My Masking Behaviors are More Conscious Than Ever

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:18]Hello and welcome back to Autistic After Hours. I'm your host, Asher. And if you are watching me on YouTube, you may see that I'm in a slightly different position than normal today. And that is because I am joined by a very adorable cat sitting on my right side, which you can see he looks like an orange mound in the camera right now. Um cuz he's curled up like a snail shell. Before we get into the episode today, quick reminder to follow Autistic After Hours on Instagram. We are over 70,000 followers on there now, which is amazing. Thank you for your support. Also, a quick reminder to please consider following or subscribing wherever you're listening right now, whether that is on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube. A lot of people listen. Not everyone subscribes or follows, and it makes a huge difference when you do. So, please consider doing so if you want to support me and support the podcast. Today I wanted to talk about this experience that I've talked about many times on here of feeling like I sort of leave myself or abandon myself or feel like I can't be present when socializing specifically or just like when around other people. And the reason why I wanted to talk about this more in depth today is because I feel like I've made some progress in understanding where this feeling is coming from. like the actual mechanism inside of me that's like causing me to have this feeling in social situations. And I wanted to share that with you today because even though it might seem obvious, it was kind of eye opening for me to have this realization and it's helped me to reframe things a lot. So I wanted to talk about it more with you. What I've realized is that I think there are maybe one or two people in my life where this feeling doesn't happen when I'm talking to them. And those people are my mom and my boyfriend Nick. They are the only two people in my life where I don't get this feeling where when I'm talking to them, I feel fully present. I feel like inside of myself and I feel like I'm sharing honestly and authentically and I don't get the feeling of abandoning myself. I don't get this feeling of leaving myself or being outside of myself.

[00:02:44]And when I talk to them, socializing feels actually energizing for me because I feel present and I feel like I almost enter like a sort of flow when I'm talking to them. But with anyone outside of that, I get this feeling of not being fully present. And I realized that the reason I think why I'm getting this feeling is because when I talk to people, and again this is anyone outside of my mom and my boyfriend Nick, when I talk to people, I feel like I'm focused on trying to adjust myself to talk to them in the way that they want to be talked to. And I'm not actually just being myself. And again, I said this sounds obvious because like it sounds so obvious when I'm saying it.

[00:03:45]It's like, yeah, that's masking. Like that's what we've been talking about for years. Everyone here probably knows about that.

[00:03:53]But something changed for me recently when I actually started thinking about it and feeling what it felt like in the moment. Like actually having like awareness in the moment of that happening. Like I don't know why this feels different for me now thinking about it than it has in the past, but like really isolated that feeling. Like I think I've I've really started to be able to isolate that feeling of me responding not as myself, but trying to respond as like the version of myself that I think I'm supposed to be for that person. So it is masking. It's like hiding my true authentic presentation.

[00:04:38]But even more than like hiding it necessarily, the hiding part is more a result of the more active mechanism, which is that I am actively trying to present myself as what the person would want from me or what I think they want from me. And as a result, I'm hiding myself. So when I'm talking about masking in social situations, the hiding aspect often feels more subsequential.

[00:05:11]It's like as a result of the more active thing for me, which is that I'm actively like trying to be someone who I'm not.

[00:05:21]And because of that, I end up hiding myself.

[00:05:24]And the hiding part that is the feeling of not being present. I feel like when I'm talking to people, my brain immediately shifts into how do I please them? How do I say what I'm supposed to say? It feels I just feel like this sounds so obvious.

[00:05:52]This is what I always talk about, but I don't know why something shifted for me recently and I've become very aware of myself doing this in the moment. In the past, it was something that like outside of conversations I knew I was doing, but I didn't actively feel in the moment when I was doing it because I felt like I left myself. I abandoned myself. It felt almost dissociative to engage in this people pleasing in like adjusting myself in this way. But I feel more present now and I feel myself doing it. And so that is why I think it feels like this huge realization right now. It feels really different for me where I'm at in my journey in this moment because I actually feel myself doing it now.

[00:06:41]Whereas before it felt almost like an unconscious process that I couldn't specifically isolate or name, I now feel like this process of adjusting myself in social context and then subsequently feeling like I'm not present or like I can't be fully there because I'm hiding myself as a result.

[00:07:02]It feels a lot more visceral now. it feels a lot more obvious and I feel myself doing it.

[00:07:11]Whereas before in the past I I didn't feel it necessarily happening. I knew afterwards that it happened because of how I felt drained and how I felt like I wasn't present. But now I actually feel myself doing it in the moment. And I think that's what has changed.

[00:07:28]And I think that's why talking about it feels different right now because I've had this realization that I actually like can consciously feel myself doing it. And that has led me to feel way more in control of it. And I feel now like maybe I'm on the precipice of finally being able to stop doing it because I can feel myself doing it now. I just don't know how to not do it though. That's the thing.

[00:07:58]I can't fully figure out why I'm doing it. I think I'm doing it because I feel uncomfortable being myself or I feel maybe like they would not accept or like if I were myself.

[00:08:23]I want to give you a concrete example here because I realize a lot of this is very like elusive and probably hard to understand if you don't like exactly precisely know what I mean or if you haven't experienced this exactly. It's probably difficult to figure out what I mean. I'm going to try and give an example. So at its most basic level, I would say this is an example of what I mean. If I were talking to Nick, my boyfriend, or to my mom, and they asked me for my opinion on something, I in the moment would give them my honest opinion. I would like in my mind feel comfortable and feel able to literally just say what I think and I would know what I think because I feel comfortable with them. I feel comfortable enough to feel connected to myself. So I would just tell them what I think. Not fear the repercussions, not fear that they think I'm wrong or not fear that they dislike my opinion. Just know that they know who I am. They love who I am and I can just be honest with them when I'm talking to anybody else. I wouldn't give my honest opinion. I would give them the opinion that I think they want to hear.

[00:09:48]And that is why masking feels often synonymous with like faking or lying for me. And it makes me feel like a liar. It makes me feel like I'm not in control of myself or my own life and like I'm presenting like a fake version of me to people because that's kind of exactly what I'm doing.

[00:10:15]And it's rooted in a defense mechanism.

[00:10:17]It's rooted in a lack of safety. It's rooted in a lack of feeling comfortable around other humans. It's rooted in anxiety.

[00:10:28]And so it's not a purposeful desire to mislead people or present a false self.

[00:10:36]It's rather a fear-based response. It's me being too scared in the moment to be honest with people. Scared they won't like me.

[00:10:46]Scared they will be upset with me. Scared they won't want me around. scared that I'll say the wrong thing based on the fact that before I was heavily masking or before I learned how to people please, I did face social repercussions for being myself. So, it's all rooted in those fears of the experiences that I've had. And now I feel so scared to be myself that I end up feeling like I lie to people all the time because instead of being me, I'm just trying. so hard to adjust myself to be what I think they want from me. And I think this type of masking behavior very closely resembles what a lot of neurotypical social constructs are built around things like white lies or things like sugar coating the truth, these types of things. But for me as an autistic person, it feels really extreme to engage in these types of neurotypical social construct behaviors because it feels really inconsistent with my sense of self. And it feels really grand to engage in these types of behaviors because honesty and authenticity happen to be very important for me as an autistic person.

[00:12:10]both because of traumas of feeling so distanced from myself, but also because honesty and clarity and predictability, familiarity, consistency are all just like really important grounding things for me as an autistic person, both in my environment, but within myself. So when I engage in things like white lies or sugar coating the truth or when I try to engage more quote unquote neurotypically, it feels like a huge departure from myself. And this rattles my life on the daily and it's not something that feels good for me. It's not really something that I can do without becoming completely exhausted and just wanting to isolate myself. So for me, it's not really an option to continue doing this, which is why I do what I do. It's why I make the content I make. It's why I do this podcast. It's why I talk about this. It's why I analyze myself so much because I'm trying to find a way to exist that feels sustainable. And I'm realizing that the way that I do exist in most social contexts is not sustainable for me because I am trying so hard even inadvertently, even when I don't want to be, to behave neurotypically, because I'm so scared to not. I'm so scared to be myself. I'm scared that people won't like me.

[00:13:31]And I realize even in moments that seem insignificant, I'm passing everything that I do through a filter that feels like it's not my own.

[00:13:43]It feels like a filter that was put there because without it, I would get myself into trouble.

[00:13:50]I would face social repercussions. But I realize now that I'd rather face the social repercussions. And I also know I'm in a very privileged position to be able to say that. But I feel in my life that I'd rather face the social repercussions than continue living life through a filter. And I'm not saying that I want to be able to go around and like, hey, I just want to say what I want and I just want to live outside of society. I'm not saying that I want to just be able to like go be rude and like say things that I that are going to get me in trouble. And like that's that's not what I mean. What I mean is that I want to be able to just act without fear that I will be disliked. Like, it's really all about social anxiety, too. I just want to be able to be myself without this fear that I'm not acceptable for being who I am.

[00:14:43]It's small things like if someone wanted my opinion on something like being able to genuinely give them my opinion without feeling in the moment like I have to filter myself and adjust myself and adjust my own feelings and thoughts and beliefs to fit theirs. I just don't want to constantly feel like I'm becoming versions of the people that I'm around because I'm so scared to be me instead of be the me that I think they want me to be. It's that it's not that I want to be some sort of like social deviant. I just want to be myself and not feel like I leave myself because I am becoming versions of who I'm around because I am so scared. That that is the only way that I can be liked.

[00:15:31]That is what I mean.

[00:15:34]And I'm proud that I feel like I've made progress. And I feel like I'm starting to actually be able to have awareness in the moment when I'm engaging in this because in the past it felt very subconscious. It felt very out of my control. But I'm realizing now that I can actually feel it happening in the moment. I feel myself filtering. I feel myself adjusting. And I want to stop.

[00:15:59]And I need to figure out how to stop.

[00:16:02]Not completely. Again, I already feel the people in the comments being like, "Oh, well, you have to filter yourself sometimes for X, Y, or Z." Like, I know that's not what I'm saying. That's not what I'm saying. And I don't really know how to express it anymore clearly.

[00:16:16]I hope you understand what I mean. But I'm not saying that I want to completely just never filter myself.

[00:16:24]Like, I understand to a certain degree you have to be able to do that in certain social contexts. I understand that. That's not what I'm saying.

[00:16:33]I'm saying that I want to on the smallest level just stop feeling like I have to completely adjust myself in the most meaningless interactions. Like at the grocery store, if I were like talking to someone at the cash register, at the grocery store, and they asked me like, "Hey, what are you doing this weekend?" I feel in the moment like I have to like adjust myself to like give them the perfect response or something. And it's in those moments, that's what I mean, where I want to just be able to like be me, you know? I just want to be me and not be so afraid that they're going to be like thinking that I'm weird or awkward or like say the wrong thing.

[00:17:15]That's what I mean.

[00:17:18]So, that's where I'm at. That's what I'm thinking. I just wanted to share where I'm at and what I'm thinking about. So, thank you so much for listening. As always, remember, autistic adults exist. We deserve awareness, support, community, and acceptance. And I'm so grateful that you're here. I'll talk to you again soon. Bye.