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I’ve already described how the bottom-up nature of Autistic sensory processing leads to us being overstimulated and easily distracted by things like ambient noise and visual clutter. There is an additional neurological feature of Autism that contributes to our sensory issues and meltdowns in a significant way—our difficulty adjusting to a stimulus over time.

Neurotypical brains engage in sensory adaptation and habituation: the longer they are in the presence of a sound, smell, texture, or visual cue, the more their brain learns to ignore it, and allow it to fade into the background. Their neurons become less likely to be activated by a cue the longer they are around it. The exact opposite is true for Autistic people: the longer we are around a stimulus, the more it bothers us.

When we’re overloaded, we become irritable, or filled with despair; we might even start self-harming to get an endorphin rush or ground ourselves. Our bodies are visibly tense with anxiety, and we’re difficult to engage with during these times. What non-Autistic folks often don’t realize is that Autistic people experience intense sensory input as if it were physical pain.

— Unmasking Autism by Devon Price (Page 105)

To maintain their masks and compensate for the challenges they’re facing, many Autistic people fall back on an array of destructive and compulsive coping mechanisms, including substance abuse, calorie restriction, excessive exercise, emotional codependency, and even joining cults. I think if we want to really confront the role the mask has played in our lives and work on parting with it, it’s important we face just how unsustainable and costly masking has been.

Masked Autistic people fall back on a variety of flawed strategies in order to relax, mute our most disruptive behaviors, or conform with neurotypical standards. Some use compulsive exercise or calorie restriction to make their jittery, unruly Autistic bodies settle down or shrink into a more convenient shape. Some self-harm in order to regulate their anxiety or sensory overwhelm. Others become so lonesome they seek out approval from high-control groups and cults, or find themselves trapped in abusive domestic relationships they are unable to escape. Even many mental health professionals are unaware that these disorders and self-destructive behaviors are highly comorbid with Autism.

— Unmasking Autism by Devon Price (Page 100 - 101)

For many masked Autistics, the best way to camouflage a socially undesirable quality is to rebound into the complete opposite direction, and overcorrect for anything neurotypical people and institutions have taught us to hate about ourselves. An Autistic person who was mocked for being needy and intense as a child may camouflage as hyperindependent and emotionally avoidant, for example. On the flip side, an Autistic person who has repeatedly been told they are selfish and robotic might instead wear a mask of helpful friendliness, and become a compulsive people-pleaser.

— Unmasking Autism by Devon Price (Page 97)

Researchers Zablotsky, Bramlett, and Blumberg set out to understand how parents perceive the “severity” of their Autistic kids’ symptoms.[9] They surveyed nearly a thousand families raising Autistic kids, and also measured the Autism symptom severity of the children themselves. What the researchers found was that parents did not accurately perceive the level of their kids’ suffering. Instead, parents based their ratings of Autism “severity” on how much their kids’ behavior bothered them and required a lot of their time and attention. Many children described by parents as “high functioning” were quietly coping with debilitating sensory pain, or were falling behind academically or socially in significant ways. This carries over to how Autistic adults are perceived, and the expectations that neurotypical institutions place on us to appear “normal.

— Unmasking Autism by Devon Price (Page 92)

Jess has ADHD, but their description of how challenging it is to lie, cheat, and steal your way through a neurotypical-looking life when you lack the accommodations you need is just as relevant to life as a masked Autistic person. Regular life is more cognitively and emotionally demanding for neurodiverse people than it is for neurotypicals, but we have to hide that fact from other people on a daily basis. To prop up our façade of being “high functioning,” we build a messy, unstable scaffolding of flawed coping mechanisms. It’s no wonder we report anxiety[7] and depression[8] at elevated rates.

Though masking is incredibly taxing and causes us a lot of existential turmoil, it’s rewarded and facilitated by neurotypical people. Masking makes Autistic people easier to “deal” with. It renders us compliant and quiet. It also traps us. Once you’ve proven yourself capable of suffering in silence, neurotypical people tend to expect you’ll be able to do it forever, no matter the cost. Being a well-behaved Autistic person puts us in a real double bind and forces many of us to keep masking for far longer (and far more pervasively) than we want to.

— Unmasking Autism by Devon Price (Page 91 - 92)

Camouflage is all about obscuring one’s unique qualities and struggles as a disabled person; compensation is all about crafting little hacks and cheats to help you get your needs met because you can’t request the accommodations you require.

When I introduce neurotypical people to the concept of Autism masking, they usually understand it as a social process or performance. It’s true that masking involves things like memorizing social rules and feigning friendliness, but that’s really just the most obvious form it takes. Most of us have to mask everything from our information processing style, to our lack of coordination, to our limited food preferences, to the fact that we require more rest than neurotypical people are expected to.

— Unmasking Autism by Devon Price (Page 90)

In the psychological literature on the subject, Autism masking is said to consist of two classes of behavior:[4]

Camouflaging: attempting to hide or obscure Autistic traits in order to “blend in” with neurotypicals. The main goal of camouflage is to avoid detection as disabled.

Compensation: using specific strategies to “overcome” challenges and impairments related to disability. The main goal of compensation is to maintain the appearance of high, independent functioning.

— Unmasking Autism by Devon Price (Page 89)

Are you afraid of seeming stupid? Or childish? When you were young, did people accuse you of being cruel? Did you come to believe you were finicky, or selfish? Autistic people frequently are stereotyped as immature, unintelligent, cold, or out of touch. And each of our masks helps to cover up the Autism stereotypes we felt we needed to resist the most. Behind each mask, there sits a deep pain, and a series of painful beliefs about who you are and what you must never allow yourself to do. Consequently, a big part of unmasking will mean facing those qualities you loathe the most in yourself, and working to see them as neutral, or even as strengths.

— Unmasking Autism by Devon Price (Page 88)

The fear of seeming childish wounded me in a profound way, as it does many Autistic folks. One of the major ways abled society dehumanizes the disabled is by calling our maturity into question. “Adults” are supposed to be independent, though of course no person actually is. We all rely on the hard work and social-emotional support of dozens of people every single day. You’re only seen as less adult, and supposedly less of a person,[3] if you need help in ways that disrupt the illusions of self-sufficiency.

My own “childishness” reminded allistic people that much of what we call maturity is a silly pantomime of independence and unfeeling, not a real quality of unbreakable strength. Abled people hated seeing my awkward softness and confronting the fact they might be sensitive and needy in their own ways, too. So they acted like I was invisible, or that my childlike habits were perverse. I learned that feigning maturity would be my sole salvation, the only way to ensure my humanity got recognized.

— Unmasking Autism by Devon Price (Page 87)

I think for most masked Autistic people, there are key moments in childhood or adolescence where we learn we are embarrassing or wrong. We say the wrong thing, misread a situation, or fail to play along with a neurotypical joke, and our difference is suddenly laid bare for all to see. Neurotypical people may not know we’re disabled, but they identify in us some key flaw that is associated with disability: we’re childish, or bitter, self-absorbed, or too “angry,” or maybe we’re just awkward and make people cringe. Avoiding being seen in these ways becomes our core motivation in life, each day a battle between the heavy armor we wear and the embarrassing characteristics that armor was designed to cover up.

— Unmasking Autism by Devon Price (Page 86)

A number of the Autistic people I interviewed for this book are also ADHDers. So are many of the writers, mental health providers, and activists I quote. Within the Autistic self-advocacy community, people with ADHD are usually treated as honorary members by default. And the more we learn about the two neurotypes, the less they seem like distinct categories. They are, in every sense, sibling disabilities, two highly similar groups who belong in community with one another.

— Unmasking Autism by Devon Price (Page 75)

Autism can also look a lot like an anxiety disorder. Most of us are anxious nearly every moment we’re around other people, after all. Overstimulating, unpredictable surroundings will tend to activate our fight-or-flight response. The rituals and repetitive behaviors we develop to cope with stress can look a lot like Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Autistic burnout presents very much like a major depressive episode. All too often, these negative mental health consequences of masking are what a therapist recognizes, rather than the untreated disability that’s caused it.

— Unmasking Autism by Devon Price (Page 70)

Clinical studies show Daan’s experiences are far from abnormal. Therapy that is focused on battling “irrational beliefs,” such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), doesn’t work as well on Autistic people as it does on neurotypicals.[72] One reason for that is many of the fears and inhibitions of Autistic people are often entirely reasonable, and rooted in a lifetime of painful experiences. We tend to be pretty rational people, and many of us are already inclined to analyze our thoughts and feelings very closely (sometimes excessively so).

— Unmasking Autism by Devon Price (Page 70)

Would a large, hairy man who loves collecting Funkopop toys but also enjoys MMA fighting be considered youthful? Or would that label instead apply to a petite woman who wears dresses and speaks in a high-pitched voice about her love of horses? All too often, the difference between who gets perceived as an innocent, shy Autistic and who gets viewed as creepy, awkward, and obviously disabled is more a function of things like race, gender, and body size than it is any innate difference in personality or behavior. There is no objective definition of what makes someone moody or a social chameleon, either. It’s easier to socially camouflage if you’re the kind of person society doesn’t view with much suspicion in the first place.

(...)

This cluster of traits is commonly called “female Autism,” but that label ignores the fact that a large percentage of Autistic people are transgender and gender nonconforming.[13] I’m transgender and Autistic, and find that my experiences don’t fully slide into either the “female” or “male” Autism narratives. Like Bobbi, I was raised and socialized as a bit of an odd freak more than I was a “boy” or a “girl.” Neither girls nor boys related to me as one of their own, and I didn’t identify with them, either.

— Unmasking Autism by Devon Price (Page 54)

Though many of us experience sensory issues, anxiety, meltdowns, and debilitating mental health symptoms, we push as much of that misery into the private realm as possible. Our elaborate veils of coping mechanisms and camouflaging can create the illusion we don’t need help. Often this comes at the expense of giving up on the areas of life where we might need assistance.

— Unmasking Autism by Devon Price (Page 39)