Where’s My Copy of the Social Rule Book?
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Autism and Masking
DSM-V criteria aside, the first thing I learned that made Autism click into place for me was this common phenomenon within the autistic community: that there’s some kind of rulebook for social situations that everyone has access to — except you.
Learning to Blend In
As a child I learned early on that the things you say, your behaviour, your body language, all affect how you’re perceived by others. I also learned that if I was going to appear normal, I had to conform to these principles. This is called masking which involves: suppressing certain behaviours autistics find soothing but that others think are ‘weird’, such as stimming or intense interests. It can also mean mimicking the behaviour of those around us, such as copying non-verbal behaviours, and developing complex social scripts to get by in social situations, (National Autistic Society).
Let’s look at an example:
A Story
First grade. I might have been five years old. We were working on math. My favourite subject. Specifically we were working on counting by two’s and three’s and so on. To challenge myself I chose to count by four’s. Every now and then I’d get stuck and look…
