When I first ‘came online’ with my public work in the spiritual philosophy and healing realm, one of the first things I did was attend an invitation to speak to a peer group about neurodivergence.
As a C-PTSD survivor, the lived-experience originator of the phrase ‘Orphan of Estrangement’, and someone well on the spectrum, it has been a consistent form of work of mine to deeply examine life from the nexus of these marginalized identities to understand, alchemize and share as much as I can regarding these perspectives. Point being, masking and recovery from it is as much a core subject in my life as are the healthy relationships I speak so much about.
Masking is an act of self preservation that can be voluntary, but is more often involuntary, and for people who mask- like those with Autism, or people who have survived C-PTSD (a Venn diagram with an almost complete inclusion on the Autism side due to the fact that Autism symptoms and PTSD symptoms can look very similar, especially if presenting early on, and the fact that neurodivergent people– especially children– are abused in very high numbers), this process can take a heavy toll on the mind and body.
Think of masking like holding up a heavy shield. As long as the shield is present, one is- or hopes to be- safe from attack. But the longer the shield is held, the more muscle strain occurs, the more energy is required to hold it, and all the while, the person misses out on all the activities in life they could be doing if only for the fact that they have at least one arm busy at all times holding a heavy piece of metal. How easy would it be to go out in society this way? Make friends? Just enjoy yourself?
The masks worn by those who develop them are formed to be the ultimate protection from attacks and abuses they’ve received in the past. Sadly, interpersonal trauma is a very deep wound to experience for a human being wired for connection, and in order to connect, we have to be vulnerable and show our true selves. This authenticity is the weak spot all abuse victims were struck in, in one way or another.
When interpersonal abuse strikes early in life, while someone is developing, and when an autistic person already intrinsically notices that there seems to be something ‘wrong’ with the way they are and the way they do things, they learn to mask. They pretend to be someone else- someone harder, less vulnerable, less noticeable, less authentic. The mask is a smiling face, a placid demeanor, a body that doesn’t stim, a voice that never speaks its mind, and ultimately a heart fortified against hurt….but a wall around the heart keeps out connection, too.
At various degrees, a person who has to mask for survival so consistently becomes someone who naturally seeks intimacy, but struggles to attain it. For them, safety is found in distance and performance– not in closeness and authenticity, two necessary ingredients for a real bond. But nevertheless, life goes on, and they make their way as best they can. Struggling to make friends, or maybe to keep them long term. Maybe yearning for romantic partnership, or stuck wondering why the relationships they’ve had feel so empty. Work is more daunting because it’s not just a daily grind, it feels like having to do your job while giving a satisfying performance of the person everyone thinks you should be– and if you let the mask slip, you lose everything.
But as I said… life goes on. You meet people. You grow close somehow.
And then the mask begins to slip forever. What happens then?
One of the notorious ironies of healing is that just when you’re doing better than ever before, your entire life will fall apart. Skill regression for autism, mental breakdowns for C-PTSD, usually a mixture of both. This happens because while we are in survival mode, our system knows to do anything it can to ‘keep it together’ or else. It is not until we are somewhere comfortable, somewhere safe and consistent that our bodies begin to get the hint: it’s okay now. We can let the shield down.
The adrenaline of the battlefield wears off. We feel our pain now more than ever, in frightening intensity and dimensionality. We see ourselves, our patterns, we are flooded with memory, experience, confusion, and realizations.
We lose time. We don’t feel like going out. We can’t handle the club. We don’t respond to texts. Work becomes harder; many of us lose jobs in this time. But it is only now, in the midst of our own shadow, a mess in the nest we’ve finally found, that we can really heal.
We come back to ourselves. We stand in our authenticity. We let our real voice be heard. We dance, stim, tend to our needs. We make our way back to our truth, our joy, our self-love…
And now we are a vastly different person than who we were when we made the friends, partners and commitments we currently find ourselves in. This is where we face a bittersweet crossroads.
As we heal, as the mask drops and we begin realizing it is not only safe to be the real you (at least most of the time), it is the only way to have a fulfilling life, we begin to integrate who we are. And in this process…one begins to distance from those closest to them. This isn’t unheard of in healing, and it’s a natural fact of life that at some point, we usually part ways with friends, partners, etc. But for someone who has finally unmasked, this point of the journey hits hard. It is a series of tough conversations or slow distances. Explaining what’s changed, reintroducing who you are, and trying to figure out where to go next. In the end we realize that the same cast can’t come with us into the new story.
I write this for you to understand that when this happens, you must persist. Nothing is wrong, though heartbreak will come. A sort of mourning of, if nothing else, the comfort and familiarity you knew while you were pretending to be the version of you that protected your heart. You will part ways with people not because they did you wrong, but because in your healing, you have become incompatible with them. Sometimes completely, sometimes only when you’re too close.
The truth is that as long as we are masking, we cannot have authentic relationships. The truth is that once we integrate ourselves, we will be unable to deny the misalignment we ignored in order to try and satisfy our need for acceptance and safety. The truth is that these relationships can rarely transform into what we would need them to be in our new form, because they were built on a kind of self-abandonment. And the truth is that they were what we needed for as long as we needed them.
And that’s okay.
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