Coping versus masking

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My daughter is 8. Now that I really look at it I can see autistic traits from 3 months old but given that they were not yet at the level where it severely interfered with how we lived I often wondered and then compartmentalised it under behavioural differences. Also, I was not aware how autism can materialise so differently in girls and females. Now I can see that most of those behavioural differences are best understood as originating from an underlying neurological difference. She is extremely high functioning. Most people would not think she has autism. It mostly comes out at home when she is safe. However, since she turned 8 she is unable to keep up acting "the part" in public. Examples in public might include panic attacks, meltdowns and aggressive behaviour (not at school, just when she is with me out and about), lateness arriving places - due to very high demand avoidance, ritualised behaviour and stims, and some friendship and communication issues (ritualised use of language and some slowness in processing language when she is overwhelmed).

I am interested in the junction between her safe space and the social world. I understand the way she behaves in the social world as 'masking.' She even talks of playing out a part and that it is tiring. I assume what I see, and who I know, is the closest version of her true self - all the great stuff but also all the anxiety and lack of impulse control and sometimes violence and aggressive language. But then I see the fall-out. If the social world was less stressful, I assume I would see someone who wasn't so stressed or depleted by it. There is a cause and effect there right? Or is her ability to "let it all hang out" at home a way of coping, a way of letting out the build up and the steam of a day regulating herself?

Also, what do you think the difference is between masking and coping. I take masking to be a fairly passive commitment to try and pass under the radar. I take coping to be a more engaged and committed decision to set up strategies to make being in places and situations that are challenging more manageable and less threatening. Would you agree? She has a lot of coping strategies. Rituals and also, with regard to her friends, a beautiful honest ability to ask for accommodations to make life more ok. However, she is very shy and so struggles to look to adults for help outside of the home.

Am I right to think that an ideal future situation is an increase in coping mechanisms (some self-initiated and some sought as rights and accommodations by us as parents) and a reduction of masking?

The way I understand it, the term "coping" is broader.
Coping means ways and strategies to live with one's contitions.
Masking is about passing for normal.
Masking can be part of coping.
Too much masking can have serious impact on mental health because of constant denying one's own needs and feelings. Been there.
Some masking can help with going through different situations, make the life easier (eg. dealing with officials). Been there too.

I see no contradiction here. Yes, probably if she acted more relaxed at school, she wouldn't have so much steam to let at home. But she is likely smart enough to see that school is not a safe environment and acting out there would put her in trouble.

It's good she can be herself at home. It's great she can ask for accommodations. Maybe she has some problems with trusting adults. Don't they disregard and shrug off her requests? Because they believe her masks?

Thank you, that makes sense.

I believe she has a history of thinking the only person who can keep her perfectly safe is me - her mother. Everyone else is less able in terms of safety. So that means each year when she has a new teacher she literally devises a test to see if the teacher is up to scratch and can be entrusted with keeping her safe. It happens during autumn term each year and the teacher might well be totally unaware that she is being tested. My daughter will then react according to how satisfied she was with the teacher's performance. So I guess that is trust. She needs to really know she can trust someone. She is speaking a little more to her teacher this year, it is a good teacher and she passed the test with flying colours. But I guess we live in a world that generally encourages masking and that praises and rewards masking, my daughter is probably aware of that and unknowingly not seeing or accepting her autism when she was younger might have contributed.

I believe you can mask and not be coping underneath. Where as coping is utilising,developing strategies that make coping easier and more likely.

Thanks, that is useful.

Please shoot me down if I am wrong here. I am just trying to understand the feeling underneath by trying to relate it to myself. Please help me out. But I have thick skin so if relating it back to myself is narcissistic and unhelpful I can understand that too.

Between 12-15 I had a severe eating disorder. Nobody noticed. My eating disorder was an attempt to control my environment and make life easier for me. It was ritual, order, numbers (calories) and absolute control in the face of chaos. During that time period i also engaged in some other destructive behaviour. Mainly trying to lie in the snow until I froze to death but always getting up and walking away. I would not describe myself as depressed during that period. I would say I was trying to cope. Outward I was popular, had friends, and was top of my class in everything. This all ended at 15 when, after getting increasingly frustrated, I let on that I was not eating and my teacher called my mum and then I was sent to a child psychologist. I hated him with a passion and decided after the first appointment that this had all been a waste of time. Nobody was going to "see" me or "get me" or even "save me" and I would be better off taking care of myself. At that point I moved out of home and have not lived with my parents since. In terms of the eating disorder, it cleared up within months of moving out. I no longer needed it as a strategy to cope. It was never linked to any idea of body image and I am 38 now and have a perfectly happy relationship to food and weight.

So was the eating disorder a coping mechanism of sorts? Although a fairly negative one? And was what I was doing in school and with my friends a form of masking? Or was it masking but not coping underneath? Or is this not close at all to what it feels like to be autistic in neurotypical space?

I guess the main motivation for asking all this is that I felt I masked and never let out steam (apart from through internalising and feeling crap inside and the rituals of obsessive behaviour) and I like that my daughter comes home and lets out her frustration and see that as a positive thing (although it is full on). I want to do everything I can from stopping her internalising her anxiety and closing herself off.

Im not trained in anyway to give specific answers. Just opinions from my perspective. Hiding,covering up,trying to seem “normal” to the outside would be masking. The disorder may have evolved as some kind of coping mechanism.

"Masking" is probably all you did resulting in the "nobody noticed" effect.
I remember a girl in high school, she was pale and lacking her usual energy... I asked her how she felt and then she said "I'm just tired", she did not want to go any further. It turned out she was anorectic.
The way you described your eating disorder, it seemed OCD-ish to me. I would call it destructive coping. But these are just words.

I totally agree with your ideas about your daughter. I suspect my 6yo to be somewhere on the spectrum but with my expirience of going undiagnosed until I was 30, I would say: the only things I lacked were understanding, validation and acceptance. I could deal with all the rest with my own resources. So I give her all I can to make her feel safe and accepted. I would guard her with my body and soul from things like ABA but accepted social skills training from local psych center.

Eating disorders mostly happen because the person feels they need something to control and it's usually because they feel they have no control over something that is happening. Then somehow an eating disorder picks them, no one decides to start withholding food and to not eat just because. Those who decide to do it and then can't keep it going are just fasting. It's not always about weight as the person may claim. They are using their weight because it is something they have control over. As you say yours was an attempt to control your environment.

It's good you understand her. Mine would just get mad at me for my anxiety when it got worse and then eventually it led onto self harm behavior like eating disorder. Also I would take her to a counselor.

Thank you that is really useful. It is interesting you say that about ABA because my best friend who is autistic and also a child psychotherapist says the same. I listened to him thankfully.

It's good you understand her. Mine would just get mad at me for my anxiety when it got worse and then eventually it led onto self harm behavior like eating disorder. Also I would take her to a counselor.[/quote]

Thank you for your posts. She has just started seeing an amazing art psychotherapist with experience with children with ASD and PDA. Anything else I can do? I am sorry you had it tough.

Thank you both for listening to my questions about my eating disorder too. I am confused at the moment because I think it is natural when trying to understand someone you love to look at yourself and see if you can understand the behaviour in terms of your own thinking... In doing that I am noticing a lot of autistic traits in myself but then I start worrying I am being narcissistic and making it all about me so then I get confused that I am misunderstanding the situation.

Well, it is likely you have it. Eating disorders are common among HFA women. Your relationship with your parents when you were young seems rather troublesome. Like you were lonely in your family. I don't know how you managed to get out of home at 15 but it seems you enjoyed it. Anxiety, low self-esteem, perfect student mask and mental health problems that standard consuelling couldn't penetrate – it's the gray zone of the spectrum, the high functioning females. Poorly researched and not included in DSM.
But if so, then you can be able to relate to your daughter and be her real friend.

ABA is about forcing a checklist of behavioral "milestones" on a child. Yes, you can train your child to behave a certain way, even if it's painful for them. But the checklist of trained tricks has nothing to do with real developement, while the side effects may include trauma, low self-esteem, anxiety (which comes anyway and one needs to learn ways to lower it, not get more) and generally more mental health problems.

When I moved out at 15 I also moved country. It sounds quite incredulous now but at the time my mum agreed for me to go and live in my dad's house abroad and then my dad lived with his girlfriend about 2 hrs away. So living "by myself" might be overstating it but I actually lived by myself (physically) but still had a family house to live in and money for food etc. But I was alone! And that is what I needed. It was the best thing that ever happened to me.

It has been impossible to do all this reading and research without seeing myself in there somewhere. I think living in different countries and then different cultures meant I often just came across as foreign or quirky. Well, I guess I will never know. Paying a small fortune to have daughter assessed and for weekly therapy etc. The idea of assessing myself would be pretty far fetched at this point.

I think you don't really need the assesement. Just be open to the possibility that you can relate to your daughter more than most of the other people. And seek some counselling when your anxiety goes too high. In the gray zone one's self-understanding is more important than some official paper.

Thank you, really appreciate it. this was really useful for me, it means a lot what you have said.