My late-diagnosis through the lens of masking & autistic burnout

Realising I was autistic was a very gradual result of a cumulation of experiences growing up, in particular the continuous sense of being ‘othered’.

Autism masking is a more intense way of trying to ‘fit in’. It manifests in several ways. For me its picking up ways in which other people act and trying to act like them, scripting conversations in my head, and hiding my stims and sensory overloads. It was honestly a subconscious thing. I assumed for most of my life everyone else was doing it, I was quite shocked when people told me they did not in fact script every thing they said to eachother in conversations. 

It’s slightly embarrassing to admit but it started far before adolescence, when I was very little in primary school I would recreate conversations with my teddy bears. I thought if I practised enough I could be perceived as normal.

Joanne Limburg describes how autistic women appear ‘uncanny’ in her book Letters To My Weird Sisters: On Autism & Feminism. The nature in which we appear uncanny refers to our ability to mask. I believe masking is a huge reason among other factors to why I did not get diagnosed until adulthood. 

The uncanny valley is a phenomenon when something looks human but isn’t actually and it unsettles us like when cartoons look a little too realistic. 

Some people can kind of tell you’re masking, and I get why they don’t like it, authenticity is something to be admired. I think for neurotypicals the masking autistic is a little like the uncanny valley. But it genuinely hasn’t always been safe for me to unmask.

The persistent bullying I experienced in secondary school didn’t help. If you are judged enough by everyone else you will end up wanting to be someone else.. 

Understandably, trying to morphe yourself to be considered ‘acceptable’ comes at a cost.

It takes a lot of energy to live life like a performance, to only breathe and move how you would naturally in the privacy of being alone, to pretend to be someone else.

In my case it manifested as depression (which I would later learn was in fact autistic burnout) and a dwindling sense of self. 

After a day at school I was so exhausted from socialising as someone else that I would retreat to my bed sheets and would lie in my room for hours mindlessly scrolling social media dissociating. 

At university it manifested as attending university socials only to be unable to leave my room for the whole weekend. Introverts might relate, but the difference between me and an introvert is that when I am around people I feel safe to ‘unmask’ around I don’t get burnt out. 

Masking is so engrained now into my subconscious I have to actively try not to do it and that takes a lot of self reflection. It means learning what I actually enjoy doing from scratch. When I was younger I would try to be interested in what my friends were into and learn all about it, but I lost the opportunity to explore what I actually enjoyed. 

It’s confusing for sure, but it’s why a lot of autistic women appear ‘normal’ and go undiagnosed. I lost a lot of myself trying to fit in. I’m learning not to beat myself up about that though, we learn survival mechanisms because of the unfair circumstances we are put under.