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

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

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.

“Depending on what exactly the situation is, I sometimes feel as though I have to concentrate quite hard to keep all the plates spinning. Other times, when it’s things that come slightly easier and more automatically, it’s more like a feeling of holding onto myself too tightly, and often there’s a corresponding tension in my actual posture too.” Al

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.

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

Psychologically, we still feel the pain of being rejected and of that loneliness. And how do we ensure we avoid these fears becoming a reality? We learn to ‘fit in’ and get along with others. We are constantly socially masking by hiding the aspects of ourselves we think others won’t like.

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.

To compensate for this they could either learn to always laugh after a joke, which would be considered shallow compensation, or they might go to great lengths to determine the mechanisms of jokes and understand why they are considered funny and therefore know when they are supposed to laugh, which would be considered deep compensation.

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.