@Sci_Fi_FanGirl @actuallyautistic As a late and newly diagnosed member of the club, I'm beginning to clue in that some of this new "weirdness" doesn't go away. While I'm becoming calmer in this seemingly new CNS, my thinking and behavior is different. It's deeper, more analytical, more deliberate. At times, that frightens me.

I caught myself today, talking with family, establishing a boundary for their sake, so they don't spend energy on us when they clearly need it in their current difficulty, and then changing the subject gently but intentionally to something humorous to bookend the conversation but also to lock in that boundary. Calculated but caring.

There's always a hint of a mask there, isn't there? Masking behaviors comes from fear. Yet almost every interaction between people has at least a grain of that. We attend to loved ones because, on some level, we fear either for their wellbeing, or the relationship, or our own identity, if we do not do so. So even acts of love carry the smallest grain of fear.

I suppose what I'm saying is this: masking does not seem a binary thing, there or not. It seems instead to be a continuum, asymptotic when approaching 0 and same with 1.

@futurebird This sounds exactly like the kind of responses #autistics get when they talk about #masking. They generally aren't happy to be told how good they are at it, when doing it at all, even successfully, is a tremendous strain. Sometimes ESPECIALLY when it's most successful.

So am I understanding you correctly: you want to ELIMINATE the anxiety, not just mask its overt symptoms?

Unfortunately, what works best for me is something you may not like any better than compliments on your masking, even though it addresses your internal state, not just external appearances: decrease your respect for other people.

This is what the old "imagine your audience naked" trick is based on, but the approach is more general. For example: there are certain people I have to interact with, who are Trumpezoid Nazis. Instead of imagining them naked, I imagine them in full black-and-silver Nazi SS uniforms, complete with the appropriate insignia: Totenkopf, paired lightning bolts, swastika, iron cross, Nazi eagle. I find it much easier that way to avoid saying things to them I shouldn't, AND to avoid stressing about how they'll react to what I do say. It allows me to feel a level of detachment from them as people that I would otherwise find it difficult to achieve.

My own social anxiety, at least, is based not solely, or even primarily, on fear of the real-world consequences of what I might say, but on fear of damaging a perceived personal relationship with my audience. And it is most intense when that relationship is felt to be most precarious: that is, when I have no REAL reason to think such a relationship exists, but I'm hoping against hope that it will. Writing off the imagined personal relationship is, for me, the key to avoiding social anxiety.

If this doesn't work for you because the psychology of your own social anxiety is different, please disregard. But if this DOES ring true, you may get considerable relief from putting it into practice.

@cookiesdf Me pasa con el #masking cuando dicen "pero al final todos hacemos masking en nuestra vida"...

A ver, NO.