What the title says. Well intentioned, often other “neurodivergent” people look at your life, your autism, and say: “you should mask harder.”
For example, I accidentally said something that offended a friend. Won’t go into detail, but it was me unintentionally coming off as arrogant, not something bad like a slur or hate speech.
I asked for advice (elsewhere) and the advice was universally, “you see, NT avoid this topic at all costs. Going forwards, know it is best to avoid this topic.”
But isn’t this just saying “mask harder and be more palatable for everyone else”?
Every piece of “autism advice” I see even in “neurodivergent friendly” communities is basically “how to be less autistic.”
I asked for advice (elsewhere) and the advice was universally, “you see, NT avoid this topic at all costs. Going forwards, know it is best to avoid this topic.”
I don’t think of that as masking actually. NTs run into the “said something they shouldn’t have” error quite a lot… i think of that as just learning new social nuance. If social interactions are like kayaking in ooen water, this is the equivalent of bumping (gently) into a wall that was already there, but being given instructions to mask more is like them putting down barriers to reduce the amount of water you have available to maneuver in.
But I do think in your example that the best course would be for NTs to just be more aware of and accepting of ND saying things they consider weird. Would be the most efficient course of action and is more of a solution than “Add this to the mental list of things you can’t talk about!”
What else is there to do when people don’t accommodate?
If I masked any harder, I would become Jim Carrey’s character in The Mask.
Stanley Ipkiss
We all wear a mask.
I’m not autistic (that I know of), but I do have ADHD so I can be a bit extra sometimes. I’ve realized that it’s a different mask for every person or group of friends.
Occasionally I run into people with whom the mask is pretty much transparent. Those are my favorite people. I’m a lot more fun around them. So as long as I get to choose, these are the people I hang out with.
My current job (well, former job - I’m a contractor now) is actually great, because like half the team is people like that. I can make stupid ass jokes or rant about things, and it’s all good.
I basically made masking a hyperfixation for a while, until I had a good enough grasp of NT social interaction that I could drop the mask more and more. Then I just came across as cool, confident, and interesting when I was doing my own thing. It’s kind of a “Learn the rules so you can break them” situation. NT conventions aren’t really all that complicated if you devote a bit of time to study. If you can steer your fixations at all, it’s worth the investment so you can get on with your life with fewer interruptions.
It’s not “mask harder” - it is “don’t be autistic”.
If I could will myself into being less autistic…I wouldnt even be here. So what gives? Is it clueless NT allies?
It’s a skill that we find harder to master than others. That’s all.
Some are naturally gifted at math. Some can learn a new language effortlessly. Others have to practice and pay attention carefully or they make an error.
It took me 30 years. My personality is now permanently different. It’s no longer a mask just like learning a language and culture eventually becomes normal.
If the advice was saying NT avoid the topic, that would just mean they are masking it as well would it not?
Well, NT people mask too. I thought the goal of these communities was “ND dont need to mask 24/7! Accept who you are!” and then I hear “But limit your personality in public, it makes others uncomfortable.”
People (including other autistic people) treat my autism as a liability and a nuisance. Thanks! I knew that!
I think there are situations where consciously choosing to follow a social convention against one’s “natural” inclination (which I think is a type of masking) is a good idea. For example, if someone has recently experienced a death in their family, I might think twice about making death-related jokes, or even bringing up the subject of death at all. I don’t think these rules are inviolable; with the right context I think humor can help with grief. But I think it requires a level of intimacy with the person grieving and their relationship with the deceased, and thoughtlessly saying any thing that comes to mind can cause fresh hurts for someone already hurting a lot. That’s a rule that I consciously try to follow and think very carefully before I break it.
There are other rules that I will willingly and gleefully break because I think they’re harmful, e.g. “It’s [unpatriotic / blasphemous / rude] to criticize [the government / church leaders / authorities]”. That rule is bad and exists to reinforce the power of people who already have power, so I deliberately try to break it, and I try to catch myself when I find myself unintentionally following it.
I think a lot of “just mask harder” advice comes down to people’s (well-founded or otherwise) belief that a certain rule should be followed, sometimes without question (I often find this axiomatic take explained with some variant of “that’s just the rule”). I like learning about the rule even if I take the implicit recommendation of following the rule with a grain of salt, but I do find the implication that rules have to be followed because they’re rules tiring.
Don’t call your mother fat, don’t push the person standing at the crosswalk in front of a bus, don’t cut someone’s hair when sitting behind them because it bothers you… Socially unaccepted actions, why, because they are. In another universe they all may be acceptable. Our cultures calls them rude, murder, and possibly assault or maybe just impolite. Why. Because stuff and things. Mostly, it’ll hurt someone’s feelings.
Really I think it is, our freedom ends where anothers begins. Thus, we are free to do what we wish, but if your happiness impeeds on anothers happiness, then there is an issue.
Edit*. When the law doesn’t match that, then I feeo government has failed
I don’t think the reasoning behind unspoken customs is unknowable or arbitrary. I think part of being a good person is analyzing the rules that are handed down by our elders and deciding which are good to follow and which are good to leave behind. Circumstances change, new information comes to light that our parents weren’t privy to. Or, maybe they just made convenient or selfish choices when deciding which rules were important. Sometimes those convenient or selfish choices get codified into law, and when they do, it’s up to us to fix them. I dunno if that’s government failing so much as it’s just how government works.
New information coming to light is 90% propaganda, 10% truth. If we got rid of all borders and made all insurance companies illegal while saying denying a person care in terms of health would put your organization in prison. It would fix nationalism immediately, drag health costs down, and fix many issues people struggle with. The person who works for their family isn’t an issue, the government that doesn’t let them is. It doesn’t matter where or who they are, they were segregated due to old rules, mainly the British decision to segregate to isolate and isolate and divide to rule. Did wars happen before then, yes. But the way to end all wars isn’t through segregation, but rather assimilation throughly so all are accepted without question.
Sorry, end rant
All is well. I also find the problem overwhelming when I try to think about it all at once, all the cruelty we inflict on each other because we were taught to, or because it feels easier to keep rules that afford us the barest of privilege over our neighbors. It’s a lot.
Makes sense, thank you for your response. I am often unsure how to make sure people know that I am being sarcastic or sincere. So thank you for your input. Appreciated
of course ❤️
Sometimes the advice isn’t centered around interactions with other people.
Like - wearing sunglasses can help with feelings of overstimulation during the daytime.
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running a fan at night for constant white noise can help you sleep
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Liquid electrical tape is a great way to cover up those little LED lights on everything
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10-20 seconds of cold shower can help your body with thermoregulation
My problem is that so much of discussion about autism is centered around social interaction, that people begin to think autism is just a problem of fitting in, and if only other people could be more receptive everything would be better… well it wouldn’t make the sun any less bright!
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Wait. That was meant to be with well intentions?
I do generally notice that, though I don’t necessarily agree that trying to treat others well is masking versus just choosing polite conversation.
Where’s the line? I’m rude because I don’t pick up on social cues…that’s literally what I am diagnosed with.
“I think depressed people just need to be happier to avoid depression”
Learning how to pick up social cues in a rote way instead of an imitative way, essentially, is a treatment. I mean, I know it’s hard to pick up on norms and mores naturalistically with autism, and we should all be graceful and respectful of that as well. Just you know, if someone says something is rude or hurtful, that’s not an attack on your inability to judge that social situation by default…it is information. Even NT do impose expectations on other NT behavior across settings that is sometimes incomprehensible.
Specifically, that’s a Symptomatic treatment. It doesn’t fix autism or make you less autistic, but can sometimes help you meet life goals.
There is no objective line, but if your actions result in your friends getting hurt that is sad, and if your friends decide not to hang out with you because of the chances you’ll hurt them again that is a fair choice. You may choose not to put effort into understanding other people’s perspectives but this means most people with healthy boundaries will either get hurt at some point and leave, or recognize that is bound to happen and leave pre-emptively. So if you want friends that treat you right or a partner who isn’t miserable, then you will have to put effort into understanding other people’s perspectives.
Your friend was offended for a reason. People assume you care why or how to avoid it because that is a necessary part of any healthy friendship. If you do not care, then I hope your friend finds friends that do care so they, at least, can be happy. I also hope that you have friends and you are happy, but an unhealthy friendship does not make you happy and it barely counts as friendship anyway.
The situation really wasn’t as bad as I made it out to be. I was just talking about how I was doing in a course and my friend got jealous because I am doing much better. I didn’t brag, just like “Oh I did great on the exam”
But apparently GPA and pay are two things you can never discuss with anyone….for some reason.
Ah, well, so as you know we live in an exploitative capitalist hellscape where our humanity is ground down until we’re depressed cogs in a machine that doesn’t even produce profit efficiently but which makes those that own the machine feel good because they have so many people under their control. But if you discuss this in public then those that own the machine or the sycophants who want to win their favor to end up in a better position in the machine get mad at you, so most people have resigned themselves to spending most of their lives being a cog in the machine.
This results in two emotional dynamics. Firstly, people are afraid of angering the sycophants of the machine. Secondly, people want to keep some parts of themselves safe from the scouring force of the machine that seeks to make them smoother-running cogs.
The first is mostly important when discussing pay in a like-for-like situation. If you discuss your pay with coworkers in the same company or the same job title, that undermines the power of the employer, so the employer wants to find ways to punish that. That sort of punishment is illegal in many jurisdictions, but it’s hard to enforce and hard to prove, so effectively employers can get away with a lot of punishment. This means that employees that fear that punishment will avoid discussing pay and get mad at you if you do, which would risk implicating them.
The second is more relevant when it comes with the situation with your friend. Exam results are a feedback mechanism to turn you into a cog in the machine. You learn to think in the way they want their cogs to think, and people that learn to think that way most efficiently get put in positions where their thinking perpetuates the system of oppression. And like any good feedback mechanism, they are enforced with rewards and punishments and the promise of more rewards for continued loyalty.
People who struggle at tests are expected to sacrifice their humanity to score better. To give up social development, physical fitness, joy, friendships, exploration, curiosity, time with family and love to work for a system that will grind their souls into dust if they let it. Yet every system and most adults in their environment tell them this is the right choice, and there are usually-false promises of financial security and a roof over your head and respite if only you work a little harder for the next little while. This makes it all so tempting to ignore your own boundaries.
Most people give in to the system partially, becoming cogs for most of their lives, but they still know what is being taken from them and they still try to hold on to what humanity they can. They carry that resentment even if they never consciously thought about the structural issues that produced it or the greater political context. And then you come in with your better grade, proudly announcing that you’re the physical embodiment of what the system blames them for not being. So of course they feel envy and resentment towards you, because in that moment you’re doing what the system wants you to do to scrape away a little more of their humanity.
And this same logic of resentment applies to comparing pay in an unlike situation.
This means that if you want your relationship with your friends to be healthy, beneficial, and enjoyable for the both of you, you only talk about pay or grades in a carefully established emotionally and socially safe zone that mitigates much of the harm that would occur if you just talked about it when it seems relevant.
Neurotypicals of course communicate most of this through emotional subtext. A neurotypical who says “You should never discuss grades with anyone” means that you need such a safe zone. They might establish such a safe zone through a display of shame and vulnerability and seeing whether their conversational partner fulfills their part in the social ritual by making assurances and offering warm support. Even without the neurotypical subtext display, creating a safe zone is necessary, though; everyone has feelings and mental schemas.
Well, then take this advice: hate people and assume the worst until you get to know them enough you can trust them.
Yes, and I’m afraid that I (LSN, self-Dx with high certainty, awaiting formal Dx since early 2023) been guilty of giving this advice until some time last year, when a user on this very platform informed me that what I was suggesting was masking.
One major factor in this problem, I believe, is that a lot of the “raising awareness” stuff I’ve seen over the years tends to focus on just one part of our demographic (namely young, medium support needs boys), which is quite counter-productive. This is likely the main reason why none of my teachers ever thought to have me tested, and why I was 17 before I thought “Hmm, I can’t shut up about Linux, I have a bunch of autistic friends, and I just watched three solid hours of old PSAs. I wonder if there’s a reason for all that?”
There are times when masking is a good idea, this potentially being one of them (I do not know the context); but on the whole, it really isn’t fair to do it all the time just to placate neurotypicals when they are more than capable of dealing with it without long-term psychological harm.
you see, NT avoid this topic at all costs
I don’t think this is a NT vs Autism thing. There are topics that, depending on the environment, are taboo and not to be discussed. Figuring out these rules is confusing (or at least, not automatic) for Autistic peeps, but actually following the rules is something both NT and autistic people must do. Whether or not you call it masking, it’s still something that both groups are subjected to.
I don’t see how it can’t be a NT vs autism thing.
They’re only taboo subjects because society (primarily NTs) decided they were taboo.
Autistic people have to follow the rules set by NTs, not the other way around.
They’re only taboo subjects because society (primarily NTs) decided they were taboo.
Autistic people have to follow the rules set by NTs, not the other way around.
I’m 50/50 on this.
People running a social scene (generally NTs) set the cadence, yes.
Thoughts/questions/ponderings:
- Do autistic people, as individuals, not have rules in their own head about how people should interact with them?
- Are there not rules that both autistic peeps and NTs have in common?
- In social groups composed entirely of autistic people, would another set of norms emerge that could get someone in the group scolded if they broke them, just like in the rest of society?
- When a NT person upsets an autistic person because they broke a norm they weren’t familiar with, wouldn’t they also feel bad and try to remember not to do that in the future?
Some taboos exist for good reason and apply across the board. We don’t greet strangers by asking them how their genitals are feeling, for example (although that would be hilarious).
I think I agree with Savvy more.
Do autistic people, as individuals, not have rules in their own head about how people should interact with them?
Autistic people generally have either far fewer than allistics or if they have some kind of social obsession potentially they have a whole world of rules of their own that even allistics will struggle with.
But yeah generally, in my own case: 1) Don’t be irrationally or sadistically mean.
That’s basically it. You can be irrational/strange around me and at most I’ll be surprised due it being unexpected and my “mask software” wont have a response to load and I’ll freeze up for a bit. You can even be mean if there is sufficient justification for it. Maybe I fucked up bad.
Now, “being mean” a fairly broad category and I have specific obsessive silos of topics I don’t want broken, but that’s on the basis of a “info hazard”. Mainly: discussions of poop or story spoilers. But if someone ends up breaking those “Rules” I don’t hold it against them because they could not have known that I have a severe aversion to both of those things, I just warn them and move on.
In social groups composed entirely of autistic people, would another set of norms emerge that could get someone in the group scolded if they broke them, just like in the rest of society?
Yes but they’d probably be documented, FAQ’d, etc. Autistic people would tell rule violators to RTFM.
When a NT person upsets an autistic person because they broke a norm they weren’t familiar with, wouldn’t they also feel bad and try to remember not to do that in the future?
If the autistic person got upset at the person for breaking a norm the allistic was unfamiliar with they’d be being unfair assuming there was no good reason for them to have known in the first place.
Some taboos exist for good reason and apply across the board. We don’t greet strangers by asking them how their genitals are feeling, for example (although that would be hilarious).
I unironically would be pretty comfortable in a society that did that. At worst I’d probably be confused by why this was the thing people asked about but if I encountered a society that did such and I learned that as a common greeting I’d settle in fine.
When I was young (late 1970s), “How’s it hangin’?” was actually a common greeting. Not usually to strangers, granted, but pretty common.
Thanks for the answers/breakdown!
- Do autistic people, as individuals, not have rules in their own head about how people should interact with them?
I’m sure most do, but it’s far more likely for their rules to be ignored/overridden if they don’t fit in with society’s idea of normal.
For example, an autistic person who does not like being touched is more likely to be seen as the “problem” than someone who tries to shake their hand or give them a hug. People who are close to them will probably learn to respect to that individual’s personal rules, but NTs seem to less adaptable to social change, particularly if it’s inconvenient to them.
Are there not rules that both autistic peeps and NTs have in common?
Definitely, but a lot of them exist for good reasons. I suppose I’m talking more about the seemingly arbitrary rules here.
In social groups composed entirely of autistic people, would another set of norms emerge that could get someone in the group scolded if they broke them, just like in the rest of society?
In my experience there just generally seem to be fewer “global” rules, but when rules are broken people get over it more quickly.
When a NT person upsets an autistic person because they broke a norm they weren’t familiar with, wouldn’t they also feel bad and try to remember not to do that in the future?
I guess this depends on the person, but that applies to everyone, not just NTs.
That last line reminds me of Goku patting people’s genitals in DB to determine their gender lmao
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“Read the room” is not a rule. “Read the room” is a skill of knowing how the people in the room are feeling.
The rule that skill serves is, “don’t say things that people in the room can’t handle hearing right now”
Obvious example: avoid chattering happily about your recent raise in front of people who are miserable they just got laid off.
Usually, people dismissively saying “read the room” mean, “I know that you are capable of feeling and understanding other people’s emotions, would you please fucking pay attention to that skill right now?” (This is plenty common even for not-autistic people) But of course for autistic people that assumption is just incorrect. People saying that to autistic people need to read the room.
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I’m not diagnosed autistic or any other form of neurodivergent. To the day if someone asks “how are you?” I might give a real answer. “Not good, my cat is sick and I’m worried he might be dying” was one I gave last year, to a food service worker. He gave me a discount that day, acknowledged that that doesn’t make it better but he did something to show he saw me and we have been a lot more friendly since then.
I don’t dump on him every time I see him, because I genuinely have good days, but he lights up when he sees me, and that makes me happy too.
I would argue that it’s moreso that there are many more specific and clear social rules, but most people don’t know how to explain them, so when asked, they just say “read the room”. As another person said, it might also be a reminder or shorthand of something that you are assumed to already know intuitively.
I think part of the skill is tone, which is kinda dumb since the truth you communicate is basically the same. Even so, something like “I don’t know why I’m alive anymore” might be considered rude while something like “eh” or “not great” or “same as usual” (hopefully that’s not your usual) or even something like “well, I’ve been a bit overwhelmed by current events recently” would generally not be seen as rude. You can still say something that’s true; you just have to soften things. It would be easier if the softening was not necessary, but as people have gotten at earlier, you have more power to change yourself that to change how the rest of the world reacts to things.
No you shouldn’t rinse and brush as much off as possible, it undermines the environmental benefits of using the dishwasher to save water. The dishes and dishwasher will be fine.
Yes brush or scrape as much as possible, that does save water. Does not need rinse and can save that water.
Yes and no. The advice you received in particular is just as valid for neurotypical people. Knowing what is okay to talk about in different contexts is a learned behavior, not something that comes naturally to everyone.
However it is also true that a lot of advice is just ‘mask harder’ because… It’s really the only thing you can do. You can’t control other people and institutional change is slow, so the only option is to affect what you can affect and that will be yourself.
The difference is on WHY you’re doing things. Masking is toxic if you’re doing it to please other people or because it feels unsafe otherwise.
But adopting different ways of communicating depending on the context is not masking, it’s how language works. Nobody speaks to their boyfriend the same way they speak to their Christian grandmother or the same way they talk in Xbox Live .
