Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity

Though ADHD is not believed by professionals to affect emotional processing and social skills development directly, one prominent experience among ADHDers is rejection-sensitive dysphoria, feeling intense panic and distress when receiving negative (or even neutral) social feedback from other people. Because ADHDers find rejection so terrifying and

So, she started begging her mom to let her skip school. “It was really hard to convince my mom to let me stay home that much,” Crystal says. “And eventually I hit the limit of how many sick days I could have without getting in trouble. But for as long as I could I got ‘stomachaches’ and stayed home, which really kept me sane.”

For Crystal, and for a lot of masked Autistic people, middle school is when a lot of struggles really come to the fore.

Forty-six percent of Autistic adults who underwent ABA therapy as kids report having Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as a result of the experience.

To call the stealthy, more socially camouflaged form of Autism a “female” version of the disorder is to indicate that masking is a phenomenon of gender, or even of assigned sex at birth, rather than a much broader phenomenon of social exclusion. Women don’t have “milder” Autism because of their biology; people who are marginalized have their Autism

Neurowonderful video series)

It’s pretty common to feel awkward or out of place the first time you meet someone new or attend an event. Unless a serious red flag occurs, I recommend giving a new space three visits before you conclude it’s a bad fit.

Real Social Skills)

and a crucial piece of data that deserves a ton of our attention

our neurons activate easily, and don’t discriminate as readily between a “nuisance variable” that our brains might wish to ignore