How Does Masking Work?

Post Reply New Topic

I become a completely different person depending on who I'm mixing with. I don't like it.

I had less meltdowns as I got older. I think I just became better able to tolerate stuff, plus I was better able to control my reactions, but it took a long, long time to get to that point. Then, once I was living alone, my meltdowns almost completely went away. It's being with people that is the main cause of my meltdowns, especially family, as we tend to get on each other's nerves a lot when we have to be together for a while. Once I was living alone, I found myself better able to handle being with my relatives during visits, because when the visits were over I could be alone again, and destress. A few years ago I read about B vitamins being good for stress and mood, and started taking those. I discovered that they really were helping me on a few occasions when I ran out of them, and started having emotional problems again. After getting and taking more B vits, I would quickly start to feel more stable, and I realized that before taking the B vits I had never felt so emotionally stable before. The B vits aren't a total fix, but they are a very big help, and I want to keep feeling this more stable way. Being too emotional feels awful. Feeling stable feels more like what normal should be, so the B vits are helping me to maintain a more balanced emotional state.

The B vits I take are B complex capsules. Tablet supplements aren't good, as they often don't dissolve enough on the way thru your intestines, and end up coming out the rear exit, instead of helping you. I generally just get the best buy, not any particular brand, just as long as it's a capsule or gel cap. I also look for higher doses per capsule.

I've been taking a little extra B complex the past couple of days, due to bad news from my stepmom. I live up north. My father and stepmother are snowbirds. They live up here near me in the warm months, and down in Florida in the winter. My father was already in declining health when they went down there this fall, and after a recent broken hip, his overall health got worse. He is now in hospice and not expected to last more than 2 weeks. I have health issues of my own, so I can't handle a trip down south. As soon as I finished the call from my stepmom about my father's condition, I took an extra B complex vitamin because I felt myself starting to destabilize. The extra supplement helped me to maintain my equilibrium. I'm still upset, but I'm handling it better.

I don't take psych meds. I was on some as a kid, and hated the side effects. They also didn't do anything to help me. Since they were causing problems without causing any benefits I eventually took myself off of them without telling any of the adults around me. I had emotional issues whether I was on or off the meds, but at least when I was off them, I didn't have to deal with the unpleasant side effects. I was prescribed psych meds a few times as an adult, but only tried one of them. It didn't help, so I didn't renew the med. The others failed my research test. I checked them out online before filling the prescriptions, and found out that they had nasty, and even dangerous side effects, so I chose not to take them. I'd rather put up with my emotional issues, than deal with nasty and dangerous meds. Fortunately, the B complex capsules don't cause me any problems, and they do actually help me, so I will stick with them.

For the past few years now, anytime a doc prescribes a med for me I research it before deciding whether or not to take it. If I don't like the risks associated with it I look for safer alternatives. So far I've almost always been able to find safe alternatives among health supplements--vitamins and herbs.

^ you raise a good point about the B vitamins Questor, I’ve taken eaten a couple of rounds of marmite on toast every time I’ve noticed myself fixating on something I find irritating after I heard it mentioned in the radio that B12 is important for serotonin production & regulation.

I have not really had meltdowns since I was 13, (I don't get sensory overload, I have the opposite problem) and I have never had the very noticeable stimming tendencies. When I was 18 and went to college, I started really trying to learn how to interact, because I really wanted to make friends with my new classmates. I watched them for months, and then started interacting, and as time went on I did it more and more, and I had learned enough that it worked pretty well and I made friends. When I started working, I had to learn new things because work is different from school, and that took a long time and my coworkers thought I was rude until I figured it out. It's mostly just a lot of formulae about what kinds of things you can say (and how your attitude should be) to different kinds of people (classmates, coworkers, superiors, customers, etc) in different situations. That's what masking is, for me. And just... always being hyper-conscious of everything I'm doing, so a weird stim won't even be able to start. I don't think of it like hiding myself though, (I don't pretend to be someone I'm not) I think of it more like speaking a language. I speak NT-language when I'm in public. When I'm around my friends, (who are mostly those friends I made in college!) I only have to speak it well enough so that they understand me. I don't have to speak it so well they think I'm not weird, because they already know that I am.

I wonder whether saying you mask as a non diagnosed person is a way ,for some , of 'legitimising' the belief you're on the spectrum .

It seems there's an increasing number of people , who are self diagnosing/self identifying , who are queueing up to say that masking well is why it appears they're not on the spectrum .

Firemonkey, I think in adults it could be due to the fact that ASD awareness was virtually non existent until perhaps 20 years ago.

For a few months at the beginning the therapist I see for CPTSD doubted that I was on the spectrum, we discussed it openly. That's changed by now, but it was hard for him to fathom the masking side of things, until I think I explained it/likened it to being a closeted gay surrounded by ignorant and bigoted people.

My point is that masking my differences and struggles was and still is to a lesser extent the only way to protect myself. The motivation is real.