Greentext

Makes "The Shoes" awkward to re-watch.

🔥 🔥 🔥

there it is

I just recently started recognizing how autism has affected my behaviors and life in general. This is masking.

It is indeed called masking

I first heard that term here on Lemmy with regards to ADHD and man it's so weird that it never occurred to me that that was likely what I was doing and why almost every second of my existence feels like I'm trying to avoid getting caught for something. I think it's probably so ingrained now that the 'mask' is grafted on to me and I'll never be able to stop masking, it's just second nature, but it kind of feels a bit better to look at it as an explainable coping mechanism that I developed rather than living with the vague sense of being like an alien in disguise on a foreign planet. I also reckon that despite it being perhaps a shame that I've felt the need to mask, I don't think it's entirely irrational. It's undeniable that it's useful and helpful to be 'normal'.

To a certain extent yeah. Everyone "masks" in a sense that they may show different parts of themselves to different people, or act differently around different people. You save the weirdness to your friends and family and present a more "normal" image to strangers and acquaintances.

However, for neurodivergent people, masking is much more extensive and hides different things. Often these people will hide their autism, ADHD, etc. from everyone or most people. There is considerable effort to hide their symptoms.

Neurotypical people hide the fact they like mayo on pizza while Neurodivergent people hide the fact they struggle to understand facial expressions or social cues.

Yeah it's basically masking. It doesn't always look like this but it's basically noticing that your brain wants to do X but you've learned from experience that society prefers when you do Y instead of X. So you pay attention to anytime your brain thinks about doing X, catch yourself before you do it, and then do Y instead. It can be unpleasant sometimes because X may be something that you feel a compulsion to do, or that helps you regulate your emotions.

I was acting like a bloated insufferable entitled man-child. It’s called “musking.”

Stims, Jerry!

Yeh

I too find this surprising

I had a friend in school who liked to imitate people. Except he was always using the same voice and body language when he was imitating. So you knew he was trying to imitate someone, but you had no idea who that was supposed to be, and it was very funny. I told him that, one day, and he was shocked by the realization.

My experience growing up was that I had personality traits that were strong since birth (and still are today), and every other traits that I developed as I aged and experienced life.

In these growing years, the people I looked up to, the artists I liked and any other person that had something interesting to me all had an effect on my personality because I replicated the things I liked about these people.

So reading the green text, he probably did the same thing with Jerry and it became a part of his personality.

Yeah you can ship of Theseus yourself into a more enjoyable person that way, but still stay mindful of the individual parts you're taking.

The first thing I ever consciously took was my friend's laugh. It was just so open and joyful, and I really admired that part of him. Anyway thanks, Eric. I love it.

amen

It’s coded language, anon is just severely socially inept.

I just go thru life like I'm playing a CRPG. Ask people about themselves incessantly. It looks like people like to talk about themselves. And they also liked people who asked them to talk about themselves. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I have ADHD and I personally wish I could adopt some personality traits from people I find admirable!

I'm just so me all the time even when I try very hard to be aware of myself and how I'm presenting.

So impulsive.

I read that as Frankenstein's monster truck and dibs on the band name.

I larped as a confident person for a few years and it just became my natural state of being.

Life’s all about pretending. The economy and its money, for example.

I remember a similar post where someone introduced their autistic cousin to Frasier only to meet the guy some time later and see that he had basically turned into Frasier.