16. Loaded Words
Welcome to CHAPTER SIXTEEN of #TechnicallyAutistic: Lessons from the Periphery, where I talk about why I feel alienated by the growing conversation about “masking.”
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Well, it’s a spectrum.
That’s what always gets me. Because they all say the same thing: well, it’s a spectrum.
Duh.
It’s a spectrum. That strikes me as one of those things people say to comfort themselves rather than to comfort me.
It feels like a copout. None of us wants to accidentally say the wrong thing.
And honestly? I don’t mind taking one for the team if I can keep the illusion that disclosing my disability is something I do and not something that’s being done to me.
It’s not the word “autistic” that scares me. It’s trying to figure out if the person that I’m talking to is broadening their view of the autism spectrum to fit me, or if they’re narrowing their view of me to fit me into the spectrum.
Every now and then, someone asks me if I know “this girl on TikTok.” “I think you’ll like her,” they’d say, showing me a charismatic, conventionally attractive social media influencer who posts about autism. Sometimes it almost feels like they’re sizing me up: if someone like that can be autistic, then surely you [*looks up and down*] would qualify. But when I scroll through their accounts, it’s the same stuff: memes about hating small talk, bonding with people over fandom stuff, storytimes about being deceived and not realizing, PSAs urging people to be direct and avoid hints when talking to autistic people. I wish I could relate.
But I can’t.
“You’re overthinking,” someone might say. After all, anyone who treats me differently based on what they see on the media as opposed to they’re seeing in front of me, is not worth keeping into my life. Right? But here’s the problem; appearance can be deceiving. And so can appearances of appearances.
“But Asaka, you had all the signs,” my mom says.
“You said ‘excuse me’ instead of ‘what’s up.”
— I was an English learner.
“You only talked about dogs.”
— That’s just one trait.
“You’d also ask people ‘What are you talking about?’ and ‘What do you want to talk about?’ instead of ‘How’s your day going?’
— Well, I’m sure ADHD can hinder learning if it’s severe enough.
I shut down, because I’m afraid that other people will use my past truths to poke holes in my current truths. Like the needle and thread of “of course,” the needle and thread of “no wonder” pierces through the most tender parts of me:
Wait, so Asaka only talked about her dogs until she was 12? No wonder why she blanks out after asking “How’s your day”—she’s probably screaming on the inside.
Wait, so Asaka said “Excuse me” instead of “What’s up” until she was 11? No wonder why she uses big words on social media and gets mad when people doesn’t follow rules—she doesn’t see professional and social settings as being different.
Wait, so Asaka didn’t know until she was 14 that people expected her to ask questions when you have a back-and-forth conversation? No wonder why her sentences are kind of vague and repetitive—it’s like a game she never quite mastered.
Maybe I’m overthinking again, but I worry that everything—from the regular brain farts and routine workarounds, to stupid decisions I made when I was in a bad place—just all the things I’ve bent over backwards proving that doesn’t define me would be reinterpreted to continue the story of a person I don’t recognize: the little kid forever captured in my medical records.
My internal debate over whether I can claim 'autistic' or not is ongoing, but my biggest fear throughout this is that if I cannot disprove my autism diagnosis altogether (or “beat those autism allegations”, like the kids say), I am “admitting” that I am not who I say I am.
Let me explain: in the autistic community, you will hear a lot about something called “masking.” Masking, for those of you who don’t know, is a coping mechanism where someone hides their differences to fit in or appear more "normal" in social situations.
According to Healthline, masking can look like:
forcing or faking eye contact during conversations
imitating smiles and other facial expressions
mimicking gestures
hiding or minimizing personal interests
developing a repertoire of rehearsed responses to questions
scripting conversations
pushing through intense sensory discomfort including loud noises
disguising stimmimg behaviors (hiding a jiggling foot or trading a preferred movement for one that’s less obvious)
As with other autistic experiences, it’s easy to see sensationalized examples of masking and think, “No, I don’t do that.” And it’s tempting to run with oversimplified narratives, because it’s easier; the truth is that every script flipped by the autistic community feels like another page someone would have to sift through in order to see the world through my eyes. But life is nothing but layers. I can’t fear it.
When I first read an article about masking many years ago, I used to think that masking, in the context of autism, meant that a person used rote memory to complete social interactions, like chatbots with zero original thought. But after listening—and listening to listen, not listening to talk—I understood that masking is often more comparable to what most of us have done at least once, with a codependent, moody friend.
You’re watching what you say, and maybe you say some stuff that you don’t mean 100% because you know that’s what they want to hear. You're using intellect instead of intuition, not in the sense that you have no emotional stakes, but in the sense that you’re always playing Devil’s Advocate with yourself to rationalize their behavior, or at least, pick your battles. Nothing is given; there’s always an “if”:
If that’s how they cope with things.
If that’s important to them.
If they’re not OK with that, then I should not be OK with that.
I understand that for those of us who are autistic, the whole world can feel like the codependent, moody friend, ready to put words in your mouth and hold you responsible for their insecurities.
In the last year alone, I’ve probably combed through hundreds of posts, comments, and articles by people on the spectrum, and the one—and only, as of now—story that I could truly relate to is titled Don’t assume I’m masking.
“There’s this narrative around masking—in my head, if not in yours,” writes contributor Consentsquad on NeuroClastic, a popular autism blog.
Here’s how it goes:
If an autistic adult seems neurotypical while socializing, they’re not being authentic. They’re using analytically-learned techniques to mimic neurotypical eye contact and mannerisms. They’ll suffer later from the strain of acting neurotypical for too long. AFAB [assigned female at birth] people are diagnosed less often as children not because we didn’t matter very much to the adults around us, but because we supposedly learned to mask at a young age.
I can start panicking when I hear these narratives. My brain already seems impossible or alienating to neurotypical people. Where do I fit in if other autistic people feel the same way?
Oh my gosh, me too.
“When I was young and very isolated, I did not have opportunities to learn how and why other people thought what they did,” the author explained.
“Once I reached my teens, I became self-aware enough to know that I could cure my loneliness by starting conversations—theoretically. Instead, I developed intermittent mutism and chronic catatonia.”
No way. That’s nearly identical to how it played out for me, too. Even when I got something done—“lock, stock, and barrel” as my therapist had said—I encountered more specific issues that made it very difficult to show that I got it. For them, it was anxiety; for me, of course, it was the attention and motor issues.
Today, Consentsquad loves having small talk with other people, as do I. They say doesn’t feel “unnatural or forced,” and they savor it: “I still appreciate that release from the mutism that kept me from social contact I craved for so long.”
The writer says that they do mask sometimes, or at least try to, without even realizing it—when they go auto-pilot and give haphazard responses to people when they’re feeling overstimulated and struggling to think clearly. But in these moments, people can still tell that they’re struggling: “The interactions will be brief, lack depth, and likely mark me as neurodivergent far more than authentic, intentional communication ever does.”
“I’m not even capable of thinking analytically if I’m in a situation that exceeds my sensory and emotional capacity,” they explain.
Me neither.
Before getting on medication for ADHD, my working memory was so flimsy that I wouldn’t have been able to use the strategies many autistic people use to navigate social situations. I always hear about autistic people tracking conversations when it’s their turn to ask a question or share a story, reminding themselves of what someone else said in a similar situation, or even replaying entire conversations from beginning to end to find patterns.
Meanwhile, I’d been figuratively catching my breath, assessing when to zone in and out based on the speaker’s facial expressions, tone, and presumed psychological state, since I couldn’t process large amounts of information at once. I wasn’t even aware that I’d been doing this until I could… just focus. You’d be surprised by how much you could learn about someone without remembering the particulars of their school, work and home life, as long as you pay attention to why they’re telling you.
Of course, there’s a dark side to leaning so heavily on intuition over concrete facts. It was so easy to gloss over my own shortcomings, and even when I was in a genuinely unfair situation, I lacked confidence in my ability to recall specific details (forget about coming up with actual solutions) and resorted to emotional appeal, which led to so many issues.
But at that time, these tune-out-a-thons were the best way I could relate to people, and I’m still friends with most of them. I could easily be caught off-guard by people suddenly appearing in my path at grocery stores and by plans my family had been mentioning in passing for days, but when my friend’s moods changed, I never felt the same sense of bewilderment.
It’s obvious that I don’t move through the world as seamlessly. I have communication hiccups, and yes, I like to smooth things over—correcting, revising, and adjusting—but I can confidently explain why I made the call. When I’m talking to someone and I buffer, it’s not because my perception of reality is scrambling to keep up with my words and actions; rather, it's because my words and actions are scrambling to keep up with my perception of reality.
The changes in my demeanor aren’t always meaningful. For example, medication, supplements, posture, and hydration can all impact my speech. I have jaw problems, so wearing a mouth guard, taking a warm shower and carefully applying lipstick can help me talk louder. These things don’t define me.
I also see that these inconsistencies may mirror many descriptions of “masking,” and quite frankly it’s upsetting that someone could see my plucky, spirited efforts to connect with the world, and treat it like a glitch in a deepfake—a damning evidence that my thoughts, feelings, and opinions are the artifices of a manufactured neurotypical persona, for the real me was vanished by conformist society.
Of course, that is a real thing that real people go through. I’m glad that we can talk about it, and I’ve read so many beautiful stories about people rediscovering themselves after they learn about their autism diagnosis. But when someone tell me I should also unmask, I don’t know how to because I don’t feel a mask. I worry that this idea only serves to please other people who are unsettled by the various inconsistencies in elements and hope to seperate “real” me, with my God-given autistic traits, or the fake me, with my learned behaviors. That being said, I don’t fault anyone for seeking comfort in that because we’re all afraid of the unknown.
I know a handful of people (who are not autistic, to my knowledge) who will talk to anyone and everyone, but are deathly terrified of giving PowerPoint presentations. Why was that? One time, when one of my friends texted me after a hellish presentation, I said: It sounds like you really like public speaking when it’s social but not when its’ academic haha.
I regretted this immediately. It sounded like I was grilling her. What the hell? Not wanting her to feel singled out, I quickly added: Honestly, same! I don't feel motivated to present unless I'm doing it with friends (She had another class with me, so that was also my way of expressing my appreciation, but with the lack of emojis, that wasn’t clear).
I had to call her to make sure she didn’t think I was judging her, and thankfully she didn’t—all good! She wasn’t a huge school person anyway, but I realized that what I said could be hurtful to another person because it could sound like I believed they were having a hard time because they didn’t care enough about the assignment.
Apart from accidentally sounding interrogative due to my speech impediment, I can be nosy at times. In high school, my most meaningful social interactions came from therapy sessions, and in college, I studied journalism, so I know how to pry. Even though I recognize difference between a professional relationship and a friendly one, I sometimes find myself pulling out the big probing guns because I’m scared of being the last to know.
My biggest struggle with impulsivity isn’t with saying mean things out of emotion (though that has happened before and it’s still my responsibility). It’s more about accidentally saying inconsiderate things because I’m approaching it from one angle and forgetting about other perspectives. I feel like I’m a champ at holding multiple, simultaneous truths, so when the world start closing in on me, that tells me that I’m probably A) critically bored and can’t stop talking or B) running from something. I need to keep my shadow self under control because otherwise, she can get under other people’s skin.
Working on this project for the past year, trying to clarify my understanding of my diagnosis, I’ve been inundated with reminders that things aren’t the way they seem. It’s stirred up the existential fear that I don’t know anything about anyone. It’s also like, I’m constantly disclosing, explaining my brain, and pouring my heart out on the Internet because that’s what I do to feel a simulacrum of control, and most people don’t feel like they have to do that. Sometimes, I feel guilty, like I’m not doing enough because I don't always get to hold people in the ways they’ve held me.
It’s also interesting because I consider this impulsivity as a part of ADHD, and feel attached to the ADHD label in a way I don’t with the autism label. But as you can see, impulsivity is only one factor that drives my decisions. Everyone has complex fears, hopes, and motives. It’s only human.
I need to keep my shadow self under control because otherwise, she can get under other people’s skin.
And when I think of it like that, I wonder if the current approach, where we take everything and anything a person does to modify or compensate for their autistic traits and call it a “mask” (which, lest we forget, is a metaphor for disguising oneself) is truly helpful for anyone. Many of my autistic friends agree that some of the stories we see about masking are exaggerated and can be used in a way that undermines the individual’s agency.
Autism is the only disability where the person who has it doesn’t receive credit for their ingenuity or resourcefulness. As someone with this diagnosis, any decision I make about coping with my disability, or any decision ever, could be categorized as either an instance of “masking,” a series of unnatural behavior society has bullied me into, or “unmasking,” the act of surrendering to my natural tendencies, perhaps from my early childhood. I’m not saying that doing what you’ve got to do to get by, or freeing yourself from shackles of shame, doesn’t take enormous strength. It does.
But no one is a collection of symptoms, an embodiment an identity marker, however you want to put it… no one wants to be treated like a case study. Some people say they are autistic (“There’s no me without autism,” I remember one student saying, every time she came to a Breaking Down Barriers meeting), and other people say they have autism. But every person I’ve met in the disability community has likes, dislikes, and interests that are not exclusive to or solely influenced by disability.
In a world of clickbait, it might be easy for someone who’s new to the conversation to fall into the trap of assuming that anyone who doesn’t fit their narrow view of autism is “hiding” their autism. In other words, an individual might already be staying true to themselves, but the people around them might be eager to explain it away, where it can’t disrupt the precious illusion that autism is foreign and scary.
I see this sometimes with celebrity speculations, where the subject’s quirks are instantly labelled as an autistic trait if they’re controversial, but once these quirks become popular or accepted, they’re reinterpreted as facades they put on to hide their autism.
Tacking on disclaimers, like “Many autistic people mask for safety, and not deception” and “Unmasking is a privilege,” doesn’t solve this.
Maybe we talk like this, because we haven’t found a better way to do so—yet. And veering into that territory makes me uncomfortable, because I don’t want to be paternalistic. It’s clear that a good number of autistic people resonate with the concept of masking, and I, of all people, should know that other people’s realities are something to believe in or not believe in. Is it better to just say, “Well, that’s you. #CantRelate #BuiltDifferent”?
It’s hard because I only ever hear people talk about masking in a circular way: You don’t relate to autistic traits? Well, you could be masking your traits. What is masking? That’s when you have autistic traits but try to hide them. You don’t relate to autistic traits? Well—
I may as well count myself out, declare myself a wacko fringe case that should be studied for decades to come, or better yet, decide that I’d been misdiagnosed all along.
But what if other people with this diagnosis feel the way I do? Why slam the door shut behind me?
We can argue about who’s the bigger problem: my diagnosis, or society’s ignorance. You can all be the judge while I read my testimony.
Honestly, I wrestle with this every time I hear sentiments from “the community” that belies the essence of who I am. These conversations often serve as my only means of self-advocacy, and each time, I feel like I’m walking on a tightrope of paternalism and exceptionalism, under the mounting weight of untold stories.
When I started college, I was surprised by how many of my fellow students were diagnosed with autism or were in the process of getting a diagnosis. I feel like I tried to see how far I could go on this tightrope, eager to find where I end, and others begin, hoping that one day, I’d feel more connected. But along the way, I’ve found myself saying insensitive things. It’s part of why I feel like such an asshole.
We can argue about who’s the bigger problem: my diagnosis, or society’s ignorance. You can all be the judge while I read my testimony.
Welcome to my worldly, human, and surprisingly ordinary life.
I’m a product of the world I grew up in. I come with scars, stretch marks, and echoes of everyone who has ever loved me.
No one will dare tell me my accomplishments are just acts. Only I can say I’m just a kid—an overgrown scene queen who spends too much time thinking about the meaning of life.
Today I’m fighting for my right to be a normie because I just want to go about my day, without a tabloid headline written on my forehead: “HER DOUBLE LIFE: this autistic woman goes out and does things like any other people.”
It’s not like I’m going to be blamed for it, because masking is a trauma response. But the voice saying “poor thing, she must be traumatized” sounds eerily similar to someone looking at me like a five year old flouncing in her mother’s high heels: bless her heart, she’s playing pretend. Don’t.
On a second thought, I do play pretend. But who doesn’t? We all have personas that we put in front of different people. Every day we follow rituals, partaking in greeting customs and following scripts, and every season, we go undergo phases to discover something new about ourselves. It’s just that my performance in that arena never felt any more unnatural for me than it is for people who are not autistic.
And yes, thriving with any sort of disability requires a little esprit d'initiative, the courage to say no to the ways things have been done. But that doesn’t mean the most different part of me has to always take precedence, like a drop of ink in a glass of water. Fluid I am, a multi-dimensional being just like you, and I don’t need to be exempt from the hard, beautiful, dirty work of integrating my evolving facets.
It’s just that my performance in that arena never felt any more unnatural for me than it is for people who are not autistic.
I guess that’s where it gets murky, huh?
I know that some of my feelings, desires, and interests exist in tension with the constraints of my disability. Since it takes me more effort to gather my thoughts, maybe I should say to hell with it, start pulling a Quinni (she seems lovely) and say things in the bluntest way possible to preserve my cognitive resources. Maybe then, I’d have a bit more energy by the end of the day… but I wouldn’t be me!
I can’t unsee subtext or stop myself from addressing unspoken things any more than I can unsee optical illusions or stop myself from grabbing onto something when I fall. Unseeing is possible, and sometimes neccesary and very important, but doing it 24/7 with everyone feels more stifling than freeing. I also like that people can say the same things in so many different ways because I love adding a personal flair to everything I say (But then, I’m a sucker—the type to waste time shopping for mascara that’s probably made in the same mass-produced factory and repackaged into “lenghtening” “curling” and “volumizing”).
Telling me to drop that is like telling me to take my clothes off, you know? Asking someone with a physical disability to put themselves in a compromising position—sit at an awkward angle or let someone touch them—because the alternative “would be too hard for you” is considered to be disrespectful, so why is it advertised to me as the epitome of empowerment?
These conversations often serve as my only means of self-advocacy, and each time, I feel like I’m walking on a tightrope of paternalism and exceptionalism, under the mounting weight of untold stories.
I guess I don’t feel indebted to my perceived autistic traits, unlike many other people with this diagnosis. Attempts to uncover the essence of my autism feels like expecting a stutterer to think, type and w-w-w-write in a stutter. Or expecting a blind person to be offended by the figurative usage of “see.” Or expecting a person with coprolalia to not laugh at the “Mommy sorry” meme.
I also know that autism is not stutterinng or blindnesss or Tourette’s. Not that these three things are any more alike, but many people would agree that autism is a unique disaiblity—sometimes invisible, often characterized as pervasive.
So say it with me again: what is autism?
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