I’d already completed one round of residential and outpatient treatment for my PTSD and agoraphobia. I was trying to come to a place of acceptance with my recent autism diagnosis and what that meant for my life. I was back at work and thinking that everything was going to go back to “normal” now. But every ping from the Teams notifications, every meeting I was required to attend, every time my to-do list got longer and overcrowded, I was debilitated by anxiety attacks. I had to take naps daily by 1pm because of the exhaustion of dealing with all the stimulation of the job I used to love. It took about 4 months of living in my denial box, of thinking I could just power through, for me to realize that things were never going to be my old “normal” again.
The hardest part of unmasking for me was being in burnout and realizing that I didn’t have the capacity to mask in any situation. I suddenly didn’t know who I was anymore because I was unable to do all the things that I used to be able to do. I was learning the hard way all of the things that took my energy, because those were all the things that I could not tolerate anymore. From that place, I had to learn to be okay with this new reality, this new set of limitations that I was living through.
Once you get a diagnosis or you’ve reached burnout, you start hearing a lot about masking and the toll it takes. And there’s this idea that since you’ve been masking, you can just take a mask off. Easy-peasy. After all, we’re all familiar with how easy it is to put a Halloween mask on or take it off. It’s like all of a sudden, you’re supposed to just be your authentic self, and accommodate for your needs and all that jazz. That’s not really how unmasking works after a lifetime of living in a masked state.
Unmasking requires time, trust, and personal experimentation to find out what is actually soothing to you: what body movements, textures, smells, etc. are helpful and which are draining your energy. You have to practice once again trusting yourself: rebuilding that trust between your brain and your body so that your body can signal what it needs and you’re going to pay attention.
It also requires open and trusting relationships, because masking generally doesn’t happen in isolation, right? We mask as a response to societal expectations, and then we just continue to practice that masking even when we’re not around other people. In the unmasking process, we need those people we trust that we can unmask in front of and know that they’re still going to love and accept us.
There’s also some risk, as you continue unmasking in your broader relationships, that it’s going to cause issues in those relationships. I’m talking any type of relationship, whether it’s a friendship, a romantic relationship, or a working relationship. You may come to find that the job that you’re doing is causing you to mask all the time, and you need to explore some different career options. You may find that there are people in your life that you care for deeply, but you also need to protect your energy around.
We learn that masking isn’t all bad. It’s always exhausting, but there are benefits to masking in certain situations. We eventually get to determine where we need to rebuild masks to function well in life. The reality is we can’t just go running around willy-nilly with no masks in place at all! We still have to function in professional relationships and environments. We have to communicate effectively, shake hands, make eye contact, etc.
We also have to deal with uncomfortable situations in order to be able to engage in meaningful life activities. For instance, if you have traditionally done brunch with your bestie one Sunday a month, you may have to mask in that environment. It’s loud, there are a lot of smells, and a lot of movement and activity, but it’s worth it because you’re getting to have that brunch with your bestie! The difference as we learn and grow is that we get to choose when we mask and when we don’t.
Unmasking and re-masking is hard work. It’s okay if you struggle in this area. I still have times where living unmasked is hard, and I have moments where I slip back into masking out of habit. I’m almost a year into this journey and I’m still learning and growing. In part two of this mini-series, I’ll share some of the ways that I show up as my authentic neurodivergent self and hopefully give you some ideas you can use. Look for that to land in two weeks. Next week, we’re wrapping up the pacing series.
What’s one way you’ve unmasked and are showing up as yourself?
