Masking

Send us Fan Mail (https://www.buzzsprout.com/2604834/fan_mail/new) Most people do some version of masking. Most people call it "Reading the room." But for many people, particularly those with autism, masking isn't a social skill. It's a survival strategy that starts in childhood, runs on autopilot for decades, and costs far more than anyone on the outside can see. In this episode, we break down Miller et al.'s 2021 paper from Autism in Adulthood, which is a qualitative study of 461 participants across three groups: people with autism, neurotypical adults, and neurodivergent adults without an autism diagnosis. We get into what masking actually involves, what it does to your sense of identity over time, why it gets harder the longer it runs, and why the people who are best at it are often the least believed when they say they're struggling. This one is for anyone who has ever held themselves together in public and fallen apart in private, and wondered why nobody ever noticed.