On Being Authentic

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Being authentic is my most important goal. It has been the most difficult part of being an adult with ASD. I have learned to blend well, but the struggle to seem NT has been exhausting. I have tried to deprogram myself the past few years, but I continue to have questions about what is socially allowed as part of my authentic self and what is just rude and over the line. Every culture will have different answers to that, but I need to learn *my* answers, and not just be defined by those around me.

Today, I came across an article written for NTs on the blog of a music streaming service I use (Focus at Will -- great for concentration). If anyone else is having questions about authenticity, this blog series on the subject may be useful. It definitely pushes back hard on the idea of changing yourself to fit society:

https://www.focusatwill.com/authenticity-part-three-fake-authenticity/

I actually don't give the proverbial monkey's about society. Like Frank Sinatra before me, I do it my way and I change for nobody. If you can't or won't accept me as you find me then that's your problem.

I have been writing songs since I was 15 and some of them are actually on this subject.

'Authentic' is actually one of my favourite words, I love the sound of it. But I love the concept anyway because I believe in honesty.

I also struggle with deprogramming and being my authentic self. I spend tons of energy and worry on blending. It's so automatic for me now it's hard to turn the performance off and be the real me. I was raised in a very WASP-y environment where everyone was expected to be polite, and to send cards on holidays, and basically just be pleasantly social and surface, which is just not the real me at all. It's especially disconcerting when my HFA teenager acts completely "weird" in public (she thoroughly owns her autistic traits and her theme song is "can't be tamed"). I cringe inside, sweat buckets, and come close to tears because she is not blending. All my alarms go off. BUUUUWA BUUUUWA the Normos are looking, blend, blend! I don't actually CARE what people think, I just don't want her (or myself) to be verbally attacked, bullied, or ostracized. That's what NT people did to people like us when I was growing up. It still happens to me in groups of women friends. I try to blend, but they catch on that I'm faking, "hiding something", or I say or do something weird, IDK, and I get bashed or dumped or shunned. Sometimes I'm afraid I really just an a*hole. So yes, not only is it difficult to be your authentic self, but there's a line of NT's around you waiting to punish you for it.

Thank you for sharing your story. I wish there was a better way for us to talk about these things, because I feel like some of us are going through similar issues, although these are so complex, they can be hard to write down.

I think it's worth finding that balance between being yourself and being polite. Personally, after five years of unlearning how to be like other people, I've found that being honest about who I am has made me more acceptable to (most) people. And it's made me realize whose opinions I don't care about.

I realized the most damaging thing was the feeling I had been carrying around that I wasn't worthy of love, that I had always assumed everyone would dislike me if I wasn't vigilant about the mask I was wearing. When I allowed myself to show my true face to the world, I started being a better version of myself. The transition was painful, though. In the end, I just allowed myself to act naturally, without filters.

Empathy training has been important, though. I've been using Headspace to train myself in that.

But what do you do when the response is worse than just a cruel opinion of your authentic autistic behavior? I could handle not having anyone else's love or respect, as long as I still feel God's love and respect and love and respect myself, but the consequences are usually more tangible and much worse. Like when religious persecution means being put to death, not just shunned by the community (this is just a hyperbole). I could lose shelter, financial support, food, medical care, etc...

*Please do not respond with just "learn to become independent"; I have been trying and failing for over ten years.

_________________
31st of July, 2013
Diagnosed: Autism Spectrum Disorder, Auditory-Verbal Processing Speed Disorder, and Visual-Motor Processing Speed Disorder.

Weak Emerging Social Communicator (The Social Thinking-­Social Communication Profile by Michelle Garcia Winner, Pamela Crooke and Stephanie Madrigal)

"I am silently correcting your grammar."

I can't solve the problems of the world. But what I can say is that this goes far beyond what we experience -- humans attack each other for many kinds of reasons, and NTs are also victims (as you mention, for religious persecution, for example).

What worked for me was looking inward to focus on myself, and strengthening my capacity for empathy and forgiveness. It also helped to focus on other people's problems, and to try to do what I can for them. When you look out at the world, so many people are in a bad situation, and for many different reasons: learning to understand them and love them is very healing.

I also noticed that NTs also vary a lot in how they respond socially, and that they make a lot of the mistakes I do, though I believe for different reasons. I realized that I needed to stop apologizing for who I am, and not waste time on trying to be someone that I'm not.

But no, I don't have an answer for humanity being at its worst, at destroying people and rejecting or killing them for being different. In those situations, the best thing to do is to find a place that welcomes you, hard as that is (sometimes very hard indeed: I toured the Jamestown archeological site, and those settlers were in a pretty rock-bottom situation). Sometimes we are born into the wrong place or time, and we have to make the best of our opportunities to improve our lives. Learning to be grateful for what you have, even when it's not enough, can really improve your happiness.

I don't know what you're going though, but I know it can feel impossible to deal with all the stuff we have to. I hope you find solace in your faith and in the teachings of your religion -- and the people who believe as you do. That kind of community can be very powerful, very healing, and a good opportunity to care for others and to develop your skills in empathy (something I personally think we are naturally better at than NTs, though I'm obviously biased).

Sorry, this probably isn't very helpful.

'Authentic' is a concept that my brain is incapable of understanding. There is a way you're expected to act in the 'real world', and there is a way you're expected to act here on this forum - and I constantly fail at both of those things. So apparently my 'authentic' self is so unacceptable to other people, that it would be stupid for me to try to 'embrace' it.

All I can do is try to figure out what other people want, what type of behavior they find acceptable, and try my best to adhere to it. Even then I fail constantly, but at least I try.

The only people who find me acceptable are fairies, and it's debatable whether they're even real. So I guess my 'authentic' self is a private, spiritual thing, and with mortal human beings I just try my best to conform.

I'm sorry to hear that.

I am new here. With respect for what has gone before in discussion, I feel that authenticity is the most important aspect of life when your life is told to you in terms of instruction or a demand to "be normal". There is no normal. Normal is a myth from the linear neuronorm mind. It's a "comfortable idea" of how to be for people addicted to socialization. Socialization is over rated.

I sometimes wonder if people confuse authenticity with consistency? I have been told that I have two personalities, but I think they are confused when I have over socialized and need to isolate myself to recover. Then they think I am depressed or sad, but I just need time by myself.

I think that the best thing to do is to make sure that you are not spending too much time with people who do not accept you for who you are (unfortunately, that can include limiting time with family). It is not healthy to feel criticized, but it is also not healthy to walk through life acting completely differently than you feel.

Just out of curiosity, do any of you feel you have friends or partners that provide the safe haven that you need?

Thank you alloftheabove for your confirmation. I am new here but not new to "the spectrum" and leading a life hiding it, struggling with it, etc. I am older and predate the Rain Man movie that kicked off such interest in this whole cultural swirl of activity around "us, the disordered" in the 1990's. While I missed the educational system's attempts to mainstream me (back then everyone was mainstreamed - there was only one stream - or expelled, which I was several times), I also missed all the current kinds of "help" to become normal. Teachers hit me with sturdy wooden objects but did not force me to ingest pharmaceuticals.

I tend to think now that I have had it easier in many ways than younger people do today, in that the timing of my life allowed me to dodge the bullet of today's "help" to become "normal". I was allowed, out of cultural ignorance, to be more authentically myself with the only cultural retribution being that I was labeled "a bad kid", "a delinquent", etc.. However, being as I am, incapable if standard socialization, it didn't matter much because I inherently didn't care.

So my advice to young people living with the current oppression of contemporary cultural "help to be normal" is to stop caring so much about what neuronorms think. They are not that good at thinking. Look at the news and see the state of the world, of the planet. It's a mess, and as the dominant cultural determiners they pretty much made it.

Imagine a world where the spectrum people determine the course of events. The last time that happened it was called the Renaissance. Begin to consider that you may not be the problem but rather the solution. Value yourself as you are. And if the neuronorms become oppressive, offer them the quote from the great philosopher and baseball player Ted Williams who said, "If you don't think too good, don't think too much". That usually quiets them down for a while.