[CW: Internalized Ableism/Anti-ND Sentiment]
I'd think my image, self-esteem, and relationships with others would improve tremendously if I learned how to act neurotypical, but I don't even know where to start.
I feel like I have to first acknowledge the fact that I don't think right at all. I want to have the thought process and behavior of a neurotypical person, but I don't know how to perform that.
I first got diagnosed with autism as a child, and the psychiatrist who gave me that diagnosis made me feel a lot of relatibility to this condition I had never heard of before this time. As a child, this led me to believe that this matter was good to view from the angle of "I'm not inferior. I'm just different!", but now I no longer view my neurodivergence that way. I now acknowledge it as my worst flaw.
Effectively, I want to get to a point where any future psychiatrists I encounter will have a hard time detecting autism within me. I also have ADHD and bipolar disorder, and having those stacked on top of something I already deem horrendous makes me feel triple terrible.
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masking is for covid and getting clean paint lines
I'd think my image, self-esteem, and relationships with others would improve tremendously if I learned how to act neurotypical, but I don't even know where to start.
I went down the same path as a ND person before and I'd say it's 50-50 on how much it was worth it. You can learn to emulate the behavior and even appear better than the average NT person because you can optimize the social game that everyone does on autopilot. The problem is that I can almost guarantee that your self-image, self-esteem, and relationships will not improve. These things come from having people see and accept who you are, not the mask you put on in order to get validation.
You'll have to learn the flows of conversation as an algorithm. It will never become natural, because a lot of ND people are wired against that, but it can be done with minimal effort after practice. You'll have to learn how to make facial expressions seem genuine, squinting the eyes to emulate the look of a real smile etc etc. Even then you'll doubt yourself a lot and make mistakes. I recommend a middle ground approach, learn how to communicate with NTs but don't necessarily hide your Neurodiversity. Treat it as translating your real self in a way that NTs can understand.
I don't think it's truly possible and I think no matter what you think of being autistic, trying to suppress it is going to end poorly. You really should accept yourself and realize that many NT people are just assholes. There are also plenty of great NT people but it's not always easy to find them. I have found a few through living in a share house and becoming friends. The forced (maybe barrier-free is a better term) socialization let us get to know each other on a deeper level than the superficial conversations that people often have with work or school acquaintances allow. I've also met a few people through hobbies who are great.
I think denying who you are is a terrible way to go about life. I spent years, decades even, before I accepted myself being ND and queer. I tried to "be normal" and it always fell apart due to burnout or a mismatch in social expectations with inflexible/unwilling to learn NT people.
I can see the truth in what you're saying to a good degree.
A bit ago, I had this coworker. She was similar to me in some ways. She was queer and neurodivergent. She was autistic just like me, and as I worked with her, I connected with her unlike I did with anyone else at our workplace. On top of that, it was really mutual.
She got bullied, for lack of a better term, by a lot of other people we worked with. A lot of people were needlessly harsh and hard on her, to the point of making her cry some days. I felt a lot of empathy because I went through the same with some of the people who we worked with, and I just didn't like seeing her struggle and seeing her go through immense pain.
Eventually, we started texting each other outside of work, and even though neither of us work at that place anymore (thankfully), we still talk to each other to this very day. The reason why she came to mind for my response to your comment is that I started texting her about some of my depression and internalized ableism that I'm feeling today, and it really put this matter into perspective.
Back when we worked together, she would tell me about horrendous things that happened to her at work, even explaining to me that a lot of our coworkers would only treat her like that when I wasn't around because they knew I would stick up for her.
Whenever I talked to her about anything that I was struggling with or even just our interests, humor, and enjoyment, there was never any judgment that took place. I never felt like she was going to take anything I said the wrong way. There was always empathy, kindness, and understanding in everything we talked about.
That is the kind of exchange I got with a neurodivergent person. I never felt like I was "inappropriate", "awkward", "weird", or "distasteful" in anything I said, and whenever she would say anything that a lot of neurotypicals found odd, I never took issue with any of those things myself. In fact, they were more relatable and easier for me to understand.
I don't get out there and interact with a whole lot of neurodivergent people. In the lens of a neurotypical world, I'm broken, but it seemed like being with other neurodivergent people was the only thing that could teach me that it's not ME that's wrong. There is an overwhelming lack of understanding within a society that takes "different" or "unusual" as a synonym for "terrible" or "less than".
We are called neurodivergent for a reason. We deviate from a norm that's highly expected within our society, but when that norm isn't met, people will immediately feel inclined to accuse the neurodivergent person of failing, not the norm itself.
As someone who never got diagnosed as a kid and masked heavily as a result, your successes at being “normal” will never reach you because it’s not authentically you doing them. The failures still reach you, though. It will burn you out eventually regardless.
Masking is a tool and if you need to do it you need to do it. But if you’ve built your life up to not need it, I wouldn’t recommend it. I’ve also heard it’s harder to mask once you’re unmasked than it is to do the other way around.
It is possible to go very deep but it takes a horrible toll on the body and mind. Maintaining my Worksona is exhausting me to the point of cracking under the pressure
I'm not sure what to make of this post comrade, are you actually asking for advice on how to better mask your true self? Is there a specific version of Neurotypical that you could list out for me to better understand what it is you're wishing to accomplish? You mentioned thought processes and behaviors, but that's such a massive umbrella of human experience. I don't want to respond with some anecdote without fully understanding. Hopefully you're having a better day today 💙
