: As a kid, #AspieLife is often spent having a hecka time trying to make sense of people's behavior vs. what people say. It's also spending a lot of time being sometimes frightfully uncertain whether or not what you're saying and/or doing is accurate/proper for the moment/situation because you usually brace reflexively for penalties up to and including some form of violence. It's fundamental to why we mask, alas.
#neurallyatypical #actuallyautistic #residentalien #theweirdkid #autism
@thedisasterautist Yep. Masking is the result of trauma (and sometimes, deliberate abuse)..
@sanau: It's an adaptation, like learning how to speak the language and learn the customs of a country you're somehow stranded in with no chance of escape, and that invariably leads to what you cited.
@thedisasterautist It's different though, in that most people don't expect someone new to a language & culture to "just know" everything and will often be helpful rather than disparaging, whereas autistic people are expected to read NT minds and mimic NTs perfectly, and are punished when we inevitably fail.
@sanau: That's why I said it was like it. It was my experience at one point, when I was a stranger in a strange land and stranded. I looked like the locals, and when I didn't speak or act in ways familiar to them, things went either of the two ways you mentioned. Some people = bastards. Some people = helpful. That's analogous, though of course not identical, to our experiences. In ways it's worse because we do speak the language, though not always the local dialects, which can be extra crappy.
(continued)
It doesn't usually get much better for a lot of us as we get older. We just learn to deal.