Masking: A Maladaptive Coping Strategy

Masking is a hot topic when it comes to conversations around autism, many people find it confusing and will struggle to understand why somebody is choosing to hide things from them. Autistic individuals will often talk about how the effort required in pretending to be “normal” can be extremely tiring and that they feel it is essential to do it to be accepted.

All human beings have, to a greater or lesser extent, a desire to connect and fit in, it is a key component to how we survive as a species. There is a strong notion on the part of many autistic people that if you do not ‘pretend to be normal’ you will be rejected.

So who is to blame for masking?

There are many well intentioned activists out there who will state that masking is completely down to a failure to accommodate. This is disingenuous as actually there is much more that needs to be considered. Furthermore, placing the blame completely at the feet of society is incredibly disempowering to autistic people: it removes their perspective of control and prolongs suffering.

Essentially the suffering associated with masking can be put down to assumptions and misunderstandings. These can come from not only those with whom autistic people interact but also the autistic person themselves. However, note that masking is used to survive in toxic environments and avoid bullying, but in these situations many people feel forced to mask and not be themselves.

A simpler example of this kind of misunderstanding occurs when an autistic person puts a lot of exhausting mental effort into understanding a conversation in a noisy environment. They believe that this is necessary in order to fit in and meet their social needs. They do not understand that there are plenty of people who would not qualify for a neurodevelopmental diagnosis who also have this problem. These people simply ask to move to a quieter area so they can engage in the conversation more comfortably - and their friendship group does not normally have a problem with this.

Something similar has occurred with social interaction. Many autistic people believe that they will be rejected if they do not put in excessive amounts of mental effort to ‘appear normal’ so that they can fit in and obtain the social interaction that they need. Some go so far as to develop a persona that they portray in company. Putting so much effort into pretending to be someone you are not is far from healthy. It leads to low self-esteem and can lead to more serious mental health difficulties. This is really not the answer, but sadly, the fear of rejection is strong, few autistic people will believe that there is a better way.

Worse, trying too hard but not getting it quite right means the autistic person can fall into the ‘uncanny valley’ and unwittingly put people off them. The ‘uncanny valley’ is well known in robotics and by cartoon makers where it has been found that increasing realism, but not completely meeting realistic means that people find the characters creepy and are put off them.

How does masking develop?

In most cases masking will start at school/during childhood, Parents often complain that their child masks (hides) their difficulties at school. This can be very frustrating because it leads the school to believe the child is fine which can mean that investigations into the child’s needs do not happen.

The reason the child may be hiding these difficulties is because the child finds themselves in a hostile environment where they feel they have no choice but to survive. For instance a child may look to prevent being bullied by hiding their difficulties and blending into the background so they can be ignored. Clearly this is not going to be of long term benefit for the child in regards to social development and general wellbeing.

Not being accepted at school and being seen as strange, which often leads to bullying can make autistic children hide their autistic difficulties in order to simply survive school, which is perceived as a hostile environment that they cannot escape from. So they choose to blend into the background so they are not perceived as a target. Clearly this is not going to be of long term benefit for the child in regards to social development and general wellbeing.

As they get older, and social interaction becomes more sophisticated, this morphs into huge amounts of effort to fit in and mingle with peers - in addition to not sticking out and attracting bullies.

An additional factor is that a lot of very well meaning effort goes into teaching autistic children and young adults social interaction skills. This often involves teaching facial expression, body language and social rules. Much of this is misguided and creates an extra burden on the young person, especially those who have processing issues and are struggling to keep up with the words. This leads to autistic young people believing that they have to put in masses of effort in order to engage with social interaction.

These beliefs and habits are also maintained and reinforced through toxic workplaces and bullying in the workplace because of differences. Then extreme effort for fitting in becomes a survival strategy. But we would still maintain that such high levels of effort is still unnecessary.

Many autistic people may fear that by no longer masking they are likely to lose friends, and this can make it hard to step back and not try so hard. But true friends are accepting of who you are and often stronger friendships come from something much more than just how you interact socially, examples of this are shared interests and experiences.

We would say the issue has arisen because of pressure from the environment when growing up. This includes school, other children and well meaning adults. The autistic person falls into unhealthy habits and develops a maladaptive coping strategy. It is maladaptive because excessive effort is required, it causes low self-esteem and mental health issues - and because there is a better way.

A better way?

There are a lot of misunderstandings regarding social interaction on the part of the both very well meaning adults and autistic people. A key one is the requirement to make eye contact. Making eye contact as in looking into people’s eyes is not required. It is sufficient to look vaguely in the direction of the person’s face. This can include looking at the forehead, the mouth, the nose, or even just to one side of the face. Doing any of these counts as eye contact in normal social interaction.

Another is the requirement to understand how someone is feeling from body language and facial expression. Most autistic people can sense emotion directly and this is much more reliable than working it out from body language and facial expression. So why not help autistic young people and adults to develop and work on this instead.

In fact, all teaching to improve social interaction should take the barriers that the autistic child, young person, or adult has and is experiencing regarding developing the skills of social interaction. For example, there is no point teaching lots of social rules to someone who is struggling to process the meaning of what is being said. In fact teaching social rules often leads to frustration because the autistic person will quickly learn that people break them all the time. The problem is that these rules relate to the context of social interaction. In fact it is better to teach a few key social rules that will work in most situations. For example, finding something nice to say about someone when people are complaining about that person is a surprisingly effective rule.

Most people are not offended by people who are quirky or eccentric. Those who are offended are probably not worth knowing anyway. It is better to find those who will accept you as you are than to try to fit in with those who won’t. A good starting place is to find those with similar interests - or even to develop an interest in something where you can join a group to learn more.

The more niche the interest, the more likely people are to be accepting of difference. As long as you stick to the basic rules of being friendly and don’t complain all the time, you will be ok.