A couple of posts today made me think about the connection between masking and imposter syndrome, especially for those of us who have realised late that we are autistic. I have long believed that there are essentially two aspects to the way that we masked. Masking ourselves from the world and masking ourselves from ourselves and that both of these contributed to being able to stay below the radar of realising what we were for so long. But, perhaps, the most important one, was not the face we showed the world, mostly because I doubt if that was ever as good as we thought it was, but the mirror we learnt to see ourselves in.
That internal masking of ourselves can take many forms.
I thought it was just me.
But, everyone does it this way.
No one else is bothered, or even seems to be noticing. I must be just imagining it, or too sensitive. It can't be real.
I've tried talking about it, but no one took me seriously, they thought I was joking. It's obviously just me. I really must be broken, or mad.
I can't see myself anywhere, I can't be right.
I can't be this way, no one else is.
I must be wrong.
And so much else...
So much of it is denial and disbelieve, as much as anything, and it doesn't go away once we begin to realise the truth. It doesn't magically lose its power. It has to be faced and defeated as a deliberate act of de-masking, that, perhaps, never really ends, because we've carried and tended to it for too long. And, all the time, it is a voice of doubt and so-called reason in our minds that can fuel our imposter syndrome. That can make us doubt our journey, our revelations, our truth. Because that was always its job. It is the reason we created it. To mask ourselves from the truth. Because, it wasn't the truth we saw, or were able to accept.
This isn't to say, by any means, that it is the only bone our imposter syndrome will chew on. But, for those of us who are late realising our truth, it is perhaps a particularly meaty one. Because it has been with us for so long, our only answer to the darkness we lived in and the only world we could see.
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Mind Shambles
in reply to Kevin Davy • • •Kevin Davy reshared this.
Kevin Davy
in reply to Mind Shambles • • •Silver Arrows
in reply to Mind Shambles • • •@Aspiedan I used to depersonalise easily when I saw my reflection, but not all the time. But enough to be significant. Logically I'd know it's me, but I'd feel a disconnect. Strangely, it doesn't happen as much recently. I can even make eye contact with my reflection these days without freaking out.
The exception being when I'm at work. If I catch my reflection in a mirror, or on a shiny bolt when I'm working on a bike, I flinch and have to look away. It just freaks me out. That might be the disconnect between masking and seeing who I am.
This kind of thing is a known trait of #schizoid, is it also common among other neurodivergences? I don't remember seeing depersonalisation as autistic/ADHD trait.
Kevin Davy
in reply to Silver Arrows • • •I don't know how common it is. But, I suspect it's one of those things where it is difficult to tell if it is the autism, or trauma, or something else. We tend to be quite intersectional beasties.
Bernie Luckily Does It
in reply to Silver Arrows • • •V'ger
in reply to Kevin Davy • • •Very well said. I've felt like that for a major part of my life. The first time I noticed that something must be really off and it's not just "me being whiny", was when I opened up to my former wife about how hard just about everything feels for me and that I just feel exhausted. She basically replied with: "I don't believe you, I don't see that."
I felt absolutely devastated but at the same time thought, how good must I be in hiding my problems? This isn't right. It took several more years from that point to find out that I'm autistic.
Kevin Davy
in reply to V'ger • • •Janeishly
in reply to V'ger • • •V'ger
in reply to Janeishly • • •Once I got the diagnosis, I came out to a colleague and his first response was: "But do you really feel that diagnosis? Because I talked alot with people about autism, and ..."
Luckily our conversation was interrupted at that point.
Dziadek Mick
in reply to V'ger • • •@vger @janeishly
Other people, eh? With their “you don’t look” or “seem” or “behave” like an autistic. I had it with my alcoholism too.
You don’t ever hear this exchange, do you?
Person: I’ve just been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. That was a bit of a blow, I can tell you.
Idiot: Well, you don’t look like you have cancer. Are you sure it’s not an infection.
But when it’s a mental or behavioural issue, out they come with their resistance to the problem.
Kevin Davy
Unknown parent • • •This could almost be one of the most harmful ways of masking. It's exhausting and stressful and also leaves you wondering what, if anything, lies beneath it any more. It's also hard to get out of the habit of doing it, once you've been doing it for long enough.
Jeffrey Haas
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Kevin Davy
in reply to Jeffrey Haas • • •Indeed. For many of us, the reality of what is really us and what isn't is, difficult.
Looking for explanations…
Unknown parent • • •@bflipp @Aspiedan
Oh…
I wouldn’t say I was obsessive, but I certainly lost my sense of self. When I heard the “fake it ‘til you make it” mantra at a professional development thing for teachers, I knew I’d been doing that my whole life.
As an aside, some of the teachers at the school made a video satirising the concept a few months later.
Kevin Davy
Unknown parent • • •I do this too. Read the room, adjust accordingly. The difference, for me, was that what I'm adjusting was based on myself. I took, sometimes exaggerated, sometimes emphasised, the aspects of myself that others seemed to like and accept. My intellect, humour, or just simply the ability to get on with people that I seem to have. I try not to do this as much now and I do wonder what the real balance of myself looks like. It is something I am still working on.
Perhaps, without realising it, you did something similar. Perhaps, what you worked on in the mirror, was shaping yourself as much as anything. Like me, perhaps what you really need, is to find the right balance.
Murdoc Addams 🧛🏻 🇨🇦
in reply to Kevin Davy • • •I don't know if you've had occasion or inclination to read my posts* about the ttrpg vampire clan Malkavian or not (about how I think they were meant to represent neurodivergence), but what you said about the mirror reminded me of it. This is because their clan symbol is a broken mirror. The reason is because the mirror is supposed to represent your self-image. But it's just an image, an illusion, there's nothing behind the mirror. So Malkavian wisdom says that in order to progress in life, you have to break the mirror, i.e. destroy your self image because it is holding you back from realizing and becoming who you really are. A truism I think for everyone, but it seems to be yet another way Malkavians make a good representation of neurodivergence.
*For reference: autistics.life/@murdoc/1144288…
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Kevin Davy
in reply to Murdoc Addams 🧛🏻 🇨🇦 • • •Yes, I have seen your posts. Although I do not play games, there does seem an echo there. The mirrors we hold up to ourselves and try to see ourselves in, so seldom represent the truth. So indeed, we have to break them, before we can even begin to do so.
Owl Eyes Hoo
in reply to Kevin Davy • • •"The Dangers of Missing a Sense of Self":
youtube.com/watch?v=hfqEqIgBYO…
- YouTube
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Jonathan Lamothe
in reply to Kevin Davy • •@Kevin Davy
This right here. This has wreaked so much havoc in my brain over the years. The only conclusion I could draw was that I was somehow defective.
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Kevin Davy
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •Same. The only logical conclusion was always that I was broken and in my shame to hide that fact.
Elischeva
Unknown parent • • •I found something like an Identity only in recent years. The problem with it is: I don't fit neatly in the social categories offered to me. What's, if you belong to multiple seamingly mutually exclusive categories and have an additional layer on top? And many people don't know such people with such complex identities can exist and can't handle this.
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Unknown parent • • •@bflipp @Aspiedan This hits close to home. The first diagnosis I got after I hopped into the mental health bingo this time, almost ten years ago now, was a bogus "unspecified identity disorder". But for all the whacky reasoning he had, I guess in the end he was onto something.
I also don't really feel like I have an identity. I have a personality, but not identity. I also didn't really have a chance to observe and practice things growing up with real people, so a lot of my personas were or I guess still are adapted from television and movies. And I can tell ya, real life isn't anything like an US sitcom...