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

As I’ve mentioned previously, camouflaging involves the act of mimicking the behaviour of others, but it is also often driven by a deep psychological need to be socially accepted by those around us, fuelled in no small part by a constant stream of uncomfortable self-consciousness.

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,

The goal is the same: to blend in socially and please those around us. It is often unconscious, although many of us, as we get older, become more aware that we are using the strategy.

In a major plot twist for the field newer evidence is even now suggesting autistic people can empathise too much, which hugely calls into question previous theories around the ‘normal’ development of imitation.

Instead we need to be able to empathise with what that pain must feel like, while switching our minds back to help that person. They suggest that autistic people may struggle to do this more, and so may be so consumed in feeling others’ emotions that they have to switch off completely.

Three main themes stood out: (1) motivations for camouflaging, including wanting to fit in and connect with others; (2) the use of strategies, including masking autistic traits, to appear less autistic and compensating for impairments; (3) long- and short-term consequences, including exhaustion and threats to self-identity (more on this later).

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.

Because social camouflaging is not a negative by-product of being autistic; it is an important developmental tool for all humans, born from the need to imitate others and meet others’ expectations of us that has been vital for our survival since time began.

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