value "optics" so it's difficult to tell the level of inappropriateness of my behavior.
Lord thats a good description. Okay so for like me it's like an unpredictable amusement park ride. At some points in the ride you get some calm and smooth sailing, aka the days where my AUDHD is calm and lets me function and do my work. Then all of a sudden there is some sort of Jump Scare, like there is a sudden drop, or something pops out at you, or theres suddenly bumpy terrain.....those are the days my AUDHD doesn't let me function. And sometimes you don't know when the ride changes.
I’ll hold the door open for anyone and everyone, I’ll let cars get in line first, I’ll do my best to never interrupt someone speaking, I’ll apologize, and admit when I’m wrong, I just may be doing all of this with a neutral look on my face appearing either too intense or too casual. I’ve got the manners we all learn, but when I speak I’m much less likely to sound typical. That could be due to less concern about conforming to “girl tones” or other regional dialect choices or trends. It could be about whatever connects in me that doesn’t connect in you, and vise versa. Yes some of it is the intensity felt. Some of it is what’s going on inside while performing normally. Some of it is how I may sound like a robot even if my intentions are full of blooming daisies and I may sound firm even if my feelings are full of grace. There is an expression/communication difference that is most prevalent.
Makes me feel like a child that will be constantly reprimanded for manners I don’t understand or grasp the concept of.
If it were just manners, that would be fine. I like having a script to follow for social encounters with strangers (not that allistics even bother to follow them half the time) because it's easier than trying to mask through a "real' conversation. Saying "please" and "thank you" is not hard; it's so easy that I probably overdo it to the point of being annoying! Masking is also remembering how to hold your arms so that *you're not showing anxiety but also so you're not accidentally touching any part of your body that someone might perceive as rude but also not pointing (even by accident) but also not crossing your arms because that's closed off but if you leave your arms hanging people get uncanny valley because "no one" stands like that even though you do (except for when your [likely but undiagnosed because your doctor stops listening the second they see "anxiety" in your chart] comorbid hypermobility makes your shoulders hurt) but if you put your hands in your pockets (if you even have them) then that could be rude because either you're fidgeting (which people hate for some reason) or you're touching your body (which people hate for some reason) or they might feel threatened because what if you have a weapon so you don't do that either and now we're walking and when I walk one arm swings and the other hangs straight but when I do that people make weird comments about it so I have to remember to swing both arms but now I'm doing it too hard and I look like I'm jogging which people extra hate because I already walk kind of fast--* If that was exhausting to read, imagine having it run through your head for every single muscle in your body every time you aren't alone. Those spiralling thoughts are represented as a mess of a run-on sentence because that is the level of buzzing I feel in my head just trying to *walk through the grocery store without talking to or bothering anyone.* It's not not even in words, but it's still consuming brainpower. Constantly. It takes conscious effort on my part to make "appropriate" facial expressions, and I'm pretty sure I'm still fucking it up. It is considered rude in my area to walk past a person without looking up at them, giving a little smile, and moving on, but my "hello fellow person, I see you there and am acknowledging your existence" smile is a grimace and I've started doing a nod instead but I think it might be weirding people out more. And even when I'm alone, I feel like I'm constantly being watched and judged for every little slip-up. It got better when I was living completely alone, but the second I was back to living with others--it doesn't matter if I'm alone in my room with the door shut, or even alone in the house, I feel like I have to perform "Normal-Personhood" 100% of the time. I wish I could just turn it off because it's *exhausting*. The sense of constantly performing can't really be escaped unless I am *completely* alone for an extended period of time. Thirty-some-odd years of constant passive-aggressive comments about your appearance and behavior--no matter how closely you've followed the rules you've been taught--will do that to you. It gets worse because as I've been working on unmasking, I've realized that a big part of my frustration in social situations is that people don't consistently follow the Rules that I've constructed in my head to make sense of societal norms. I get just mad at people who are struggling *just like me* for not following the (made-up and mostly bullshit) rules as I do at people who are actively being mean, and that's not fair to anyone.
Manners are being polite, and nice. masking is trying hide being what feels like being "not human" masking is a disguise, meant to keep you safe but ultimately hurting you in the long run. Shoving down who you really are, to make others feel safe and comfortable at the cost of your own comfort and sometimes your own stability. Masking is hiding that your a moth amoung butterflies. Still beautiful and great but different from everyone else. Masking, is a cover over your face that hurts to wear but feels like danger to take off. Everyone is watching to see who is different, some want to help but others see a target. Just like celebrities on TV have fans and haters, we neuro divergent have safety(loved ones trying to understand and help) and danger(strangers or people we know, who don't care or understand or don't even care to understand) Manners are are not putting your elbows on the table, masking is hiding who you are and what you need to survive. These are the best ways I could think to explain. I grew up in a house that forced me to hide all my neuro divergent tendancies or be punished for be punished for existing. It sucks. there is a huge difference between the two, it's not always this bad for everyone, but because I never learned to take the mask off or take breaks from it, I now deal with generalized anxiety (everything makes me anxious or panic) and depression. I don't want sympathy, I just want people to understand what we go through.
I watched Full House and wondered how they saw in through the side of their kitchen and assumed everyone must be watching through the side of my kitchen. Watching movies like the Truman Show also felt like how my daily life is except instead of talking to the producers in the sky, you’re talking to God or the Universe or what have you.
Everyone else is all tuned into the same radio station, all dancing and bopping along together, and I spin my dial constantly but only get static or snippets of the songs. And I spend so much time and energy freaked out because I'm always spinning the dial, so I'm kinda stressed about it all.
It's like being on national tv having to perform a set of instructions that change based on an arbitrary schedule. It's not one thing you learn and then it gets easier through your life. It's like speaking in a rotating set of foreign languages so that even if you can theoretically understand, nothing can ever settle in enough to not be an extreme effort.
i s2g this analogy fits so well. when i was 13/14 i was starting to realise for the first time how social hierarchies work (like how some kids at school were considered cool whereas others were considered weird for no reason i could really understand) and it made me hyper aware of all the little things that other people did and that i did, generally and especially socially, and i’m pretty sure that’s when i actively and intentionally started masking too. at some point around that time i also watched the truman show for the first time and because i had no language to describe the feeling that i was different from everyone else i legitimately developed a kind of paranoia that my life was a real world version of that movie and that everyone else was watching my every step and knew all my deepest secrets because they were being broadcast for everyone to see. so i 100% agree with that comparison your bf made edit: i also just rmred another analogy i saw recently that rang true to me which was a clip by hannah gadsby where they said that being autistic surrounded by nts is like being in a room full of drunk people and you’re the only one who is sober and vice versa lmao
it’s not the actual prescribed social rules that are the problem (although some people do miss out on that growing up, and i feel for them fr). it’s the *implied* rules that allistics seems to pick up on as they grow up. sarcasm, humor, emphasis, changing definitions of words. things that haven’t yet been tracked in an ever evolving world. sometimes it’s fun to discover them, but more often than not the stakes invariably end up much higher because socializing is taking part in an interconnected web of communication. when we mess up, the repercussions are real—people can bully, take advantage, sabotage our places in the social world, or otherwise exploit our difficulties within this ever evolving paradigm. it’s hard to keep track of things that are actively moving in real time when our minds are best equipped for fixating on things set in place in detail. personally, i think growing up autistic feels like being a rock that’s thrown into a river, being expected to swim, and yet waiting for time to slowly erode you into sand (i do like the tv analogy though, but i think that’s more specific to the social anxiety that often comes along with autism).
i dont know but for me - its like he just learned manners and can use them if he feels like it. his ability to function is not overly affected by the environment he is in, he just can. but if im in a situation where im stressed, the music is loud, the lights are harsh, people are coming up to me asking me questions and im getting overwhelmed - my brain is full. the ram is overwhelmed. my fan is whirring. there is no more energy, computing space to add in "manners." im just trying to grit my teeth and survive. my brain cant think, i cant function.
Here's my masking analogy: Each person is a type of screen-based technology (laptop, TV, etc). Whenever people are around each other, a film or TV show plays on each person's screen. Everyone within a shared culture owns a similar media library (aka "cultural norms"). In any given situation, NTs are instinctively able to choose appropriate content to display. Humans are varied, so there are Macs and PCs, but also TVs with blu-ray players, and DVD and laserdisc players, and VHS and Beta machines, and so on. Then, there's us. What are we? We have the same stuff in our media libraries. We learned all the scripts and the storylines. So. 1. We look around to see which shows or films the people around us are playing. 2. We crouch down low behind our screens. 3. We proceed to perform a puppet show version of the same shows and films and hope no one notices that our "tech" is the puppet show. We do puppet shows.
This and being reprimanded for my mistakes is similar to cancel culture but it’s your inner circle.
For me, good manners doesn't come with anxiety. Masking comes with anxiety. My level of anxiety over trying to make sure I: - say the right thing - do the right thing - have the right facial expression - have the right tone - laugh in the right place - make the appropriate socially acceptable comments - give appropriately socially acceptable answers - ask the appropriately socially acceptable follow up questions - don't info dump - pretend I understand things other people obviously understand but are totally opaque to me - avoid doing the things that help me focus like doodling or drawing while knowing that I am: - missing critical parts of communication that are obvious to others but are opaque to me - not understanding when I come across badly and being unable to course correct - putting people off without knowing what it is I do that causes this - likely coming across in a way that is rude and abrupt without meaning to is at: - 100% in every interaction I have with another human being at work because I have been fired or left with no choice but to resign because I don't fit in or I'm "rude". The above is every interaction at work, even when I'm not actively speaking in a meeting, I still have to make sure I'm existing in a way that doesn't put people off if they observe it. - 50-80% in other infrequent or brief interactions like dealing with real estate managers, doctor office staff, cashiers, wait staff etc. I have few friends because after all of the above, I have no spoons left to mask and at some point I just want to be who I am without having to pretend to be something else. My immediate family hate me with the fire of 1000 suns because I can't mask around them any more. When I was younger I was constantly being punished and I never knew what for. My parents would tell me "you should just know, we shouldn't have to tell you." I was constantly called a liar and mistrusted. When I was 13/14 I used to go to the town library after school and get a McDonalds cheeseburger on the way home. My parents thought I was hanging out with bad kids and taking drugs and punished me for it. I was at the library reading. I'm in my 50's. I never got married or lived with anyone because relationships require a high level of masking for me and it's impossible to maintain for more than a few months. I could not possibly have considered having children due to the sensory overload and the amount of people I'd have to interact with while trying to mask. From what I understand, the body language and communication style of autists is as opaque to allistics as theirs is to us, however, as they are the majority, we are expected to adapt to their ways. I have barely scratched the surface but I will try not to info dump any more ;-)
 Like this. Pretending to be “normal” all the time.
Since I was a kid and watched Truman show I was like omg that's me. And literally would wonder if people would remember this or that and worry people were pranking me bc that was the thing in the early 2000s. But omg Truman show was life changing and i am so happy at the end... we don't know what he does or if he finds his friend or his tv dad. He's just existing and we don't know. I wish my life felt like that.
I would compare masking as acting all day long and lying about who you really are :(. (Because lying takes a lot of mental energy) (this is how I understand masking)
Being late diagnosed, I related to the character Egg in the movie BoxTrolls, he was raised to be like BoxTrolls and thought he was one, everyone treated him like he was just a little different or bad at things instead of letting him know why he feels so different and struggles so much. If he'd been raised around other humans or had known he wasn't a tall box troll things could have been better for him. Also the way he socialized was pretty relatable. Lol.
I do like that! It captures the anxiety side of it very well good for him! Masking for me would be pretending to be someone I'm not but to the point where I've done it so much it becomes habit and I no longer Know who I Am anymore actually.... I guess kind of like acting you create this persona that ticks all the required boxes for people to accept you in the general culture you live in and it's not real but you've lived it so much that anytime you're in an unfamiliar situation or what not it just turns right back on whether you want it to or not and you fall back into being this person who is essentially just an act..
Severity and clarity. Manners are clear, regular and only affect a small portion of my communication. With masking it’s not explicit where it’s “needed”, is highly situational and affects a huge portion of my communication. Also with manners I feel like having too much isn’t as quickly to be noticed compared to masking. Idk if that makes sense but that’s my experience
This is actually such a good way to word it. I always feel like I'm on a spotlight, what's okay and what's not okay for me? Everything is different. It's a weird feeling.
Masking feels like everybody received the manual, except for me.
My VERY terrible attempt to describe autism is to tell a NT to do this: Set an alarm for once every hour you're awake. Every time it goes off, add a pebble to your shoe, another too- tight rubber band to your arm, and turn a new radio or TV channel on (so after 12 hours there's 12 different things playing, 12 rocks in your shoes, 12 noise distractions), also turn the volume up on each, and turn one more light on. Now act like none of that is happening and do your daily chores/ errands/ work. Also, everyone is in on a joke except you, but you have to laugh and smile convincingly enough that no one else KNOWS you're not in on it.
I have a recurring dream that kind of sums it up. I’m driving at night (already very stressful for me) and I can’t figure out how to turn my lights on or slow down. The roads are twisty and I’m just hanging on for dear life and trying to guess which way to crank the wheel. Occasionally I see other cars. Their lights are on and they’re driving normally, but I am so terrified that I am going to accidentally hurt one of the “normal” drivers… or myself.
I've been working on this in therapy this month because this shit started early for me. I have an unfortunate formative memory at the age of 3 that I've been reformatting and recontextualizing, and what I've gotten out of that process has really helped my anxiety. NT's don't remember the same way we do. You know the thing where we keep feeling something touching us - cloth, a bug, a sunburn or scratch - and NT people can literally forget that feeling after a short while? Amazing. Astonishing. Fascinating. And guess what. It works for awkwardness too. They literally forget. They brush it off, focus on the things they just wanna focus on, and move on with their lives. They literally forget. That we broke a social rule of some sort. They've already forgotten it. How? I don't know. NT magic. But we're not the center of attention for all of the NT folks around us every second of every day! We're not. They literally don't think that way. We do. We're projecting, probably. That thing where people assume everyone thinks the same way they do? Yeah, we can do that too sometimes. I've relaxed kind of a lot after realizing the value of remembering this NT fact about memory. It just works differently than mine, and that's real nice actually.
**I think for NT people there is a continuous feedback loop socially if things are working well.** The feedback loop for social interactions if you are neuro divergent is fractured. What would come naturally especially with practice for an NT person (go socialize with work friends - say) feels like a constant challenge. Neuro diverse masking involves constantly theorizing about what worked and what did not because it is too hard to be sure. Social cues are mysterious and require vigilance and caution and feels exhausting. **A tightrope walk with no sense of equilibrium.** comes to my mind - how would you even??? **Work example:** You do your job at work and have this secondary skill to constantly attend to - 2 jobs at once. Plus, some NTs are masters of this stuff: schmoozers! Schmoozers use that stuff to get ahead at work - rather than the job they were hired to do. They try to trip others up socially with their superior schmoozing abilities for entertainment - and they get promoted by flattering the boss, getting others to do their work, being charming - effortlessly (but often underperforming at what they were hired to do). Their feedback loop is in hyperdrive. Schmoozers also have a smoke screen that fools people - they may even fool themselves into thinking they are effective employees, when in fact they are master schmoozers. A schmoozer can use of all your spoons up if they decide to - quickly. It requires you to mount a reliable defense system in your social skills - a time waster for NTs - exhausting if ND! Do you want to socialize with work 'friends' (or anyone else?) after a week of this??? Additionally, as an ND person, it may be hard to identify the schmoozers in the crowd of people who are simply just being ordinary polite, appropriate, work people and doing what NTs do to feel comfortable, connect, be polite, friendly and scratch their own itches.
It feels like you're on a reality tv show where the contestants live together but also rank each other every week. They say they like you and enjoy your presence but you get ranked last every single week. And they reassure you that they do like you but if that's true why are you ranked last every single time?
A very good analogy. I always feel as if I'm in the spotlight and I get stage fright so mess everything up!
I saw an amazing TikTok that explained this perfectly. The answer is that it's the rules that we're not taught that are a struggle that we're just expected to know. Consider having him watch this: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTLPKpFgv/
That’s a perfect explanation.
Similar thing but I sometimes feel like as if I’m an animal in a zoo enclosure when a lot of people know that I am ‘so’ different from them.
Your title is SO accurate