Abuse with an Excuse

Written on Twitter:

I seem to have had a non-standard experience. I didn’t know, didn’t know to mask, I just got high and went into the breach numbed and otherwise as my weird self. It’s true there wasn’t any social success.

I suppose there were times when small talk seemed easier. Hyperlexic, if I couldn’t produce any small talk, I sometimes said so, talked about that: I’m sorry, I wish I had some small talk for you. I’m here. ❤️

I suppose I’m always wishing I could STFU.

It’s either this or I am just still brutally unaware.

I’m trying to find it, that’s why I’m talking: you know the NT version of “the mask?” That’s the one my people were talking about the whole time, what is not “the shadow,” is “the mask,” the mask is what people allow themselves to see about themselves, our FB selves, while the shadow is our dark side, the things we will not acknowledge, and everyone has one, they say, it is filled with Freud’s dark drives and the seven deadly sins, and aspects of ourselves that we use as insults for others. Basically, your shadow is that bad penny, evil Human Nature’s bad side. Your (NT psychological) mask, is your cherry-picked personality – OMG, hey, it is so good to think in text! #ActuallyAutistic , everyone come in, check this.

NTs have one theory of masking as part of their theory of mind, and Autists have an entirely different one as part of ours, wait for it – so we see them masking, conforming, our theory of mind says: “there’s something more going on underneath, surely they understand more than they’re saying they do.”

But when THEY detect an Autistic  masking, what does THEIR theory of mind tell them?

What is behind a mask in their minds?

THE SHADOW.

Oh my gawd, this is the DEP, they see us masking, and what is behind our mask in their theories is everything they have already decided they hate about themselves.

For real, y’all. This has truthiness from here to Timbuktu, I believe it already. Ouch. (I can bounce this off of someone IRL, one who was and is very into shadow work and such.

I’ll get back. ❤️ )

“Empathy,” was close, that’s part of it, what is buried in our shadow we lack empathy for (repression, per Alice Miller); the shadow is all that is repressed in us, the blind spot.

But these are not two individual versions of the same phenomenon, these masks.

In theory, Autistics have a psychological mask also, of course, repressed things – but it’s not that mask we get caught out at, NT people don’t bust each other or anyone for the shadow’s mask. It is not two psychological masks passing in the night, not a different bunch of micro-empathies from otherwise identical systems like a language problem, but a two theories of what an Autist’s mask is covering problem. The NT only knows the shadow and projects and assumes the worst.

I got Autistic therapists here, right? Surely they know the shadow and the whole world is here before me? The big takeaway, I guess, Autists, get yourself a counsellor that has done their shadow work, one that has the chops to understand their own reactions to people, I’d want to know they had the idea.

Jeff May 4^th., 2023