Coping Strategies – Week 6 of #TakeTheMaskOff

The last several weeks of this campaign have been challenging ones for me in different ways. This week’s topic is more positive and lighter, but it remains another difficult subject for me. The focus is supposed to be on things that help you mask less, but I don’t mask less and right now I have no plans to mask less. I believe I would have to feel safer and more accepted than I do before I could risk it. My entire lifetime of experience is constantly running in the background of my mind, telling me how people react when my observable behavior or social responses stray outside the limits of “normal” variation. Even today, when my mask slips the reaction is at best confusion and more often negative in some way. I try to correct those reactions, but once people have constructed a narrative about my feelings, thoughts, and intent based on their own interpretation, it’s really hard for me to reverse it, especially since I struggle understanding how they have perceived me. I go from managing things fairly well to completely lost in a heartbeat.

I’ve noticed one odd thing since my diagnosis two years ago. Everyone seems to assume my ability to mask, to read and understand the reactions of others, however imperfectly, and manage my own behavior and responses are strengths. If I were also intellectually disabled, as is the case for many (the rates I’ve seen range from 40%-60%, though a more recent study suggests the true rate may be 15%-20%) of my fellow autistic human beings, I would not be able to hide my autistic traits. It’s true that I have the ability to hide in plain sight. And it’s true that there are situations where that has been very advantageous, notably employment. But the few studies I’ve seen that have included well-being in their measures have all found that in aggregate those of us who are better able to mask actually experience lower overall well-being than those of us who can’t mask their autistic traits. Obviously individual experience covers the whole spectrum whether you are intellectually disabled or not, but the aggregate results are telling. I appreciate my intelligence. It’s as much a part of who I am as my autistic aspects. Given that I have the unexplained but often observed in autistic people large gap between verbal and spatial intelligence, my autistic brain even shapes the way my intelligence is expressed. But hiding significant parts of myself from everyone around me every minute of every day has been more of a drain and sometimes crushing burden than a benefit, especially since I’ve always longed to be accepted and loved.

Even if I felt safe enough to mask less, the reality is that everyone in my life knows I can mask, that I can fit in to some degree, and that I can look more or less normal. And it’s difficult for anyone to understand why I might not want to do so or how hard it can be. I now know that it’s all mostly effortless for them. Everyone struggles from time to time in certain social situations and they probably believe that’s what it feels like for me. It’s not, of course, but I think you have to be autistic and masking to truly understand how it feels and how difficult it can be.

So what can I do? While I’ve masked pretty much my whole life, I never knew what I was masking before my diagnosis. Notably, I didn’t really understand that the experience of other people was so different from mine. I thought they experienced the world and did things more or less the way I did, but for some reason they could manage it all a lot better than I could. Mostly I thought I was broken and I was trying to hide that truth from everyone. That’s what I was masking. But I had no idea what precisely was broken, so my efforts were at once all-encompassing and scattershot. I expended energy in all sorts of directions and spent every single second trying to keep up with … everything. Combine that with my cPTSD hypervigilance and simply existing each moment required enormous effort.

My ASD diagnosis provided an explanation and a framework. I could learn where my differences really were. I could perceive my efforts through that lens. I could better see the things that were helpful in certain situations and the things that weren’t. While I may not mask any less, I believe I do so more effectively today, in the ways and circumstances where it’s actually needed. I waste less energy randomly flailing.

I’m also working to be a little less demanding on myself. Over time in therapy I recognized the informal accommodations at work I had long negotiated, over which I worried every day, and about which I became highly stressed any time it was suggested they might change. In other words, they were never simply my preferred working conditions. They really were accommodations that had allowed me to be successful in my job. So I formally documented them as accommodations through our HR processes. Nothing changed in my actual working conditions, but it removed one source of worry and stress. It gave me one less thing to constantly manage.

I consciously find ways now to manage sources of sensory overload. For me, much of that is tied to vision with touch next on the list. I bought night driving glasses and they help a lot. And sometimes if the inside lights are bright I’ll keep my sunglasses on, ignoring the voice in my head screaming about it being “weird”. I mostly don’t wear clothing that isn’t comfortable anymore instead of forcing myself to endure it and pretend it doesn’t bother me. I wear my headphones even more openly and constantly now than I used to. It’s a bunch of small things, but in aggregate they help.

I carry a smooth, metal fidget spinner. The sensation of spinning it even in my pocket and letting it hit my fingers is soothing. And the smooth metal also has something like a worry stone feel. I notice more when parts of my body are moving and instead of automatically suppressing it every time, I manage or redirect the movements but still try to express it in some way. I allow myself to enjoy things like spinning or once again letting my body move to music. Agony Autie calls it “stim dancing” and that term really fits for me. It saved my life in the late 80s during a really bad time in my life, and I also seem to have a bit of auditory synesthesia. Especially when surrounded by it, I feel music on my skin and in my muscles. It’s hard to describe. And again, it’s only since my diagnosis that I’ve slowly understood it’s not really the same thing most people mean when they talking about “feeling the music”.

So I’m not working to mask less. I am trying to mask more effectively with less unnecessary drain on my resources. And I’m trying to be kinder to myself in different ways. I can mask and still reduce sensory overload and consciously allow myself to stim in ways that aren’t overtly autistic to those around me. And I can let myself respond without restraint when I’m alone. That’s really more of an aspiration right now than a reality. Controlling my appearance is far too deeply ingrained in my psyche for me to ever simply stop. But I’m trying to relax my guard a little at least.

Diagnosis and Masking – Week 5 of #TakeTheMaskOff

What impact has my diagnosis had on my masking? That’s the question posed this week. For some reason my mind wanders to Robert Frost’s poem, The Road Not Taken. Most people know the poem only from inspirational and individualistic quotes about choosing the road others avoid and the difference that can make. That is not, of course, what the poem says at all. I’ll include it at the end for those who might like to read the entire thing. It has a whimsical quality and is full of twists and turns. In the present moment, our traveler is torn between two roads, equally fair, both perhaps worn the same, yet both untraveled that morning. It bounces back and forth down different avenues of observation and speculation in that indecisive moment. There’s a sense that whichever path is chosen there is certain to be at least some regret. The closing, most often quoted lines are not set in the present moment, though. The traveler recognizes that in some distant future they will look back, define the road they chose as the one less traveled, and build a story about how that choice made all the difference in their life.

Our stories are never simply recitations of fact. We are creatures who build narratives. Events in our lives have meaning to us because we imbue them with meaning. We connect them. We are not objective, outside observers. We are participants in the tales we tell. And the ways we choose to tell them shape ourselves and often those around us. The lightness of Frost’s poem carries within it our traveler’s awareness that they are in part a character in the story that will one day be told by a future and perhaps very different version of their own self. We exist in the now. We share a thread of continuity with the versions of ourselves we have been in the past and we trust that thread will be maintained by our future versions. But that future version will not be precisely us, right now in this moment, any more than we are the same as those different versions of ourselves in our past.

Moreover, our memories are not cameras. Even the experience of our senses, the data that informs what we think we know about the world around us, is heavily shaped and interpreted by our brains. The memories themselves collate and capture and often try to make sense of that information. They fill in the missing pieces. They drop things that don’t fit. They revise and reshape. Every single time we access a memory, it is read and written anew, as if it were a new memory. Frost is right. Even though in the present moment we perceive the roads as equal choices with little to distinguish them, in the future we will remember them as markedly different and imbue meaning into the choice we made.

How has my autism spectrum disorder diagnosis impacted my masking?

It has made all the difference. And none.

I can only speak as a late diagnosed autistic person who went from no awareness at all to assessment and diagnosis over a pretty short period of time in what felt like a whirlwind.

That event altered the narrative of my life by giving meaning to things I had felt were scattered and disconnected. It explained things I had never understood and which I had often tried to push to the edge of my consciousness. My diagnosis provided a framework I had lacked my entire life. It changed and is continuing to revise the story of Scott as I put the different pieces in place. It has given me access finally to perceive and hopefully work through things that are not directly related to autism. That may sound strange, but autism describes the way I experience … everything, including trauma. I have an autistic brain. That self-knowledge doesn’t just explain my autistic experience. As I work through my stories in that light, I can finally see and begin to understand all the other things as well.

For we are always creatures who tell stories, of all sorts, but most especially about ourselves. My stories have been shifting and changing. I’m aware of the process and it doesn’t bother me even though I understand it bothers many when it happens to them. I’ve been trying to piece together coherent narratives my entire life. I’ve never found them to be static or, for that matter, complete. And that means I can only write as the person I am now, remembering past events in light of the information I have in this moment, not as the person who actually experienced those events. I see my past masking so much more clearly now than I ever did when I was the person doing it in the moment.

I have little idea, really, who I am and what I want, beyond acceptance and love. I’ve striven for those two things from my earliest memories, with all my will and ability, and I’ve focused my efforts on discerning which things are acceptable to do, acceptable to want, and even acceptable to be. As I told my therapist, there are limits to acceptable deviation from cultural norms in behavior and interaction that most will accept. I’ve worked really, really hard to find a way to stay within those lines, or at least manage perceptions well enough so people mostly believe I do.

My diagnosis has given me the option to turn the accommodations I’ve long informally negotiated at work and over which I’ve incessantly worried into formal accommodations. That removes one source of stress. I’m somewhat more aware of my masking in the moment now and better manage my energy or take actions to reduce some stress. Diagnosis allows me to be more intentional in my efforts instead of flailing at everything.

I would not, however, say that I mask less in any situation or interaction. I think I’m better at some aspects of masking now and worse at others. Some things I’ve done worked better when I wasn’t really aware of them as I was doing them.

My diagnosis altered my whole world and cast all the stories of my life in a new light. That process is ongoing and touches every part of who I am. My diagnosis did not, however, change the world in which I live. It’s no more safe today to stray outside the boundaries of “normal” than it was when I was a child working diligently to fix myself. I do not feel any safer today than I did then.

I’m working on … everything. That’s really all I can say with any certainty.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Autistic Burnout – Week 4 of #TakeTheMaskOff

I don’t have one of my researched, informative posts on this week’s topic. Yes, I’ve read other accounts of autistic burnout. I can’t recall off-hand if I’ve read any formal research or not. I know in a way what I experienced personally, though I struggle to find words that truly capture how it felt. Moreover, it was so pervasive it often lurked at the edges of my awareness. I can also find threads of common experience in the stories of non-autistic people struggling with the ongoing effects of complex trauma, especially from childhood. I don’t think there’s a single explanation or underlying cause for my personal struggles. I believe it was the weight of everything finally becoming more than I could carry.

More people, I think, have heard of autistic meltdowns and shutdowns than autistic burnout. Those are the short term and often visible results of sensory overload and emotional dysregulation. I had both as a child. I mostly learned to control them because I had to do so. I found a way, even though one unintended consequence apparently involved disrupting my interoception much more than I ever understood, at least until it almost killed me last year. After my last major meltdown in adulthood at age 22 landed me in a psych ward over a weekend, controlling them became one of my driving imperatives in life. No, that’s not really accurate. I was driven to control it as a young child. It’s always been an imperative. That was the last time in my life I lost my battle against it. I’ve let the energy out at times, but only in controlled doses in private where nobody could see. And I never, ever let it take control. I’m aware that many, if not most, autistic people cannot manage the overload and dysregulation the way I do. I don’t really recommend my experience, but it has certainly made my life more manageable than it would otherwise be.

Autistic burnout, by contrast, is a long, slow process. For me, especially since I had no idea I was autistic, I had no explanation. Things I had always been able to do became harder over time. It’s not exactly regression, but some loss of skill accompanied it for me. I felt increasingly overwhelmed. I began to struggle to get through most days. I started becoming less capable and less functional. I tried anti-depressants. The one I tried turned the background sense of not wanting to be here or be alive I had managed since I was nine years old into full-blown suicidal ideation. I tried therapy, but it went nowhere. That was always my experience of therapy before I finally figured out I was autistic. I discovered I had sleep apnea and treatment for that gave me a burst of new energy for a couple of years. I discovered I had celiac disease and my body was in bad shape. Treating that improved my energy again for a few more years.

But none of those improvements lasted. I could manage less and less. Every day became harder and harder.

Autistic burnout felt like losing my ability to be a human being, at least in any way that held meaning for me.

I probably reached my lowest point in 2015. I realized how much it was impacting my family and used raw force of will to make myself do better. I’ve begun to realize these past two years just how strong my will can be. I stopped sinking, but couldn’t make much headway until my ASD diagnosis a year later. That finally gave me a framework, explanation, structure, and grounding from which I could work. Things that had never made any sense finally fit. It hasn’t been any sort of magic pill. Progress has been uncertain and slow. But I have finally been able to make progress.

I have some hope again for the first time in a very, very long time.

The ASD diagnosis also gave me the framework and insight to begin to perceive, understand, and work through the impact of toxic stress from my traumatic childhood. I’m barely beginning that work and it’s really hard. I can distinguish the dysregulation of emotional flashbacks from the autistic response I have to overload and that different sort of dysregulation now that I know both exist. They have a different … texture to them. My somatic response, now that I’m learning to pay attention to the signals from my body, is different with each. And only the former comes tinged with dissociation. Complex trauma was certainly a factor in my burnout, but most of it followed the course I’ve seen others describe with autistic burnout, especially the part about slowly losing the ability to do things I had long done.

Life got really, really hard even as the objective demands on me grew less. It made no sense. And that was perhaps the hardest part for me.

Mental Health – Week 3 of #TakeTheMaskOff

I’ll start with a simple statement. I have no idea how masking specifically affects mental health. I’ve never done anything but work to camouflage and hide my differences. I may not have had a name for it, but I always knew I was broken, that I didn’t work the same way everyone else seemed to work. And I knew I had to hide anything others saw as unacceptably different from their view, no matter what. “Quirky” could be okay as long as people found it amusing or endearing. Negative reactions, though, meant I had to find a way to manage whatever had provoked the reaction. My success was always mixed, but that’s how my energy has been focused my whole life.

I can say one thing, though. I don’t believe anyone seeks out assessment and diagnosis because their life is going wonderfully and everything is coming up sunshine and roses. I was struggling two years ago when I sought assessment. I had been struggling for a very long time before then, mostly in silence and shame. I am still struggling today. I have my individual therapist. We’re seeing a couples therapist. I’m now also seeing a therapist, working in coordination with my individual therapist, who specializes in EMDR to try to work through trauma. I’m trying, but none of it is easy.

I camouflage my autism no less today than I ever have. Does that also take a toll on my mental health? I can’t really say. I’ve never lived any other way. It probably doesn’t help.

I can say that I’m so very, very tired.