How masking can be helpful at times. How it can hurt. My experience with autistic masking and unmasking. My new unmasking autism workbook. I am planning future episodes on the topic.

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• Post quoted in the article: "Why classic therapies don't work for autistic people?" by Pascale Larivierre


• Workbook mentioned in the article "The Unmasking Workbook for Autistic Adults" by Jessica Penot, LPC-S


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Episode 9 Transcript:




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0:06
Welcome to Autistic POV. My name is Barbara Graver and I started this podcast to share a bit of my journey as a late diagnosed autistic. Hey everybody, this is Barbara Graver. Thank you for joining me today on Autistic POV. Today I wanted to talk about masking. I'm just actually making a few observations on masking.







0:32

I do want to return to this topic at some point. But I just wanted to take kind of a pro and con approach to it today because this is something that's come up for me recently. So I have been using a workbook called the Unmasking Workbook for Autistic Adults.







0:50

It's written by Jessica Pinot, who is a licensed counselor and autistic person. And it's a great workbook. I love it. I like the way it's set up. I like the way it builds. It builds to this point kind of in the center where there are two charts that the author calls a template for change.







1:12

And I like the way the book is structured because the way it works is if you work through each section, by the time you get to this very important part of the book, you know what you want to say, which is great. So I think it's very well constructed.







1:27

And this part of the book, it basically has two sections to it. what what do you consider a gift of autism and what do you need help with and i like that i like that approach i filled it in but i found it necessary to create a







1:43

third category of things that i considered adaptive measures so they're not they're not necessarily things i want to change some some things around it i may want to change But they are adaptive measures. And one of the things I listed in this, along with some other things we'll talk about at some other time, was masking.







2:05

And I was kind of surprised. I kind of surprised myself that I put it there because unmasking has been a huge thing for me. I've suffered a lot. through masking but I did put it there and the reason I did is because masking can







2:23

have a benefit I mean masking can be a layer kind of a layer between you and the world and while it is a soul-crushing thing certainly not being able to mask is highly highly debilitating And it was interesting because I came across an article on Substack, and I'll link to it below.







2:47

The article was about two sisters, two women with autism. One was highly masking and the other couldn't mask at all. And I was surprised by my reaction to it because to me, it wasn't really an either or. To me, I could identify the experience of both of these people.







3:06

And that's because sometimes I can mask and sometimes I can't. I have had epic, epic meltdowns in public when unable to mask. And at other times I've endured difficult things without any kind of incident because of my ability to basically pretend I was okay. So, I mean, that's not good. Enduring things is not good usually,







3:30

but sometimes there isn't another choice and it is useful to be able to to step behind masking, like kind of seeing it as a shield where you can step behind it and you can interact. And, and I do this in my everyday life. I don't have a lot of contact with other people in my everyday life.







3:52

I basically spend time with my family and my pets and do media online and have a few online friends. and see an autism therapist. And that's pretty much the extent of my social involvement. But I do leave the house. I leave the house and I interact with people on a limited, kind of superficial basis.







4:14

And I have stock phrases that I can use when I'm walking my dog and someone says hello. I have certain things I'll say about the weather or certain responses I'll make. And they're not necessarily memorized, but they're things I use over and over again. And it's kind of my way of interacting. And that's masking.







4:34

And it doesn't hurt me to do that. It's not satisfying, but it doesn't hurt me. And I kind of feel proud of myself when I have like one of those little kind of ordinary exchanges with someone. And I feel like I handle it well. And it doesn't matter that nothing important is being communicated.







4:54

What matters is that I'm kind of proud of myself after I do this. And it allows me to present an aspect of myself that people can accept. So it can be good. And masking in particular could be good when it keeps you from... It keeps you from having a meltdown, say.







5:15

That's what this article on Substack was about. I am kind of all over the place, but this article on Substack, the girl said how her sister who could not mask would have meltdowns at work and how it was so debilitating. And I agree with that 100% it is. And I have done that. I identified with both.







5:36

And I think a lot of people probably can. certainly there are people who can't mask at all and that's very debilitating I'm not trying to minimize that but I think that a lot of us have had that experience of being able to mask and then not being able to mask and I think that too is worth







5:52

looking at so that's kind of how I look at masking it's not a hundred percent hundred percent bad but it could lead to some pretty dark places and I wouldn't want to pretend otherwise and unmasking is a good thing. To me, unmasking is a good thing. At this point in my life,







6:15

I am looking at it in a little bit different way than I think a lot of people do, because I have kind of a limited involvement in the world. To me, masking is not Trying to blend in or trying to fool people or trying to seem normal. I did that. I've done that in my life.







6:31

I did it in school. And interestingly, I felt like I accomplished it, like particularly in high school. I felt like I accomplished it and at great personal cost. But now I look back and I think, I don't really think I fooled anyone. I think in most situations,







6:48

people always perceived me as awkward and unusual and a little strange. And I was sometimes just kind of oblivious to that. But so I don't think I was ever really, really super successful with blending in. But That's not the kind of unmasking I'm really worried about now because it's not only that I can't really do it,







7:10

it's that I don't really want to do it. I just don't want to and I don't have to and I feel really, really lucky that I don't have to. And the way I look at unmasking now is like simple, simple things. So one way I've tried to unmask is by recognizing when something's too much for me







7:30

and to not push myself to endure situations that are overwhelming for me. And another way I've done it is by not allowing myself to be unduly influenced by other people's ideas about my personal preferences. And just a couple examples, like one way, recognizing when something's too much for me, I did the taxes this week.







7:56

And when I did my taxes, I knew if I tried to, we have a rental unit, so there's a lot to that. I knew if I tried to do it all in one day, it would be overwhelming. So I collected all the little pieces of information I needed,







8:10

and there are a lot of them over the course of a week. And then I sat down to do it on tax day, which was a mistake, but I got through it. I got through it okay because I had everything there and my son had helped me with some of it.







8:24

But I was just washed out after I did that. And even though I don't consider doing taxes hard, I don't consider it confusing or difficult, I still find it super stressful. Like any paperwork, I find stressful. So I chose to not cook that day. I didn't even make lunch.







8:44

I ordered lunch and I ordered dinner, which I never do. I don't do that routinely. But I could have pushed myself to make the meal I had planned for that night, but I chose not to because I knew it would be too much.







8:58

And I think that's a form of unmasking because it's a mask to pretend you could handle something when you can't. That's masking to me. And another thing, when I mentioned not being influenced by other people's perceptions, there are things that bother me, like ceiling lights shining in my eyes and various noise things







9:19

different kinds of noises going on and I used to kind of internalize people's reaction to that when they would say that's ridiculous there's no reason why you that should bother you I would think you're right shouldn't bother me I'll just white knuckle it and sometimes they could and sometimes they couldn't but I don't







9:38

I'm trying not to do that anymore I'm trying to tell myself that they don't understand and that that isn't my problem. So that's another way. And kind of hand in hand with that, like honoring limits, like not attributing my reactions to bad behavior or subjective labels,







10:04

like thinking I'm picky or I'm