Week 8 of Becoming My Selfiest Self
What happens if you shape your life out of more genuine NOs and YESs?
‘Masking’ or playing a role is a core part of the human experience. We are, above all, collaborative. We need and crave each other’s company, contact and approval. But for those of us who didn’t know we were Autistic/ADHD, this masking is a little different.
We are trying to hide innate parts of ourselves i.e. how we experience, process and understand (or don’t) the world. And it’s exhausting.
As
Price puts it, those of us that go undiagnosed are masked, not masking.Masking sounds conscious and autonomous, even a little deceitful or considered. The less comfortable truth, Devon argues in his brilliant bestselling book, Unmasking Autism: the power of embracing our hidden neurodiversity, is that, “Masking is a state of exclusion forced onto us from the outside.”
He writes:
“Women and marginalised groups don't have ‘milder’ autism because of their biology; people who are marginalised have their Autism ignored because of their peripheral status in society.” Undiagnosed autistic people are masked, rather than masking, he writes, with the onus on the lack of choice, power and autonomy present in the situation.
Learning about masking was a key part of how I discovered I was Autistic. It explained my chronic agreeableness, to the extent I sometimes genuinely can’t recognise my own preference. And what I thought of as my terrible passivity. My habit of attaching myself to the prettiest most popular girl in my vicinity.
What Is Masking and How Can We Stop?
The very first inkling I had that I might be autistic was… Well, actually, I had no inkling whatsoever until a Special Educational Needs teacher asked me: “have you ever considered that you might be autistic?”
Being masked is hard work.
You have to think fast to keep up in social situations.
It leaves little time for the work of getting to know your real self and your community - the life work that makes life meaningful and helps you find where you fit, and how you might help this gigantic co-operative effort we call civilisation.
And so I created my unmasking experiment. Also known as how to discover your selfiest self.
(I have to not think too hard about what a self actually is or the whole thing falls apart. If anyone knows, please explain it to me asap.)
So the rules, in case you need a refresher:
Your weekly YES and NO must be purely for you, to make YOUR life easier, more pleasant, joyful or comfortable.
Aka NOT people-pleasing.
Not social camouflaging.
NOT changing yourself to accommodate others.
Not trying to make yourself more palatable/normal-seeming/cool/chiiiill.
Okay, so here are mine for this week:
YES to actually reaching out to the people I want to interview for my upcoming book
I took way too long to do this because of legitimate reasons but also perfectionism. I wanted my introductory emails to be insightful and intriguing and awesome.
In the end I settled for them just being slightly awkward, and on reflection, slightly overly detailed but done.
Thanks to my wonderful editor, I now have conversations booked with Professor Tony Atwood (Autism legend), Dr Felicity Sedgwick (Autistic girls and women and masking expert) and I have become firm friends with the original Aspergirl Artemisia Xene (used to be known as Rudy Simone).
Also I am reminding myself of a previous YES which is that editing one chapter of my new book a day is sufficient. The content is heavy sometimes, and so I give myself a break, and this can still count as great progress.
NO to procrastinating over my novel
Last week I wrote about the possibility of creative unmasking. Could I ACTUALLY FINISH A NOVEL if I stopped trying to be more talented than I am???
What If Your Weirdest Work Is Your Best Work?
At first, post-diagnosis, I was sure I would have to leave academia.
In the spirit of creative unmasking I want to say A BIG NO to perfectionism and commit from hereon to writing 500 words a day, even if they are terrible.
(They are always terrible.)
I’ve created this hyper-detailed plan for a new book that my agent is <technically> waiting for and I’ve never had so detailed a plan before, so 🎉 but I think it is moving from the realm of the useful towards becoming a crutch I use to avoid Actually Writing.
(Why does fiction make me so neurotic?)
If I don’t manage this today, I am going to have to create an accountability writing group - would you join? 30-minute Zoom sessions in which I will have perpetually bad hair. We could do writing sprints, and then share word count.
Gameifying works for me!
Share your victorious NOs and glorious YESes and let me cheer you on from afar. Solidarity will get us through!
Commit to the personal work of interpreting your own feelings and desires. Join my sweet and dorky challenge!
Do I feel more like myself as a result of this YES and this NO?
Week 9, and I am feeling a bit static in the process of unmasking.
Honestly, sometimes it feels too late to ‘unmask’ since I already built so many parts of my life in the years before I knew WHY I struggled!
I’m in my forties now. A lot of the big decisions are already made.
But I’m continuing with the quest, and continuing to show up here, trying to be truthful and push towards a way of being that is more soothing for my intensely sensitive nervous system.
I guess at least you can’t accuse me of toxic positivity.
As a good friend of mine and I agreed long ago, while drunk in a Cornish beer garden - the glass is certainly half full, but it’s full of slurry.
If you have fallen out of TRUE YESing and NOing along with me, then don’t worry I have too!
It’s never too late to recommit.
What will your next YES/NO be?
You can connect with the Autistic community on Twitter. If you have a question, use #ActuallyAutistic or #AskingAutistics (or both). You can also visit The Autism Self Advocacy Network and the Autistic Not Weird Facebook page and website.
📚 Chelsey Flood is the author of award-winning novels Infinite Sky and Nightwanderers, and a senior lecturer in creative writing at UWE. She is currently working on a book for Jessica Kingsley Publishers about the connection between undiagnosed neurodiversity and addiction, as well as her first domestic noir. 📚
YES to phoning the doctors, even though I hate going to the doctors.
NO to seeing myself as a burden or someone so less than that even going to see a doctor is me being annoying/a burden.