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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 numbers from the research may show that on average autistic girls and women camouflage more, but this summary ignores the many autistic boys and men who also camouflage. No research states that camouflaging is exclusively used by females, in fact Hull and colleagues (2020) found that the average male camouflaging scores were higher than the non

To put it mildly, I’ve spent at least 30 years of my life studying non-autistic people, I’ve spent 10 years in therapy, and have undertaken a PhD in psychology to better understand the non-autistic world that surrounds me. Meanwhile, I have struggled to convince several of my previous workplaces to watch an hour-long webinar on how best to work wit

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).

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.