In the second in my series of posts on autism, I would like to provide an idea of how autistic masking works for an autistic person in the workplace.

What is autistic masking? Rather than me boring you with the definition, you can just go to the quite-excellent Embracing Autism site and check out any of their various articles on the topic. (NB: I scored 119 on the CAT-Q masking assessment. So yeah.) In brief: It’s when neurodivergent people do their best to pretend they’re neurotypical, ie “just like everyone else,” ie “normal”, ie “not a weirdo”. Which all of us neurodivergent folks have been described as sometime in our lives.

So without further ado, here’s how it works for what they used to call, “a high-functioning autistic” (and what I would call, “an intelligent professional autistic adult who has been masking so long he doesn’t even know he’s doing it”):

It’s Monday and you need to ask a colleague a question. You want to just ask the question, but know that neurotypical folks get offended when you just jump straight to business. So you write, “Hi Jane,” and then the question.

Then you think no, not enough; too cold. So edit it to “Hi Jane; hope you’re doing well.” Then you remember it’s been a long weekend and so probably should mention that, and change it to, “Hi Jane. Hope you had a good weekend.” No, that’s probably too stiff. 

How about, “Hi, Jane! Hope you had a good weekend!” No, that’s too much. All those exclamation points. It’ll sound like you had eight cups of coffee, or took Ecstasy or something. How about maybe, “Hi, Jane; hope you had a good weekend!” Perfect!

But…dive right into the question? Put in a line break? A paragraph break? Turn it into two messages so Jane can tell you how her weekend went, even though (let’s face it) you don’t really care? Not that you dislike Jane; you like her fine. It’s just that you want to deal with work stuff, not get into chitchat. And besides, then she’ll ask you about your own weekend, and what will you say then? Admit that you stayed inside all day and binge-watched the second season of The Gentlemen on Netflix and then Supergirl on HBO? (And isn’t “HBOMax” a stupid fucking name? No; stay on topic.) Not very exciting. You’ll sound like a dweeb. Can you you put it in a way that sounds funny? Or maybe self-deprecating? Maybe she won’t ask?

And if two messages, then how long between messages? Just a second, so she see the question right away and can skip the empty social stuff if she wants? Or wait longer, to imply you really do care how the weekend went even tho you really don’t? What if you get stuck in a long conversation about her weekend, when you’re really in kind of a hurry and need your question answered and didn’t want to chat and let’s face it most of the time you don’t want to chat anyway? Not ignore her message about her weekend; then’ll she’ll think you’re an insensitive jerk. But hopefully she’ll respond with something innocuous to the personal stuff and you can blip by it with a “Me too!” or some such and get down to work.

And if you wait too long between messages, then you’ll sound like you’re badgering her. That’s a bad idea. Best make it a single message so you can blow off any chit-chat she responds with and just focus on the work stuff. So okay; one message. One exclamation point. A paragraph break because it was a 3-day weekend. Hope for minimum chit-chat. Be prepped with a self-deprecating joke about not going outside all weekend because you were binging The Gentlemen. And going outside would entail socializing, and fuck that, it’s the weekend.

(Maybe use Supergirl as a good excuse to climb up on your hobby horse about how it’s a good film and one reason it bombed at the box office was because of misogynist incels and use that as a path into your other hobby horse about how badly women are treated in tech and segue into your work question? Yes, that could work! Or would that be too much? Hopefully there will be no chitchat. [Yeah, right.])

Or blame the weather.

Anyway, now that we’ve put together this two line text, let’s send the damn thing.

And then you second guess what you said the rest of the day. That’s masking. Sounds fun, don’t it?