Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity

by Devon Price

The few relationships I did have were enmeshed; I took responsibility for others’ problems, tried to manage their emotions for them, and lacked any capacity to say “no” to unreasonable requests.

I lived by a very narrow set of rules, and remaining independent and invulnerable was chief among them.

we tend to latch on to subjects that fascinate us and focus on them with a fervor others find weird.

I was “too much” in so many ways.

Like me, they had developed coping strategies to blend in.

They were trapped in abusive or unfulfilling relationships, with no clue how to feel seen and appreciated.

Nearly all of them were depressed, haunted by a profound sense of emptiness.

Older Autistics never had the opportunity to be assessed, because knowledge about the disability was so limited during their childhoods.

We were defined only by what we seemed to lack, and only insofar that our disabilities presented a challenge to our caregivers, teachers, doctors, and other people who held power over our lives.

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 ignored because of their peripheral status in society.

When an Autistic person is not given resources or access to self-knowledge, and when they’re told their stigmatized traits are just signs that they’re a disruptive, overly sensitive, or annoying kid, they have no choice but to develop a neurotypical façade.

Maintaining that neurotypical mask feels deeply inauthentic and it’s extremely exhausting to maintain.[5] It’s also n...

Similarly, Autistic people are born with the mask of neurotypicality pressed against our faces.

I am going to wonder if this is true for second-generation autistic kids.

I got into unhealthy, codependent relationships because I needed approval and didn’t know how to get it, so I just molded myself into whatever my partner at the time was looking for.

The more other people around me relaxed, spoke passionately about their special interests, and rocked in place excitedly, the less shame I felt about who I was, and how my brain and body worked.

When I’m excited, I flap my hands and squirm in place.

It is so good to visibly express joy! Even neurotypicals love Kermit arms.

Conforming to neurotypical standards can earn us tentative acceptance, but it comes at a heavy existential cost.

Refusing to perform neurotypicality is a revolutionary act of disability justice. It’s also a radical act of self-love. But in order for Autistic people to take our masks off and show our real, authentically disabled selves to the world, we first have to feel safe enough to get reacquainted with who we really are. Developing self-trust and self-compassion is a whole journey unto itself.

Think of five moments in your life when you felt like you were FULLY ALIVE. Try to find moments from throughout your life (childhood, adolescence, adulthood; school, work, vacation, hobbies). Some of the moments might leave you with a sense of awe and wonder—“wow, if all of life was like that, life would be amazing!” Some of the moments might leave you feeling deeply recharged and ready to face the next challenge, or satisfied and fulfilled. Write down each of these moments. Tell the story of each moment in as much detail as possible. Try to think specifically about why the moment stuck with you so dramatically.

Everyone in the child’s life views disability not as an explanation of how a person functions (and what help they need in order to function), but a sign of damage.

When the child makes themselves small and inobtrusive, they’re granted some of the affection they desperately crave and never get enough of. So they do it more and more, quieting the voice inside themselves that says how they’re being treated isn’t fair. They work hard, demand little, and play by society’s rules as closely as possible. They grow into an adult who is even more self-effacing, and even less capable of voicing how they feel. Then, after decades of forcing themselves into a restrictive neurotypical box, they have some kind of breakdown that finally makes all the turmoil bubbling beneath the surface impossible to ignore. It’s only then that they discover they’re Autistic.

Autistic burnout is a state of chronic exhaustion where an Autistic person’s skills begin to degrade, and their tolerance to stress is greatly reduced.[5]

Autistic people frequently experience inertia in starting a task,[6]

GETTING INTO THE SHOWER. GETTING OUT OF BED.

Instead of looking to the external signals of Autism that others might pick up on, it’s important that we instead focus on the neurobiological markers of the neurotype, and the internal experiences and challenges that Autistic people themselves report. Autism is neurological. Autism is a developmental disability that runs in families[9] and appears to be largely genetically heritable.[10] However, it is also multiply determined, meaning it has no single cause: a whole host of different genes appear to be associated with Autism,[11] and every Autistic person’s brain is unique and exhibits its own distinct patterns of connectivity.[12]

Autistic people have differences in the development of their anterior cingulate cortex,[14] a part of the brain that helps regulate attention, decision making, impulse control, and emotional processing. Throughout our brains, Autistic people have delayed and reduced development of Von Economo neurons (or VENs), brain cells that help with rapid, intuitive processing of complex situations.[15] Similarly, Autistic brains differ from allistic brains in how excitable our neurons are.[16] To put it in very simple terms, our neurons activate easily, and don’t discriminate as readily between a “nuisance variable” that our brains might wish to ignore (for example, a dripping faucet in another room) and a crucial piece of data that deserves a ton of our attention (for example, a loved one beginning to quietly cry in the other room). This means we can both be easily distracted by a small stimulus and miss a large meaningful one.

Autistic brains have unique connection patterns that deviate from what is normally observed in neurotypical people. When infants are born, their brains are typically hyperconnected; much of human development is a process of slowly pruning unhelpful connections and becoming more efficient at responding to one’s environment, based on life experience and learning. In Autistic brains, however, researchers have found that some regions remain hyperconnected throughout the life span, whereas other regions may be underconnected (relatively speaking). It is difficult to sum up these connectivity patterns because, as neurobiologists at the Weizmann Institute of Science have found, every Autistic brain exhibits a different connectivity pattern. Our brain wiring appears to actually be more diverse than the wiring of neurotypical brains, which researchers believe have a consistent pruning pattern.[17]

Autistic people also exhibit less of what neuroscientists call global-to-local interference:[19] we are inclined to zero in on small details, even when those details don’t jibe with the overall “big picture” that a non-Autistic person might see.

expression as a whole, for instance.[21] This helps explain why many Autistic people have prosopagnosia (the inability to recognize faces),[22] and experience difficulty reading emotions on neurotypicals’ faces.

all of this means that Autistic people tend to have the following qualities: We are hyperreactive to even small stimuli in our environment We have trouble distinguishing between information or sensory data that should be ignored versus data that should be carefully considered We are highly focused on details rather than “big picture” concepts We’re deeply and deliberatively analytical Our decision-making process is methodical rather than efficient; we don’t rely on mental shortcuts or “gut feelings” Processing a situation takes us more time and energy than it does for a neurotypical person

Autism is associated with a deliberative processing style. When making sense of the world, Autistic people usually defer to logic and reason rather than emotion or intuition. We dive deep into all the pros and cons, sometimes excessively so, not knowing where to draw the line between an important variable and an unimportant one. We tend not to get habituated to familiar situations or stimuli as readily as other people, so we often think through a situation as if it’s completely new to us, even if it isn’t.[25] All of this requires a lot of energy, focus, and time, so we get exhausted and overloaded quite easily. However, it also makes us less prone to errors. Experimental research shows that Autistic people are far less susceptible to the biases allistic people commonly fall prey to.[26] For example, consider this relatively simple problem:

Allistic people often accuse us of overthinking things, or being too slow and hesitant to come up with a response. We also get overwhelmed when presented with mountains of data, which neurotypical people find much easier to just ignore.

Autistic people process the world from the bottom up. If you want to understand Autism as a disability and a source of human difference at a glance, it’s best summed up this way: we process in a careful, systematic, bottom-up way. Allistic folks, in contrast, make sense of the world in a very top-down fashion.

Autistic people, on the flip side, don’t rely on knee-jerk assumptions or quick mental shortcuts to make our decisions. We process each element of our environment separately, and intentionally, taking very little for granted.

Too much change may cause us to become really exhausted, or to freak out.

Autism touches every part of the Autistic person’s life. Of course, many non-Autistic people might resonate with some of the feelings and sensations I just described.

Because the neural and cognitive features of Autism are so pervasive, it affects almost every aspect of a person’s body and brain. It’s related to coordination and muscle tone, the ability to read emotions on people’s faces, communication skills, reaction time, and even how a person recognizes feelings of pain or hunger.[28]

Autism can predispose a person to having fanatical interests (often referred to as special interests)[30] and to following rules very rigidly.

Disruptions to our routines or expectations can make us panic. Learning new skills may take us far longer than other people.

Autism is behavioral. Autism is associated with repetitive self-stimulatory be...

Stimming is an important means of self-regulation. It helps soothe us when we’re anxious or overloaded with stress, and it helps us express joy and enthusiasm.

Others stim by engaging the body’s proprioceptive system

swaying in place.

Oh dang like i have to do when I'm waiting in a restaurant and really hungry.

Repetitiveness is a key feature of Autistic

most of us prefer consistent routines. We often eat the same meals over and over again, or only enjoy a limited range of foods (sometimes called samefoods in the community). We hyperfixate on activities that we enjoy and can get so engrossed in them that we forget to eat or take a break to stretch our legs.

simply because the sounds feel pleasant to have vibrating in our vocal cords.

far beyond the point that an allistic person would find entertaining.

Childhood me and the wizard of Oz

We tend to maintain shallow relationships, out of fear that people would hate getting to know our “real selves.”

Many Autistic people have trauma histories and post-traumatic stress symptoms,

others are incredibly hyperverbal from a young age, with huge vocabularies. Some Autistics can read people’s emotions so easily that it’s overwhelming;

help in every facet of our existence. What unites us, generally speaking, is a bottom-up processing style that impacts every aspect of our lives and how we move through the world, and the myriad practical and social challenges that come with being different.