Our diversity is dizzying. Our approaches to love will be just as diverse.
Tag Archives: fight flight fawn freeze
Why Autistic Masking is Unsustainable (and What to do Instead)
Here’s where the problem comes in – the more you mask, the less energy you have to mask. But the more you mask, the more you are expected to mask. Drop the mask, and you potentially lose vital and important relationships and your survival capacity is diminished in direct ratio to that.
Since masking long term isn’t sustainable, and since expending more energy than you can recuperate on a regular basis will lead to exhaustion and burnout, autistic people who have to mask in order to obtain the basic needs for survival will inevitably crash and burn.
Living With Alexithymia: I Don’t Know What I’m Feeling, But There’s a Lot of It
“Wow, you’re so self-aware,” said the neuropsychologist during the interview portion of my autism assessment.
“I’m really not,” I replied, and went on to clumsily explain that I was only applying my current understandings to previous periods in my life retroactively, much like adults do when describing their own childhoods.
The Autistic Ambassador 