Masking is not Bad

Hello Dazzle! Thanks for coming and hanging out with me today, I’m glad that you are here. Today, I’m giving you my hot take: “Masking isn’t bad!” Let’s start with defining what masking is:

In psychology and sociology, masking is the process in which an individual camouflages their natural personality or behavior to conform to social pressures, abuse, or harassment. 

-From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It is often something that we discuss in context of being neurodivergent. But I think that the first thing to really understand about masking is that this is something that every human does. We all face social pressures to fit into our cultural norms. All of us have traits that are considered either desirable or undesirable by society. Because of this, all of us spend some amount of effort masking. This can be seen most commonly at places of employment where behaving in an undesired fashion can result in the loss of income.

Healthy emotional regulation requires that we mask sometimes. Everything that we feel is valid, but there are socially acceptable ways to express those emotions and there are ways that are not socially acceptable. There are also times that the way that we express our emotions can create social risks. This is why one of the most intimate things that we can do with another person is to be vulnerably unmasked.

Consider masking to be a shield. There are times that it makes sense to shield parts of ourselves from others. Not everyone needs to see all of ourselves in all situations. As a nurse, I mask my fear from my patients. I do my best to not let them see when I am scared that they will have a bad outcome or that I will not be able to help them. They do not need the added burden of my emotions on top of the crisis they are having. This is an appropriate and healthy type of masking. I also mask some of my verbal stimming. This is because it can be disruptive and distracting to others who are working around me. I choose to engage other kinds of stimming while I am at work. That way, I get what I need while not making it harder for others.

Putting on a social mask is part of the social dance that we often don’t think about. It is saying the prescribed things even if you don’t want to have the conversation with the person, because it is what society considers to be polite. Masking is about meeting people half way. It is about doing things the way society expects so that you can better integrate with other people.

The problem begins when it is no longer meeting in the middle. And this is why masking is often difficult for those who are neurodivergent. We are often taught as children that we are expected to meet others where they are rather then at the halfway point. This hiding this amount of masking is the problem rather then masking itself. Masking is like many of the other functions in our lives. We need it, like we need water. But also like water, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. When we take masking to a level that we are never presenting our authentic selves to anyone we create a toxic lifestyle for ourselves.

This point of degree might seem like I’m splitting hairs, but let me talk a little bit about why I think it matters. As we engage in the process of unmasking ourselves, it is easy to decide that we are no longer going to mask anything and that people can just meet us where we are. After all the years that we have been doing this, it feels fair. But this isn’t how healthy and balanced relationships work. Engaging in the social dance, is shared problem solving. With each person that we meet, we should be asking: “How do we make sure that both our needs are being met in this exchange?”

Meeting in the middle will look different with each person you engage with. This is why masking is such a difficult topic to tackle and to relearn. We each need to engage in enough masking that the other person feels comfortable, but not so much that either person feels smothered. Respecting other people’s boundaries often involves masking. This happens to me frequently with swearing. I use them like any other word. Sometimes, people tell me that they aren’t comfortable with swearing. In those cases, I mask my swearing as best as I can while engaging with them because that is what respect looks like.

So, if you are one of the many late diagnosed neurodivergent people out there trying to figure out how to take off your mask, keep the idea of meeting in the middle in mind. None of us are going to be leaving our houses and behaving in the manner that we would like to all of the time. That’s not how living in a community works. But we can learn to give ourselves more room to be who we are more of the time. It is about finding a healthy, sustainable balance.

Well, that’s about it for my rambling today. Thanks for coming and spending some time with me. If you like my rambling then click on that like button. It really does help! Until we talk again, you take care of yourselves!