I’m autistic, black and transmasc. What I have always found to be interesting is that it is extremely hard for me to mask, mainly due the way I am being perceived as a cis black man. I think a lot of my adverse experiences with allistic people is rooted in white supremacy, racism and perceptions of how black people should or do behave. In general, I am quite to be perceived as rude, disrespectful, loud, etc. but when in reality I’m not super aware of these things because I am autistic. I do not think I’d get as much leniency as white autistic people when it comes to my “behavior” especially as someone who went undiagnosed for over 17 years and has always live in a predominantly white area/attended predominantly white schools. Honestly, as a black person, receiving a diagnosis has helped me a lot in navigating situations and getting the support. Experiences of BIPOC autists are so hard to find, and I am so happy you brought this up! I often feel unseen. I relate a lot to what you’re saying, and I’m glad you’re making content! I’ve been watching for over 5 years.

as an autistic person, I often feel like I'm two people, the one who masks, goes out into the world and interacts with people in the 'right' way, and the one who doesn't, the one who can be genuinely himself but only alone or in the company of trusted (often neurodivergent) friends. these two parts clash

The way you describe the confusing feeling of failing to mask as an undiagnosed autistic child really resonates with me. After unexpectedly getting an autism diagnosis at 17 so many of my childhood memories just made so much sense but in a sort of painful way where you realise how obvious some of the signs were that still no adults picked up on(if that makes sense?)

AS AN AUTISTIC PERSON IM SO EXCITED AB THIS

One thing I think about socializing is how subconciously it's been ingrained in me to mimic other people's behaviors. Like I can't turn it off. I'll start acting drunk or high when I'm around friends who are drunk or high, because I just naturally mimic other people's social language. People will make fun of me for it like I'm doing it on purpose :V

It's so comforting to hear somebody else talk about how they weren't allowed to read books or go to the library during recess. I really hated it and I've always felt like I was the only person who ever experienced it. I spent almost all of my childhood up through high school masking very heavily just to survive and make it home at the end of the day. I was living in a state of near-constant sensory overload and I was miserable. Since I kept my grades up, nobody ever seemed to notice. I also felt very isolated due to my intense special interest, though I can't remember whether that isolation was due to active bullying or if it was latent self-hatred from earlier bullying. Being a newfound trans person in a R+35 high school made me feel even more isolated and scared to reach out and try to make friends. I've been lucky enough not to have to mask much here in college, and I'm even lucky enough to get to major in my special interest. My department has anti-discrimination rules that actually get enforced, and while I've had a few discrimination issues I've always felt overall safe. I still have some sensory overload issues but they're nowhere near as bad as they were a few years ago.

oh man this is relatable, and i'm glad you're talking about it because more people need to understand it. masking was a massive part of my teenage years and i had no idea i was doing it - just thought i was trying to be a good friend, etc. the misdiagnosis thing though... i thought i had an anxiety disorder for multiple years and i DIDN'T - i mean, i do now, or at least a trauma disorder that involves a lot of anxiety idk - but i thought i had anxiety when i was like 14 and i didn't. i was experiencing a perfectly normal and understandable amount of anxiety for the situation i was in as an undiagnosed autistic person surrounded by critical allistics who hated my autistic traits. i couldn't reconcile the cognitive dissonance of "these people are my friends," "these people are making me feel bad," and "friends aren't supposed to make you feel bad" any other way than "these people are my friends and i feel bad for no reason which means i have a disorder". i GAVE MYSELF anxiety by attempting to fix an anxiety disorder i didn't yet have, because i didn't know i was autistic and i didn't know i was lowkey being bullied.

Something I've learned about internet friends from allistics is that a lot (not all) of them view internet friends as not as 'real' as in-person friends. They view them as people they talk about a limited number of subjects. They generally don't dig too deep into personal stuff. Whereas literally every single autistic person I know, myself included, view internet friends as equally as real as, or in a lot of cases 'more real' than, in-person friends. I'm FAR more myself with online autistic or neurodiverse friends as I don't feel any pressure to mask, they understand why communicating can be delayed, and we just have a really good understanding of the time we need. I don't have to explain why I need a break from messaging or gaming or watching videos. Whereas the few allistic online friends I have are more unintentionally impatient. They don't understand why I went from messaging for 2 hours straight to feeling so completely burned out I can't finish the conversation for a few days. They don't see online communication as equally exhausting as in-person communication whereas I feel them pretty much equally. There's always a level of masking I feel the need to do with online allistics that's easier to deal with than in-person masking, but masking is still masking.

I very much relate to the things you discuss in this video. Basically everything my parents criticized me for or mocked me about when I was younger was one of my autistic traits, whether that was being a picky eater, or having a smell/feel sensory aversion, or being too afraid to order food. The queer-autistic overlap is a huge thing. There are so many of us. Over the last year, finding my own queerness and making queer friends has been unbelievably freeing for me. When I’m around them I don’t need to mask, because they’re much more self aware about neurodiversity and queerness than most people. Existing in that space has allowed me to try to pick away at and unmask the autistic masking that was drilled into me as a child, as well as the gender based masking of being raised to be a man.

Autistic trans plural fella hereee gosh yeah, I mask a lot. I used to be unable to tell what's my mask and what's the Real me. I still don't. but surrounding myself with primarily autistic people and very gradually learning how to unmask allows me to see what I Actually am and that has been a thrilling experience a lot of people think of masking as just putting on a mask for a period of time while in front of other people. But like, I feel like for autistic people, they mask 24/7, even while alone, and it's quite rare to unmask unless in the correct environment. and the mask runs so deep to the core of you that it's crazy. it almost looks like CPTSD from the fact that you were born with a different wiring

i was bullied a lot when i was in elementary school, to the point that for Like a full year I didn't talk to anybody at all and just read a book on the side. then i reached middle school and made a conscious decision to start masking (of course at the time i didnt know i was autistic, or what masking is) which consisted of me telling myself that in order to be "less cringe" and "wired" I will now question every single thing I said in a social interaction and never lose sight of myself in the public space (or in other words: dont say whats on your mind, analyze the situation and calculate the prefect response, and never stim in public or act "wired" in public)

I love that this video released the week I decided to unmask more because I’m tired of getting burnt out for nothing!!

As someone who is trying to figure out my brain and struggles with mental health, this kind of discussion is really important to have and is something that autistic people and non autistic people should talk about. I know personally that changing how i act and talk in order to 'blend in' is extremely draining and has become so common for me that i sometimes can't reconmect with how i actually am for a while. And i also very much relate to watch Ashton said about feeling alienated from stats as a trans person as i am trans myself. And the thumb thing? Suuuuper relatable lol. Most of this video is very relatable to me. I guess we were just quirky .....

21:21 trans guy here 29 y/o - I can relate to this video heavily with the masking & stimming traits. My dad used to yell at me for humming all the time. My mom told him that happy people hum. It didn’t get him to stop yelling BUT to this day I still hum in silence or the moment I’m focused on working. However, the #relatable feeling I have with your story blew my mind the moment you mentioned having similar oral fixation as me. My grandmother told me when I was little that I needed to stop chewing on my nails and keeping my fingers out of my mouth. For my orthodontic treatment, I had to wear braces, a herbst , and retainer. It caused me to cut my tongue and get a scar just like you!!! Wild irony, right?Afterwords I had to wear invisalign through out 5-6 year schooling. Back then I’d put things in my mouth that are hard on teeth. Now a days I use proper toys like teethers or pacifier for oral self soothing. Body regulation I sway side to side when I’m standing. Funny thing now that I think about it, masking causes teeth grinding issues to this day.

the thing i've been confused about in the last few years is that i seem to have gotten a lot more sensitive as i get older. i used to be okay watching relatively gory shows, but now i have a hard time seeing any kind of pain. it's taken me a while to realize that it's definitely just that i was masking so much that all my emotions got squashed so deep down i didn't even know they were there

I'm autistic too and I related so hard to all the thumb sucking prevention devices. I had all of those too (and I also desensitized myself to the taste of the nail polish stuff and figured out how to get around the silicone thumb cage). I also had the mouth thing, but mine was plastic at the top not wire so it was slightly different. I've never seen anyone else talk about that before. I'm in the UK as well so it seems that that particular form of well-intentioned child torture is global. As someone who got diagnosed so long ago that I was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome as a low support needs girl, back in the 2000s to early 2010s. I think it was less that people didn't know what masking was, rather it was just seen as a good thing and the main way of 'helping' autistic kids was by teaching them to act more normal. I for example was put in social skills classes in school every week from the age of about 10 to 14-15 with a small group of other autistic kids. I literally had autistic masking as a school subject. So I think it's less that people are now realising that masking is a thing, it's just now seen as generally more negative than positive. Anyway, great video looking forward to seeing more like this soon (but no pressure!).

Ashton you really unlocked something in me when you talked about thumb sucking. Like literally we had beat for beat similar experiences. I'm not autistic but sucking my thumb was a HUGE part of my self soothing beyond the "normal" age

This video was very important for me to see as I am a queer austistic person. I felt so seen and heard for the first time in my life.

7:15 - 12:10 THIS!!! gosh I wish there was more variety of autistic voices being amplified just like you said, it has come to a point where I would straight up get annoyed when reading or looking into autistic experiances that only mention just white cis-het skinny people like... i'm just in the process of descovering that there's a chance of me being autistic and the "repetition good until overdone then become bored of repetition" feeling just never left me when looking into the resources, coming across the same type of people being talked about, so yeah...

autistic person here! i just wanna ask some fellow autistics for an opinion about this :) throughout all my life i felt strange, foreign to the world, like an alien basically. i've never been bullied, but i did not feel like peers would embrace me, like i would be a good fit for their cliques, groups etc. i sometimes think to myself that maybe i just was good at masking, so i skipped out on the common experience of being a target for harassment at school (can't complain about that though!). at the same time, i've never felt like i belonged, i never really knew who i am. so at the ripe age of 11-12 i started showing depression symptoms. i began resenting my classmates for not understanding me and seeking validation online, but to be quite honest i've always done that. i have always been that kid that would worry their parents, because for some reason i just got along better with older people online. thankfully it was mostly just outcast teenage girls, but i do believe being exposed to the internet so early on traumatized me in various different ways. however that's a whole different discussion i assume. on the web i finally felt like i belonged, but it quickly has proven to be a superficial feeling. going back in time and analyzing my behaviour, i think even online i was masking. some people felt really cool, so i read up on their interests and got sucked in for a while. it finally felt like i figured it out, what i like, who am i and so on. yet after a while i would question myself "why"? do i really enjoy it, am i really like that? i noticed i started texting like them, picked up on their expressions unintentionally. so again, i am really myself, am i really understood? now i am technically an adult and i still struggle with that. i feel like a little child who never really got to figure themselves out, because whatever i do, it's always to please other people. even in alternative, atypical circles irl. i feel like i don't even fit in with autistic people. does anybody else feel like that?

im waiting to get assessed for autism right now and your videos talking about autism and disability have made me feel a lot better about it and understand it better :')

agree with everything, to add on to how hard it is to see intersectional rep for us autistics, it does surprise slightly just bc of how many autistics are more likey to be queer/noncomforming. it really just shows how hard it is to find rep for any kind of intersection ):

I am an allistic person, but my boyfriend is autistic. I really appreciate you being willing to explain this in such an in depth way. It helps me understand him more so that I don’t behave in ways that upset him so often

To me the worst thing about masking is the fact that after masking (and not knowing I'm autistic) for 18 years, it now feel so hard/impossible to be my authentic Autistic self. I want to visibly stim in public, but it's so hard because of a fear of judgment. I want to communicate Autistically, ask people questions about their interests, give them genuine compliments, and infodump, but I can't. I'm afraid of coming across as too intrusive, or sarcastic, or embarrassing. I'm trying to get better at this by practicing and by surrounding myself with other Autistic people. Thank you for this video! It's so hard to explain why masking is such a big deal.

The self undiagnosing thing you mentioned is so real. I was diagnosed with Bipolar 1 at age 13. Why? I was having meltdowns at family dinner (with 3 literal infant children in the room, constantly screaming, and 4 other people all talking, my sensory issues are very much auditory centered) nearly every day, for years, and my dad has Bipolar so therefore I must be Bipolar. Funny thing is? I never experienced half the symptoms or criteria listed,they literally just took my meltdowns as a form of mania, and since my dad has it and it can be genetic diagnosed me. They also put me on a weird mood stabilizer that wasn’t actually a mood stabilizer but instead an anti epilepsy med that’s sometimes used as a mood stabilizer for bipolar?? Anyways, around that time was the same time I learnt what autism is on my own, started researching autism, learnt what stimming was, how to identify and regulate my emotions, what a meltdown even was, what sensory processing was and how I could avoid being overstimulated, etc. all without the help of my therapist (I quit therapy shortly after the Bipolar diagnosis because I hated my therapist, he was a sexist c*nt) and instead completely through my own research. My mom was convinced this meant the meds were working and praise be they finally found out my diagnosis…! When I stopped taking the meds only a few months after I started them nothing changed. At all. Nobody even noticed I stopped them because, they didn’t do shit for me. Anyways, yeah, I self undiagnose bipolar… fuck that

I think there’s a balance because working on certain things is helpful. E.g., when I push myself to make eye contact it helps me read people’s emotions and be more connected to reality, especially with my partner. Maybe the difference is, with masking there’s an element of shame and fear of being “found out.” And even if you have to push yourself in appropriate situations, it can be done in a way that is compassionate and gentle toward the self.

numbered points for organization: 1. one of my earliest memories is tearing up the foam padding on my mom's headphones and her being really upset about it. she was abused as a child and i think this makes her default to anger more than sadness as an immediate reaction, which she then passed on to me unfortunately but anyway. i also tore up a family photo because at daycare they showed us how to make our own jigsaw puzzles out of photos, but when my mom confronted me about it i was too freaked out by her reaction to explain myself so i just assumed i was in fact a destroying monster. one of my internal nicknames for myself is the destroyer. 2. as you said, i wish that they had seen it for what it was. i know now that my biggest stims involve picking at things ie skin or glue. i also love tearing up things. so in a perfect world, my mother would have seen that i tore up her headphones, took some time to herself to calm down, and then come to me and ask why i did that. and then from there working with me to find better ways to stim, such as getting a piece of cardboard and going to town. 3. i'm unmasking more. its not necessarily intentional, i'm just very tired of pretending that i'm not suffering. i still feel like nobody will ever truly know me in my entirety and it gets really lonely sometimes. i feel a lot of disconnect between how my parents and sisters see me vs. how i see myself, but i think thats bc they've been assuming i'm not disabled for the past 27 years whereas now i know that i am disabled, and they are still dragging their feet. 4. i'm unemployed and having a lot of trouble getting a job bc applying for jobs makes me lose my mind, and job interviews feel like masking contests and i'm struggling a lot with masking right now. but if you don't mask, you do not get the job. like maybe 0.00000000001% of the time. maybe. its so fucked. and most jobs that don't require a college degree do in fact expect you to act like you like people. and tbh i don't like people and i don't want to pretend that i do, thats soul destroying.

As an autistic person I also highly value my internet friends! I find it's a common phenomenon among autistic people I know. Our friendships over the internet are not much different than IRL, and in some cases even better because the internet can make communication easier for us. My best friends are internet friends and I appreciate them so much 🤍

Thank you for this video as someone who only recently realized I'm both autistic and transmasc. I'd def watch more of the subject. Edit: personally I'm terrible at masking and have been told I come off as "creepy," but when I don't mask I can come off as rude and careless of others' emotions (even fellow nd people if they were heavily socialized to mask). It's emotionally exhausting but I'm trying to drop the mask, and along with it anyone who can't handle the real me. I just hate being accused of not caring when the opposite is true. I'm hyperempathetic to the point that I have to shut people and their emotions out sometimes for my own mental health. Also not trying to diagnose your parents but maybe your mom was overstimulated by your stimming? I used to really want to be a parent but the more I unmask the more I realize I find sensory-seeking children extremely disregulating to my own nervous system. It sucks tho and I'm sorry your parents put their own regulation over yours (possibly not realizing that's what they were doing).

I wish I could unapologetically be myself, but the embarrassment or feeling of doing something wrong is so ingrained into me that it's hard to focus regardless of what I do. It's picking between my intuitive behaviour and faking, but both leave me feeling a bit drained, since i'll either look like a weirdo or put all my focus into looking somewhat normal. One time I pushed myself to do excessive amounts of small talk and ended up in really bad burnout for a week

what you're talking about is so real dude,, it's so hard to explain the kind of harm masking my autism has done to me and it's absolutely wild to look back on with the knowledge i only gained very recently that i'm an autistic person. like i feel like i did stim externally, y'know? but at some point every one of those stims was either bullied out of me or i stopped because teachers reprimanded me for them and considering how much i was bullied i was kind of desperate for every teacher to be on my side, so all my stims became something more subtle that's frankly significantly more harmful for me. lots of picking my nails and cuticles, biting my lip or chewing on my cheek, grinding my teeth, all that. i'm trying to figure out like, how to unlearn all this and learn how to stim again in a way that's healthy but like,, it's definitely not easy. i know i'll figure it out someday but man, i just wish it wasn't bullied out of me in the first place. thanks for talking about this dude, i won't lie it's kinda trippy af watching videos by another he/they ashton but like youre awesome and i really appreciate the work you do

Similar to the difficulty of ordering at a restaurant: I have a very hard time making phone calls to strangers. It's totally fine if it's friends and we're just shooting the shit, but as soon as anything of any consequence actually depends on the call, it becomes super stressful. That package that didn't arrive and now I have to call about? Hell. Call a store to see if they have an item in stock? The worst. Calling to cancel my internet subscription? WHY THE HELL WASN'T THIS JUST AN ONLINE BUTTON LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE THEY OFFERED?! Emails also take me a long time to write up (like an hour for like 5 lines), but they feel moderately less stressful.

I think the most brutal part for me is how pointless it is. I have to exhaust and drain myself to act a certain way, only for people to absolutely 100% know there's something "off" about me anyway. I can sort of keep limping on because I am making myself "tolerable" to them, but at the end of the day, they get to enact their implicit bias against me and all the invisible work was for nothing.

I'm an autistic nonbinary and transgender person of color. I was diagnosed before I entered preschool, and as a result, I was able to get more treatment early on, including applied behavior analysis, which my mother called "sessions," occupational therapy, and speech therapy. These sessions actually encouraged me to be myself around other people, and since there were other autistic people of color around me, I didn't feel the need to mask around other people until middle school. This is when things called the "late bell," "passing period," and the "dismissal bell" were introduced, which forced people like myself who weren't familiar to this unexpected change, to adapt almost immediately. Along with this, some of the teachers I had weren't willing to understand me (for example, my 7th grade science teacher). However, my secret vulnerability under my quiet and edgy mask that I put on made it easy for toxic people to befriend me. It wasn't until the summer before my 7th grade year that I found out what autism was, and that I had it. After this revelation, I sunk into a deep depression, as I felt like nobody really liked me no matter how hard I tried. Add onto this the revelation that I could be transgender in 9th grade, and you get a complete train wreck of a person before he discovers his identity after graduating. Even though I can't relate to your experience being a late-diagnosed autistic person, I just want to say it's nice that you're making content again. I watched you in 2020 (I think idk lol).

in many ways I really relate to masking, and I know I do it and have done it since childhood. For example I was also shamed out of sucking my fingers "past the acceptable age". I sucked my right forefinger and middle finger instead of my thumb, but still. My parents didn't use quite so extreme measures, people around me just kept making fun of me for it until I stopped. I also recognize that in some ways I was incredibly lucky as an undiagnosed autistic child: I grew up in a very small town, so most of the kids in my class in elementary school were kids that had known me since daycare. This meant that many of them didn't see my actions as that strange, it was just "a Mio thing" to them. I also didnt socialize a lot outside of school (I was too busy reading and scrolling the internet, and got quite mad if these activities were interrupted by socializing) so that probably also contributed to the fact that I didnt really get bullied much until middle school. Or at least people didn't say much to my face, maybe they were talking behind my back, I wouldn't know. I was way too busy folding clothes and arranging pens by color and size for fun to notice. I still do remember multiple occasions where I was shamed for my way of communicating (bad eyecontact, acting disrespectful without meaning to, acting like a knowitall without meaning to etc) or the lack of socializing, mostly from my family members (especially my mom, even though I'm sure she didn't mean to be mean, she still was) which made me develop a lot of shame around my socialization skills and manners. This is probably part of the reason why going over a social situation I participated in and "reviewing my work" is such an automatic part of my thinking process now. like I will get out of a function and immediately start going through the things I said and did and how people responded with a critical and analytical eye to determine where I went "wrong" (if I did. i usually do) how I could improve things etc. Like every time I socialize with people who arent part of my innermost circle of Safe People, it'd like I'm taking a test. and then grading myself immediately afterwards. which is exhausting but idk how to stop it. It is partly and anxiety thing, but partly not? like I really feel like I'm taking a course on learning a new skill. the skill being socializing "normally". and the teacher being also me. Stimming is something I also didn't realize I did, craved, or stopped myself from doing for a long time. as a child my favorite stims were bigger fullbody ones, like...idk what to call it. jumping on my bed but sitting down? like getting a bit of bounce going and them throwing myself down to one side and repeating. I also looooooved pacing!! the middle of my room used to always have this. whirlpool of loose hair and dustballs and other debris in an almost perfect circle that formed from be walking round and round and round in my room all day. my brother hated it because his room is right next to mine (I have to walk through his room to go downstairs and there isnt a door between our rooms, just the empty open doorway) and he would always hear my footsteps while I was pacing and think I was spying on him. my sister hated that bouncing thing I did on my bed because her room was right below mine and I guess it made a lot of noise. I used to subconciously/unknowkngly hold in my stims a lot. I still remember so clearly the feeling of Too Much Energy that I would get in my muscles, how I would tighten and release and tighten and relax my mudcles over and over subconciously to make it feel a bit better. I STILL remember how happy I was when I discovered thst I could do the flappy hands if I was really happy!!!!! felt so good. I had known that some people do that but for some reason thought that it wasn't my cup of tea. but boy was I wrong, that's one of my most integral and instinctive happy stims now!! the other one is playing with my necklace, but that one I have done for as long as I remember. I physically can't exist without having a necklace on at all times, not an exagerration. Overall I'm a lot more aware of myself and more accepting of myself these days!! happy for it too

I’m autistic, and one of the masking things that I’ve noticed about myself is that I essentially learned to pretend to make eye contact. I dislike actually doing it (and related a lot to your explanation of why), but I guess I must have figured out when I was young that if you just look at someone’s chest or forehead, or something else near their face, they don’t realize that you’re not technically looking at their eyes. I never realized I did this until I started wondering if I had autism and if asked, I probably would have said that I had no problem with eye contact. You know, another thing I do is I really control my facial expressions and tone sometimes when I’m trying to be polite. I do really have to force a smile in a lot of situations and I really monitor my whole body when I’m talking with people sometimes. And yeah, the identity…thing? Very real. Extremely real. I’m still very young (18), but I really do feel (more than is normal I think) like I simply do not know myself. I also definitely have a dissociative disorder (probably just DPDR, but I’ve wondered abt others), so I’m sure that’s mixed in there too. I have so much I could say about my experiences with autism but it’s less related to masking and I’m not looking to unpack all of that right now. But yeah. I hope this was coherent enough. My head is kind of foggy right now.

Ive been masking for as long as I remember. The thought of stimming can trigger anxiety attacks from how much it was ingrained into me That stimming is bad and wrong, im trying to develop a healthier relationship with visible stimming because its so helpful (big fan of rocking, jumping, dancing and hand flapping stims) ive even managed to mask my communication struggles a lot to the point people think im joking or intentionally being difficult when I actually struggle. At this point I dont even know who or what I am without masking which is deeply upsetting. I am super fortunate to have a friend group that is entirely neurodivergent with a lot of autistic folks so I have a safe space to be myself where I wont be judged. For the medical aspect, I started getting pretty string anxiety that lead to me skipping most days of school in 10th grade, I never understood why I was so anxious, no psych has ever been able to help me, I realised after about 2yrs that im autistic through researching psychology, turns out my anxiety is due to being autistic and constantly being bullied and harassed and abused for displaying autistic traits and the completely rational fear that I would be treated poorly again without knowing why or how to cope. Because of that anxiety diagnosis however, I've been denied mental health care for ever other problem I experience, MH practitioners seem to think Its all anxiety, to the point they won't even diagnose my extremely apparent depression. Ive actually masked ti the point that I developed a (not disordered) system to cope and masked so heavily I didnt even see the system even though we have no amnesia barriers at all. Im luckily in a place where things have a chance of being better aoon

literally watching this and i JUST REALIZED that the sucking thumb thing was also a sign as child. i relate to that so much. it's comforting hearing other autistic dudes describe their experiences and i relate deeply. subscribed :3

I relate to a lot of what you said! Especially the figuring out how to behave (or mask) from what others find weird. I definitely mask a lot, especially during my pary time jobs. I've been told by many people that they thought I was so outgoing before they actually got to know me and tbh it's not great giving people the wrong impression. I'm still trying to find a balance between masking and being myself...it's tough!

I relate to this so much, and it really saddens me that I pretty much don’t know who I am without the mask

the factthat ur also covid concious is just truly making my day

I relate to basically every example you're going into, and while a lot of this is already stuff I've been processing on my own, it's really affirming to hear from someone else. For me a big issue with ordering at restaurants is that I struggle more to make eye contact with new people/strangers than with people I know, but I know it would be seen as rude to avoid eye contact with my server at a restaurant (it would communicate seeing them as lesser rather than the truth of my just having a harder time with eye contact in certain situations).

Love these videos Ashton. Like respect for this man. I'm also autistic, trans (ftm) and a punk, I feel I relate somewhat to you. I feel like throughtout my teenage years I deffinatley subconciously and conciously masked my autisum, I feel I kinda failed at it quite often but like I was bullied a lot too so it was kinda a way of "fitting in" or being "normal" to me at the time.

i really appreciate the non-auto-generated subtitles idek how to explain it 😭

I'm two weeks into my uni course and the amount of masking that I'm doing is so unsustainable. I'm so exhausted, but it's nice to get to see autistic creators share their experiences, so thank you

one distinct memory i have is of me as a kid flapping my arms at some birds, and my mom responding by saying i looked like the kid with down's syndrome at my church and it's disrespectful. like HOW

I'm happy to see autism be embraced and talked more now. It's makes it feel a bit easier navigating as an autistic trans person who also has autistic children but obviously we still have a long way to go in terms of progress but I'm really hopeful for the future

omg the thumb sucking thing is so similar to my experience - i don’t know if i’m autistic but maybe i should look into that now. great video!

The sucking thumb thing really takes me back. My dad used to pour salt on my thumb to stop me from doing it. That hurt so much! But with the masking. I'm finding it really hard to make friends in college at the moment because even in safe environments, I just jump to the best social script. Which is not a good social script. But it can get me out of stressful social situations. It can't make me friends but I don't know how to turn the script off. And nobody wants to be friends with the person who just gives vague agreeable answers to everything

In the past few years as I've realized I'm autistic, I did what you're describing with reflecting on all these childhood experiences that seem small but are really painful to recognize their impact altogether. I have masked so much without knowing what I was doing and now it's very hard to unmask. I started to a little during the pandemic cause I was all alone so it was easy, but now as I'm starting college I'm being thrust into a totally new social environment and I've just gone back to my habit of constantly masking :( I do love having other neurodivergent friends who I can talk too though! Even if I'm masking around them sometimes, I can also talk about my experience without them thinking I'm crazy lol

When you mentioned being not social to the point of not liking to order in restaurants that's so me. I was well into my 20s having my boyfriend (now husband) order things or talk to people for me because I couldn't/it was so difficult for me. Now I am a lot more comfortable but still won't go out of my way to talk to people or meet someone new if I can avoid it

I’m trans masc, autistic, and mixed. My friend circle is mostly people who are autistic and trans, and it can be very white. I’m mixed with Asian and Hispanic blood, and am sort of in a strange, odd place between worlds. I sort of feel like I have to choose between an autistic white circle or a non white circle. And I have felt like I have to mask in many different ways for many different groups, and could never just be me and comfortable. Thankfully, now those two groups are merging together but being at intersecting identities makes it so difficult to find good friends and people. Not to mention having fetishes on top of that which can even get other autistic people to think you’re weird, and isolate you more. Having friends on the internet is an absolute blessing, because I would not be able to find anyone like me in person. Or if I did, they would only be part of one of the identities I’m in rather than all or at least comfortable with all of them.

I'm a cis possibly autistic (suggest by psychiatrist, undergoing assessment) man who definitely has experienced masking. Bullied or punished out of stimming and other things like that. I've been thinking about things from my childhood from a lens of possibly being autistic, but this video definitely made me think more about masking specifically. Thanks Ashton.

Yes! The most important thing I’ve done for myself over the past year is learn how to unmask as much as I safely can. It’s been liberating. I used to fear stimming in front of everyone, even those I knew wouldn’t judge me. I couldn’t do it even if I wanted to-there was a mental block. Now I’m slowly making progress and it feels so good.

I’m a trans autistic adult and I wasn’t diagnosed until earlier this year - masking is EXHAUSTING. I went though a period of pretty severe burnout after working a retail job full time for a year when I was 19 and having to mask really heavily, and I was basically bedridden for a year. Since I wasn’t diagnosed (and this was during a time where autistic burnout wasn’t really well known in the medical community) doctors thought I had a brain injury.

I've described how it feels like to interact with allistic people while speaking with allistic person is like you're an anthropologist learning about a new and unknow culture but from childhood. It sure is easy to misstep on things you didn't even realize could be important. Usually they understand that at least i find interacting with people challenging. Though it doesn't always change their behavior toward me for the better.

im already so good at masking, IM WATCHING for more tips!!!

loooove this so much . i’m autistic, nonbinary, & arab . i live in an arab country too . i feel like nothing represents me, im not formally diagnosed but even though i’ve researched for 4 years i still doubt myself because my experience is not like everyones experience .. also, i appreciate all of your videos soooo much they are wonderful ❤️

I literally only today found out that i'm autistic and dysgraphic and that i've been diagnosed since i was 4??? my parents didn't want to tell me because they thought since i didnt have a lot of support needs it wouldn't impact my life but it has and sincerely this is impacting me a lot more knowing.I went through 16 years of my life feelings weird and out of place and having to hide it just to find out tha there is a name for both of my feelings about myself. I think parents should always infrom thier kids because i genuinely do not understand why they didn't tell me.

you were the first person who made me realise i was autistic years ago when you mentioned not looking someone in their eyes was an autistic trait. since then i have learnt so much about myself. i went through a grieving process weirdly enough in realising i was autistic and that i would always struggle but it is so validating understanding myself. i dont understand why teachers/parents didnt see it but now knowing makes more sense

I see a lot of myself and my little sister in this, she went through the thumb sucking thing to in almost the exact same situation and i see a lot of my autistic traits in her but my parents continue to say it’s just adhd, personally I turned some of my autistic traits into the weird class clown kid outside of class, but in class i would he silent and stimming the whole time

Thank you for bringing up the thumb sucking specifically, because I was the same. I sucked my thumb until way past the ‘developmentally appropriate’ point and I never see anyone else talking about it and I feel a lot of shame about it

This is a really cool video ty ^_^ i've spent the past year after moving to a new country unmasking and it has been truly liberatory for me

i have recently discovered that i might be autistic (still got to do more tests and check other professionals) but it's already been like a massive change in how i see myself and life itself. it is insane that i had such an ableist view about autism and at the same time was in deep suffering because of ableism. the most difficult part for me is to control my body. surely i learned how to mask it, but as a kid i frequently scribbled my clothes without even noticing, cause i didn't have enough control over my hand holding an open pen, and everyone was like "why you paint all your shirts you nuts???" besides that, stumbling on everything and hurting myself or even simply walking in a different way where some of the many reasons i was bullied. being raised as a girl also made it harder, because it is embarassing for people to have a little clumsy tomboy as a friend or even as a daughter. you have to fill many roles to be accepted as a girl. nowadays i identify as non binary, but being expected to act like a princess for sure f*cked up my mind for a very long time. i am learning how to forgive myself and am doing much better, but i have to confess that it leads to deep suffer being repressed by something you struggle with and can't control or by something that's just you being you. i think that's the hardest part.

I'm not autistic but I have GAD and trauma so I can come across as autistic. It's weird but I sort of also mask. It's not that I can mask in a way that people won't see I'm anxious or sad, but I will mask by monitoring every single social interaction I have and think about what things I can say so it won't come across the wrong way. Sometimes my tone or the things I say can sound mean. I sound like an asshole when in my head I was just stating an observation. I'm super scared people will think I'm mean tbh but some days I will just leave social situations without saying anything because I get so anxious thinking I'm doing something wrong. I often overthink things I have said and have to ask friends if I said something wrong.

Videos like these are really valuable Creators like you talking about their experience of the world have helped me understand so much better why I feel the way I do about the way I interact with the world and the people in it Recognizing my so-called quirks for what they are has done a lot to help me feel better and not judge myself so harshly I'm so grateful that the generation that is coming up now will have the language to understand themselves and will be better position to find the tools that help them get through this world

I watched a lot of your nonbinary-themed videos back when I had my coming out. I received my autism diagnosis this fall, and it's a nice surprise to hear you're also autistic!

seeing someone else talk about how they had sucked their thumb longer than is considered typical is mind-blowing. i don't remember the exact age, but i had to deal with that weird nail polish too (that i also ignored), and the wire thing that goes in the mouth. the dentist had called it a crib? i had very few comforts as an unrecognised autistic kid in a ""corporal punishment""-happy environment,, and i hadn't tried to mask at that point, so i sucked my thumb all the time and people of all ages mocked me for it in all sorts of contexts until i had that wire mouth thing. man i haven't thought about this in a very long time. it's a really stigmatised thing, i guess you could say it Sucks. my replacement stim was biting down as hard as possible on the skin under my bottom lip, and now i have nerve damage. anyway trans autistic people are very epic, we need more visibility that isn't fear-mongering shit. lastly, as someone who _does_ have high support needs, it is frustrating how much emphasis trans and autistic communities often place on independence. there's an implied or unconscious shaming of people who very much need daily help with 'basic tasks' and communication, like sorry i can't decide to not be disabled and do everything myself courageously agh also an Edit: not extremely important, but i'm one of the people who suffered through masking everything as much as possible for years and years, but eventually realised my guesswork of social norms was very wrong, so i was performing not even the right thing and i came off as even more unsettling and weird to allistics. it's impossible for me to even try to mask now.

Hello. By the way, I have difficulty communicating because I had a stroke in Broca’s area, the part of the brain that controls speech. 2/8/2021 but I lived again. (My wife helped me compose this.)

Thank you so much for sharing this. You've given my a lot to think about in regards to myself.

I love this video. Thanks for it! I am autistic (+ Adhd, ocd and anxiety) and I know that my OCD developed because I wasn‘t allowed to do most of my stimming at home as well as in school and public in general. Unfortunately, my autism and ADHD were undiagnosed during childhood so I just felt like a big human mistake that does weird things and somehow doesn‘t know all the hidden rules everyone else knew. I know that I am autistic for 3 years but I still have a lot of trauma and sadness inside myself. I try to stop my masking as good as I can to heal but it is very difficult to deal with all the stuff and reactions from others that I suffered from as a child and teenager.

I did my English Speaking GCSE (a compulsory part of english language GCSE in the UK, which in itself is ableist) on this topic. I quoted all the stats about masking leading to mental health problems and suicidality, and explained in depth what masking was. I also include an anecdote and talked about how school is one of the places I feel the most pressure to mask at. I was marked down for not masking well???? I met all the criteria for a distinction, but my teacher marked me down to a merit because I wasn’t making enough eye contact and i didn’t move at all because I was trying not to stim and I was nervous.

Thnx for the shoutout lol. This videos really great! I didn’t realized masking was such a new term. I’m sorry you went through all of that shit.. and that so many autistic ppl have been through similar shit.

Recently, as I've been learning more about autism and autistic people, I've started to suspect that I'm autistic or neurodivergent in some way. I relate to/have experienced a lot of the experiences of a lot of autistic people, and I've done a lot of stuff that seems to point in that direction. This video hit the bullseye for me, especially the thumb-sucking (had that EXACT metal thing in my mouth too, thought that wasn't what stopped me) and echolalia (I didn't even know there was a word for that!). But I'm terrified of actually going to a doctor about it. I don't go to therapy/don't see a psychologist, but I kind of want to. It's hard to think about the idea of bringing this up with my parents and I've heard so many mixed messages about self-diagnosis and the pros/cons of getting a formal diagnosis that I don't know what to do. I've found it hard to find support online as someone who's just figuring this out. I think this is the most I've talked about it ever. Thank you for this video, it was really validating and feels like a step forward :)

i think for me, being homeschooled meant that i didn’t really have to learn to mask as much. i certainly learned a lot and built a bit of a mask mostly since starting a job where i interact with the public every day, but i so feel you on feeling like i still fail to mask a lot. especially being trans too, im never sure how people are reading me, and i often feel like i fail to interact with men especially, because i also never learned how to do that as a man myself growing up !

This is a nice video. I stim a lot and don't try to mask that often. I have a necklase that I can fiddle with and it looks like I'm nervous to other which I probably am. I rock so frequently I don't realise I'm doing it, and in lectures I've been asked to stop by peers. I play piano and tap along to songs unconciously - it is hard for me to stop. I don't think there is any reason to mask try to stop any of these. They are harmless and make me happy.

THIS VIDEO MADE ME REALIZE THAT ME SUCKING MY THUMB WAS STIMMING WTF THAT WAS SUCH A BIG THING ABT MY LIFE THAT MY PARENTS JUST TOOK AWAY

Very good and interesting video. I sometimes wonder how masking affects my life as an autistic person, but it’s hard because I don’t know what I started masking in the first place. I feel like I’m a very confident person and the way I act is distinct from most people, to the point where people will know Im autistic and/or a weird person because of how much I talk about my interests and just am loud/extroverted. But what’s weird is that when I was little, I was very quiet and did my own thing. I had friends, but I wasn’t super interested in socializing with strangers. I was diagnosed when I was 3 and afterwards went to a therapy I barely remember except that around that time they put braces on my feet so I don’t walk on my tippy toes and I was picked up in a separate bus to go to school. Up until about 2nd grade, I had a teaching assistant (like for autistic kids with higher support needs) and went to speech therapy, and when I “graduated”, I was convinced that I didn’t have autism anymore. I think I learned a lot of social cues when I was around that age that really stuck with me, and I do remember my mom telling me not to stim (run around during recess imagining things) at recess after moving in 5th grade so that it would be easier to make friends and how she told me I needed to make eye contact with my teachers and coaches. But it’s been so long now (I’m in college btw) that it feels like second nature. Idk. It’s weird that with all my quirks tho I never got bullied, even in elementary school when I feel like I was masking less? Part of me thinks that because I was such a smart kid/“gifted kid”, people respected me even if they didn’t understand me.

As an undiagnosed autistic child I would suck on my own hair when I was overwhelmed or upset and my parents would pull my hair from my mouth and scared me out of doing so by telling me horror stories of kids dying from hairballs in the stomach. Like yeah that’s bad but like you mentioned, no safer alternatives were offered. And to this day I have a complicated relationship with my hair and a mix of both gender dysphoria and fear keeps me from having my hair too long, long enough to reach my mouth.

spending every day for years constructing and revising a self that people will want rather than who i am has made me suck. i've avoided my loved ones because i was afraid i wouldn't be able to mask well enough at the time. i've been hot and cold with others because the shift between masking and honesty is incredibly jarring. i've hurt people playing along with their feelings and lying about my own. and more. but i've recently come out as a trans man and now this character doesn't work. it never did for the most part, but it made me passably likeable. i could charm strangers into friends or romantic partners that i'd then neglect because i was scared i couldn't keep the illusion going and reveal myself to be a chore to be around. but now i can't do it anymore. by coming out that double edged sword of masking is only cutting one way and it's in my direction. the fake shrill customer service voice that once kept me safe is now one that puts me in danger. masking and being in the closet go hand in hand to me. i did shitty things to protect a way of living that was hurting me. i'm going to start introducing myself with my real name with my real voice with my real thoughts from now on... or at least try to.

Thank you SO MUCH for talking about that thumb sucking thing omg I've felt alone on this my entire life and I'm 26... I've also had that metal thing and it was awfull, sadly it's right at this moment that I've developped most of my self harm compulsive behaviors because I had nothing left to regulate myself. I wish my parents had known how to handle this better but at least now that I'm an adult i can unlearn and relearn things :)

Omg I've never been this Early! Hey Ashton! Hope you have a good day!!!

you said so much that i didnt even know i needed to hear outloud. thanks

Ashton do you have any resources for people with higher support needs? Any kind of representation would seriously mean a lot to me bc I didn't start learning about this rewording of functioning labels until I found the spicy autism community on reddit. TW: I'm going to talk about my personal experiences with ableist violence and discrimination along with the irreversible damage narrative being used against our intersecting communities. I really believe that my support needs are probably higher than most autistic people I've interacted with because even they've been aggressively and violently ableist towards me. Something that really bothers me is how autism is treated as this cute quirky thing people have until they're confronted with our autistic traits that irritates them or makes them extremely inappropriately hostile. Stimming and special interests are fun and cute to gush about unless you're forced to deal with stims and special interests that you can't stand. Another thing that really really hurts me is when nobody wants to acknowledge the other very obvious traits of autism. Like the social difficulties and especially how our brains our wired differently. An example of this that haunts me was back in 2015 or 16, my mom was cooking something with bell peppers in it and when we were finished eating, I threw it away because I thought she finished using it. My aunt lashed out at me asking me why I just threw out a perfectly reusable bell pepper when to me, I had never seen a cut open bell pepper before. I didn't know how they were supposed to be hollow inside because in my mind, I always thought the insides would resemble closer to a tomato or something. When I told my ex about it, he legitimately got mad at me too and couldn't understand my autistic thought process. It's very little, subtle things like this that could turn so many people against me for things I simply can't understand or control the way I think. I feel guilty that I did that still, but I really didn't know that nor do I like bell peppers in general. (In fact this ableist experience makes me hate them even more now) Or when your self acclaimed "best friend" tells you in great detail while you're out in a public event how much she wants to beat the ever living shit out of you because she can't stand your vocal stims. Almost all your friends mock and degrade you when they've seen you pick out your eyebrows, attack your intelligence, or get defensive using the r slur when it's so deeply tied to your severe childhood trauma. Connecting that slur to your abusers who've threatened to murder your dogs and lured you to a secluded area pointing a realistic toy gun in your face believing that it's real. Allistics and edgy lower support needs autistic people will only see that word as a casual insult, but you will always see it as a form of violence against you and an alarm bell that you could die at any moment now. I also highly agree how dysphoria inducing it is whenever cis people focus on autistic girls and women as if they're the only marginalized gender who's gatekept out of autism. Altho, there's something else you forgot to mention in the only instances cis people will acknowledge our autism is if it's being used as a weapon against our transness and gender variance. How being trans and non binary is seen as an autistic contagion that leaves us down "dangerous paths of destroying our bodies". We're constantly compared to confused little girls no matter how far into our adulthood we are, it's even why they're legitimately passing laws now that have it so that anyone (INCLUDING LEGAL ADULTS) with an autism diagnosis are denied gender affirming care. All it is is fucking eugenics in the end. I hate the entire concept of masking and I'm really REALLY terrible at it. Even if I have to force myself to stop particular stims or info dumping more nicher special interests, I will never stop being noticeably autistic through my other behaviors. It's honestly a core part of why I'm such an isolationist because this entire world isn't equipped to accept autistic people and how they can accommodate our support needs and respect our boundaries when it comes to our triggers. I hate that I'm even saying this, because one of the friends I mentioned used that as a means of telling me I'm not really disabled, I just want everyone to coddle me and I'm very deliberately stealing SSI benefits from other disabled people who "really need it".

Very insightful Ashton!! Thx for making the content you wish you had, I think it's v helpful

Such a great video. I’m currently struggling to unmask even when by myself, the internalised ableism is very ingrained. Add that the conflict of wanting to unmask but also wanting to fit in and have friends. Being multiply marginalised (disabled, trans, queer) makes it harder because it distances you from peers even more. I hope to one day be open about my autism and disability, but for now I hide it with the majority of people. I’m so open with my transness and queerness (but that may change depending on my country’s election results), but I’m so far behind in my autistic journey compared to my rainbow one. I can’t even see a future where I’m able to be open atm. This content is very important as someone who has similar identities; it’s nice to see myself in you. Looking forward to more videos on this and other topics 💜

I have autism and I genuinely believe that masking it and being treated like a neurotypical child as a kid made me develop ASPD.

Im autistic, transmasc non-binary, POC (mixed), chubby, a furry and an alterhuman/otherkin/therian. Before even watching this, i know that ill agree with you Pretending to be „normal“ to fit in feels incredibly awful and i hate it, i love being myself and doing what i love, but even my autistic best friend (irl) sometimes makes fun of me. She stopped but she used to make fun of noises, stims, hobbies and the way i sing ect.

Started rocking during this video and immediately felt so much better. I've been masking heavily my whole life and I'm trying to let myself not do that all the time. Also on the "women and girls" thing. It made me feel so affirmed at first (both in my autism and my gender) because I'm a trans woman who's traits align with those, but as I've gotten more educated on terms and met more other trans people its gone to just being frustrating because I know how shitty unnecessarily gendered health and mental health messaging is for people who don't have my situation.

I've been struggling massively to recognize what my true self is like and unlearning masking to find what I can be like in a non-judgmental home situation. I moved out of my mom's house, and she shamed me a ton for autistic behaviors that I didn't recognize as that at the time. It's confusing and stressful to hold back on masking in my own home now.. It's like I don't know what I'm genuinely like. Drinking and smoking did not help bc I only displayed the 'silly' but socially acceptable behaviors seen in intoxicated people. I hardly ever let people see any socially unacceptable behaviors by the time I was a teen and learned to mask really well. Now, at 24, I've been officially diagnosed, and I don't know how to fully relax and not mask most of the time even with my 2 gfs And we're all autistic, trans, and queer. I'm a brown transmasc nb lesbian. they're white transfem bisexuals. I know they understand this on some levels, but not completely. So, I never saw myself in any form of representation, and it feels like I never will on a large scale. It's alienating to continually try to pass as something acceptable when I differ so much from the skinny white cishet neurotypical ideal -and only get far enough to have a social life, a job, etc, but constantly feel burnt out. This is in part due to my job as a hairdresser, which has you learn a lot about making scripts, hiding stimming, and picking up on how to fake engagement and eye contact

i feel like my masking developed in such an intense combo of being in very christian environments basically all the time, queerness and transness but only learning anything about that part of myself via the internet or bullying (that i didn't realize was bullying bc autism), and then being diagnosed and treated for adhd from a young age and leaning into the class clown/weird kid vibes bc i needed that wiggle room for breaking social norms

i have 3 siblings and i realized i was autistic about a year ago. before that i used to joke that i wouldn’t be able to be “normal” without taking my cues from them and i was genuinely thankful for that. now , after i learned what masking is i have a lot more conflicting feelings about that… it’s very hard especially to recognize now the stuff that they say that would make me “revise my mask” and to now try to push back on it . (anyways loved this video from a fellow 🏳️‍⚧️trans autist💖)

When i was an autistic kid i found out masking was a thing and i was mostly doing it without thought and it was a big part of why i felt like shit all the time, and i basically had to figure out what kind of person i was beyond, because id been doing it for so long as a kid. Found out im queer, that was a big one

god this hit home. no neurotypical will ever understand what i had to go trough to just learn to exist in some semblance of peace

I watched the segment on stimming and then immediately went to a haircut appointment where I had to try super hard to sit still to not fuck up my haircut oopsie

I am autistic. I also have a diagnosis of ADD, bipolar and used to have DID ( Dissociative Identity disorder ). I am also queer and trans masculine. My father was ashamed of my nuero divergent traits. If I made the most minor social mistake or displayed traits, he would tell me that I had been embarrassing and that the people who saw it were horrified by having to witness me being bazaar. Even when I performed near perfectly, he would remind me that I usually failed and that I shouldn't be proud of myself. Also, he had a terrible temper and he enjoyed hurting me a lot more when he was angry. Catching his attention when he was irritated, put me in danger. Allowing people to witness autistic behaviors, feels like my life is in immediate danger. It is not easy to express those traits even when I am alone in my home with the door locked Masking feels like I am preserving my safety, it feels like trying to hold a sneeze almost at all times and having to keep my composure, while following a script. Compulsively scripting, is so exhausting. 10:20 10:20

Instead of being diagnosed with autism (which many autistic people and psychology experts agree that I probably have) I was diagnosed with ADHD and OCD 😀

For some reason I haven't been getting notifications for your videos for a few years? Glad I found this one so I can binge everything I've missed. Anyways back to the topic at hand. I'm Autistic, Neurodivergent in general, Non Binary and Queer. I'm turning 26 on October 24th, I've known I am Autistic since I was 3 years old (so for 23 years) and I have this odd masking dichotomy, sometimes I'll be really good at masking and people won't pick up on The Autism™ other times I cannot mask to save my life. I've been masking for as long as I can remember but recently I've been trying to deconstruct my mask so I can be more true to myself and overall be happier. Growing up Autistic was difficult because while I was trying to navigate being Autistic and Neurodivergent I wasn't able to focus on other aspects of myself like being Queer till my very late teens because 1: Didn't have the energy to navigate it till I had figured out what being Autistic meant to me and 2: Most Autistic folk don't get a good sex ed if one at all so I basically had to learn through the internet. As for the younger Autistic folk reading the comments my advice to you is stay true to yourself as much as you can because if you have to mask for someone to want to be your friend or partner they aren't worth your time. Happy Special Interest'ing everyone! And remember, nothing about us without us!

something that i struggle with a lot is that i feel like im in need of more support ("higher support needs" or however i say it idk lol) but i mask so well that im never taken seriously until its too late. i feel like im constantly misunderstood but i also feel like its my fault because i still have a lot of internalized ableism ngl. idk just something that popped into my head like i used to think of myself as "low support needs" but its because i dont even consider my needs because it feels just impossible to fix so i just ignore it.... fuck me

18:59 wait, me too! I never thought about how it could be an autistic trait but now that I think about it it was definitely a form of sensory seeking.. I know it's gross but I sucked it so frequently that I had a nasty mark/scar that you can still see the fades of to this day.. I stopped sucking my thumb a few days into kindergarten, not because I wanted to, but because I knew it was socially unacceptable. before I had even gone to kindergarten my mom made it very clear that she did not accept the whole thumb-sucking thing because she found it gross and bothersome (similar to how your mom said she got "seasick" from you rocking) so once I got into kindergarten I decided I wouldn't suck my thumb in school and would only do it at home, because I didn't want the other kids thinking I was weird (they still thought I was weird, as that's just part of being an undiagnosed autistic kid I guess, but that's not the point) but one day, we were outside on the floor (probably dismissal and waiting for our parents cars or something? That's the only reason I can think of since there were multiple grades outside and that's the only time we'd all gather and sit on the concret outside) and people around me were getting a bit loud and I could feel myself getting overwhelmed, so I started sucking my thumb to cope. Then I looked to the benches and there were some older girls (probably 3rd-5th looking back, but when you're a kindergartener everyone looks super older so even though I knew they were students it felt even more intimidating) who saw me and were giggling to eachother. I felt embarassed as soon as I realized I was doing and immediately took the thumb out of my mouth and told myself I would never suck it again to prevent future embarrassment