Meltdowns are a physical reaction to overstimulation surrounding auditory overload, visual overload, and sensory overload in general. Meltdowns can also occur from the extreme exhaustion that comes from masking.
Across genders, masking is associated with more symptoms of generalized and social anxiety, as well as depression. One study found that those who said they used masking had higher rates of suicidality. Autistic individuals also report extreme anxiety and stress after spending time suppressing their natural behaviors.
Masking leads to anxiety, depression, and loneliness
It's almost like you're an alien who is stuck with humans that are unpredictable and make no sense a lot of the time. This alone is traumatic.
Masking can cause emotional harm such as autistic burnout, emotional distress, and mental health concerns such as depression or anxiety. If you are autistic and find that you mask your autism in specific situations, it's helpful to lean into your self-worth and support systems.
Masking may involve suppressing certain behaviours we find soothing but that others think are 'weird', such as stimming or intense interests. It can also mean mimicking the behaviour of those around us, such as copying non-verbal behaviours, and developing complex social scripts to get by in social situations.
All children are different, but if they change character when they go from school to home, or go into meltdown, or appear exhausted, it might be a sign that they are masking in public.
All groups reported that masking made them feel disconnected from their true sense of identity and had a negative effect on them. Other aspects of masking seemed more specific to autistic people, such as sensory suppression, and masking leading to suicidal ideation.
Fawning is an attempt to avoid conflict by appeasing people. They are both extremely common in neurodiverse people as it is a way for them to hide their neurodiverse behaviours and appear what is deemed to be “normal”.
If you hide your adult ADHD symptoms from other people, that's called masking. Basically, you're trying to seem more “normal” or “regular.” ADHD causes some people to act hyperactive or impulsive. It makes other folks have trouble paying attention. And still other adults have a combination of those symptoms.
Masking describes the act of hiding or suppressing symptoms of a mental health condition. People usually mask in situations and environments where they are expected to act in a socially normative way — like at school or work, or when meeting new people.
As a result, processes such as facial mimicry, which are crucial for social interaction, are impaired when one is interacting with a masked individual (Kastendieck et al. 2021). Masking affects the perception of some expressions more than others, as certain parts of the face are more important for different emotions.
Autism masking, also known as Autism camouflaging, follows the same lines….. Masking is a word used to describe something seen in many children with ASD – when they learn, practice, and perform certain behaviours and suppress others in order to be more like the people around them.
Some people become anxious when wearing a face mask or just thinking about wearing a face mask. This would be what some are calling face mask anxiety. But it is important to remember that the mask is NOT causing the anxiety. The person's perceptions about the mask are what lead the brain to become anxious.
Some people with quiet BPD can hide their condition and appear successful, independent, and overall high functioning. You might be able to hold a job during the day, but crash into a depressive, anxious, or dissociative state when the day is over. Think of quiet BPD as a mask.
In 348 epidemiologically ascertained toddler twins, we explored associations between autistic traits and three robust, highly heritable predictors of familial autism recurrence: variation in attention, motor coordination, and parental autistic trait burden.
Overstimulation – Children may use stimming in response to sensory overload. Focusing on one behavior may help the child feel centered instead of overwhelmed by sensory input. Under-Stimulation – Children may use stimming to provide sensory input if their desired senses feel underactive.
What are 'masking' and 'camouflaging' in the context of autism and ADHD? Many autistic people and ADHD-ers report using “masking” and “camouflaging” in their lives. This is where people conceal certain traits and replace them with neurotypical ones to avoid being recognised as neurominorities.
When regularly done, masking can lead to autistic burnout. Autistic burnout is the extreme fatigue — mental, physical and emotional exhaustion — that results from constantly hiding your natural traits.
It's critical to understand what's going on because camouflaging is associated with many adverse outcomes in autistic individuals, like higher anxiety and depression. We are seeing studies that show masking in girls as young as 7 or 8 years old on the school playground.
It's quite common for autistic children who do not appear to have any behavioural difficulties at school to behave differently at home. Tony Attwood refers to this as the Jekyll and Hyde character (Attwood, 1998). In section, we look at some of the reasons behind this behaviour, and offer tips to parents and carers.
“High-functioning autism” isn't an official medical term or diagnosis. It's an informal one some people use when they talk about people with an autism spectrum disorder who can speak, read, write, and handle basic life skills like eating and getting dressed. They can live independently.