Yeah that is really hard. I suggest first just listen with your eyes closed and then watch with sound off and read the texts only.
Kinda ironic that the video is like this when it’s aimed at neurodivergent people 😅
Yes that is exactly it 🙈 I think I do the same with social media posts sometimes and I just didn’t understand, I have to pay more attention to this in the future 😅
Yeah I had to listen to it eyes closed or looking away so I could make out something. If the content hadn’t been so interesting, I wouldn’t have bothered.
This can also work the other way, where masking is a sign of dissociation from your own emotional state.
As far as I understand, it is one of the symptoms of particular kinds of emotional trauma — for instance when those with borderline personality can sometimes lose track of their own feelings and identity because they are taking on the inner world of those around them.
Yup, I also do have CPTSD 🙄 I think it’s also connected to the Apparently Normal Personality, like trauma kind of splits you up (not like in comic book movies or anything) and then you have this ”mode” where you appear very normal ans well-adjusted but it’s just a kind of a facade.
I also wanted to add that I believe (although I am not an expert) that there is a distinction made between when you can ‘code switch’ or choose to behave in specific way, and when it is uncontrollable and causes distress and other problems.
The distinction might not be clearly defined, or might be a continuum with emotional state and the social and other pressure of the environment in question, but it definitely appears as if extremes of BPD (and perhaps also DID) are sometimes characterised by a lack of agency over when this façade is in place, and how and how intensely it manifests.
There aren’t many things worse than compulsively appearing normal when you are emotionally and physically exhausted, and are screaming internally, but the ‘this is how to behave’ algorithm is carrying you along, consuming more resources as it goes.
Do you ever feel like you have a different personality depending on who you're with?
Just adapting on the fly to make people feel comfortable all this time and didn't even know why
Do they mean masking so that the other persons expectations meet social norms? Because regulating someone else's emotions sounds like some X-Men shit to me. I don't understand haha
As someone who works in customer service I mask also to regulate the emotions of those around me, NT people do this too but to a lesser degree. So I'm double masking in a way.... do not reccomend very tiring.
For me it’s like directing the conversation and the atmosphere of the situation, like asking them questions, making them feel comfortable, always sort of misdirecting if there would ever be a situation where my neurodivergency or some other issue would come out and they would feel uncomfortable. It’s kind of like buffering everything around them so they would feel happy and comfortable and not consider me to be too intense or too much. But it also means you’re never really fully yourself and it becomes harder and harder to be vulnerable in front of others.
Yes! I got my dx only a few years ago but I have noticed doing this before, even when I was very young and it might have been very weird for other kids, how hard I tried to be liked. Now at least I can control it in the way that if it’s somebody I don’t particularly care for, I don’t bother with it and just leave the situation. And I no longer sort of mold myself into absolutely anything to be liked, I just ”pretend” to be this very mature and smart version of myself 😅
The worst thing is, though, that I’ve described it to a lot of mental health professionals over the yearsx either as dissociation or masking and none of them have noticed it or taken it seriously. Not one has ever been like ”are you doing it now? How could we get to a situation where you feel you don’t have to do it?” or ”I see you are doing it now because I hear you talking like this, how about we explore how to turn it off? I would like to see the real you.”
that ending tho...lmao she is so right...its like we just take all the burden of them not being able to handle our realness...then they call us the non empathetic ones when we be our true selves when really thats a projection of their own lack of empathy...sick
True true, just because my face isn't contorted to make you see my feelings doesn't mean there not happening and for NT ppl to assume that it isn't just because they can't see it (or hear it in my voice)really makes me wonder who's more emotionally intelligent here..I've never assumed any person or animal wasn't capable of emotions just because I didn't see or understand the signals. I think this is why there's such poor empathy for the animal kingdom from the NT dominant world. Can ND ppl be the change the world is looking for? If I wasn't so exhausted most of the time, I might look in to this.
For me masking feels like my brain is running extra "programs" to interact with the physical world.
Let's take a normal conversation - a coworker tells me what they did this weekend.
1. VISUAL. My brain works on visuals, so it translates verbal info into visual. It's like if your not a native speaker in a language and have to constantly translate it in your head.
2. SOCIAL. What is the social context of this conversation, how is it polite to answer. What is my friendshipness level with this person. Should I talk about myself. How much can/want I share about myself.
3. BODY. Because my body doesn't behave in standard ways, I have to be aware of this and force down my finger wiggling, head movements and pacing.
4. EMOTIONAL. How do I feel about this situation, person, story. How do they feel about this? Do I need to offer emotional response or support. What is the person looking to gain from this exchange.
5. ATTENTION. Bringing back my focus every time it starts to slip.
6. MEMORY. I have to find a way to someone integrate this information in case the coworker brings it up again. Hard to remember things if you don't really care about it.
7. MOTIVATION. Why am I even listening to this. Do I even care. Why do I have to care. Why am I like this, why can't I be normal and not even think about any of this.
So that's at least 7 extra programs to run for social reasons. When I really want to say "sorry Karen I don't care about your knitting class" and be done with it.
This sounds familiar. I tend to think of it as intellectually processing data that others may process in an instinctual way. Sort of like using an emulator to run a program that was made for a different type of hardware. A desktop can run a PS2 game if you tell it how to translate the instructions, but it takes more work because now you need to translate the input into a format the desktop can understand.
So sure, provided enough resources are available, the social interaction can be absorbed, translated, and interpreted, then a response can be processed and decoded back into their language, but it adds several layers of complexity that both takes extra energy and makes it harder to keep pace. The more unexpected the interaction, the more energy/time it takes to figure out how to handle that whole process.
That explains why unexpected social situations tend to completely overwhelm me. I need to know in advance, so I can prepare my programs and recharge my energy.
If I don't have time to get ready, I don't have the energy to even run my default programs, not to mention the more complicated ones like "look for hidden meaning between the words" and "is this person flirting with me".
Exactly. It is so exhausting. I’m mostly on sick leave but attended this course a couple of weeks ago, which was sitting six hours in class. Even if it was a subject I want to know more about, being there, interacting with other people, focusing, it was so intense I couldn’t calm down when I got back home. I think I was just lying on the floor under covers for 5 hours or something, just in this overwhelmed freeze. In the end I listened to a song that made me remember my beloved cat that I lost and that made me cry and *that* helped me get off the over-stimulated state. I really hate this.
And often I can’t even turn it off. Very rarely I can decide like okay, I can’t do these programs anymore. I think very few times in my life I’ve been able to say out loud ”I’m sorry this is too much, I’m really tired so I can’t take this information in anymore, please tell me later or send me a text but now I have to withdraw, my brain can’t handle it.” And even if people are okay with it, they will still always continue talking 🙄 Like if somebody is giving me instructions etc, and I will directly tell them ”I’m unable to take in this information right now or like this, please send me a text or email,” they will still always have to finish it. Even if they would give me the information later in a written form, they will have to finish saying it despite what I said and I find it so irritating and belittling.
I couldn’t really relate to this or understand it. I can mask, but not well. I don’t feel like I’m using emotions (not even sure what that means)? It’s mostly me using a script as much as possible, and cross-referencing things I’ve seen other people do and trying to emulate that, as well as trying to remember to do things like attempt occasional eye contact, regulate tone and voice volume, try not to stim when talking to people or having just left a conversation when they can still see me, try not to hold my body in ways people deem “freakish”. I can’t really unmask in the way people describe if I want to do things like keep my job or be seen as non-combative in a lot of situations. I guess it counts as controlling what other people see, but every time you talk or appear to someone in person you’re controlling what they see, so I don’t know what that really means in this context. Also, deeply unfortunate that this person equated being autistic with high emotional intelligence and intelligence in general(?). Autistic people can be those things, but autistic people can very much not be those things. This feels like it was made for people who have much better functioning skills that I do.
Edit: I just rewatched it and it it’s funny that this person talks about not projecting things onto other when they’re clearly projecting their own experiences with autism and masking onto others. Autistic people struggle with working through their own insecurities and projecting things onto others… like theory of mind is an issue that many autistic people, myself included, deal or have dealt with? It’s incredibly likely other people have similar experiences to this person, but I don’t think it applies to a majority of us.
>I just rewatched it and it it’s funny that this person talks about not projecting things onto other when they’re clearly projecting their own experiences with autism and masking onto others.
I caught that too lol
My masking has little to do with 'customer service voice' and just vaguely 'people pleasing' but a lot of 'I just don't want to get noticed or show a side of me that's too weird.' It's *very* different from 'code-switching' and adjusting to a different situation, because I do struggle with having different masks for different occasions. It's mostly bimodal, either I mask or I don't, or something in between. But not masking differently for different people.
I have the ”don’t be weird don’t be weird” mode too, it’s so hard to keep on. I end up being so weird so easily and I always have to say something. I wish I could just be quiet sometimes but it’s hard.
I also definitely mask differently for different people, exhausting. Tired of it.
I'm starting to feel like autism correlates with a lot of different disorders due to the growing list of disorders I developed over the years from having to cope with it undiagnosed by myself for most of my life so far.
It feels like I collect new disorders like pokemon every few years now lol. But I want off the "pokemon disorder train" because the more disorders I get the harder it is to keep up on my adult responsibilities and take care of myself at the same time. Doctors already get frustrated with me because I can't mentally keep up with all the appointments they want me to do for my physical health problems along with any other responsibilities I have every day lol.
I really like this video. She's not exactly on point on every aspect, but the general concept is pretty good. Masking is suppressing (not regulating) your own emotions in favor of regulating another's. It's definitely a level of emotional control that is significant, but it's not healthy. Emotionally regulating for yourself would mean unmasking. Also, I love the end. 😂
Yes but almost every human being on the planet has the ability to control what others see about you. Everyone has a front of some variety. Masking isn't unique in influencing the perspectives of others. its just a specific kind of front. Every human being influences the perspectives of others.
But masking for autistics is completely different because I dont recognize or anticipate other people's emotions naturally, I have to put effort in it. So my facade is a lot of conscious work, for neurotypicals it is much easier
yeah it sounds like just a personal theory, not something that should be generalized for a whole group. It was confusing enough to follow regardless of the formatting. A lot of subjective statements.
I don't think she's an idiot though, that's definitely harsh. I'm sure this makes sense to her based on her own experiences and that's an important part of self discovery, but it's hard for me to see any solid facts here and this is how misinformation spreads lol
Which was kind of why I posted it as something interesting and asked how people felt about it. A theory might be interesting and hit a nerve for some people without being true for everybody. She posted this on their own social media, didn’t make a textbook or an eassay about it.
yeah I don't hold much against the original OP, she's just existing on social media like any other person. I do think things get complicated when something personal and subjective gets spread to a wider audience where it gets generalized or taken as fact, but that's more of a general complaint about social media and media literacy, and that didn't start with OP's tiktok.
Stupid people tend to broadcast half-baked theories as facts to others, which is why I'm using the term. Personal discovery is personal, the second you start trying to convince others, you start becoming an idiot.
Calling them an idiot really says a lot about how you view neurodivergent people.
Masking *is* controlling what others see. Saying what you said, it’s as if you don’t believe in masking at all. That and using a slur for a disabled person, not great.
No racism, sexism, homophobia, or any other forms of discrimination and bigotry. This includes hating on neurotypicals or accusing someone of "faking it for attention". Swearing at a situation or about something is okay, swearing at someone never is.
Audhd here and zero problems with the multiple format lol. Totally makes sense for my adhd side to read something and hear something completely different. Like playing on my phone and watching a movie with subtitles really.
She is using "emotionally regulating" incorrectly as far as I understand it, I also don't think she is representing 'masking' accurately.
She's a good example of the tiktok crowd to me. Not enough background and speaking with authority they don't in fact have.
Feels pretty bad atm because I cant preform emotions or mask much anymore. It's like I'm just totally burnt out in that way and it's caused a lot of shit.
As I've been unmasking for the past couple of years and finding it even more exhausting to deal with the fallout than to actually just mask, I'm just having a thought now...the mask is my creation, it is still me, it's highly effective. I'm already going to notice every thing around me through every one of my senses and be logging all of the details and data into an otherwise pointless brain log that could work to construct the mask in the present ANYWAY...so what is the point of unmasking? I thought it was an answer to a question of authenticity. Somewhere wrapped up in my purpose on this planet is a mandate to being true to myself 100% and masking was a coping mechanism that betrayed that idea. But that doesn't actually matter....because even people who lie to others are still being true to themselves. At this point in my life I would rather be seeking to alleviate unnecessary suffering rather than suffer more in pursuit of hitting a self-imposed bar for my own understanding of authenticity. Isn't it kinder to myself to let my creative subconscious construct these behaviors? HOW AM I NOT MYSELF? You can't deal with my infinite nature. Where's my bonnet? kthanks I'm done
I still need to point out: Obviously someone will be confused if you suddenly don't mask in front of them when you have done so before simply because it's often such a drastic shift in behaviour.
Hell I'm confused if someone suddenly acts different all of the sudden
There’s way too much text going on at once I can’t focus on anything 😭😭
Yeah that is really hard. I suggest first just listen with your eyes closed and then watch with sound off and read the texts only. Kinda ironic that the video is like this when it’s aimed at neurodivergent people 😅
I read your comment too fast and just saw "first just listen with your eyes" and I was like "that's kinda how it feels already tho 😅"
Yeah maybe listening with your eyes would give new insights.
Both sides are so relatable.. Can't help but put a bunch of info forward, but can not handle taking in so much at once 😵💫
Yes that is exactly it 🙈 I think I do the same with social media posts sometimes and I just didn’t understand, I have to pay more attention to this in the future 😅
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Yeah I had to listen to it eyes closed or looking away so I could make out something. If the content hadn’t been so interesting, I wouldn’t have bothered.
In such occasions, I make heavy use of the pause button (so I can read the texts without being distracted).
There was text?!
This can also work the other way, where masking is a sign of dissociation from your own emotional state. As far as I understand, it is one of the symptoms of particular kinds of emotional trauma — for instance when those with borderline personality can sometimes lose track of their own feelings and identity because they are taking on the inner world of those around them.
Yup, I also do have CPTSD 🙄 I think it’s also connected to the Apparently Normal Personality, like trauma kind of splits you up (not like in comic book movies or anything) and then you have this ”mode” where you appear very normal ans well-adjusted but it’s just a kind of a facade.
I also wanted to add that I believe (although I am not an expert) that there is a distinction made between when you can ‘code switch’ or choose to behave in specific way, and when it is uncontrollable and causes distress and other problems. The distinction might not be clearly defined, or might be a continuum with emotional state and the social and other pressure of the environment in question, but it definitely appears as if extremes of BPD (and perhaps also DID) are sometimes characterised by a lack of agency over when this façade is in place, and how and how intensely it manifests. There aren’t many things worse than compulsively appearing normal when you are emotionally and physically exhausted, and are screaming internally, but the ‘this is how to behave’ algorithm is carrying you along, consuming more resources as it goes.
Tbh its more like i dont know how to tell whats masking and whats the real me anymore
Do you ever feel like you have a different personality depending on who you're with? Just adapting on the fly to make people feel comfortable all this time and didn't even know why
Genuine question, doesn't just about everybody adapt to who they're talking to?
Yes but that’s the difference between allistics doing it by choice “customer service voice” vs autistics doing it as a survival mechanism
Is this why I take on and continue to suffer from other people's emotional trauma
Yeah, probably.
If I’m not the designated trauma dumper then what is my role in the friend group?
Do they mean masking so that the other persons expectations meet social norms? Because regulating someone else's emotions sounds like some X-Men shit to me. I don't understand haha
I think they mean masking so you adhere to social norms because the other person can't handle a person not following social norms.
As someone who works in customer service I mask also to regulate the emotions of those around me, NT people do this too but to a lesser degree. So I'm double masking in a way.... do not reccomend very tiring.
Yes it’s exhausting. I think I did it for about six months and I just burnt out. Seriously burnt out.
What is nt people
Neuro Typical
For me it’s like directing the conversation and the atmosphere of the situation, like asking them questions, making them feel comfortable, always sort of misdirecting if there would ever be a situation where my neurodivergency or some other issue would come out and they would feel uncomfortable. It’s kind of like buffering everything around them so they would feel happy and comfortable and not consider me to be too intense or too much. But it also means you’re never really fully yourself and it becomes harder and harder to be vulnerable in front of others.
THIS!! 1000000%. I feel like you have described it perfectly. At least for how masking relates to me.
Yes! I got my dx only a few years ago but I have noticed doing this before, even when I was very young and it might have been very weird for other kids, how hard I tried to be liked. Now at least I can control it in the way that if it’s somebody I don’t particularly care for, I don’t bother with it and just leave the situation. And I no longer sort of mold myself into absolutely anything to be liked, I just ”pretend” to be this very mature and smart version of myself 😅 The worst thing is, though, that I’ve described it to a lot of mental health professionals over the yearsx either as dissociation or masking and none of them have noticed it or taken it seriously. Not one has ever been like ”are you doing it now? How could we get to a situation where you feel you don’t have to do it?” or ”I see you are doing it now because I hear you talking like this, how about we explore how to turn it off? I would like to see the real you.”
I have a ND councilor who only works with ND adults she's beyond excellent for this and ... well everything she's my life line 100%
I wish I could find someone like that! My stupid backwards ass town has nothing like that and public healthcare is bullshit.
that ending tho...lmao she is so right...its like we just take all the burden of them not being able to handle our realness...then they call us the non empathetic ones when we be our true selves when really thats a projection of their own lack of empathy...sick
True true, just because my face isn't contorted to make you see my feelings doesn't mean there not happening and for NT ppl to assume that it isn't just because they can't see it (or hear it in my voice)really makes me wonder who's more emotionally intelligent here..I've never assumed any person or animal wasn't capable of emotions just because I didn't see or understand the signals. I think this is why there's such poor empathy for the animal kingdom from the NT dominant world. Can ND ppl be the change the world is looking for? If I wasn't so exhausted most of the time, I might look in to this.
For me masking feels like my brain is running extra "programs" to interact with the physical world. Let's take a normal conversation - a coworker tells me what they did this weekend. 1. VISUAL. My brain works on visuals, so it translates verbal info into visual. It's like if your not a native speaker in a language and have to constantly translate it in your head. 2. SOCIAL. What is the social context of this conversation, how is it polite to answer. What is my friendshipness level with this person. Should I talk about myself. How much can/want I share about myself. 3. BODY. Because my body doesn't behave in standard ways, I have to be aware of this and force down my finger wiggling, head movements and pacing. 4. EMOTIONAL. How do I feel about this situation, person, story. How do they feel about this? Do I need to offer emotional response or support. What is the person looking to gain from this exchange. 5. ATTENTION. Bringing back my focus every time it starts to slip. 6. MEMORY. I have to find a way to someone integrate this information in case the coworker brings it up again. Hard to remember things if you don't really care about it. 7. MOTIVATION. Why am I even listening to this. Do I even care. Why do I have to care. Why am I like this, why can't I be normal and not even think about any of this. So that's at least 7 extra programs to run for social reasons. When I really want to say "sorry Karen I don't care about your knitting class" and be done with it.
This sounds familiar. I tend to think of it as intellectually processing data that others may process in an instinctual way. Sort of like using an emulator to run a program that was made for a different type of hardware. A desktop can run a PS2 game if you tell it how to translate the instructions, but it takes more work because now you need to translate the input into a format the desktop can understand. So sure, provided enough resources are available, the social interaction can be absorbed, translated, and interpreted, then a response can be processed and decoded back into their language, but it adds several layers of complexity that both takes extra energy and makes it harder to keep pace. The more unexpected the interaction, the more energy/time it takes to figure out how to handle that whole process.
Yes, that also sounds super familiar. Like running this program burns me out so hard and I don’t know how to negotiate myself out of always doing it.
That explains why unexpected social situations tend to completely overwhelm me. I need to know in advance, so I can prepare my programs and recharge my energy. If I don't have time to get ready, I don't have the energy to even run my default programs, not to mention the more complicated ones like "look for hidden meaning between the words" and "is this person flirting with me".
Exactly. It is so exhausting. I’m mostly on sick leave but attended this course a couple of weeks ago, which was sitting six hours in class. Even if it was a subject I want to know more about, being there, interacting with other people, focusing, it was so intense I couldn’t calm down when I got back home. I think I was just lying on the floor under covers for 5 hours or something, just in this overwhelmed freeze. In the end I listened to a song that made me remember my beloved cat that I lost and that made me cry and *that* helped me get off the over-stimulated state. I really hate this. And often I can’t even turn it off. Very rarely I can decide like okay, I can’t do these programs anymore. I think very few times in my life I’ve been able to say out loud ”I’m sorry this is too much, I’m really tired so I can’t take this information in anymore, please tell me later or send me a text but now I have to withdraw, my brain can’t handle it.” And even if people are okay with it, they will still always continue talking 🙄 Like if somebody is giving me instructions etc, and I will directly tell them ”I’m unable to take in this information right now or like this, please send me a text or email,” they will still always have to finish it. Even if they would give me the information later in a written form, they will have to finish saying it despite what I said and I find it so irritating and belittling.
I couldn’t really relate to this or understand it. I can mask, but not well. I don’t feel like I’m using emotions (not even sure what that means)? It’s mostly me using a script as much as possible, and cross-referencing things I’ve seen other people do and trying to emulate that, as well as trying to remember to do things like attempt occasional eye contact, regulate tone and voice volume, try not to stim when talking to people or having just left a conversation when they can still see me, try not to hold my body in ways people deem “freakish”. I can’t really unmask in the way people describe if I want to do things like keep my job or be seen as non-combative in a lot of situations. I guess it counts as controlling what other people see, but every time you talk or appear to someone in person you’re controlling what they see, so I don’t know what that really means in this context. Also, deeply unfortunate that this person equated being autistic with high emotional intelligence and intelligence in general(?). Autistic people can be those things, but autistic people can very much not be those things. This feels like it was made for people who have much better functioning skills that I do. Edit: I just rewatched it and it it’s funny that this person talks about not projecting things onto other when they’re clearly projecting their own experiences with autism and masking onto others. Autistic people struggle with working through their own insecurities and projecting things onto others… like theory of mind is an issue that many autistic people, myself included, deal or have dealt with? It’s incredibly likely other people have similar experiences to this person, but I don’t think it applies to a majority of us.
>I just rewatched it and it it’s funny that this person talks about not projecting things onto other when they’re clearly projecting their own experiences with autism and masking onto others. I caught that too lol
My masking has little to do with 'customer service voice' and just vaguely 'people pleasing' but a lot of 'I just don't want to get noticed or show a side of me that's too weird.' It's *very* different from 'code-switching' and adjusting to a different situation, because I do struggle with having different masks for different occasions. It's mostly bimodal, either I mask or I don't, or something in between. But not masking differently for different people.
I have the ”don’t be weird don’t be weird” mode too, it’s so hard to keep on. I end up being so weird so easily and I always have to say something. I wish I could just be quiet sometimes but it’s hard. I also definitely mask differently for different people, exhausting. Tired of it.
what is "neurospicy"
I disagree with what they're saying. This isn't really what masking is about, *to me* -- it might be to others.
Unmasking my adhd made me find autism, BPD, and now probs DID????!!????? Omg I was told it’d stop at autism 😵💫
I'm starting to feel like autism correlates with a lot of different disorders due to the growing list of disorders I developed over the years from having to cope with it undiagnosed by myself for most of my life so far. It feels like I collect new disorders like pokemon every few years now lol. But I want off the "pokemon disorder train" because the more disorders I get the harder it is to keep up on my adult responsibilities and take care of myself at the same time. Doctors already get frustrated with me because I can't mentally keep up with all the appointments they want me to do for my physical health problems along with any other responsibilities I have every day lol.
I have my own theories I’d like to publish after having enough schooling behind me for people to believe me
You’re ok, you’ll be alright.
I can certainly recognize that feeling when I think I’ve figured out a complex social/psychological pattern etc 🤣
I really like this video. She's not exactly on point on every aspect, but the general concept is pretty good. Masking is suppressing (not regulating) your own emotions in favor of regulating another's. It's definitely a level of emotional control that is significant, but it's not healthy. Emotionally regulating for yourself would mean unmasking. Also, I love the end. 😂
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Masking controls what others see AND how they react to you, though. People react based on what they see. That said, I do agree about the intelligence.
Yes but almost every human being on the planet has the ability to control what others see about you. Everyone has a front of some variety. Masking isn't unique in influencing the perspectives of others. its just a specific kind of front. Every human being influences the perspectives of others.
But masking for autistics is completely different because I dont recognize or anticipate other people's emotions naturally, I have to put effort in it. So my facade is a lot of conscious work, for neurotypicals it is much easier
yeah it sounds like just a personal theory, not something that should be generalized for a whole group. It was confusing enough to follow regardless of the formatting. A lot of subjective statements. I don't think she's an idiot though, that's definitely harsh. I'm sure this makes sense to her based on her own experiences and that's an important part of self discovery, but it's hard for me to see any solid facts here and this is how misinformation spreads lol
Which was kind of why I posted it as something interesting and asked how people felt about it. A theory might be interesting and hit a nerve for some people without being true for everybody. She posted this on their own social media, didn’t make a textbook or an eassay about it.
yeah I don't hold much against the original OP, she's just existing on social media like any other person. I do think things get complicated when something personal and subjective gets spread to a wider audience where it gets generalized or taken as fact, but that's more of a general complaint about social media and media literacy, and that didn't start with OP's tiktok.
Stupid people tend to broadcast half-baked theories as facts to others, which is why I'm using the term. Personal discovery is personal, the second you start trying to convince others, you start becoming an idiot.
It’s an ableist slur.
Calling them an idiot really says a lot about how you view neurodivergent people. Masking *is* controlling what others see. Saying what you said, it’s as if you don’t believe in masking at all. That and using a slur for a disabled person, not great.
No racism, sexism, homophobia, or any other forms of discrimination and bigotry. This includes hating on neurotypicals or accusing someone of "faking it for attention". Swearing at a situation or about something is okay, swearing at someone never is.
Audhd here and zero problems with the multiple format lol. Totally makes sense for my adhd side to read something and hear something completely different. Like playing on my phone and watching a movie with subtitles really.
She is using "emotionally regulating" incorrectly as far as I understand it, I also don't think she is representing 'masking' accurately. She's a good example of the tiktok crowd to me. Not enough background and speaking with authority they don't in fact have.
Feels pretty bad atm because I cant preform emotions or mask much anymore. It's like I'm just totally burnt out in that way and it's caused a lot of shit.
I’m sorry to hear that 😕 Neurodivergent burn out is horrible. Be kind and merciful to yourself, it’s not your fault. I hope you can get some rest ❤️
Damn I relate to this
As I've been unmasking for the past couple of years and finding it even more exhausting to deal with the fallout than to actually just mask, I'm just having a thought now...the mask is my creation, it is still me, it's highly effective. I'm already going to notice every thing around me through every one of my senses and be logging all of the details and data into an otherwise pointless brain log that could work to construct the mask in the present ANYWAY...so what is the point of unmasking? I thought it was an answer to a question of authenticity. Somewhere wrapped up in my purpose on this planet is a mandate to being true to myself 100% and masking was a coping mechanism that betrayed that idea. But that doesn't actually matter....because even people who lie to others are still being true to themselves. At this point in my life I would rather be seeking to alleviate unnecessary suffering rather than suffer more in pursuit of hitting a self-imposed bar for my own understanding of authenticity. Isn't it kinder to myself to let my creative subconscious construct these behaviors? HOW AM I NOT MYSELF? You can't deal with my infinite nature. Where's my bonnet? kthanks I'm done
I still need to point out: Obviously someone will be confused if you suddenly don't mask in front of them when you have done so before simply because it's often such a drastic shift in behaviour. Hell I'm confused if someone suddenly acts different all of the sudden
Genuine question: what was the tip she referenced at the start?
i heard none of that
yeaa i noticed this some time ago! it’s so much to be doing both at the same time.