Taking Off the Mask: Practical Exercises to Help Understand and Minimise the Effects of Autistic Camouflaging

but we did find that females and those diagnosed with autism later seemed to be rated more highly by peers (Belcher et al. 2021). This might suggest that while intent to camouflage doesn’t change how we are viewed by others, other mechanisms are at play that do, such as the quality and depth of that camouflaging.

Camouflaging is being selfless in a way because you are focused on what people expect of you and you are entirely living to please others.

think I spend a good deal of my waking life camouflaging, and I have come to feel as if life is a chore, a duty; there is no pleasure in it. It has led to anhedonia.

It is no wonder that we develop a reaction to avoid that trauma; if we camouflage ourselves and avoid these mishaps and faux pas then we avoid that crippling shame too.

Goffman (1990) describes how we all need a ‘back stage’ where we can relax and don’t have an audience; however, the issue is that for some even this ‘back stage’ requires a performance. This might just be the crux to why autistic camouflaging is much more exhausting than non-autistic social performing; there is no ‘back stage’, our whole lives are

The need to avoid shame and stigma because of our different social presentation therefore runs much deeper.

A particular strength that lots of autistic people have is the ability to systemise (Baron-Cohen et al. 2003), that is to understand how to analyse and construct systems, and so it is that I find life much easier when I can turn the abstract and vagueness into its own system.

Recent studies have found that better executive functioning seems to be associated with more camouflaging traits. In particular, those who score highly on measures of executive functioning seem to demonstrate higher abilities to compensate for their autistic deficits,

Livingston and colleagues (2018) explained how camouflaging uses up valuable resources, which could otherwise be used elsewhere.