Unmasking Autism
“Autistic people are born with the mask of neurotypicality pressed against our faces. All people are assumed to think, socialize, feel, express emotion, process sensory information, and communicate in more or less the same ways. We’re all expected to play along with the rules of our home culture, and blend into it seamlessly. Those of us who need alternate tools for self-expression and self-understanding are denied them. Our first experience of ourselves as a person in the world, therefore, is one of being othered and confused. We only get the opportunity to take our masks off when we realize other ways of being exist.”
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“The opposite of alienation is integration, a psychological sense of connection and wholeness. People whose identities are integrated can see a through-line connecting the many selves they have been across various times and places. Every human being changes over time, of course, and alters their behavior depending on the situation or setting they’re in. There is no static “true self” that stops adapting and changing. To a masked Autistic person, this fact can be really disturbing, because we may lack a consistent “story” to tell ourselves about who we really are. Our personalities are just means to an end, externally motivated rather than driven by some internal force or desire. Someone with an integrated identity isn’t disturbed by change and variance, though, because they see a connection that endures across the many people they have been: core values that persist across their life span, and a narrative of personal growth that explains how they moved from the person they once were, to who they are today.”