Part 2: Reflections on unmasking – Thinking about social acceptance

A few weeks ago, I caught up with a friend from work who is also autistic. One thing that we talked about was the importance of being socially accepted. In particular, my friend mentioned that being socially accepted isn’t a big deal for her. As someone that finds being socially accepted important, I found this interesting. However, this conversation with my friend made me really think about my unmasking journey, and how social acceptance links in with that. In this blog post, I will talk about some of my reflections I have had when it comes to thinking about the link between social acceptance and unmasking.

Prior to my unmasking journey, I had this idea in my head that to be socially accepted, I had to have a lot of friendship groups and have a busy diary of social plans. This is because on the outside, I was seeing most of my friends and family having lots of friends and social plans. Furthermore, in a work environment, I thought that the only way to be socially accepted was to regularly go out with the team to the pub. This was because going to the pub was something that I considered part of the corporate culture, and that I would be left out in a social sense if I didn’t conform to that.

As I thought I needed to do all of the things mentioned in the paragraph above to feel socially accepted, that is what I tried to do, both inside and outside of work. In particular, I went along most of the time to the pub when people at work went, and tried to integrate myself in friendship groups in this way. At the time, I thought that the things I was doing was working, as it felt like I was getting on well with others. However, upon recent reflection, it is now clear that it wasn’t really achieving my goal of being socially accepted. Firstly, I wasn’t making many meaningful friendships, which I consider an essential aspect of being socially accepted. Secondly, and this is something that I find painful, was that I was effectively resorting to masking to fit in in a social sense, as I thought that the traditional way of being socially accepted was the only way.  

I still strongly believe that being socially accepted is important to me. I do consider myself as fairly outgoing and I do value time spent with others. Furthermore, being socially accepted means that I have a strong support system, which is positively correlated with my wellbeing. However, one thing that I have thought about is approaching things in a different way and in a way that works for me, rather than simply accepting that the traditional way is the only way. In particular, I have thought about the social situations that I genuinely enjoy spending my time and energy on. Social situations I enjoy playing sports together, meaningful one – on – one conversations and socials that don’t involve drinking or loud noises. This may not be the common way of having a social life or being socially accepted. However, I have already been able to build friendships quicker by spending more time and energy on social situations I enjoy. This is because spending time and energy on social situations I genuinely enjoy means that it is easier for me to show my authentic self, which makes a massive difference when it comes to building and maintaining friendships, as that way people accept me for being unapologetically me.

Another thing I have thought about when it comes to being socially accepted is how my friendship circle looks like. Personally, I don’t have big friendship groups that would do group activities such as holidays. However, I do consider myself to have a good number of meaningful friendships (around 20ish friends I would consider as meaningful). I would also say that I have a large variety of friends (in terms of school, university and work friends, as well as friends with different personalities). I do feel having both meaningful and a large variety of friends has helped me a lot in the last few years, and that is something I am extremely grateful for. In the past, having big friendship groups was something that I craved. However, by thinking about the unmasking journey and being socially accepted, a big question that I have asked myself has been “Do I want a big friendship group because it will genuinely improve my life, or is the want for a big friendship group mainly driven by societal expectations?”. This question remains unanswered, but is certainly an ongoing debate.

Going forward, my aim is to be socially accepted, but in a way that allows me to unmask and show my authentic self. I don’t want to resort to masking just to be socially accepted, as that would be a classic case of the costs outweighing the benefits. The last few weeks have shown me that there is a clear path to be socially accepted and show my authentic self at the same time. However, the main challenge I will face is that to be socially accepted and show my authentic self at the same time, it may involve going against the norm in a lot of ways. And going against the norm with anything is scary. Despite this, I do believe that there is nothing wrong with doing things in a different way, and the beauty of the unmaking journey is that it makes me really question and reflect on difficult things like this.