Transcript

GINNY

You mentioned masking, which is something I’ve heard a lot about, but I don't feel like I understand well.

ANDREW

Yeah. So I think masking is basically covering up your autism. And I think it’s interesting, because for me, because I got diagnosed at 19, I didn’t realise how much of my life I spent masking. And because as I was being raised, those mannerisms that were masking were also as defined by my parents being polite, it’s very hard for me to unpick them too.

So right now, in this conversation, for example, I’m masking. And I think masking is something that you do to cover up your autism. Most of the time, it’s done to your advantage. I want to talk in a masked way to you. Because otherwise, I wouldn’t be looking at you. I am accentuating my voice a little bit. I’m quite monotone, and I’d just be talking non-stop sort of thing. I’d rather mask in this situation because it feels nicer to have a conversation that’s a bit more reciprocal, for example.

A lot of the time that I employ it in my day-to-day life, it’s good for me. However, though I do think there’s a flip side to masking, where it is, for lack of a better word, quite traumatic because, especially for younger people, especially for people with more support needs, where they may be forced into therapeutic settings, there can be a lot of forced masking there. It’s really important to be aware that with masking, there can be a lot of trauma associated with it, even though a lot of the masking that I did growing up and that I’ve learned is quite useful for me now.

I mean, I’ve gotten into med school. I’ve got myself a first-class degree in medical sciences. It does come with a lot of trauma. And it’s what I was saying before, with social interaction being a lot of effort.

It’s not just the fact that you need to work harder to do the social interaction. It’s also wrapped up in a whole load of past instances in that person’s life, where they’ve misread the situation. They thought they were doing the right thing, and it’s really backfired in their face. And they don’t know what’s going on. And they’ve had to really deal with the social consequences of that. And that can be really, really hard.