What masking is
The National Autistic Society describes masking as a strategy autistic people use to appear non-autistic, so they can blend in and be more accepted. Researchers usually call it camouflaging: hiding the traits that show, and building compensation strategies to get through social situations that were never designed for you.
It is not lying and it is not being fake. It is a survival strategy, and it works. That is exactly what makes it so hard to put down.
It also runs a bill. The research is consistent about this. Long-term masking shows up as measurably higher biological stress, and it is the most frequently cited cause of autistic burnout. Deep exhaustion, identity strain, and that specific feeling of being out of sync with yourself.
My version of it
I had a hat for every room.
Walking into a sales meeting, I put on the salesperson. Seeing friends, I put on the social one. An event, a different one again. I had a version of me built for every room, and I could switch fast enough that nobody ever noticed.
I copied social behavior. I watched how people did it and then I did that. And I rehearsed. Obsessively. Not once or twice. Five hundred times in the mirror, until it came out sounding like something a person would just say.
That rehearsing has a name, as it turns out. Researchers call it a compensation strategy, and it is one of the most documented parts of masking there is. For thirty years I thought it was a weird private thing that only I did.
To be clear about where I stand: I have never been formally diagnosed. I found the research, recognised myself in it, and tested it against my own life. I am telling you what I did, not what you are.
You do not notice the weight of it, because you have never once put it down long enough to feel the difference.
Why there is a pair of glasses on my website
Because I am not trying to give you a show.
Every time those glasses go on and come off, that is the entire point. On is the version I built for the room. Off is me.
Social media runs on the exact opposite of that. It runs on the version you built for the room, all the time, forever, refined and optimized until there is nothing else left. I would rather do the other thing, in front of you, on my own website.
And the cool people thing
Since you came all the way down here, I will tell you how that works too.
"I'm only talking to cool people" is a hook. I know it is a hook. It creates a small amount of cognitive dissonance, and dissonance makes people listen, because your brain wants to resolve it. Am I? Am I not? What does he mean by that? And now you are paying attention.
What I actually believe is far less clever. Everyone is cool in their own completely unique way. Every single person. The hook is only how I get you to stay long enough for me to say it.
So now you know how the trick works and you are still reading, which means it was never really the trick.
If any of that sounded familiar
If you have been carrying a different hat for every room, and you are tired in a way that sleeping does not fix, this is the page I wrote for you.
You are not broken. You have been doing something very expensive for a very long time, without knowing it had a name.
Put it down when you can. Start with one room.
On masking and camouflaging: the National Autistic Society. I am describing my own experience here, not diagnosing yours.