I’ve been masking all this time

I just finished a chapter on masking in Unmasking Autism. I’ve only read 3 chapters so far, but every single one of them has been mind-blowing.

Admittedly, I’m fairly opposite from the ways in which Devon Price is neurodivergent. I guess that’s why they prefer the term Autism, and I prefer the term neurospicy. For example, they talk about how there are 2 types of masking: 1) camouflaging–hiding to blend in, and 2) hacks to seem like you’re high functioning when you’re not.

I have definitely been masking. I people-please. I’ll dumb down my speech or stay quiet about not knowing who Sisyphus is (although I know who he is now), or whatever people are talking about that makes no sense to me.

In fact, I just realized that training to be normal is a joke about learning how to mask, only the term didn’t exist back then. In reality, my blog is about training to be authentic.

I also use hacks. I would see a client and think, wow, they’re just doing what I’m saying and their life is getting better. Why can’t I take my own advice? I guess I must be crazier than they are. But I don’t say this out loud in session, of course! Because I’m supposed to seem like my life is together. So instead, I just don’t tell them about my blog. In the beginning, at least.

But sometimes the hacks I’ve used are to hide that I’m high-functioning instead of barely functioning because otherwise I might seem…crazy? Although apparently the only person I’m fooling is myself.

Here are some examples from my blog Normal in Training:

1. I didn’t feel like I had any friends in grad school because while they were all busy putting in the 80 hours a week they told us we would need to work during orientation, I was racing towards defending my Master’s thesis, which happened to get published in the Psychology of Women Quarterly. I had so much time on my hands I spent all my time watching Gilligan’s Island, The Brady Bunch, and The Flintstones. I felt this terrible sense of guilt and shame for being a fraud, because research seemed pretty easy to me. So maybe I’m doing it wrong?
2. On the other hand, while I was in grad school, Waco and an eclipse happened, neither of which I knew about because of the aforementioned TV lineup. So when I was walking to class one day and everything looked weirdly shadowy, I was like, huh! The sky looks weird. My colleagues were like, don’t like at the sky, you idiot! There’s an eclipse! Or at least that’s how I heard it.
3. And, when I found out that dude from Waco killed everyone I was like, what? This has been going on for months?!, my colleagues responded with, you didn’t know about Waco?! What? Do you live under a rock?! This one is literally what they said to me. I couldn’t fake knowing so I just thought I was really dumb. But it still didn’t motivate me to keep up with current events. Because now I realize all that bad news is overstimulating. So I was “stimming,” or what I prefer to call self-regulating, by watching shows from my childhood when life was much simpler.
4. Consequently, because of numbers 1-3, I thought I wasn’t that smart. I just work hard. Except, actually, I don’t even do that. Well, it turns out that I do, but one of my neurospicy characteristics is that I have incredibly fast processing speed, which means I get things done very quickly. So 30 hours of work for me is like 50 hours of work for other people. But I didn’t find out that was a thing until decades later. So I instead I just thought I’m not smart. Which doesn’t make any sense. So then my friends are like, are you crazy? You have to be dumb not to think you’re smart! Again, literally what she said to me.
5. I wrote a post called Popularity because I didn’t think I was popular in high school. I was a nerd and a goody-two shoes and people teased me for being some minority, even though they didn’t know I was Filipino. Just some brown person. Different and therefore unacceptable. (This was mostly pointed out by kids who were throwing shade to hide their own difference, by the way. You know how that strategy goes.) I share the post on Facebook and everyone from high school, including my brothers, inform me that I was popular in high school. What?! That would have been nice to know back then!
6. I write a post about being an unathletic athlete, and I know this is getting predictable, but they say, you have to be crazy not to know that you’re athletic! I mean, I see their point. I was winning matches. I had shots people couldn’t return. I was known for never missing. I played 3x/day sometimes. But…in my defense, I was picked last in gym class. And even a teammate told me I threw like a girl. (You know who you are!) Which I do. Because I am a girl. And I’ve noticed that guys “stim” or self-regulate by throwing balls all the time. At walls. Up in the air. Into impromptu hoops. To each other. So they get pretty good at throwing. A neurospicy characteristic that I do not possess.

So I guess at least it makes sense to you why I don’t think I’m normal. Because all of these beliefs of mine seem crazy to other people. Which is the real lesson in my blog Normal in Training, I now realize. We are the ones who put ourselves in the prison of our minds about what we are not, what we can’t do, and who we can’t be.

Which is why I love the topic of neurodivergence. Because if you’re different and you think you have to hide it, you don’t. Figure out what it is that makes you different. Sure, it will be a double-edged sword. But why not use the side that can be your strength, and be careful not to cut yourself with the other side? Because once you learn how to do that, you can do anything.

So that’s why I started this new blog, NEUROSPICY AND FLYING.