Part 12 : Reflections on unmasking— Is everyone masking?

One thing that I discussed with my cousin recently which I hadn’t thought about before is whether everyone is prone to the challenges of masking. Discussions with my cousin made me think about what masking is and whether it is more than just a neurodiversity thing. I talk about this more in this blog post, and also mention how it links to my unmasking journey.

Initially, when I came across the term masking, I thought of it as hiding your true self to fit in. When I think about why it may be hard to fit in, I immediately think about neurodiversity. This is because neurodivergent individuals have brains that are wired differently to the norm. Therefore, it is harder for neurodivergent individuals to fit in and navigate a predominantly neurotypical world. This results in them having to resort to masking. Furthermore, when I saw the context of where the term masking was being used, it was almost always being used in a neurodiversity context. Therefore, I had this view that masking was a challenge predominantly faced by neurodivergent individuals.

However, when I discussed further with my cousin, she suggested that masking is something that everyone does. One of the points she made which I particularly agreed with was that in reality, everyone is trying to fit in, not just neurodivergent individuals. This links closely to the fact that no one has things truly figured out, even though it may seem that way on the outside. Just as no one has things truly figured out, similarly no one truly feels that they fit in, and therefore everyone resorts to some form of masking and hiding their true self. For example, a lot of people mask to conform to societal norms and behaviours. Another example is people masking in the corporate world to fit in to the corporate culture. In summary, I feel we all are prone to the challenge of masking, and it is not just a challenge that purely neurodivergent individuals face.

If there was one thing I can take away from this new perspective, it is that a lot of neurodivergent individuals are in a neurodiversity bubble. What I mean by this is that if you are neurodivergent, it is easy to only see things from a neurodiversity lens and think that the challenges you face are ones that only neurodivergent people face and no one else. It can therefore be hard to look past the neurodiversity bubble and appreciate that most challenges neurodivergent people face are ones that other groups of people also face in some shape or form. For me, I thought that masking was a challenge that only neurodivergent people face, and I didn’t look at things past that neurodiversity lens. Another good example to illustrate this is where a lot of people say that society is not accommodating for neurodivergent individuals. Whilst that is true, society is also not always accommodating for individuals in ethnic minorities, individuals of colour and many more. Therefore, it is important to see past the neurodiversity lens, rather than get stuck in a bubble of thinking that it is only neurodivergent people that are facing certain challenges.

The fact that we are all masking has slightly changed my perspective towards the unmasking journey. In particular, it has acted as reassurance that the unmasking journey isn’t something that only I am doing. I have spoken to multiple people who feel that they resort to masking and are going through an unmasking journey of some sort. Just knowing this normalises the unmasking journey and makes it feel less intimidating. Furthermore, I also feel less alone in the unmasking journey, as I feel that my experiences of unmasking is relatable to a lot of people, which makes it easier to open up about it. I want my support system to have a range of people, and I feel that this is easier with the knowledge that my unmasking journey is something a lot of neurotypical people can relate to.

Thinking about going forward, I do believe that this new perspective can slightly complicate the unmasking journey. This is because beforehand, I firmly believed that my unmasking journey was predominantly autism linked, which made it a lot simpler to approach. Now I am unsure on how much of my masking is autism related, and how much of it completely separate to autism. This is another thing I may need to unpack when thinking about unmasking going forward. However, I do feel that neurodiversity and unmasking doesn’t always have to be thought about together in my case, and I do think that thinking about unmasking without thinking about neurodiversity can help me. This is because I don’t always have to attach the neurodiversity label to every aspect of my unmasking journey, which is quite freeing.