I recently found out I am autistic, but I remember being friends with a special needs child, (I think she was autistic, not too sure on that though) but after everytume we talked her guardian would always thank me for being her friend. As if people don't have the decency to even try to friend someone. It upset me greatly and still does to this day.
Same scenario for me. A while ago in high school during my last year we found out I have ADD. I was the friend of one of the principal’s kids and after I left she sent me a message via my dad (who was a teacher at the same school) that she was grateful I was a great friend to him. Luckily things seem to be looking up since he started talking to more people often.
I had an autistic friend who sat with me one the bus. I called him a "bus buddy" since I had different names for friends I hung out with the most (lunch, class, etc). Turns out a lot of the kids I liked to be with tended to be queer, neurodivergent, both, "weirdos who love the internet", or open allies at least (often came out later, questioned, figured it out later, etc, though). I now know that I am trans (He/They if you want to know), and most likely neurodivergent. I think about my past and there were lots of signs related to being neurodivergent and trans. Neuroqueer if that term is okay.
I was often praised as a kid for befriending the “weird” kids who had autism or special needs and I was like??? Stop insulting my friends bro. I befriended them because they are fun to play with, not because I wanted to do a pity charity project. Also I’m neurodivergent and mostly likely autistic as well haha. I just was good at masking and my ADHD traits distracted from my more autistic ones.
I am autistic and I always stuck to myself in my high school years. I was not the nicest person and had a girl named Lois that clung to me as her best friend. She seemed like she was always trying to be her mini grandma, had the same old lady haircut and was kinda clingy. She seemed to be oblivious to other people. Her haircut and her just always following me around just always got me upset but I just chalk that up to me being a judgmental prick. I do think I stood up for her from time to time and do wonder how she's doing. I also did have a date to a military ball, the guy reminded me of my stepdad in that he was pretty clingy to the point that it made me uncomfortable. I was still a prick because I didn't want to be his girlfriend. I still have low self-esteem and think that anyone who even shows interest in me probably needs to get their marbles checked because I am not conventionally attractive. I did also have another guy that was overly flirtatious with me and tried to get me to be his girlfriend but me being anxious around boys just be a complete "I'm too good for you" mentality. Anyone else have that problem where they don't know how to deal with people and you just come across as looking like you're stuck up? Then, when you do show interest in people, they don't reciprocate your feelings and that just makes you come off as possessive and low insecurity?
I worry that nerotypical people look at masking and think "oh, they're fixed! That's the goal!" and ignore the tolls it takes on those masking. Especially if it's an organization or school that is claiming to 'help' but results in stories like yours.
I mean, look at the book "unbroken" by Alexis Quinn, mental health professionals literally told her she was "one of the good ones" because she could mask.
If you do mask, as you get older, you learn how much it doesn't worth it. In social situations, with family and friends, it just drives a huge wedge between you. An experience I have with my family for example: Eye contact is difficult for me, because it is inherently confrontational and aggressive gesture to me. I understand that for neurotipical people it isn't. It's polite I think. So my family constantly demanded me to look them in the eye while having a conversation. They would not continue the conversation unless I looked them in the eye. So I did. Now, almost every family interraction I had turned into a tense, negative confrontation, that was inches away from turning phisical in my mind. I am actively afraid of my parents because of this, despite them never hitting me. I do not talk to them anymore. What suprised me is how understanding my boss and my coworkers are about this. Just saying eye contanct makes me feel uncomfortable once, was enough for them to not bring it up anymore. (They didn't ask why, didnt ask for a diagnosis) It helped me to put in perspective my parents behaviour and cut contact. If complete strangers care more about me than my family, then what connection is there to keep? In short, mask if you feel like you are in phisical danger, but don't otherwise, and as you age, stop. They can tell anyway.
it's not so much a politeness thing, but in many cultures it's a sign of trust. the way I understood it growing up you look people in the eye specifically to show them that you're *not afraid of them*. this can be in a family/friends kind of way: "i look you in the eye because i know you won't hurt me, so i'm not afraid" or in an adversarial way "i look you in the eye because i'm defying you. i do not fear you" the way i was taught, you don't need to look people in the eye if you don't trust them. so family and close friends expected eye contact, but strangers were okay to not look at. if your culture might be similar?
@@zilesis1 Yeah, that sounds right. I just disassociate and go nonverbal when I look someone in the eye and they look back. Its like an open challange to a fight. Like, punching someone in the face but stopping your fist an inch from their face and yelling, wanna f+in' go? And the thing is, on a phone call, it's perfectly fine. They don't demand a video call. So they CAN have a conversation without eye contact they just refuse to.
@@KaleidoAbridged humans are weird. as someone who is fascinated by histories of different cultures and how traditions come to be, i can "explain" the reasons behind eye contact and other things you're "meant" to do, but at the same time, in 2023 it's really weird to me that these things are still so pervasive i mean, your're basically right, it is a challenge to a fight. looking someone in the eye is a way of asserting yourself, letting them know yuo're not afraid of them. we don't frame it that way anymore, but the idea is still there. in the metapor you described, the neurotypical response to "you wanna f+in go?" is "heck yeah motherf+er, what you goona do about it?"
"People aren't inconvenient for having different needs." Thank you. I wanna drop in and say that both me and my sibling have been greatly appreiciating watching your videos together, as a way to learn more about queerness and especially disability. We'd often talk together about the topic you covered after watching them, and it's been definatley helpfull to unpack a lot of stuff in our own lives (considering how many neurodivergent traits we have, and a lot of research had to be done in general). Another thing being better at writting about disabled people and representation, as we're both artists and writers, that definatley helped too. Thank you 💙
One of my friends is autistic (same for me btw) and he's a great drummer and an amazing visual artist. Just an overall cool dude, really. He lives kind of in the middle of nowhere though, and I can't help thinking it might be better for him if he'd live in a city. It would be more convenient for me to hang out with him too, which is what I would like to do more often, but being chronically fatigued and getting on public transport and shit just takes such a massive toll on me. We basically only hang out if he can pick me up which means he has to drive for an hour and then drive back for another hour. I also have to be able to stay at his place (his parents don't really make a fuzz about that at least) because going somewhere and back on the same day tends to knock me out for the next day. It's just kinda interesting to see how different people with similar disabilities on paper are.
@@theothertonydutch Yeah, very intresting. Having friends that live far away from you when you're disabled does make it harder to find a convinient way to hang out with them. Just thinking about all the transporting issues that occur daily is extremley overwhelming. Though, I'm glad that you have someone similar to your liking and who you can hang out with. Hoping it goes well for both of you! I find it engaging when I read others experiances as to get a better understanding and look at their perspective of life that I'm not familiar with. Thank you 💙
“I did what any teenager whos been taught their pain doesn’t matter would do, pulled out my phone and started panic texting a friend” As a teenager who’s been taught their pain doesn’t matter, I feel VERY called out by this /lh
I have adhd and autism. Each time I felt like I've met my limit, I got in trouble for overreacting and being lazy. So I learnt that I'm too dumb to know my limits. In my experience, that's the worst about masking. You lose the ability to know your own limits, the real limitations of your body (and I include the brain) rather than the limit your body would have, without any of your conditions (adhd, asd and celiac in my case). Each time I feel like I met my limit, I can't just say so, because I have this thought in my help that if this isn't my real limit, pointing it out is legal grounds to fire me. As explained by multiple people. So not only do I need to get my adhd treated, but I need to learn to trust my gut feeling, instead of decades of people "warning" me of the consequences of me being my seemingly lazy self.
Same, minus the Celiacs (hopefully, it's still possible it'll develop later) if I get too stressed by brain shuts me down and I can't do much of anything until I'm feeling better, even if I want to. I always thought I was lazy/not trying hard enough, but no, I'm just full of tired and social anxiety
I'm disabled. My husband's family knows this. They're upset that I stopped going to their events. The last event I attended they planned a 4 mile hike. I couldn't go so I sat alone in a hot car for 4 hours. They claim they're super supportive of my disability. 😳🙄
If they want you to attend so desperately, tell them that you need to be included in the planning since they’ve let you down so much and you can’t really trust them in actively including you in activities. Hopefully they see this more as a challenge and as the actual critique it is, instead of an insult. Now you could go two way being petty or genuinely helping them with picking out locations/activities If they’re getting irate/shut ideas down just telling them “imagine living as me and not having the choice” should shut them up, if not call them out on their ableism Do this only if you have enough energy and your husband knows/ is in on it, maybe they could help as well
You just described pretty much my whole life. When it came to my chronic pain, I was taught to shut up and stop complaining. Signs of being neurodivergent, well forget about letting those show. Symptoms of depression, just cheer up already. I had gotten so good at neglecting my needs and denying what I was going through that I didn't even realize something else was going on as well. I would learn at a much later age that I had gender dysphoria all along and had misattributed it to other things. I didn't come out until I was already older than every trans content creator I could name. I will always wish I had known sooner, but that wouldn't have been possible when I was taught not to trust myself.
And then how masking and blocking out chronic pain teaches you to ignore your own body's signals. Thirst? No I'll just feel terrible and not understand why after 8 hours of not drinking or eating.
When I first learned what masking was I was confused. I thought, “But that’s just normal life. Everyone pretends to act the correct way to avoid getting yelled at constantly.” It was so jarring to learn that no, everyone isn’t constantly pretending to be okay in social situations. I always assumed that I was just worse at faking than everyone else since no one else ever seemed to need to take breaks away from gatherings to recharge.
I stopped masking at age 9. I literally remember the moment. The people who always bullied me for being different said to my face “why are you acting like that? We love the usual you.” Turns out me masking freaked them out as it created an uncanny valley effect. If I get bullied when I don’t mask and get bullied when I DO mask then I might as well be comfy right? Ended up being the “cool kid” to all the younger kids in school too!
I was told that much later, by my coworkers. They liked me. Not lie-me. NTs, mostly. Masking everything is bad... We are not NT, and uncanny valley is what poor people who see masking experiences. It isn't ok to do it for them, and it is horrible to ourselves - it is just better to be reale. I still mask some of my stims but only things that may make somebody vomit becouse disgust. Lesser evil or something.
I will say... its not really as simple as a 'choice' to stop maskingfor a lot of people, I'm glad you got out of there soon, in my experience I physically can't choose to stop masking, its a defense mechanism and its not even good masking, I'm just not myself and somehow NT's still sniff it out. its hell
@@user-ui2tj7or7u stopping masking is hard work, to figure out "what is not ok". It is worth it. If you have trusty NT they can help by telling "what look off in you".
@V Unfortunately your livelihood can hinge on your ability to mask. Because we live in a majority non-disabled society, employers are not trained to deal with us, and being disabled can be expensive.
First off I love the art piece. Especially that the kitty is booping the person on the nose. Also asphalt is the worst, at least when it comes to walking. I have a wheelchair now and I am still figuring out what I can do and where I can go. But if I am going to walk grass is so much nicer.
My emotional pain was discouraged as a child, forcing me to bottle up all my emotions. Let's just say my mindset became never telling people how I truly felt and just telling myself I needed to move on. I am also autistic, and my form of masking has been acting like the other clowns at my school. That lead to chronic anxiety and major feelings of depression
While I'm not autistic, I was also discouraged to show negative emotions as a child, so I can relate to that part and feel strongly for you. It's horrible and sad not to be able to express those feelings. That just makes them hurt more and it takes so much energy. Let yourself be weak, when you need to be weak, and find the right time to take the next step forward once you're ready for that. You are not alone. We see you and we are rooting for you.
I recently broke my foot and crutches are slow af. My uncle slowly lost the use of his legs over the course of my childhood, and my most impactful disability gifted me with no attention span or situational awareness so lucky for me my family is used to making sure I’m still with the group and they are aware that crutches are slow. Mildly horrifying that a school specifically for disabled kids wasn’t keeping track of the slow people.
I didn't realize it going into this, but this was a video I needed to watch. I'm someone who has severe social anxiety and depression, and possibly other undiagnosed issues, and a, let's say, less than helpful family. I have narcissistic family members, a mom whose response to me telling her I thought I might be bisexual was that I had to be straight because I talked about girls I liked in my private journal she had no business reading and I didn't seem gay to her (as if straight and gay are the only options), and others in my life trying to force me to act neurotypical (for instance, when we had guests, being told to stop being "antisocial" and come out of my room; """friends""" trying to get me hooked on alcohol and psychedelics because they made me more talkative and being dismissive jerks to my face when I shared a video talking about the dos and don'ts of dealing with introverted people on Facebook; a cousin who worked as a manager at a grocery store telling me her company wouldn't hire someone like me because I can't talk to random strangers like it's not a big deal; etc.). Between all these things, I've learned to bottle up my feelings, shut myself away, let problems fester without seeking help from anyone or try to deal with it myself until it becomes too much for me to handle, and made my depression significantly worse. It took me years to find stable employment outside the solo gig market. I'm not a virgin (only because I was drunk at the time, and I'm not sure how I feel about that), but I've never been in a long-term relationship with anyone, in part because I'm so used to being rejected out of hand in less intense situations than romance that I just don't even bother trying. The point is, my tendency not to seek help has done me no good, and I have that tendency because I just instinctively expect that there's no one who would want to help me deal with my problems. Seeing this made me realize how toxic that mindset is. I'm not sure how to untangle that, but the first step to solving a problem is identifying it. So, thanks.
I spent two years at overlake specialty school. A experience that would best be described as being tortured into masking my autism and appositional defiance only to accomplish the exact opposite and give me PTSD depression and severe impulse control issues. I will never apologize for who I am. I will never be shameful of who I am. I am proud of who I am. I have earned my pride with pain alone. Never forget you're pride.
At my school the admin team that have my medical history didn’t tell my p.e teachers about my joint condition. The school was made aware of my condition they just failed to transfer the information. Because of this I had to take part in p.e like everyone else until I was bullied for being physically weaker and my mum got involved and only then the school figured out that maybe my teachers should be aware of my condition. I then got to choose the activities I took part in. But things like medical information should be looked into and shared with the necessary teachers.
I got bad knees, I'm hyper sensitive and I got chronic fatigue. P.E was generally the worst with only few exceptions. I kind of liked hockey because somehow when you put a stick in my hand I become a menace and it sort of made everyone's shins fair game. I also liked a game called "monkey cage" which was basically tag but with a bunch of climbables, ropes, jumps etc. That stuff would destroy me but it was kind of worth it.
When they didn’t believe I was in pain I stopped saying I was in pain… I constantly buried the pain for years until I finally couldn’t take it. I had to push past my pain every day, and then when my hands stopped moving for several days everyone blamed me for not saying something because “I should say when I’m in pain”…. Now I’m in a safe home where I can be in pain and relax without worry and sometimes I still push through even when I shouldn’t… my roomies are very helpful and supportive to help me feel okay about being in pain, and taking rest when I need it.
I have some (currently undiagnosed) Joint pain, and I’d usually “grin and bear it”, but that came to a head on a college hike, where basically nobody believed how much pain I was in despite shouting in pain every time I put too much weight on my ankles
I feel this. My father is the king of 'grin and bear it', his response to any of my physical ability concerns was always "you've got two feet and a heart beat, [so you're capable]". It was so bad that, when I broke my arm, I had to walk around for *3 days* with my broken arm hanging limp at my side before I saw my mother and was able to ask *her* to take me to get an x-ray.
I get the nightmare scenario thing, too. I don't think it's my joints, but I do get exhausted easily. I could very easily imagine myself in your place and... yeah. I feel your pain. I'm glad you're getting better at advocating for yourself. And yes, I agree that the idea that we have to conform to what society expects from us is... ugh. I hate it. And I dislike anything that has that sort of... setup. Like job interviews. I haven't had one yet, and... I'm not looking forward to that experience. At all.
I got very good at ADHD masking growing up. Currently, I’m at the point of refusing to do it when possible for the sake of my mental health after a crisis I had during quarantine. I just can’t do it anymore
Masking is the biggest fucking trauma of my mind and childhood. As an adhd kid, maybe also autistic and "gifted" as people tend to say, my first memory of masking was in kindergarden and now fucking 10 years later, you realize you literally dont know who you are and even without drugs, lonliness, an awesome family and friends, life still jist feels like a chore . Identity sounds like a simple question, but if you have the choice to either fit in or not fit in and both things you force yourself to do, compared to fleeing from reality with reading sci fi and learning skills, there is not much space for personality, but it is indistinguishable for the people around you. Dont take this too far, whoever you are, you are awesome no matter what
Oh, and minor note, ADHD is on the spectrum so it technically counts as autism anyway. Autism is a bit of a catch-all, I guess. There is so much overlap between all the diagnosis that at this point it is archaic to refer to one thing as a singular entity.
[I'll probably go on a small rant/vent here] I've struggled with both of these things, (I'm neurodivergent with an abled body, though I'm not sure about that because I never got the courage to talk to a doctor about my lung problems, muscle pains, back pains etc. so idk) and let me tell you it's the worst. I was forced to mask 24/7 FOR A WHOLE FUCKING YEAR. All the time. Neurotypical people probably think it can't be that bad, but it was that bad. I lived in a residential housing group kind of thing with other kids with "problems". It was the worst environment I've ever experienced. I was forced to spend time with other people 90% of the day, most of whom bullied and abused me. The other 10% we had to stay in our rooms and read, study or do homework. Though none of that was in peace and you were always on edge since anyone could go into your room at any minute without knocking, since apparently knocking wasn't a thing there. We also only had our phone for an hour each day, the only time I was able to be alone and stim and talk to other people that don't hate me. It was the worst time of my life and I'll never heal the trauma I had to go through. I was so done and exhausted all the time, but I had to keep going. I had to keep up my good grades, I had to keep masking literally all the time, I had to pretend like everything was fine because otherwise I'd be laughed at and even more hated than before. I tried my best, even though every fiber of my being told me to stop immediately. [TW for sulclde] I was at the edge every single day. Mentally and literally, There were no weeks I didn't have at least one attempt. This place drained my whole energy, and to forget all of it I forced myself to be perfect at school to compensate. People told me all the time how smart I am, but at what cost. Everyday I wanted it to be the last day. [TW mention end] Everytime I had a little bit of happiness it was ripped away from me, I always had to pretend someone I'm not, in a transgender and neurodivergent way both. Im so glad and thankful for myself for making it through all that, because I was able to move out and my life is so much better now. But the worst part of all that is that I never got an apology, from anyone of all the people who lived and worked there. Not a single one. All I did and all I could do was leave a 1 star Google maps review on that place, and I can't put into words how frustrating that is. Thanks for anyone who read this whole thing, I hope it's okay to comment this I'm not really aware of what is okay and not okay to say :/
I remember being called depressed for years for a few of my autistic traits. For doctors this was just easier my dad was always confused by this diagnosis since I was a super happy child. It wasn't until I'd gotten into school for a bit before I was diagnosed with autism. Still even knowing I had autism a lot of things I did were undesirable traits that needed to be ironed out. Told to stop looking at the floor everywhere we go even though it helped me keep myself from feeling overwhelmed. Look people in the eyes when speaking. I do this but facial expression still eludes me. Stop pacing so much. Yeah straight up refused that one it clears my head and helps me think. And don't even get me started on folks refusing to elaborate when I fuck up socially. A lot of the time people when I did something I didn't know wasn't socially ok would say nothing and punish me. When asking what I did wrong they'd just say "you know what you did." And get more and more mad anytime you ask. Because they think your trying to excuse the issue by saying you didn't know but sometimes you genuinely don't know and want to avoid doing it again. This has lead to many nights of combing through every single interaction I had that night trying to figure out what I'd done wrong. As an adult however I'm able to limit who is in my life so when folks try to fit me into boxes or tell me I'm doing something wrong while refusing to say what I can cut them out of my life and move on.
Facial expression deludes everyone. People who say they can tell someone's feelings from facial expressions (with the exception of actual tears, big obvious smile or angry grimace) are lying and you can't convince me otherwise. It's just a thing normies use to make neurodivergents feel excluded or hyperaware (which triggers overstimulation). *mic drop*
You might be interested in the channel Mossy Bottom, then, he and his partner and baby moved to Finland from Ireland in the autumn of 2023 (and a few months in were hit with our coldest and snowiest winter in 13 years - they are managing admirably, though)
Because of my diagnosed Adhd and undiagnosed but highly suspected autism my mom would constantly apologize to my friends' parents when picking me up, for handling me all evening. And would proceed to say if i was not behaved then i probably didnt take my medications.. it would always confuse every parent she told that to and they'd say "really?? I havent had any problems from them. So quiet and behaved i forget they're even here sometimes". She would also apologize for me not talking out loud very often and not liking any kind of touch. The worst part in my opinion is that my mother is also neurodivergent so you'd think she wouldn't have done that. At least now that I'm older shes gotten better about not doing that.
This channel give me so much that I don't get from anywhere else, not from television, not from friends, not from family. Having you paraphrase my entire experience with disability will never cease to make me feel understood at a level that I didn't even know that I could be. I truely wish you the best with whatever your goals are and I thank you for putting the effort to talk about these things. Much love from Canada ♥️
So I was removed from a very abusive home before I was 3 years old. Already at that age I had literly lost my pain sense. I couldn't feel pain Thankfully I can today but I have never been able to hide that I was diffents as a child, but today I just come of as any other young guy
I have chronic pain too, it's really interesting to hear about someone with a similar experience. I don't I have as high a level of joint messed-up-ness as you (not that it's a contest) but alot of the things you said in the video affect me too! Like walking on pavement is so much worse for my feet than grass. I literally can't walk a significant distance on sidewalk because pavement is so bad. I usually end up walking on the grass to one side. I remember as a kid my mom would drag me to the mall (for shopping for wrong gender clothes, a whole nother story lol) and I'd be almost in tears from walking on the hard floors. Also I need custom orthotics and very cushiony shoes otherwise my feet just give up haha
i more or less stopped masking at school after an incident in sixth grade. i was bullied at the time and all out of sudden simply snapped. And beat up my bully, i think. my memory is hazy and i just remember falling to the ground. but whatever i did it worked. in a sense. because the bullying stopped. not sure whether i really beat him up or something else happend, but i stopped masking and started ignoring most of my classmates. i literally made myself stop caring about their thoughts and feelings. which might be the reason, why i got some love confessions at seventh grade, but blew them off. it's much easier to live if you don't care about others. then again it took me quite some time to forge a single friendship, because i don't care most of the time. but i don't mask unless it's really necessary, so my friends like me for who i am.
Masking for autism and ADHD has been... A very large problem in my life, and I'm glad you didn't have to deal with at least that much. By the time I was 16, I had essentially sand-blasted away my own personality and was so convinced that my very existence was burdensome that I became suicidal. Thankfully, I made it through those especially dark months without going through with any of the plans I'd made, and discovering I was trans helped a lot too. But even now, I struggle with feeling like a burden or inconvenience to everyone in my life, and I have trouble with just letting myself exist without multiple layers of filters on everything I do. It reeeeeeally sucks.
"By the time I was 16, I had essentially sand-blasted away my own personality and was so convinced that my very existence was burdensome that I became suicidal." Oh god yeah same. If all the media tell you you are nothing but a burden and selfish for existing at some point you believe it. Luckily am in a better place now, but still... I should have never had to experience this.
I didn't know I was neurodivergent till I was 17. There were VERY obvious signs, but I had pretty neglectful parents, sooo nothing got done about helping me with that until I bombed out in HS. My parents were also both very academic people and really just didn't understand what it was/is like to suffer as badly as I did in school. I literally have PTSD from it. I told them almost every day what went wrong and it was always, "You're so negative! Just think about it differently!" Mmm, yeah ok. I'll just think I am happy when every day is traumatizing for me and I am legally forced to go through it. Thaaaanks...😒🙄 I am now in college and it is far better, but due to many reasons, it took me a long time to even give it a chance. Still fighting for accommodations.
I masked in elementary school, or at least tried to, but it only made me feel uncomfortable in my own school. I found a comic series that taught me what the kark I was even doing and I decided to ... stop. I was lucky that my family supports me in this - they stopped telling me to make eye contact once they realized I was uncomfortable - and told me to just be myself. I stim in public, I hiss like a wet cat if someone bothers me, I wear whatever I want and f*ck everyone who has opinions about that. What I do mask - or had a "grin and bear it" attitude towards - is my problem with auditory overload. Which got worse during lockdown, because I was spoiled by being in my room all day or doing schoolwork in the living room with headphones. This lead to me being completely overwhelmed by a chatty class and develop reoccuring headaches, which began to affect my classwork. Luckily, my teachers and parents noticed and I got permission to basically wear headphones whenever it got too much. Yes, even when the teacher was telling us something as long as I copied the board. Germany doesn´t have homeschooling, otherwise I would´ve insistet on that because my class was AWFULL about my problems - I begged for homeschooling multiple times - but in hindsight, homeschooling would´ve made everything so much worse. In hindsight, stopping to mask is perhaps the best mental health decision I ever made, and I was lucky to be supported through the initial phase. It cost me a lot of tolerance from my classmates, but f*ck those guys anyhow.
I am asperger and I do feel this very much. Even if my experience was a bit different. My parents discovered that i am not neurotypical when I was three and I had to go to a specialist until the end of elementary school, but I didn't know that I was asperger until I was eleven. Discovering it explanined many things: I was always the weird kid too because I like books and anime more than I like being around many people: others called me "the one who reads", and I tried to "mask" by showing no emotion, staying always quiet and trying to do things as perfectly as I could, but it never seems like enough. I forced myself like i forced myself to look in the eyes, to stand noise and the teasing about my body, my height, the fact that I liked dolls, and people who told me to "grow up". And i Force myself even now because i am 21 and I "need to be mature", so I mask and bottle up everything all the time. And sometimes it gets so overwhelming that I lash out in the worst way possible with the thought "why I am never good enough!?" So I cry, i feel useless and miserable and I even throw my shoes at people. And, as a gift from all that, I struggle with self esteem issues that mix with my problems with changing things and i connect my value as a person and the love people have for me to my results: so "i am smart and very good if i pass an exam, i am not smart and a failure if I don't" and I don't always give myself the time I need to do things. Sorry about the depressing rant, I just needed to rid myself of this
Very relatable. I'm very much done apologising for having chronic fatigue as a result of overstimulation. I don't know how the fuck I got my bachelor degree in art, but I've totally given up on doing things for others and I'm just going to do them for me and at my own pace. Damn the world.
Oh god the "I am good if I pass this exame/job thing and if not I am worthless". I have this so much too. To my immense luck I am so mentally ill and exhausted from masking at this point that I can't do literally anything, so you can think about the wonders this does for my self esteem.
why. did it feel like. i was reading about myself. Though I still dont know what I have, or if I even have something. I had some times I discretely asked questions about my childhood, but didnt go into specifics much cause Im not sure how mom will react if I tell her why exactly I was asking questions.
I really relate to this. My mom gets mad and yells at me and calls me ridiculous anytime I do something slightly neurodivergent, like being kind of annoyed that she and my step dad stepped on my blankets with their shoes on, thus making them dirty. Also, you should read the Circle Series by Tamora Pierce. I'm pretty sure that all of the four main characters are neurodivergent in some way, as well as one of their teachers, and it's handled really well.
when you said 'i was always the weird kid'...oof. that hit me in the heart. my mom tells stories of me coming home from my first grade special ed class saying i wasn't the weird kid, meaning i recognized i was 'weird'/'different' as soon as kindergarten, which really makes my heart break for little baby me. in the past two years, i've realized that maybe there's nothing 'wrong' with me and with all my research since that time, i think i'm autistic. i'm realizing that i've always masked- so much so that now it's hard or even impossible for me to stim when there's another person in the room. thank you for making your videos: they're a huge source of comfort for me.
While I’m not entirely sure about it, I and many of my neurodivergent friends, plus neurodivergent aunt, all believe that I’m autistic. A lot of the more common traits of it though have always overlapped with my blindness (Sensitivity to sound, issues with sensory overload, being very particular about textures, not wanting to simulate eye contact, et cetera). I’ve sort of unknowingly learned to mask, specifically around my mom and grandparents. I remember I was once sitting and talking with my grandma, and something came up that got me really excited. I started stimming, waving my fists from side to side rapidly. My grandma wouldn’t even let the conversation continue until I, “Stop that.” When I asked her why, she literally, and I freaking quote, said, “Because it’s bothering me.” My grandma is usually a super kind, genuine person, so this was totally out of nowhere. That same kind of thing appened a lot while I was with her. We were going out to eat a lot, and doing that in places I’ve never been before always gives me a mild bit of anxiety. My dad and stepmom understand and always bring fidgets in my stepmom’s purse when we go out to eat at a new place, or if they forgot, my dad gives me an extra napkin because he knows I’ll shred the one I was given already. I was trying to keep the stimming subtle because my grandma was next to me and grandpa was across from me, but since it was such close quarters, the way I kept twisting my spoon around was pretty obvious. That’s the constant response to stimming from my older relatives. “Stop that.” “Why?” “Because it’s bothering me.” It’s also kind of funny the more I think about my highly probable autism. When I first told my best friend about it, her reaction was akin to, “Finally, you noticed it.” Yeah, turns out she had suspicions long before I did. Once, she and I went with my mom to watch my little sister’s school play, and then my mom dropped me off at bestie’s place for the weekend. I sat down on the cot in her room that was kind of always reserved for me, and I couldn’t stop swaying in place. I rubbed my hands over my eyes and gave this little agh sound, then asked myself, “Why am I so tired?” because I was normally up far later than the current time. Of course, bestie came in with the obvious, “It’s because you were masking later than you normally do on a Friday.” Because, yes, she could tell the difference between me masking and me not before I could. Whenever I have doubts about if I’m really autistic, she’ll sit down and just pull up a series of small autistic experiences online and read them to me. Together, we’ll count how many align with my experiences, and then it doesn’t make me feel like I’m faking or self-diagnosing. Another time, I was talking with one of my friends with autism about stuff. I was asking him about the differences between brainrot, a hyperfixation and a special interest and he was obliging me. At one point, the conversation shifted a little to the left and he mentioned how I tend to rock in place a lot when sitting on the ground. He specifically called it stimming. I asked him, “Wait, isn’t stimming a neurodivergent specific term?” and this man just paused, and I could feel him giving me this Look™ before he said, “[Name], I’m trying to tell you something.” Yeah, turns out all of the neurodivergent people around me noticed it before I did. I didn’t even realize I was magnetizing toward other neurodivergent people until one day when pretty much everyone in the friend group started having a conversation about struggling with ADHD and autism. That was a real surprise, you don’t even know-
I loved this video. It's very eye opening and also affirming. In recent years I developing an injury that results in occasionally feeling like there are shards of glass in my hips and between my vertebrae. It was constant and also had electrical pain running down and up one half of my body for over two years. There's nothing so eye opening when you've always been known as a highly active athletic person to suddenly not be able to walk without assistance and need to develop a daily care routine if you want to be able to move enough to dress yourself. I constantly found myself wondering how kids mask pain for so long because I knew I was being expected to act like the pain wasn't there by those around me, and I kept wondering how everyone could expect that from anyone in pain. Especially with invisible disabilities. Finding this channel during my worst years of the pain really helped expand my perspective while life was already priming me to see things I hadn't seen previously.
As an autistic kid, I am glad that my parents never forcing me to mask. And when a video mentioned and explained masking to me, I said out loud “wait, you can do that?”
I'm ADHD, as is my father and both of us have had to learn to mask. Dad is able to pass enough that I have trouble clocking him, though he is able to pick up and work with others. Dad made it so I got no treatment growing up and had to learn to mask. Now in elementary school, it was fine because young kids are automatically given leeway and I was in sports at least 6 days a week. But my ADHD comes up more as an executive function disorder than the stereotype, and my excessive energy can be channeled inward which will lead to me just not paying attention. Not a good combo when I was starting middle school and easily grasped concepts my teachers were trying to teach. I have gone to so many organization and time management classes that I know what doesn't work because I've literally tried all the methods designed for neurotypicals. I still mask decently enough that some people have a hard time being able to tell, which makes it frustrating because they expect things from me, and when I don't meet them, it just brings me back to teachers asking why I can't do better with time management. That or I just burn myself out trying to do it. However, I do allow some things to help me, like doodling or taking very colorful notes in class so I can concentrate. Meanwhile, my friends and family often let me ramble on my latest hyper fixation without making any comments. Yes, it is so damn tiring having to mask, but I'm grateful that I have found people that will accept that I can't do things a certain way or when things get to be too much. Also OMG kitty so cute!!!
Also thank god no one got on my case about eye contact. Hell, a good chunk of the time, I'm not looking at the person I'm talking with, and no one has ever called me out because I make it clear I'm engaged and listening. That or I'm looking at some part of their face so it's harder to tell. Again, people who are close are just used to me not looking at them while we're talking and have never given me crap about it. ...Then again, I grew up in a place with a huge East-Asian influence, and if I understand correctly, eye contact is not considered as polite in those cultures as it is in Western (please correct me if I'm wrong).
the thing is i never mask consciously and i only know i was HOURS after being worn down 😭 its what ive made my personality at this point bc otherwise im pretty dull emotionally 99% of the time and i dont want ppl to think im depressed (even if i am lol)
The intro reminded me of Hannah Gadsby's quote, "I have what's called High Functioning Autism, which is a terrible name for what I have. Because it gives the impression that I function highly..."
The earphones thing is very relatable to me. I almost always have them in listening to music or a podcast or something, and people are just so bothered about it. Like, okay, I would get it if I couldn't hear important things, but I can hear people. If I am in a quiet room (which is never really quiet because people are whispering and breathing and shuffling around) I have a terrible time focusing. I mean the US sucks at a lot of things but going through high school with zero accessibility was a nightmare. I am very grateful for my earbuds now.
As someone who is also neurodivergent who's experienced ABA therapy in which i was forced to mask and living in a developing country(in my case, the philippines) with little to no accommodations for us (you'd be hella lucky if you did) it was really difficult for me to act "normal" and constantly being told to suck it up and that my concerns are not important because everyone else has to "deal with it"
Not to mention the fact that i was constantly being gaslit about my pains such as when i ended up being hospitalised when my dad arrived for my 8th birthday and yelled at my mom for just leaving me and telling me I'm overeacting over the fact I'm in so much pain that i couldn't walk, and also it took me so long to find out that I have adenomyosis because my period pains where constantly being brushed off, and currently dealing with my dad's abelism so yeah.... I just wanna get out of this situation
@@artsysparks The unfair thing is that nobody is going to challenge the system on shit like that because most people who have it don't have the energy to fight for it and people who don't have it can't really relate. Like, I don't have much energy due to chronic fatigue, but I've written whole rants on this type of things only to delete them because I don't want to engage with the subject any further. But that's kind of part of the problem isn't it? Neurodivergents of the world should unite. I'm not a marxist, I promise.
@@theothertonydutch I've always tried to advocate for better accommodations only to be shut down(mostly by my father) because "the world doesn't work that way" or "it's not realistic" and calling me shit like I'm a snowflake
@@klltsun_2576 i plan to soon, but it saddens me how people like them say that to people like us when the world was already tailored for people like them
Intensely masking my autism, but able bodied, so I loved getting a different experience on this. And yeah, its absolutly not worth it, but also I made it my whole life, I have no idea how to stop, and I don't think I am brave enough to stop. In my self help group there are several autistic people who cant mask at all, and oh boy, they get treated almost exactly the same (badly) but they have so much more energy and they are so much more happier with themselves.
I have ID, I feel like it always enters the room before I do, like everyone knows immediately before even knowing me. It’s always given me a lot of anxiety. I’ve tried to mask it. But that never works. It’s almost always very futile and it always comes out somehow especially when it comes to jobs. I’ve lost a few because of it on top of being harassed. I’ve realized that even though I can’t always be open about it to many people. Masking it still sometimes keeps me safe. Those people generally aren’t the ones worth spending time with anyways. And that it was probably for the better that I left those jobs. It’s not my job to make people understand. I can only be myself and hope that’s enough for others.
The reason I developed a chronic illness was the fact that I was in crisis mode for years. I think support for teenagers needs to go beyond ‘it’s hormones your fine’.
I have adhd, and being constantly told to sit still when that just wasn’t something I was able to do was horrific. I think I can only really let myself move the way I need to when I’m around people I trust and am comfy with 100%.
this topic is really important to discuss more bc I still don't know what the "right" thing to do is when people both have needs that are in direct opposition. example: Someone needs a service animal to detect a sudden onset of of [insert disability here] but another person is deathly allergic to [insert service animal here] and they both *must be in that location* - whose disability is more / less valid ? who gets priority ? we need to be discussing these things.
Part of why I'm leaving my first full-time job to make my part-time my full. I've had to use both of those at my primary job constantly, and at my second, they're much more flexible, understanding, and friendly regarding my disabilities
For me masking was something I learned very, very early in life as necessary because most people don't actually care about how you feel and only if you're useful. It sucked, honestly. I used to be the happy positive kid but had to act like I'd bend over for people cause I was a threat to the more egotistic kids. It's not really healthy especially if you're forced into doing it like me being unlucky to not have stable friend groups that weren't curated to just be echo chambers. Kept ending up with people that couldn't handle me disagreeing with their unhealthy beliefs and now I'm just very tired. These days as an adult I'm just going rampant with what I want, and accepting groups don't last forever helps. Not the most ideal but I'm happier at least.
I was also raised without the socialital expectation to mask. Probably because Swedish and our "Only talk to strangers when necessary" culture. So I also don't like mask consciously, subconsciously I stop myself from stimming in public but otherwise I don't force myself to do/not do anything. My sister, who also is autistic, however tries to force me to mask because it makes her uncomfortable and stressed to see me break those socialital norms. In that case her masking became one of the 'rules' she had to follow and she didn't know for a very long time why she always felt stressed when I didn't hide when I got tired or didn't follow the unspoken rules. It hurt our relationship a lot in our early teens and neither of us really understood anything and no one had diagnosed us with our conditions that would explain it. Nowadays its a lot better even when she heavily encourage me to be polite its better now when we got words to describe things.
in terms of the "grin and bear it " for me its very much a thing but the endometriosis aspect adds to it. I have endo basically and didnt know for the longest time because painful periods were treated as the norm and as a child i was made to feel overdramatic and oversensitive for these moments. Now that im in my 20s my disability has gotten worse and i have to reckon with the fact that this is very much real and i dont need to dismiss myself. Its also shit because its so underesearched, I found out that incredibly painful periods are not normal from a fucking tumblr post, instead of a doctor saying anything to me
Masking is such a curse and blessing. I couldn't have done so much of what I have been able to do and the people I have met if I didn't mask, but it is so exhausting and draining, and to make it worse I can't take it off even when I want to or am alone. I don't know how. As a late-discovered Autistic, I am still wrestling with masking and its benefits and consequences. Both have such profound effects. Add in other newly-discovered neurodivergent conditions I also mask and chronic pain (either from a physical disability or C-PTSD/trauma) that I have masked so much that I hardly feel it anymore and it just gets so complicated. I can't meet my own needs because I don't even know what they are after a lifetime of heavy masking.
I'm a single mum of 2 ND kids. Was diagnosed ND myself in my 30s. I also have chronic pain. The ND diagnosis did wonders for my mental health. I have learnt to allow myself to not mask 24/7 and not mental punishment myself for not living up to NT standards. The decades of masking practice was great practice and conditioning to grin and bear it. This has lead to certain symptoms being exacerbated because I didn't seek help early enough, or when I did not "looking like I was in that much pain" (I went in and explained things as calmly and clearly as possible - no crying or yelling, cannot do that, hysteria is frowned upon). With the kids I have to be careful not to push myself. I went a bit far during a particularly difficult period for them last year. Then I couldn't change position. I had hurt my back. Going from lying to sitting or sitting to standing, or back again led to excruciating spasms in my back. It felt like labour pains. Being stubborn I didn't cry or yell out. Calmly called the neighbours and the ambulance and got myself out the door so as not to scare the kids. Surprised I didn't crack a tooth with how tighly my jaw was clenched at times. Thankfully there wasn't too much damage. Needed minimal pharmaceutical help and mostly needed to rest and move carefully. There were warning signs, thinking back. I didn't ignore them exactly, they just didn't reach the top of the priority list. They do now. That evening was terrifying. Not even focused on myself but on my children. Something I need to work on I know. I am consciously listening to my body more now. Not letting myself push through like I was. Masking and grin and bear it both take such a toll, that few people who haven't lived it can appreciate.
My solution to this as an autistic man is to stop appeasing a society that wants us dead anyway, I stopped masking completely and never did it again. If others are not happy with that, I am not going to suppress myself anymore to appeal to them when they are going to hate me anyway.
The more videos I watch, the happier I am to learn all these things. My mom deals with chronic back pain thanks to a surgery that went wrong years ago and I think she's probably "bearing" it a lot of the time, especially since my dad gets really annoyed when she complains "too much" about it. I can think of a lot of days where she got home and she just collapsed on the bed and started crying because of the pain. The thing is, I'll probably deal with the same pain one day because the surgery only sped up the decline of a spine anomaly that I inherited. I'm happy to have learned more through this video, maybe I can help my mom better and maybe even myself one day.
i have chronic pain and didn't realise till i was like 18. your story reminds me of the time i went to NCS (british government funded youth scheme, i do not recommend) and they had us hiking hills in scotland, the whole time i was lagging behind in agony, not being heard. and i still feel bad whenever people have to slow down for me to keep up. it's nuts but you hit the nail on the head.
I'm also a Fin and learned to mask very late. I see it more as a game than a necessity, I'm an extrovert and I enjoy studying how normies act. At times I feel like an astronaut exploring an alien planet. It can get tiresome but then I hide in my hobbit-hole from a month up to 100 days to recharge what feels like my sanity/grasp on reality. It's different from my social battery. I would have never survived in a country like the us growing up, that's for sure. I love Finland and our live-and-let-live culture. May everyone struggling with balancing masking and their real self find a happy medium, like a shelf-like ledge, from which to survey the sea of normies as they run by like a hoard of spooked wilder beasts toward the latest trends. It's really funny stuff to watch from up here.
Wildebeest. Now I want to watch the Lion King again because let's be fair: Scar looking down on the destroyed monarchy hits different when you're a neurodivergent anti-monarchist.
@@theothertonydutch lol exactly. I never saw the original as a kid bc I grew up on shitty disney sequels exclusively, but I always vibed with scar xD I mean honestly, the guy just wanted some agnolagement, his given name was "trash" for gods's sake xD
@@catxtrallways Oh wow that's horrifying. From my privileged position as a student in finland, I find it quite amusing to trick usians to yell at me for being a burden on society for not working. It's fun from here but I can't imagin living in such horror every day. I hope you are safe from the irrationality of those who make the silly rules
I'm autistic with various chronic issues asthma being one of them, My schools which all had well "special needs places " they just forced me to mask hiding things that my own family enjoyed about me. My mother has chronic pain due to her big bridge falling accident going from teen party to teen party back in the 80s. My mom has problems with masking as well to the point I constantly have to be her guardian angel of : hey don't push yourself too hard or, you need a break today I can take care of everything. Hell right now her back has been in more excruciating pain for two weeks currently due to her trying to rearrange a single room which I warned against.
I’ve recently been working on not masking as much after I got my diagnosis, and man I love it. So many memories of my childhood make sense now, I was stimming with my hands constantly but I didn’t even know it was called stimming, I just knew I loved doing it :D I’ve been unmasking more and more around my close friends and it’s been amazing how when I’m around those I’ll trust, I’ll just start stimming without even thinking about it 💀 I’m loving my progress so far :)
As someone with both chronic pain and autism (along with many more things) this hit quite close to home. I grew up in an environment with an autistic parent (only diagnosed recently) and a possibly neurodivergent older brother so I never was forced to be someone I wasn't by my family (school was completely different as it is for too many of us). But also I would grin and bear my pain for years and only got diagnosed with chronic pain (source of it unknown) within the past year
I’m so glad that I’ve found another autistic/ND person that doesn’t/can’t/never learned how to mask. I’m neurodivergent, and over the last few months I’ve seen so many videos of autistic people talking about their experiences with masking and the common thread with almost all of them is that they DID mask, and could do it VERY well. This made me kind of doubt my neurodivergentness (I’m undiagnosed) and made me feel like every autistic person commonly masked, at least to some extent. Now I do mask, but it’s on a pretty microscopic level I would say. But I’m glad that I never really learned how to fully mask, since one of my deepest beliefs is being true to myself, and throwing that belief out the window would not do me very good mentally. Not masking definitely still has its downsides, as I feel constantly judged by my peers for how I act. But what you said about your experiences with autistic masking (or the lack thereof) made me feel really validated for also not masking, so thank you (:
* solidarity fist bump * I never really learned to mask, either, I just learned some coping mechanisms that made interacting with NTs more doable. Like looking at the person's mouth -> nose -> right eyebrow -> left eyebrow to fake eye contact (nobody has ever realized that I don't look them in the eye), asking a new person questions about themself as a form of "small talk" (I hate actual small talk and am very bad at it), or volunteering to help in the kitchen at parties (doing something practical is a thousand times easier than moving around in a noisy throng trying to have "fun").
I really appreciate the content you make, I didn't realise how bad disabled people and neurodivergent people are treated til I started watching videos like yours. This really helped me change my perspective on "grin and bear it"
Don't know how or why I adopted the "grin and bear it" mindset - maybe a combination of the fear of being left behind and having no reference for what my normal pain and fatigue levels should be - but it's definitely been a huge issue. I would consistently overwork myself to meet the standards of my teachers, and that plus the perfectionism was a huge, regularly occurring disaster. I don't think my teachers fully understood or realized why I needed the accommodations I had in my IEP, because they would always start the semester by telling me to "do however much you think you can do" in the method they wanted. Huge mistake. I never knew when to stop because I was so used to pushing through the pain. Every time this happened my mom had to step in and yell at them to actually follow what the accommodations said (half the work of other students, allow a computer for written assignment, etc), not what their skewed interpretation of it was. Despite my mom standing up for me, I still continue to struggle with this mindset to this day. I just default back onto it without thinking. I have to be reminded that I have ibuprofen, heat pads, massage slippers, and ice packs, and that I'm always allowed to use them.
My parents often tell me how off-putting I come off to people because of my social anxiety, so it makes me want to pretend everything is fine if only for their sake. But a family friend (awesome person, love her so much) has told me the contrary, and that people who don't like me for who I am don't deserve my time and effort. It's hard to socialize with other people when I'm terrified of what people think, but a lot of times I'm tired of catering to how everyone wants me to act.
you talking about "grin and bear it" has recontextualized some of my past experiences. The most impactful aspect of my disability is fatigue. It started in college and became more severe over time. I was having no luck finding an effective treatment, but I kept pushing through work and school hoping I would find a treatment and have work and school be positive experiences again. But that never happened. I did start winding things down -- reducing courses then dropping out of college, but I was doing the smallest possible changes available to me and still pushing way past what was healthy, all with the expectation that the right medication would show up at some point. Eventually, I left my job (which was also the smallest change available to me) and applied for US disability pay. I was told to expect to need to file an appeal just because a lot of disabled people need to, but I was approved with the initial application and the approval paperwork essentially said I could've applied 2 years earlier and been approved. That put the severity of my condition into perspective, but it took your video for me to really second guess my handling of it. I live with my mother now, and despite being vastly less able than I was as a teen, my mother keeps putting herself in situations where she'll be in trouble unless I can grin and bear through a task that is significantly beyond what I should be doing -- stuff like spending hours helping move the house siding she bought into the garage so she can return the trailer it was on, or spending hours helping paint a room (I don't remember why that one was urgent). When moving the siding, there were several times where I almost collapsed while elevated above concrete or asphalt. But I kept going because I was expected to.
Funnily enough, I didn’t realize I masked until I got medicated for my anxiety. I spent a lot of time dedicating energy to studying my surroundings, checking for any possible dangers, doing rituals to reassure myself in an ocd-like manner, etc. When I wasn’t so much worrying about panic attacks and anxiety attacks, I realized a lot of autistic tendencies I had. I couldn’t stand looking people in the eyes, I did t-rex arms, I verbally stimmed a lot, I have a very flat and neutral voice, I get sensory issues, I don’t register pain well, etc. Then I realized even then I was masking a lot more than that when interacting with others. Though, since I’ve always been the ‘weird kid’ either way, I kind of have developed a low sense of care for others perception of me. I’ve been hard at work unmasking and tbh, people don’t care as much as you’d think they would, and the ones that do? They ain’t worth the time. I do still mask and having some masking tendencies, but I’ve caring a lot more for myself then I did for a while. I don’t see who I am as a problem, it’s just that the world didn’t see it as something they should adjust to with me, I suppose. It’s interesting and irritating, but I’m doing well.
I whent on a hike like a year before I nearly died because of heart failure, I vommited like twice and just kept going? My dad was on this hike and where my scout leaders , Yee then I had a stroke like a year latter , I was such a people pleaser it actually almost killed me on many occasions ,
I feel this. I'm able-bodied. All of my pain is under the surface, so no one really believes me when I complain or ask for help. I struggle to build any muscle, and I have some undefined breathing issues. I've had these issues since I was a kid. Everyone thought I was just lazy when I opened up about it. Then, the abdominal cramps became a nightmare. 7 days of every month were taken up by either pain, or an apprehensive expectation of it. Pain strong enough to make getting up feel impossible, strong enough that one bad move could put me on the ground. No one believed me. I was just "trying to get out of gym class." Surprise surprise, I started coping a lot better as a young adult, when I was allowed to buy my own painkillers (I have to take above the average amount for them to have any effect). On the other hand, I have a weird relationship with masking. I wasn't diagnosed, and wasn't consciously aware I was doing it most of the time. I know I tried to study behaviour, and my interest in psychology is not lost on me anymore. I masked all over the place. I was as quiet and 'proper' and neurotypical-presenting as possible, because it had been one of the only things I had ever received praise for. Now that I'm aware of it, I don't mask nearly as much anymore. I'm too tired to. (I also had to reformat this whole post when I reread it and realized I was oversharing waaay more than I needed to in order to get my point across, so... there's that.)
Well, they can be considered inconvenient for being different. People consider people being different all the time. It's wrong though. (Sorry, being pedantic is part of being ND)
11:06 massive eyeroll and the fact my mom seems to believe this about my "not quite sensory overload but pretty much sensory overload" tendencies with loud pitchy crowds well, it's frustrating as you probably guessed. So far I know I have adhd and I might have a little autism but the waitlist for testing is like a year long here in the US so um.. I guess I'll be patient🤷♂️
I have a learning disability and I was basically taught not to ask for accommodations unless I *really* needed them (my disability mostly effected my fluency, so I think that was their way of trying to get my fluency up and not have me fall behind in school). Because of this, I pushed my self way too hard in middle school, especially the year that I had a math teacher who was convinced I was faking my disability in order to "play the system," and by high school, I was literally cause myself to be sick I was so stressed about school. Luckily, my resource teacher in high school had me start to figure out how to advocate for myself and how to speak up for myself. Now that I'm in college, I still have anxiety and have to unlearn some of those behaviors, but I'm much more equipped for putting my foot down and asking for the extended time I need for assignments (and I'm helping some of my friends learn how to do that too). I've recently officially gotten diagnosed with Depression, Anxiety, and (believe it or not) ADHD, but if society hadn't taught me that having a learning disability was a bad thing, I probably could've avoided Depression and Anxiety.
Masking is so fucked, because you can meet someone and start vibing with them, and then you stop masking, and then they're suddenly not interested in interacting with you anymore.
I just say “I’m not comfortable handshakes, but I’ll give you an AIR SHAKE” (mining a handshake but not touching) Also the whole “yuck, disabled people, QUICK, MAKE THEM HIDE! mentality of the world is, say it with me, ABLISM!! That is my BIGGEST trigger to make me go from lap dog mellow, to RAMPAGING HEARD OF BULLS!
I have never masked to "fit in" because frankly we learned at a very young age that it's not even possible. I do however mask so that no one notices our switches and that's not even a conscous thing for us, we don't even realize we're doing it, it's just a symptom of having DID. The one time someone in our system did try to mask to fit in with the popular kids at school at not get bullied for being different they simply found other reasons to bully us instead and we quickly realized it wasn't worth the effort to pretend to be something we're not to impress others. We mask not to impress but to protect ourselves from potential harm. Also I have a simular story from High School except mine doesn't end with the teacher appologizing. We took a run off campus into an area I wasn't entirely familiar with. I had grown up in this city all my life and the P.E. couldn't believe that I wouldn't be familiar with a random residential neighborhood where I knew exactly one person who lived there but hadn't actually been there since I was 4 years old. The neighborhood was also full of houses and streets that all looked the same which made it very easy to get lost in. On top of that, the school was very much aware of the fact that I can't run and would never be able to keep up with the rest of the class. I lost sight of the coach and most of the class except for one friend who stayed behind with me and also wouldn't have been able to keep up anyway cause of his athema. He had to stop several times to use his inhaler and catch his breath. We had gotten totally lost and by the time we made it back to school class had already ended, we missed our lunch period, and the coach was just standing there waiting to yell at us, didn't even send anyone to look for us just assumed we ran off on purpose and had no idea we were in panic mode, had given up on even trying to catch up with the class and had spent that entire time just back tracing our steps so we could find our way back to the school. I don't think they even do the off campus run anymore after that incident. It use to be a common thing to see teens in P.E. uniforms running through the city but I haven't seen that happen since I graduated.
As always, thank you for speaking about those topics. Your content is useful for me, as it helps me (or will potentially help me) to properly treat people that are different from me. I always try to act polite and kind, but sometimes it's very easy to get things wrong, when one is ill-informed. So content creators like you are very helpful. I wish such stuff was a mandatory school lesson... The whole society would profit if we learned from a young age, to accept that people are all different and what that can entail and how to deal with it. Not to mention, it might make it easier for some kid to recognize themselves in that and maybe get a diagnozis earlier in life, which can get them the help they need too...
My masking came in when i was a teen and i also wanted to be social and not always alone, so i learned how to be around older and teens that were at my age but also adults. Also i learned how be mature but it got mixed in with learning how to mask. All of which i have learn through experience and tips from my cousins and Tv shows and Films.
"People aren't inconvenient for having different needs." I whole heartedly agree and understand what you mean by grin and bear it too. I've been through a lot and was always ill a lot too and constantly told I was faking it or blamed for being ill or guilted by family for missing school (plus told to hide injuries from home cos no one would believe me and told by a teacher not to tell family about the bullying at school, so it's a big mental mess of a combination of things, lol), so now I have a hard time even trusting myself when I'm ill or dealing with any of my myriad of other issues. I know it's real, but it's hard to believe myself and not worry I'm just making it all up when so many people didn't in my past (I've been called a hypochondriac multiple times, so have anxiety about literally being one), even when I do believe myself I have a tendency to grin and bear and hardly ever take painkillers. Someone has to literally tell me multiple times before I will and I'm in constant pain. Pain is just normal for me, so I just deal with it and have had it so long that I honestly don't remember what it was like to be painfree anymore. And when you have multiple things wrong with you too, people are less likely to believe any of it is real, when if you have one thing, you tend to have a load of other things too because it can contribute to other things and just make things pile up... I hope you're doing better and continue to try and do your best for yourself, so you can live your best life for yourself, not to make other peoples lives better. 🥰 💗
Your grin and bear it story reminds me of some of the absolute nonsense I managed to get myself into as a teenager via the philosophy of a stiff upper lip, which ruined my ability to process negative emotions enough to require therapy about a decade and a half later. Masking, as far as I can tell, as an apparently Neurotypical individual, sounds like a potentially useful situational coping mechanism. But like most short-term, situational responses it can do serious damage if you have to use it all the time.
I've learned very early on that other people don't feel what I feel and therefor are generally wrong about me and thus should not be trusted or relied on for what I need unless they have proven otherwise (for example, i trust my doctor and my dentist lol).
hi, i'm autistic and have chronic headaches and your story just unlock some memories that i had burrieed deep in my brain and also helped me make a connection i think i have conditioned myself not to make. I've hated walking, especially long distances, for a very long time (i'm 17 and my headaches started when i was 7/8), but i have never made a connection between the two, for some reason. not it seems so bleatent. before my pain problems started i was a very active child (i also have adhd), went to multiple dance classes, i couldn't sit still. but then boom. from 100 it went to maybe 40 at best. like, i knew that physical activity makes my pain worse, but it just never clicked that that's why. i distinctly remember multiple camps that i went on that i remember badly, and like horrifically badly, and every event that caused it is caused by my pain. the unlocked memory is when i was on a sailing camp, feeling absolutely terrible and i had been excusing myself with headaches from activities, but i "looked okay", so nothing could be bad, yeah? so they stoped excusing me from activities. i was feeling so bad, that i faked vomiting 7 times just to get a moment off. of course they caught on, that i didn't in fact vomit 7 times and sat me down in a circle (i.e. me and like 5 adults) and accused of being a liar, which i was, but i was just a helpless 11-year-old kid. one of my worst memories tbh. but my brain completely dissacociated pain with the experience, even though it was the direct cause. and all of that because i looked fine. i'm starting to see a pattern in so many of my memories. thank you. now i feel so much less guilty. thank you
I absolutely feel sometimes I spend too much time "grin and bear"-ing things wrt my own disabilities. Oof. Thank you for talking about this topic, it feels like my brain has sorted a few things out. Also Heartsword Speedpaint!!!!!
I’m loving seeing so many Neurodiverse peers in the comments!! Reading your stories is really cool and I hope you’re all comfy and safe TW for suicidal ideation: I grew up on the spectrum and from a very early time my elementary school life was a living hell. When I found out I was autistic and vaguely what that meant my peers didn’t believe me and demanded I prove it to them which of course I couldn’t do at the time, after a lot of bullying and teachers abusing their power I ended up having an outburst in front of all of my classmates and told them all I didn’t want to be alive anymore. Naturally my mom and a social worker were called and my mom had to tell me that if I was serious that I’d be taken away from her. (She did nothing wrong, the school actively hid things from her and I had no way of proving it to her) so I ended up telling the social worker I was just having a “Bad Day” so they could go away. and thus up until my anxiety diagnosis and just a lot of growing up, I learned that expressing pain was dangerous and it just became easier to bottle things up until I mentally couldn’t anymore. Luckily I’m proud to say I feel like I’m someone younger me could rely on and be proud of now that I’m dealing with these things right away. I hope one day we’ll get to a point where we aren’t teaching our children to mask and that it’s ok to just be, to just exist with your needs and not feel like less for needing support in some capacity. Whether you got this far or not, I hope you’re taking good care of yourself. Have a cookie 🍪
I’m not disabled or notably nurodivergent but I definitely developed a grin and bear it attitude towards my physical and mental issues. I’m not shure what’s the worst times, but I have a few that pop up in my mind, two times during PE (physical education or Gym) I almost blacked out and said nothing. And another thing. Once was during a mile and I was a good stretch away from a teacher so I continued and said I would say somthing then, by then my vision and general body weakness seemed back to normal and I said nothing because it was “all fine now”. The second was when we were doing some asphalt hockey practices (during pe we rotated sports). I remember it being hot that day (I lived in Southern California so it would’ve been in the High 80s°F/ arround 29°C)(we went inside/canceled at 90°F/32.2 °c) We were split up in rows and moved the puck arround some cones and back in order for the activity. The teacher was at the mid point in the cones. (Not far distance). I was waiting in line when my legs started to feel weak and my vision started closing in and fading to black. I again decided to wait because the teacher was right there. Eventually as I was waiting my legs grew so week I had to lean on the hockey stick to hold myself up, and my vision was fully gone. (This lasted a couple of seconds and if I didn’t have the hockey stick I would’ve fallen to the floor) the feeling in my legs and vision came back soon enough and it was my turn, I went across, (my vision still a bit closed in) and I didn’t say anything to the teacher… I should’ve likely said somthing considering it was likely heat stroke/dehydration issues, and my teacher should’ve likely said somthing. The other notable moment was that in high school I had a tooth aching for a long time, when I pressured it by clenching a tooth against it it wouldn’t hurt. In doing this eventually the tooth broke, and it stoped hurting. (Like big ol chunk off and it was verry apparent it was a bad cavity, I have bad time remembering to brush/floss) eventually my mother realized that she hadn’t taken us to the dentist for a few years and got us set up with a new office right away, (I might have brought it up, not shure). Anywho, on the visit I had few other smaller cavities, and the bad tooth needed a root canal, the dentist and my mother were shocked I said nothing. I got told I likely have a higher pain tolerance because they said I should be feeling it all the time. Anywho yeaaaaaa I also have a years long shoulder pain that comes and goes (mostly stays)… I think that counts as chronic…. That’s another thing with a different can of worms that includes doctor issues. And me actually saying things… Not good to say the least, even better is I’m also in the “gifted smart kid” club, so there is also that interfering with asking for help… :b
I feel like I always learn so much with your videos. I’m autistic but don’t have experience with chronic pain or other disabilities. I’m familiar with masking and didn’t realize I was doing it until I got diagnosed recently. I’ve been trying to unmask more, trying to be aware of my sensory and social needs and letting myself stim freely.
I've spent 47 years trying to fit in and failing miserably. I don't try any more. Take me as I am or go away. Also, I've always thought Finnish social behavior would be so much easier to deal with than what's expected here in the US
Easier / better than in the US does not equal easy or good. Just (somewhat) less terrible. Source: I am a physically disabled & neurodivergent Finn with family and friends in the US
i just recently quit a dishwashing job i've had for about 2 years. Frequently enough id get so overwhelmed id mentally and physically shut down, going at a snails pace till i got it done and could leave. sometimes itd be so bad that id puke and cry. when it wasnt too busy id be allowed to go sit down for like 15 min, maybe 30. then people would assume im good to go. Sometimes i would be, but sometimes id still be a little slow. and people would be upset with me because "you just had a break" and "its really busy we need you to be putting in more effort". Id feel awful, id say to myself "i cant work here anymore, if we dont get a second dishwasher this is going to kill me". then id go home, think to myself "i need to eat, it took me a solid 2 years of sending out all the resumes i could every day to get this job. Itll be fine, ill get used to it." But I never did. Sometimes id have a good week, a good month even, and Id think "this isnt so bad". but then 8 hrs later id be a jittering, incorporeal mess. People would be upset with me, asking me why im not doing enough. and id say to myself, "i cant work here anymore, this is going to kill me". im hoping i can get a job at a small, downtown coffee shop with like, 2 tables. or an adult store. somewhere chill. one of the local hobbyshops would be fun
I recently found out I am autistic, but I remember being friends with a special needs child, (I think she was autistic, not too sure on that though) but after everytume we talked her guardian would always thank me for being her friend. As if people don't have the decency to even try to friend someone. It upset me greatly and still does to this day.
Same scenario for me. A while ago in high school during my last year we found out I have ADD. I was the friend of one of the principal’s kids and after I left she sent me a message via my dad (who was a teacher at the same school) that she was grateful I was a great friend to him. Luckily things seem to be looking up since he started talking to more people often.
I had an autistic friend who sat with me one the bus. I called him a "bus buddy" since I had different names for friends I hung out with the most (lunch, class, etc). Turns out a lot of the kids I liked to be with tended to be queer, neurodivergent, both, "weirdos who love the internet", or open allies at least (often came out later, questioned, figured it out later, etc, though).
I now know that I am trans (He/They if you want to know), and most likely neurodivergent. I think about my past and there were lots of signs related to being neurodivergent and trans. Neuroqueer if that term is okay.
I was often praised as a kid for befriending the “weird” kids who had autism or special needs and I was like??? Stop insulting my friends bro. I befriended them because they are fun to play with, not because I wanted to do a pity charity project. Also I’m neurodivergent and mostly likely autistic as well haha. I just was good at masking and my ADHD traits distracted from my more autistic ones.
I am autistic and I always stuck to myself in my high school years. I was not the nicest person and had a girl named Lois that clung to me as her best friend. She seemed like she was always trying to be her mini grandma, had the same old lady haircut and was kinda clingy. She seemed to be oblivious to other people.
Her haircut and her just always following me around just always got me upset but I just chalk that up to me being a judgmental prick. I do think I stood up for her from time to time and do wonder how she's doing.
I also did have a date to a military ball, the guy reminded me of my stepdad in that he was pretty clingy to the point that it made me uncomfortable. I was still a prick because I didn't want to be his girlfriend. I still have low self-esteem and think that anyone who even shows interest in me probably needs to get their marbles checked because I am not conventionally attractive.
I did also have another guy that was overly flirtatious with me and tried to get me to be his girlfriend but me being anxious around boys just be a complete "I'm too good for you" mentality.
Anyone else have that problem where they don't know how to deal with people and you just come across as looking like you're stuck up? Then, when you do show interest in people, they don't reciprocate your feelings and that just makes you come off as possessive and low insecurity?
I worry that nerotypical people look at masking and think "oh, they're fixed! That's the goal!" and ignore the tolls it takes on those masking. Especially if it's an organization or school that is claiming to 'help' but results in stories like yours.
I mean, look at the book "unbroken" by Alexis Quinn, mental health professionals literally told her she was "one of the good ones" because she could mask.
My parents in nutshell
You don’t need to worry that’s already how it works
If you do mask, as you get older, you learn how much it doesn't worth it. In social situations, with family and friends, it just drives a huge wedge between you. An experience I have with my family for example: Eye contact is difficult for me, because it is inherently confrontational and aggressive gesture to me. I understand that for neurotipical people it isn't. It's polite I think. So my family constantly demanded me to look them in the eye while having a conversation. They would not continue the conversation unless I looked them in the eye. So I did. Now, almost every family interraction I had turned into a tense, negative confrontation, that was inches away from turning phisical in my mind. I am actively afraid of my parents because of this, despite them never hitting me. I do not talk to them anymore. What suprised me is how understanding my boss and my coworkers are about this. Just saying eye contanct makes me feel uncomfortable once, was enough for them to not bring it up anymore. (They didn't ask why, didnt ask for a diagnosis) It helped me to put in perspective my parents behaviour and cut contact. If complete strangers care more about me than my family, then what connection is there to keep? In short, mask if you feel like you are in phisical danger, but don't otherwise, and as you age, stop. They can tell anyway.
it's not so much a politeness thing, but in many cultures it's a sign of trust. the way I understood it growing up you look people in the eye specifically to show them that you're *not afraid of them*. this can be in a family/friends kind of way: "i look you in the eye because i know you won't hurt me, so i'm not afraid" or in an adversarial way "i look you in the eye because i'm defying you. i do not fear you"
the way i was taught, you don't need to look people in the eye if you don't trust them. so family and close friends expected eye contact, but strangers were okay to not look at. if your culture might be similar?
@@zilesis1 Yeah, that sounds right. I just disassociate and go nonverbal when I look someone in the eye and they look back. Its like an open challange to a fight. Like, punching someone in the face but stopping your fist an inch from their face and yelling, wanna f+in' go? And the thing is, on a phone call, it's perfectly fine. They don't demand a video call. So they CAN have a conversation without eye contact they just refuse to.
@@KaleidoAbridged humans are weird. as someone who is fascinated by histories of different cultures and how traditions come to be, i can "explain" the reasons behind eye contact and other things you're "meant" to do, but at the same time, in 2023 it's really weird to me that these things are still so pervasive
i mean, your're basically right, it is a challenge to a fight. looking someone in the eye is a way of asserting yourself, letting them know yuo're not afraid of them. we don't frame it that way anymore, but the idea is still there. in the metapor you described, the neurotypical response to "you wanna f+in go?" is "heck yeah motherf+er, what you goona do about it?"
o.o
@@KaleidoAbridged I need to distract myself from people's faces because I will study the fuck out of them if people let me and NOBODY WANTS THAT.
"People aren't inconvenient for having different needs." Thank you.
I wanna drop in and say that both me and my sibling have been greatly appreiciating watching your videos together, as a way to learn more about queerness and especially disability. We'd often talk together about the topic you covered after watching them, and it's been definatley helpfull to unpack a lot of stuff in our own lives (considering how many neurodivergent traits we have, and a lot of research had to be done in general).
Another thing being better at writting about disabled people and representation, as we're both artists and writers, that definatley helped too.
Thank you 💙
One of my friends is autistic (same for me btw) and he's a great drummer and an amazing visual artist. Just an overall cool dude, really.
He lives kind of in the middle of nowhere though, and I can't help thinking it might be better for him if he'd live in a city. It would be more convenient for me to hang out with him too, which is what I would like to do more often, but being chronically fatigued and getting on public transport and shit just takes such a massive toll on me. We basically only hang out if he can pick me up which means he has to drive for an hour and then drive back for another hour. I also have to be able to stay at his place (his parents don't really make a fuzz about that at least) because going somewhere and back on the same day tends to knock me out for the next day.
It's just kinda interesting to see how different people with similar disabilities on paper are.
@@theothertonydutch Yeah, very intresting. Having friends that live far away from you when you're disabled does make it harder to find a convinient way to hang out with them. Just thinking about all the transporting issues that occur daily is extremley overwhelming.
Though, I'm glad that you have someone similar to your liking and who you can hang out with. Hoping it goes well for both of you! I find it engaging when I read others experiances as to get a better understanding and look at their perspective of life that I'm not familiar with. Thank you 💙
“I did what any teenager whos been taught their pain doesn’t matter would do, pulled out my phone and started panic texting a friend”
As a teenager who’s been taught their pain doesn’t matter, I feel VERY called out by this /lh
I have adhd and autism.
Each time I felt like I've met my limit, I got in trouble for overreacting and being lazy. So I learnt that I'm too dumb to know my limits.
In my experience, that's the worst about masking. You lose the ability to know your own limits, the real limitations of your body (and I include the brain) rather than the limit your body would have, without any of your conditions (adhd, asd and celiac in my case). Each time I feel like I met my limit, I can't just say so, because I have this thought in my help that if this isn't my real limit, pointing it out is legal grounds to fire me. As explained by multiple people. So not only do I need to get my adhd treated, but I need to learn to trust my gut feeling, instead of decades of people "warning" me of the consequences of me being my seemingly lazy self.
Same, minus the Celiacs (hopefully, it's still possible it'll develop later) if I get too stressed by brain shuts me down and I can't do much of anything until I'm feeling better, even if I want to. I always thought I was lazy/not trying hard enough, but no, I'm just full of tired and social anxiety
I'm disabled. My husband's family knows this. They're upset that I stopped going to their events. The last event I attended they planned a 4 mile hike. I couldn't go so I sat alone in a hot car for 4 hours. They claim they're super supportive of my disability. 😳🙄
That is the dumbest thing I have read in this comment section wtf is wrong with them
If they want you to attend so desperately, tell them that you need to be included in the planning since they’ve let you down so much and you can’t really trust them in actively including you in activities.
Hopefully they see this more as a challenge and as the actual critique it is, instead of an insult.
Now you could go two way being petty or genuinely helping them with picking out locations/activities
If they’re getting irate/shut ideas down just telling them “imagine living as me and not having the choice” should shut them up, if not call them out on their ableism
Do this only if you have enough energy and your husband knows/ is in on it, maybe they could help as well
You just described pretty much my whole life. When it came to my chronic pain, I was taught to shut up and stop complaining. Signs of being neurodivergent, well forget about letting those show. Symptoms of depression, just cheer up already. I had gotten so good at neglecting my needs and denying what I was going through that I didn't even realize something else was going on as well. I would learn at a much later age that I had gender dysphoria all along and had misattributed it to other things. I didn't come out until I was already older than every trans content creator I could name. I will always wish I had known sooner, but that wouldn't have been possible when I was taught not to trust myself.
And then how masking and blocking out chronic pain teaches you to ignore your own body's signals. Thirst? No I'll just feel terrible and not understand why after 8 hours of not drinking or eating.
When I first learned what masking was I was confused. I thought, “But that’s just normal life. Everyone pretends to act the correct way to avoid getting yelled at constantly.” It was so jarring to learn that no, everyone isn’t constantly pretending to be okay in social situations. I always assumed that I was just worse at faking than everyone else since no one else ever seemed to need to take breaks away from gatherings to recharge.
I stopped masking at age 9. I literally remember the moment. The people who always bullied me for being different said to my face “why are you acting like that? We love the usual you.” Turns out me masking freaked them out as it created an uncanny valley effect. If I get bullied when I don’t mask and get bullied when I DO mask then I might as well be comfy right? Ended up being the “cool kid” to all the younger kids in school too!
I was told that much later, by my coworkers. They liked me. Not lie-me. NTs, mostly. Masking everything is bad... We are not NT, and uncanny valley is what poor people who see masking experiences. It isn't ok to do it for them, and it is horrible to ourselves - it is just better to be reale.
I still mask some of my stims but only things that may make somebody vomit becouse disgust. Lesser evil or something.
I will say... its not really as simple as a 'choice' to stop maskingfor a lot of people, I'm glad you got out of there soon, in my experience I physically can't choose to stop masking, its a defense mechanism and its not even good masking, I'm just not myself and somehow NT's still sniff it out. its hell
@@user-ui2tj7or7u stopping masking is hard work, to figure out "what is not ok". It is worth it. If you have trusty NT they can help by telling "what look off in you".
@@AxoiTanner I would rather take myself to the glue factory
@V Unfortunately your livelihood can hinge on your ability to mask. Because we live in a majority non-disabled society, employers are not trained to deal with us, and being disabled can be expensive.
First off I love the art piece. Especially that the kitty is booping the person on the nose. Also asphalt is the worst, at least when it comes to walking. I have a wheelchair now and I am still figuring out what I can do and where I can go. But if I am going to walk grass is so much nicer.
My emotional pain was discouraged as a child, forcing me to bottle up all my emotions. Let's just say my mindset became never telling people how I truly felt and just telling myself I needed to move on. I am also autistic, and my form of masking has been acting like the other clowns at my school. That lead to chronic anxiety and major feelings of depression
While I'm not autistic, I was also discouraged to show negative emotions as a child, so I can relate to that part and feel strongly for you. It's horrible and sad not to be able to express those feelings. That just makes them hurt more and it takes so much energy.
Let yourself be weak, when you need to be weak, and find the right time to take the next step forward once you're ready for that. You are not alone. We see you and we are rooting for you.
I recently broke my foot and crutches are slow af. My uncle slowly lost the use of his legs over the course of my childhood, and my most impactful disability gifted me with no attention span or situational awareness so lucky for me my family is used to making sure I’m still with the group and they are aware that crutches are slow. Mildly horrifying that a school specifically for disabled kids wasn’t keeping track of the slow people.
I didn't realize it going into this, but this was a video I needed to watch. I'm someone who has severe social anxiety and depression, and possibly other undiagnosed issues, and a, let's say, less than helpful family. I have narcissistic family members, a mom whose response to me telling her I thought I might be bisexual was that I had to be straight because I talked about girls I liked in my private journal she had no business reading and I didn't seem gay to her (as if straight and gay are the only options), and others in my life trying to force me to act neurotypical (for instance, when we had guests, being told to stop being "antisocial" and come out of my room; """friends""" trying to get me hooked on alcohol and psychedelics because they made me more talkative and being dismissive jerks to my face when I shared a video talking about the dos and don'ts of dealing with introverted people on Facebook; a cousin who worked as a manager at a grocery store telling me her company wouldn't hire someone like me because I can't talk to random strangers like it's not a big deal; etc.). Between all these things, I've learned to bottle up my feelings, shut myself away, let problems fester without seeking help from anyone or try to deal with it myself until it becomes too much for me to handle, and made my depression significantly worse. It took me years to find stable employment outside the solo gig market. I'm not a virgin (only because I was drunk at the time, and I'm not sure how I feel about that), but I've never been in a long-term relationship with anyone, in part because I'm so used to being rejected out of hand in less intense situations than romance that I just don't even bother trying.
The point is, my tendency not to seek help has done me no good, and I have that tendency because I just instinctively expect that there's no one who would want to help me deal with my problems. Seeing this made me realize how toxic that mindset is. I'm not sure how to untangle that, but the first step to solving a problem is identifying it. So, thanks.
My parents used to make me sit in a corner when I wouldn’t mask 🥺
I spent two years at overlake specialty school. A experience that would best be described as being tortured into masking my autism and appositional defiance only to accomplish the exact opposite and give me PTSD depression and severe impulse control issues. I will never apologize for who I am. I will never be shameful of who I am. I am proud of who I am. I have earned my pride with pain alone. Never forget you're pride.
At my school the admin team that have my medical history didn’t tell my p.e teachers about my joint condition. The school was made aware of my condition they just failed to transfer the information. Because of this I had to take part in p.e like everyone else until I was bullied for being physically weaker and my mum got involved and only then the school figured out that maybe my teachers should be aware of my condition. I then got to choose the activities I took part in. But things like medical information should be looked into and shared with the necessary teachers.
I got bad knees, I'm hyper sensitive and I got chronic fatigue. P.E was generally the worst with only few exceptions.
I kind of liked hockey because somehow when you put a stick in my hand I become a menace and it sort of made everyone's shins fair game. I also liked a game called "monkey cage" which was basically tag but with a bunch of climbables, ropes, jumps etc. That stuff would destroy me but it was kind of worth it.
When they didn’t believe I was in pain I stopped saying I was in pain… I constantly buried the pain for years until I finally couldn’t take it. I had to push past my pain every day, and then when my hands stopped moving for several days everyone blamed me for not saying something because “I should say when I’m in pain”…. Now I’m in a safe home where I can be in pain and relax without worry and sometimes I still push through even when I shouldn’t… my roomies are very helpful and supportive to help me feel okay about being in pain, and taking rest when I need it.
I have some (currently undiagnosed) Joint pain, and I’d usually “grin and bear it”, but that came to a head on a college hike, where basically nobody believed how much pain I was in despite shouting in pain every time I put too much weight on my ankles
I feel this. My father is the king of 'grin and bear it', his response to any of my physical ability concerns was always "you've got two feet and a heart beat, [so you're capable]". It was so bad that, when I broke my arm, I had to walk around for *3 days* with my broken arm hanging limp at my side before I saw my mother and was able to ask *her* to take me to get an x-ray.
I get the nightmare scenario thing, too. I don't think it's my joints, but I do get exhausted easily. I could very easily imagine myself in your place and... yeah. I feel your pain. I'm glad you're getting better at advocating for yourself.
And yes, I agree that the idea that we have to conform to what society expects from us is... ugh. I hate it. And I dislike anything that has that sort of... setup. Like job interviews. I haven't had one yet, and... I'm not looking forward to that experience. At all.
I only found out I was autistic when I was 16 and I have absolutely no idea how to mask so I relate to this video so fucking much
I got very good at ADHD masking growing up. Currently, I’m at the point of refusing to do it when possible for the sake of my mental health after a crisis I had during quarantine. I just can’t do it anymore
Society just doesn’t care for the “inconvenient” imperfections like it should. Only when it happens to them do they really care
Masking is the biggest fucking trauma of my mind and childhood. As an adhd kid, maybe also autistic and "gifted" as people tend to say, my first memory of masking was in kindergarden and now fucking 10 years later, you realize you literally dont know who you are and even without drugs, lonliness, an awesome family and friends, life still jist feels like a chore . Identity sounds like a simple question, but if you have the choice to either fit in or not fit in and both things you force yourself to do, compared to fleeing from reality with reading sci fi and learning skills, there is not much space for personality, but it is indistinguishable for the people around you. Dont take this too far, whoever you are, you are awesome no matter what
You know who you are, but it takes time to be able to put that into words and Oakwyrm is the fucking goat on putting some of these things to words.
Oh, and minor note, ADHD is on the spectrum so it technically counts as autism anyway. Autism is a bit of a catch-all, I guess. There is so much overlap between all the diagnosis that at this point it is archaic to refer to one thing as a singular entity.
[I'll probably go on a small rant/vent here]
I've struggled with both of these things, (I'm neurodivergent with an abled body, though I'm not sure about that because I never got the courage to talk to a doctor about my lung problems, muscle pains, back pains etc. so idk) and let me tell you it's the worst.
I was forced to mask 24/7 FOR A WHOLE FUCKING YEAR. All the time. Neurotypical people probably think it can't be that bad, but it was that bad. I lived in a residential housing group kind of thing with other kids with "problems".
It was the worst environment I've ever experienced. I was forced to spend time with other people 90% of the day, most of whom bullied and abused me. The other 10% we had to stay in our rooms and read, study or do homework. Though none of that was in peace and you were always on edge since anyone could go into your room at any minute without knocking, since apparently knocking wasn't a thing there.
We also only had our phone for an hour each day, the only time I was able to be alone and stim and talk to other people that don't hate me.
It was the worst time of my life and I'll never heal the trauma I had to go through. I was so done and exhausted all the time, but I had to keep going. I had to keep up my good grades, I had to keep masking literally all the time, I had to pretend like everything was fine because otherwise I'd be laughed at and even more hated than before.
I tried my best, even though every fiber of my being told me to stop immediately.
[TW for sulclde]
I was at the edge every single day. Mentally and literally, There were no weeks I didn't have at least one attempt. This place drained my whole energy, and to forget all of it I forced myself to be perfect at school to compensate. People told me all the time how smart I am, but at what cost. Everyday I wanted it to be the last day.
[TW mention end]
Everytime I had a little bit of happiness it was ripped away from me, I always had to pretend someone I'm not, in a transgender and neurodivergent way both.
Im so glad and thankful for myself for making it through all that, because I was able to move out and my life is so much better now.
But the worst part of all that is that I never got an apology, from anyone of all the people who lived and worked there. Not a single one.
All I did and all I could do was leave a 1 star Google maps review on that place, and I can't put into words how frustrating that is.
Thanks for anyone who read this whole thing, I hope it's okay to comment this I'm not really aware of what is okay and not okay to say :/
I remember being called depressed for years for a few of my autistic traits. For doctors this was just easier my dad was always confused by this diagnosis since I was a super happy child. It wasn't until I'd gotten into school for a bit before I was diagnosed with autism. Still even knowing I had autism a lot of things I did were undesirable traits that needed to be ironed out. Told to stop looking at the floor everywhere we go even though it helped me keep myself from feeling overwhelmed. Look people in the eyes when speaking. I do this but facial expression still eludes me. Stop pacing so much. Yeah straight up refused that one it clears my head and helps me think. And don't even get me started on folks refusing to elaborate when I fuck up socially. A lot of the time people when I did something I didn't know wasn't socially ok would say nothing and punish me. When asking what I did wrong they'd just say "you know what you did." And get more and more mad anytime you ask. Because they think your trying to excuse the issue by saying you didn't know but sometimes you genuinely don't know and want to avoid doing it again. This has lead to many nights of combing through every single interaction I had that night trying to figure out what I'd done wrong. As an adult however I'm able to limit who is in my life so when folks try to fit me into boxes or tell me I'm doing something wrong while refusing to say what I can cut them out of my life and move on.
Facial expression deludes everyone. People who say they can tell someone's feelings from facial expressions (with the exception of actual tears, big obvious smile or angry grimace) are lying and you can't convince me otherwise. It's just a thing normies use to make neurodivergents feel excluded or hyperaware (which triggers overstimulation). *mic drop*
what i've gathered from this is that i need to move to finland immediately
You might be interested in the channel Mossy Bottom, then, he and his partner and baby moved to Finland from Ireland in the autumn of 2023 (and a few months in were hit with our coldest and snowiest winter in 13 years - they are managing admirably, though)
Thats awful that you went through that. I had a IED since I did fine in a normal setting with my ADHD
Because of my diagnosed Adhd and undiagnosed but highly suspected autism my mom would constantly apologize to my friends' parents when picking me up, for handling me all evening. And would proceed to say if i was not behaved then i probably didnt take my medications.. it would always confuse every parent she told that to and they'd say "really?? I havent had any problems from them. So quiet and behaved i forget they're even here sometimes". She would also apologize for me not talking out loud very often and not liking any kind of touch. The worst part in my opinion is that my mother is also neurodivergent so you'd think she wouldn't have done that. At least now that I'm older shes gotten better about not doing that.
This channel give me so much that I don't get from anywhere else, not from television, not from friends, not from family. Having you paraphrase my entire experience with disability will never cease to make me feel understood at a level that I didn't even know that I could be. I truely wish you the best with whatever your goals are and I thank you for putting the effort to talk about these things. Much love from Canada ♥️
So I was removed from a very abusive home before I was 3 years old. Already at that age I had literly lost my pain sense. I couldn't feel pain
Thankfully I can today but I have never been able to hide that I was diffents as a child, but today I just come of as any other young guy
I have chronic pain too, it's really interesting to hear about someone with a similar experience. I don't I have as high a level of joint messed-up-ness as you (not that it's a contest) but alot of the things you said in the video affect me too! Like walking on pavement is so much worse for my feet than grass. I literally can't walk a significant distance on sidewalk because pavement is so bad. I usually end up walking on the grass to one side. I remember as a kid my mom would drag me to the mall (for shopping for wrong gender clothes, a whole nother story lol) and I'd be almost in tears from walking on the hard floors. Also I need custom orthotics and very cushiony shoes otherwise my feet just give up haha
i more or less stopped masking at school after an incident in sixth grade. i was bullied at the time and all out of sudden simply snapped. And beat up my bully, i think. my memory is hazy and i just remember falling to the ground. but whatever i did it worked. in a sense. because the bullying stopped. not sure whether i really beat him up or something else happend, but i stopped masking and started ignoring most of my classmates. i literally made myself stop caring about their thoughts and feelings. which might be the reason, why i got some love confessions at seventh grade, but blew them off. it's much easier to live if you don't care about others. then again it took me quite some time to forge a single friendship, because i don't care most of the time. but i don't mask unless it's really necessary, so my friends like me for who i am.
Masking for autism and ADHD has been... A very large problem in my life, and I'm glad you didn't have to deal with at least that much. By the time I was 16, I had essentially sand-blasted away my own personality and was so convinced that my very existence was burdensome that I became suicidal. Thankfully, I made it through those especially dark months without going through with any of the plans I'd made, and discovering I was trans helped a lot too. But even now, I struggle with feeling like a burden or inconvenience to everyone in my life, and I have trouble with just letting myself exist without multiple layers of filters on everything I do. It reeeeeeally sucks.
"By the time I was 16, I had essentially sand-blasted away my own personality and was so convinced that my very existence was burdensome that I became suicidal."
Oh god yeah same. If all the media tell you you are nothing but a burden and selfish for existing at some point you believe it.
Luckily am in a better place now, but still... I should have never had to experience this.
I didn't know I was neurodivergent till I was 17. There were VERY obvious signs, but I had pretty neglectful parents, sooo nothing got done about helping me with that until I bombed out in HS. My parents were also both very academic people and really just didn't understand what it was/is like to suffer as badly as I did in school. I literally have PTSD from it. I told them almost every day what went wrong and it was always, "You're so negative! Just think about it differently!" Mmm, yeah ok. I'll just think I am happy when every day is traumatizing for me and I am legally forced to go through it. Thaaaanks...😒🙄
I am now in college and it is far better, but due to many reasons, it took me a long time to even give it a chance. Still fighting for accommodations.
I masked in elementary school, or at least tried to, but it only made me feel uncomfortable in my own school. I found a comic series that taught me what the kark I was even doing and I decided to ... stop. I was lucky that my family supports me in this - they stopped telling me to make eye contact once they realized I was uncomfortable - and told me to just be myself. I stim in public, I hiss like a wet cat if someone bothers me, I wear whatever I want and f*ck everyone who has opinions about that.
What I do mask - or had a "grin and bear it" attitude towards - is my problem with auditory overload. Which got worse during lockdown, because I was spoiled by being in my room all day or doing schoolwork in the living room with headphones. This lead to me being completely overwhelmed by a chatty class and develop reoccuring headaches, which began to affect my classwork. Luckily, my teachers and parents noticed and I got permission to basically wear headphones whenever it got too much. Yes, even when the teacher was telling us something as long as I copied the board. Germany doesn´t have homeschooling, otherwise I would´ve insistet on that because my class was AWFULL about my problems - I begged for homeschooling multiple times - but in hindsight, homeschooling would´ve made everything so much worse.
In hindsight, stopping to mask is perhaps the best mental health decision I ever made, and I was lucky to be supported through the initial phase. It cost me a lot of tolerance from my classmates, but f*ck those guys anyhow.
I am asperger and I do feel this very much. Even if my experience was a bit different.
My parents discovered that i am not neurotypical when I was three and I had to go to a specialist until the end of elementary school, but I didn't know that I was asperger until I was eleven. Discovering it explanined many things: I was always the weird kid too because I like books and anime more than I like being around many people: others called me "the one who reads", and I tried to "mask" by showing no emotion, staying always quiet and trying to do things as perfectly as I could, but it never seems like enough.
I forced myself like i forced myself to look in the eyes, to stand noise and the teasing about my body, my height, the fact that I liked dolls, and people who told me to "grow up". And i Force myself even now because i am 21 and I "need to be mature", so I mask and bottle up everything all the time.
And sometimes it gets so overwhelming that I lash out in the worst way possible with the thought "why I am never good enough!?" So I cry, i feel useless and miserable and I even throw my shoes at people.
And, as a gift from all that, I struggle with self esteem issues that mix with my problems with changing things and i connect my value as a person and the love people have for me to my results: so "i am smart and very good if i pass an exam, i am not smart and a failure if I don't" and I don't always give myself the time I need to do things.
Sorry about the depressing rant, I just needed to rid myself of this
Very relatable. I'm very much done apologising for having chronic fatigue as a result of overstimulation.
I don't know how the fuck I got my bachelor degree in art, but I've totally given up on doing things for others and I'm just going to do them for me and at my own pace. Damn the world.
@@theothertonydutch i am very glad for you.
I still need to learn how to treat myself better and with more love
Oh god the "I am good if I pass this exame/job thing and if not I am worthless". I have this so much too. To my immense luck I am so mentally ill and exhausted from masking at this point that I can't do literally anything, so you can think about the wonders this does for my self esteem.
why. did it feel like. i was reading about myself. Though I still dont know what I have, or if I even have something. I had some times I discretely asked questions about my childhood, but didnt go into specifics much cause Im not sure how mom will react if I tell her why exactly I was asking questions.
I really relate to this. My mom gets mad and yells at me and calls me ridiculous anytime I do something slightly neurodivergent, like being kind of annoyed that she and my step dad stepped on my blankets with their shoes on, thus making them dirty. Also, you should read the Circle Series by Tamora Pierce. I'm pretty sure that all of the four main characters are neurodivergent in some way, as well as one of their teachers, and it's handled really well.
when you said 'i was always the weird kid'...oof. that hit me in the heart. my mom tells stories of me coming home from my first grade special ed class saying i wasn't the weird kid, meaning i recognized i was 'weird'/'different' as soon as kindergarten, which really makes my heart break for little baby me. in the past two years, i've realized that maybe there's nothing 'wrong' with me and with all my research since that time, i think i'm autistic. i'm realizing that i've always masked- so much so that now it's hard or even impossible for me to stim when there's another person in the room. thank you for making your videos: they're a huge source of comfort for me.
While I’m not entirely sure about it, I and many of my neurodivergent friends, plus neurodivergent aunt, all believe that I’m autistic. A lot of the more common traits of it though have always overlapped with my blindness (Sensitivity to sound, issues with sensory overload, being very particular about textures, not wanting to simulate eye contact, et cetera). I’ve sort of unknowingly learned to mask, specifically around my mom and grandparents.
I remember I was once sitting and talking with my grandma, and something came up that got me really excited. I started stimming, waving my fists from side to side rapidly. My grandma wouldn’t even let the conversation continue until I, “Stop that.” When I asked her why, she literally, and I freaking quote, said, “Because it’s bothering me.” My grandma is usually a super kind, genuine person, so this was totally out of nowhere. That same kind of thing appened a lot while I was with her. We were going out to eat a lot, and doing that in places I’ve never been before always gives me a mild bit of anxiety. My dad and stepmom understand and always bring fidgets in my stepmom’s purse when we go out to eat at a new place, or if they forgot, my dad gives me an extra napkin because he knows I’ll shred the one I was given already. I was trying to keep the stimming subtle because my grandma was next to me and grandpa was across from me, but since it was such close quarters, the way I kept twisting my spoon around was pretty obvious. That’s the constant response to stimming from my older relatives. “Stop that.” “Why?” “Because it’s bothering me.”
It’s also kind of funny the more I think about my highly probable autism. When I first told my best friend about it, her reaction was akin to, “Finally, you noticed it.” Yeah, turns out she had suspicions long before I did. Once, she and I went with my mom to watch my little sister’s school play, and then my mom dropped me off at bestie’s place for the weekend. I sat down on the cot in her room that was kind of always reserved for me, and I couldn’t stop swaying in place. I rubbed my hands over my eyes and gave this little agh sound, then asked myself, “Why am I so tired?” because I was normally up far later than the current time. Of course, bestie came in with the obvious, “It’s because you were masking later than you normally do on a Friday.” Because, yes, she could tell the difference between me masking and me not before I could. Whenever I have doubts about if I’m really autistic, she’ll sit down and just pull up a series of small autistic experiences online and read them to me. Together, we’ll count how many align with my experiences, and then it doesn’t make me feel like I’m faking or self-diagnosing.
Another time, I was talking with one of my friends with autism about stuff. I was asking him about the differences between brainrot, a hyperfixation and a special interest and he was obliging me. At one point, the conversation shifted a little to the left and he mentioned how I tend to rock in place a lot when sitting on the ground. He specifically called it stimming. I asked him, “Wait, isn’t stimming a neurodivergent specific term?” and this man just paused, and I could feel him giving me this Look™ before he said, “[Name], I’m trying to tell you something.” Yeah, turns out all of the neurodivergent people around me noticed it before I did. I didn’t even realize I was magnetizing toward other neurodivergent people until one day when pretty much everyone in the friend group started having a conversation about struggling with ADHD and autism. That was a real surprise, you don’t even know-
I loved this video. It's very eye opening and also affirming.
In recent years I developing an injury that results in occasionally feeling like there are shards of glass in my hips and between my vertebrae. It was constant and also had electrical pain running down and up one half of my body for over two years. There's nothing so eye opening when you've always been known as a highly active athletic person to suddenly not be able to walk without assistance and need to develop a daily care routine if you want to be able to move enough to dress yourself. I constantly found myself wondering how kids mask pain for so long because I knew I was being expected to act like the pain wasn't there by those around me, and I kept wondering how everyone could expect that from anyone in pain. Especially with invisible disabilities.
Finding this channel during my worst years of the pain really helped expand my perspective while life was already priming me to see things I hadn't seen previously.
As an autistic kid, I am glad that my parents never forcing me to mask. And when a video mentioned and explained masking to me, I said out loud “wait, you can do that?”
I'm ADHD, as is my father and both of us have had to learn to mask. Dad is able to pass enough that I have trouble clocking him, though he is able to pick up and work with others. Dad made it so I got no treatment growing up and had to learn to mask. Now in elementary school, it was fine because young kids are automatically given leeway and I was in sports at least 6 days a week.
But my ADHD comes up more as an executive function disorder than the stereotype, and my excessive energy can be channeled inward which will lead to me just not paying attention. Not a good combo when I was starting middle school and easily grasped concepts my teachers were trying to teach. I have gone to so many organization and time management classes that I know what doesn't work because I've literally tried all the methods designed for neurotypicals.
I still mask decently enough that some people have a hard time being able to tell, which makes it frustrating because they expect things from me, and when I don't meet them, it just brings me back to teachers asking why I can't do better with time management. That or I just burn myself out trying to do it.
However, I do allow some things to help me, like doodling or taking very colorful notes in class so I can concentrate. Meanwhile, my friends and family often let me ramble on my latest hyper fixation without making any comments. Yes, it is so damn tiring having to mask, but I'm grateful that I have found people that will accept that I can't do things a certain way or when things get to be too much.
Also OMG kitty so cute!!!
Also thank god no one got on my case about eye contact. Hell, a good chunk of the time, I'm not looking at the person I'm talking with, and no one has ever called me out because I make it clear I'm engaged and listening. That or I'm looking at some part of their face so it's harder to tell. Again, people who are close are just used to me not looking at them while we're talking and have never given me crap about it.
...Then again, I grew up in a place with a huge East-Asian influence, and if I understand correctly, eye contact is not considered as polite in those cultures as it is in Western (please correct me if I'm wrong).
the thing is i never mask consciously and i only know i was HOURS after being worn down 😭 its what ive made my personality at this point bc otherwise im pretty dull emotionally 99% of the time and i dont want ppl to think im depressed (even if i am lol)
The intro reminded me of Hannah Gadsby's quote, "I have what's called High Functioning Autism, which is a terrible name for what I have. Because it gives the impression that I function highly..."
The earphones thing is very relatable to me. I almost always have them in listening to music or a podcast or something, and people are just so bothered about it. Like, okay, I would get it if I couldn't hear important things, but I can hear people. If I am in a quiet room (which is never really quiet because people are whispering and breathing and shuffling around) I have a terrible time focusing. I mean the US sucks at a lot of things but going through high school with zero accessibility was a nightmare. I am very grateful for my earbuds now.
As someone who is also neurodivergent who's experienced ABA therapy in which i was forced to mask and living in a developing country(in my case, the philippines) with little to no accommodations for us (you'd be hella lucky if you did) it was really difficult for me to act "normal" and constantly being told to suck it up and that my concerns are not important because everyone else has to "deal with it"
Not to mention the fact that i was constantly being gaslit about my pains such as when i ended up being hospitalised when my dad arrived for my 8th birthday and yelled at my mom for just leaving me and telling me I'm overeacting over the fact I'm in so much pain that i couldn't walk, and also it took me so long to find out that I have adenomyosis because my period pains where constantly being brushed off, and currently dealing with my dad's abelism so yeah.... I just wanna get out of this situation
@@artsysparks The unfair thing is that nobody is going to challenge the system on shit like that because most people who have it don't have the energy to fight for it and people who don't have it can't really relate.
Like, I don't have much energy due to chronic fatigue, but I've written whole rants on this type of things only to delete them because I don't want to engage with the subject any further. But that's kind of part of the problem isn't it?
Neurodivergents of the world should unite. I'm not a marxist, I promise.
@@theothertonydutch I've always tried to advocate for better accommodations only to be shut down(mostly by my father) because "the world doesn't work that way" or "it's not realistic" and calling me shit like I'm a snowflake
God Im so sorry you went through that, I hope you do eventually get out of that situation
@@klltsun_2576 i plan to soon, but it saddens me how people like them say that to people like us when the world was already tailored for people like them
Intensely masking my autism, but able bodied, so I loved getting a different experience on this. And yeah, its absolutly not worth it, but also I made it my whole life, I have no idea how to stop, and I don't think I am brave enough to stop. In my self help group there are several autistic people who cant mask at all, and oh boy, they get treated almost exactly the same (badly) but they have so much more energy and they are so much more happier with themselves.
I have ID, I feel like it always enters the room before I do, like everyone knows immediately before even knowing me. It’s always given me a lot of anxiety. I’ve tried to mask it. But that never works. It’s almost always very futile and it always comes out somehow especially when it comes to jobs. I’ve lost a few because of it on top of being harassed.
I’ve realized that even though I can’t always be open about it to many people. Masking it still sometimes keeps me safe. Those people generally aren’t the ones worth spending time with anyways. And that it was probably for the better that I left those jobs. It’s not my job to make people understand. I can only be myself and hope that’s enough for others.
The reason I developed a chronic illness was the fact that I was in crisis mode for years. I think support for teenagers needs to go beyond ‘it’s hormones your fine’.
I have adhd, and being constantly told to sit still when that just wasn’t something I was able to do was horrific. I think I can only really let myself move the way I need to when I’m around people I trust and am comfy with 100%.
this topic is really important to discuss more bc I still don't know what the "right" thing to do is when people both have needs that are in direct opposition. example: Someone needs a service animal to detect a sudden onset of of [insert disability here] but another person is deathly allergic to [insert service animal here] and they both *must be in that location* - whose disability is more / less valid ? who gets priority ? we need to be discussing these things.
Part of why I'm leaving my first full-time job to make my part-time my full. I've had to use both of those at my primary job constantly, and at my second, they're much more flexible, understanding, and friendly regarding my disabilities
"one point one kilometers long and fully asphalt" I had to pause for a massive YIKES
For me masking was something I learned very, very early in life as necessary because most people don't actually care about how you feel and only if you're useful. It sucked, honestly. I used to be the happy positive kid but had to act like I'd bend over for people cause I was a threat to the more egotistic kids.
It's not really healthy especially if you're forced into doing it like me being unlucky to not have stable friend groups that weren't curated to just be echo chambers. Kept ending up with people that couldn't handle me disagreeing with their unhealthy beliefs and now I'm just very tired. These days as an adult I'm just going rampant with what I want, and accepting groups don't last forever helps. Not the most ideal but I'm happier at least.
I was also raised without the socialital expectation to mask. Probably because Swedish and our "Only talk to strangers when necessary" culture. So I also don't like mask consciously, subconsciously I stop myself from stimming in public but otherwise I don't force myself to do/not do anything. My sister, who also is autistic, however tries to force me to mask because it makes her uncomfortable and stressed to see me break those socialital norms. In that case her masking became one of the 'rules' she had to follow and she didn't know for a very long time why she always felt stressed when I didn't hide when I got tired or didn't follow the unspoken rules. It hurt our relationship a lot in our early teens and neither of us really understood anything and no one had diagnosed us with our conditions that would explain it. Nowadays its a lot better even when she heavily encourage me to be polite its better now when we got words to describe things.
in terms of the "grin and bear it " for me its very much a thing but the endometriosis aspect adds to it. I have endo basically and didnt know for the longest time because painful periods were treated as the norm and as a child i was made to feel overdramatic and oversensitive for these moments. Now that im in my 20s my disability has gotten worse and i have to reckon with the fact that this is very much real and i dont need to dismiss myself. Its also shit because its so underesearched, I found out that incredibly painful periods are not normal from a fucking tumblr post, instead of a doctor saying anything to me
Masking is such a curse and blessing. I couldn't have done so much of what I have been able to do and the people I have met if I didn't mask, but it is so exhausting and draining, and to make it worse I can't take it off even when I want to or am alone. I don't know how. As a late-discovered Autistic, I am still wrestling with masking and its benefits and consequences. Both have such profound effects.
Add in other newly-discovered neurodivergent conditions I also mask and chronic pain (either from a physical disability or C-PTSD/trauma) that I have masked so much that I hardly feel it anymore and it just gets so complicated. I can't meet my own needs because I don't even know what they are after a lifetime of heavy masking.
I'm a single mum of 2 ND kids. Was diagnosed ND myself in my 30s. I also have chronic pain. The ND diagnosis did wonders for my mental health. I have learnt to allow myself to not mask 24/7 and not mental punishment myself for not living up to NT standards. The decades of masking practice was great practice and conditioning to grin and bear it. This has lead to certain symptoms being exacerbated because I didn't seek help early enough, or when I did not "looking like I was in that much pain" (I went in and explained things as calmly and clearly as possible - no crying or yelling, cannot do that, hysteria is frowned upon). With the kids I have to be careful not to push myself. I went a bit far during a particularly difficult period for them last year. Then I couldn't change position. I had hurt my back. Going from lying to sitting or sitting to standing, or back again led to excruciating spasms in my back. It felt like labour pains. Being stubborn I didn't cry or yell out. Calmly called the neighbours and the ambulance and got myself out the door so as not to scare the kids. Surprised I didn't crack a tooth with how tighly my jaw was clenched at times. Thankfully there wasn't too much damage. Needed minimal pharmaceutical help and mostly needed to rest and move carefully. There were warning signs, thinking back. I didn't ignore them exactly, they just didn't reach the top of the priority list. They do now. That evening was terrifying. Not even focused on myself but on my children. Something I need to work on I know. I am consciously listening to my body more now. Not letting myself push through like I was. Masking and grin and bear it both take such a toll, that few people who haven't lived it can appreciate.
My solution to this as an autistic man is to stop appeasing a society that wants us dead anyway, I stopped masking completely and never did it again. If others are not happy with that, I am not going to suppress myself anymore to appeal to them when they are going to hate me anyway.
The more videos I watch, the happier I am to learn all these things. My mom deals with chronic back pain thanks to a surgery that went wrong years ago and I think she's probably "bearing" it a lot of the time, especially since my dad gets really annoyed when she complains "too much" about it. I can think of a lot of days where she got home and she just collapsed on the bed and started crying because of the pain. The thing is, I'll probably deal with the same pain one day because the surgery only sped up the decline of a spine anomaly that I inherited. I'm happy to have learned more through this video, maybe I can help my mom better and maybe even myself one day.
i have chronic pain and didn't realise till i was like 18. your story reminds me of the time i went to NCS (british government funded youth scheme, i do not recommend) and they had us hiking hills in scotland, the whole time i was lagging behind in agony, not being heard. and i still feel bad whenever people have to slow down for me to keep up. it's nuts but you hit the nail on the head.
The drawing turned out pretty cute🥰
I'm also a Fin and learned to mask very late. I see it more as a game than a necessity, I'm an extrovert and I enjoy studying how normies act. At times I feel like an astronaut exploring an alien planet. It can get tiresome but then I hide in my hobbit-hole from a month up to 100 days to recharge what feels like my sanity/grasp on reality. It's different from my social battery. I would have never survived in a country like the us growing up, that's for sure. I love Finland and our live-and-let-live culture.
May everyone struggling with balancing masking and their real self find a happy medium, like a shelf-like ledge, from which to survey the sea of normies as they run by like a hoard of spooked wilder beasts toward the latest trends. It's really funny stuff to watch from up here.
Wildebeest. Now I want to watch the Lion King again because let's be fair: Scar looking down on the destroyed monarchy hits different when you're a neurodivergent anti-monarchist.
@@theothertonydutch lol exactly. I never saw the original as a kid bc I grew up on shitty disney sequels exclusively, but I always vibed with scar xD I mean honestly, the guy just wanted some agnolagement, his given name was "trash" for gods's sake xD
@@catxtrallways Oh wow that's horrifying.
From my privileged position as a student in finland, I find it quite amusing to trick usians to yell at me for being a burden on society for not working. It's fun from here but I can't imagin living in such horror every day. I hope you are safe from the irrationality of those who make the silly rules
I'm autistic with various chronic issues asthma being one of them, My schools which all had well "special needs places " they just forced me to mask hiding things that my own family enjoyed about me. My mother has chronic pain due to her big bridge falling accident going from teen party to teen party back in the 80s. My mom has problems with masking as well to the point I constantly have to be her guardian angel of : hey don't push yourself too hard or, you need a break today I can take care of everything. Hell right now her back has been in more excruciating pain for two weeks currently due to her trying to rearrange a single room which I warned against.
I can relate to every aspect of this story
i have a pair of headphones made for range shooting that has a volume dial that i can turn on or off. when it is on, sudden loud noises get tuned out.
I’ve recently been working on not masking as much after I got my diagnosis, and man I love it. So many memories of my childhood make sense now, I was stimming with my hands constantly but I didn’t even know it was called stimming, I just knew I loved doing it :D I’ve been unmasking more and more around my close friends and it’s been amazing how when I’m around those I’ll trust, I’ll just start stimming without even thinking about it 💀 I’m loving my progress so far :)
As someone with both chronic pain and autism (along with many more things) this hit quite close to home. I grew up in an environment with an autistic parent (only diagnosed recently) and a possibly neurodivergent older brother so I never was forced to be someone I wasn't by my family (school was completely different as it is for too many of us). But also I would grin and bear my pain for years and only got diagnosed with chronic pain (source of it unknown) within the past year
I’m so glad that I’ve found another autistic/ND person that doesn’t/can’t/never learned how to mask. I’m neurodivergent, and over the last few months I’ve seen so many videos of autistic people talking about their experiences with masking and the common thread with almost all of them is that they DID mask, and could do it VERY well. This made me kind of doubt my neurodivergentness (I’m undiagnosed) and made me feel like every autistic person commonly masked, at least to some extent. Now I do mask, but it’s on a pretty microscopic level I would say. But I’m glad that I never really learned how to fully mask, since one of my deepest beliefs is being true to myself, and throwing that belief out the window would not do me very good mentally. Not masking definitely still has its downsides, as I feel constantly judged by my peers for how I act. But what you said about your experiences with autistic masking (or the lack thereof) made me feel really validated for also not masking, so thank you (:
* solidarity fist bump *
I never really learned to mask, either, I just learned some coping mechanisms that made interacting with NTs more doable. Like looking at the person's mouth -> nose -> right eyebrow -> left eyebrow to fake eye contact (nobody has ever realized that I don't look them in the eye), asking a new person questions about themself as a form of "small talk" (I hate actual small talk and am very bad at it), or volunteering to help in the kitchen at parties (doing something practical is a thousand times easier than moving around in a noisy throng trying to have "fun").
I really appreciate the content you make, I didn't realise how bad disabled people and neurodivergent people are treated til I started watching videos like yours. This really helped me change my perspective on "grin and bear it"
Don't know how or why I adopted the "grin and bear it" mindset - maybe a combination of the fear of being left behind and having no reference for what my normal pain and fatigue levels should be - but it's definitely been a huge issue. I would consistently overwork myself to meet the standards of my teachers, and that plus the perfectionism was a huge, regularly occurring disaster. I don't think my teachers fully understood or realized why I needed the accommodations I had in my IEP, because they would always start the semester by telling me to "do however much you think you can do" in the method they wanted. Huge mistake. I never knew when to stop because I was so used to pushing through the pain. Every time this happened my mom had to step in and yell at them to actually follow what the accommodations said (half the work of other students, allow a computer for written assignment, etc), not what their skewed interpretation of it was. Despite my mom standing up for me, I still continue to struggle with this mindset to this day. I just default back onto it without thinking. I have to be reminded that I have ibuprofen, heat pads, massage slippers, and ice packs, and that I'm always allowed to use them.
This is very cute art and a good video
My parents often tell me how off-putting I come off to people because of my social anxiety, so it makes me want to pretend everything is fine if only for their sake. But a family friend (awesome person, love her so much) has told me the contrary, and that people who don't like me for who I am don't deserve my time and effort. It's hard to socialize with other people when I'm terrified of what people think, but a lot of times I'm tired of catering to how everyone wants me to act.
Chronic pain friends! "Growing pains" MY ASS
Aka: why do I feel bad? Pain? This whole time? wHOopsie
you talking about "grin and bear it" has recontextualized some of my past experiences.
The most impactful aspect of my disability is fatigue. It started in college and became more severe over time. I was having no luck finding an effective treatment, but I kept pushing through work and school hoping I would find a treatment and have work and school be positive experiences again. But that never happened. I did start winding things down -- reducing courses then dropping out of college, but I was doing the smallest possible changes available to me and still pushing way past what was healthy, all with the expectation that the right medication would show up at some point. Eventually, I left my job (which was also the smallest change available to me) and applied for US disability pay. I was told to expect to need to file an appeal just because a lot of disabled people need to, but I was approved with the initial application and the approval paperwork essentially said I could've applied 2 years earlier and been approved. That put the severity of my condition into perspective, but it took your video for me to really second guess my handling of it.
I live with my mother now, and despite being vastly less able than I was as a teen, my mother keeps putting herself in situations where she'll be in trouble unless I can grin and bear through a task that is significantly beyond what I should be doing -- stuff like spending hours helping move the house siding she bought into the garage so she can return the trailer it was on, or spending hours helping paint a room (I don't remember why that one was urgent). When moving the siding, there were several times where I almost collapsed while elevated above concrete or asphalt. But I kept going because I was expected to.
Funnily enough, I didn’t realize I masked until I got medicated for my anxiety. I spent a lot of time dedicating energy to studying my surroundings, checking for any possible dangers, doing rituals to reassure myself in an ocd-like manner, etc.
When I wasn’t so much worrying about panic attacks and anxiety attacks, I realized a lot of autistic tendencies I had. I couldn’t stand looking people in the eyes, I did t-rex arms, I verbally stimmed a lot, I have a very flat and neutral voice, I get sensory issues, I don’t register pain well, etc. Then I realized even then I was masking a lot more than that when interacting with others.
Though, since I’ve always been the ‘weird kid’ either way, I kind of have developed a low sense of care for others perception of me. I’ve been hard at work unmasking and tbh, people don’t care as much as you’d think they would, and the ones that do? They ain’t worth the time. I do still mask and having some masking tendencies, but I’ve caring a lot more for myself then I did for a while.
I don’t see who I am as a problem, it’s just that the world didn’t see it as something they should adjust to with me, I suppose. It’s interesting and irritating, but I’m doing well.
I whent on a hike like a year before I nearly died because of heart failure, I vommited like twice and just kept going? My dad was on this hike and where my scout leaders , Yee then I had a stroke like a year latter , I was such a people pleaser it actually almost killed me on many occasions ,
Before my brain ingury, like I whent to center parcs and cycled the whole thing , like a month before my stroke, why , how ???
I feel this.
I'm able-bodied. All of my pain is under the surface, so no one really believes me when I complain or ask for help. I struggle to build any muscle, and I have some undefined breathing issues. I've had these issues since I was a kid. Everyone thought I was just lazy when I opened up about it.
Then, the abdominal cramps became a nightmare. 7 days of every month were taken up by either pain, or an apprehensive expectation of it. Pain strong enough to make getting up feel impossible, strong enough that one bad move could put me on the ground. No one believed me. I was just "trying to get out of gym class." Surprise surprise, I started coping a lot better as a young adult, when I was allowed to buy my own painkillers (I have to take above the average amount for them to have any effect).
On the other hand, I have a weird relationship with masking. I wasn't diagnosed, and wasn't consciously aware I was doing it most of the time. I know I tried to study behaviour, and my interest in psychology is not lost on me anymore. I masked all over the place. I was as quiet and 'proper' and neurotypical-presenting as possible, because it had been one of the only things I had ever received praise for. Now that I'm aware of it, I don't mask nearly as much anymore. I'm too tired to.
(I also had to reformat this whole post when I reread it and realized I was oversharing waaay more than I needed to in order to get my point across, so... there's that.)
People can not be considered inconvenient for being different. Amen.
Well, they can be considered inconvenient for being different. People consider people being different all the time. It's wrong though.
(Sorry, being pedantic is part of being ND)
11:06 massive eyeroll and the fact my mom seems to believe this about my "not quite sensory overload but pretty much sensory overload" tendencies with loud pitchy crowds well,
it's frustrating as you probably guessed.
So far I know I have adhd and I might have a little autism but the waitlist for testing is like a year long here in the US so um..
I guess I'll be patient🤷♂️
I have a learning disability and I was basically taught not to ask for accommodations unless I *really* needed them (my disability mostly effected my fluency, so I think that was their way of trying to get my fluency up and not have me fall behind in school). Because of this, I pushed my self way too hard in middle school, especially the year that I had a math teacher who was convinced I was faking my disability in order to "play the system," and by high school, I was literally cause myself to be sick I was so stressed about school. Luckily, my resource teacher in high school had me start to figure out how to advocate for myself and how to speak up for myself. Now that I'm in college, I still have anxiety and have to unlearn some of those behaviors, but I'm much more equipped for putting my foot down and asking for the extended time I need for assignments (and I'm helping some of my friends learn how to do that too). I've recently officially gotten diagnosed with Depression, Anxiety, and (believe it or not) ADHD, but if society hadn't taught me that having a learning disability was a bad thing, I probably could've avoided Depression and Anxiety.
Schools should treat disabled people better. Lots of discrimination in those places.
Your drawing is beautiful.
Masking is so fucked, because you can meet someone and start vibing with them, and then you stop masking, and then they're suddenly not interested in interacting with you anymore.
There are two evils here what you mentioned and…
When you think after masking your class will FINALLY like you but… they still don’t.
I just say “I’m not comfortable handshakes, but I’ll give you an AIR SHAKE” (mining a handshake but not touching)
Also the whole “yuck, disabled people, QUICK, MAKE THEM HIDE! mentality of the world is, say it with me, ABLISM!! That is my BIGGEST trigger to make me go from lap dog mellow, to RAMPAGING HEARD OF BULLS!
I have never masked to "fit in" because frankly we learned at a very young age that it's not even possible.
I do however mask so that no one notices our switches and that's not even a conscous thing for us, we don't even realize we're doing it, it's just a symptom of having DID.
The one time someone in our system did try to mask to fit in with the popular kids at school at not get bullied for being different they simply found other reasons to bully us instead and we quickly realized it wasn't worth the effort to pretend to be something we're not to impress others.
We mask not to impress but to protect ourselves from potential harm.
Also I have a simular story from High School except mine doesn't end with the teacher appologizing. We took a run off campus into an area I wasn't entirely familiar with. I had grown up in this city all my life and the P.E. couldn't believe that I wouldn't be familiar with a random residential neighborhood where I knew exactly one person who lived there but hadn't actually been there since I was 4 years old. The neighborhood was also full of houses and streets that all looked the same which made it very easy to get lost in.
On top of that, the school was very much aware of the fact that I can't run and would never be able to keep up with the rest of the class. I lost sight of the coach and most of the class except for one friend who stayed behind with me and also wouldn't have been able to keep up anyway cause of his athema. He had to stop several times to use his inhaler and catch his breath. We had gotten totally lost and by the time we made it back to school class had already ended, we missed our lunch period, and the coach was just standing there waiting to yell at us, didn't even send anyone to look for us just assumed we ran off on purpose and had no idea we were in panic mode, had given up on even trying to catch up with the class and had spent that entire time just back tracing our steps so we could find our way back to the school.
I don't think they even do the off campus run anymore after that incident. It use to be a common thing to see teens in P.E. uniforms running through the city but I haven't seen that happen since I graduated.
As always, thank you for speaking about those topics.
Your content is useful for me, as it helps me (or will potentially help me) to properly treat people that are different from me. I always try to act polite and kind, but sometimes it's very easy to get things wrong, when one is ill-informed. So content creators like you are very helpful.
I wish such stuff was a mandatory school lesson... The whole society would profit if we learned from a young age, to accept that people are all different and what that can entail and how to deal with it. Not to mention, it might make it easier for some kid to recognize themselves in that and maybe get a diagnozis earlier in life, which can get them the help they need too...
My masking came in when i was a teen and i also wanted to be social and not always alone, so i learned how to be around older and teens that were at my age but also adults. Also i learned how be mature but it got mixed in with learning how to mask. All of which i have learn through experience and tips from my cousins and Tv shows and Films.
"People aren't inconvenient for having different needs."
I whole heartedly agree and understand what you mean by grin and bear it too. I've been through a lot and was always ill a lot too and constantly told I was faking it or blamed for being ill or guilted by family for missing school (plus told to hide injuries from home cos no one would believe me and told by a teacher not to tell family about the bullying at school, so it's a big mental mess of a combination of things, lol), so now I have a hard time even trusting myself when I'm ill or dealing with any of my myriad of other issues. I know it's real, but it's hard to believe myself and not worry I'm just making it all up when so many people didn't in my past (I've been called a hypochondriac multiple times, so have anxiety about literally being one), even when I do believe myself I have a tendency to grin and bear and hardly ever take painkillers. Someone has to literally tell me multiple times before I will and I'm in constant pain. Pain is just normal for me, so I just deal with it and have had it so long that I honestly don't remember what it was like to be painfree anymore. And when you have multiple things wrong with you too, people are less likely to believe any of it is real, when if you have one thing, you tend to have a load of other things too because it can contribute to other things and just make things pile up...
I hope you're doing better and continue to try and do your best for yourself, so you can live your best life for yourself, not to make other peoples lives better. 🥰 💗
Your grin and bear it story reminds me of some of the absolute nonsense I managed to get myself into as a teenager via the philosophy of a stiff upper lip, which ruined my ability to process negative emotions enough to require therapy about a decade and a half later.
Masking, as far as I can tell, as an apparently Neurotypical individual, sounds like a potentially useful situational coping mechanism. But like most short-term, situational responses it can do serious damage if you have to use it all the time.
I've learned very early on that other people don't feel what I feel and therefor are generally wrong about me and thus should not be trusted or relied on for what I need unless they have proven otherwise (for example, i trust my doctor and my dentist lol).
hi, i'm autistic and have chronic headaches and your story just unlock some memories that i had burrieed deep in my brain and also helped me make a connection i think i have conditioned myself not to make. I've hated walking, especially long distances, for a very long time (i'm 17 and my headaches started when i was 7/8), but i have never made a connection between the two, for some reason. not it seems so bleatent. before my pain problems started i was a very active child (i also have adhd), went to multiple dance classes, i couldn't sit still. but then boom. from 100 it went to maybe 40 at best. like, i knew that physical activity makes my pain worse, but it just never clicked that that's why. i distinctly remember multiple camps that i went on that i remember badly, and like horrifically badly, and every event that caused it is caused by my pain. the unlocked memory is when i was on a sailing camp, feeling absolutely terrible and i had been excusing myself with headaches from activities, but i "looked okay", so nothing could be bad, yeah? so they stoped excusing me from activities. i was feeling so bad, that i faked vomiting 7 times just to get a moment off. of course they caught on, that i didn't in fact vomit 7 times and sat me down in a circle (i.e. me and like 5 adults) and accused of being a liar, which i was, but i was just a helpless 11-year-old kid. one of my worst memories tbh. but my brain completely dissacociated pain with the experience, even though it was the direct cause. and all of that because i looked fine. i'm starting to see a pattern in so many of my memories. thank you. now i feel so much less guilty. thank you
I absolutely feel sometimes I spend too much time "grin and bear"-ing things wrt my own disabilities. Oof. Thank you for talking about this topic, it feels like my brain has sorted a few things out.
Also Heartsword Speedpaint!!!!!
I’m loving seeing so many Neurodiverse peers in the comments!! Reading your stories is really cool and I hope you’re all comfy and safe
TW for suicidal ideation:
I grew up on the spectrum and from a very early time my elementary school life was a living hell. When I found out I was autistic and vaguely what that meant my peers didn’t believe me and demanded I prove it to them which of course I couldn’t do at the time, after a lot of bullying and teachers abusing their power I ended up having an outburst in front of all of my classmates and told them all I didn’t want to be alive anymore. Naturally my mom and a social worker were called and my mom had to tell me that if I was serious that I’d be taken away from her. (She did nothing wrong, the school actively hid things from her and I had no way of proving it to her) so I ended up telling the social worker I was just having a “Bad Day” so they could go away. and thus up until my anxiety diagnosis and just a lot of growing up, I learned that expressing pain was dangerous and it just became easier to bottle things up until I mentally couldn’t anymore. Luckily I’m proud to say I feel like I’m someone younger me could rely on and be proud of now that I’m dealing with these things right away.
I hope one day we’ll get to a point where we aren’t teaching our children to mask and that it’s ok to just be, to just exist with your needs and not feel like less for needing support in some capacity.
Whether you got this far or not, I hope you’re taking good care of yourself. Have a cookie 🍪
Off topic, but the art is adorable!
I’m not disabled or notably nurodivergent but I definitely developed a grin and bear it attitude towards my physical and mental issues. I’m not shure what’s the worst times, but I have a few that pop up in my mind, two times during PE (physical education or Gym) I almost blacked out and said nothing. And another thing.
Once was during a mile and I was a good stretch away from a teacher so I continued and said I would say somthing then, by then my vision and general body weakness seemed back to normal and I said nothing because it was “all fine now”.
The second was when we were doing some asphalt hockey practices (during pe we rotated sports). I remember it being hot that day (I lived in Southern California so it would’ve been in the High 80s°F/ arround 29°C)(we went inside/canceled at 90°F/32.2 °c) We were split up in rows and moved the puck arround some cones and back in order for the activity. The teacher was at the mid point in the cones. (Not far distance). I was waiting in line when my legs started to feel weak and my vision started closing in and fading to black. I again decided to wait because the teacher was right there. Eventually as I was waiting my legs grew so week I had to lean on the hockey stick to hold myself up, and my vision was fully gone. (This lasted a couple of seconds and if I didn’t have the hockey stick I would’ve fallen to the floor) the feeling in my legs and vision came back soon enough and it was my turn, I went across, (my vision still a bit closed in) and I didn’t say anything to the teacher… I should’ve likely said somthing considering it was likely heat stroke/dehydration issues, and my teacher should’ve likely said somthing.
The other notable moment was that in high school I had a tooth aching for a long time, when I pressured it by clenching a tooth against it it wouldn’t hurt. In doing this eventually the tooth broke, and it stoped hurting. (Like big ol chunk off and it was verry apparent it was a bad cavity, I have bad time remembering to brush/floss) eventually my mother realized that she hadn’t taken us to the dentist for a few years and got us set up with a new office right away, (I might have brought it up, not shure). Anywho, on the visit I had few other smaller cavities, and the bad tooth needed a root canal, the dentist and my mother were shocked I said nothing. I got told I likely have a higher pain tolerance because they said I should be feeling it all the time. Anywho yeaaaaaa
I also have a years long shoulder pain that comes and goes (mostly stays)… I think that counts as chronic…. That’s another thing with a different can of worms that includes doctor issues. And me actually saying things…
Not good to say the least, even better is I’m also in the “gifted smart kid” club, so there is also that interfering with asking for help… :b
I feel like I always learn so much with your videos. I’m autistic but don’t have experience with chronic pain or other disabilities. I’m familiar with masking and didn’t realize I was doing it until I got diagnosed recently. I’ve been trying to unmask more, trying to be aware of my sensory and social needs and letting myself stim freely.
I've spent 47 years trying to fit in and failing miserably. I don't try any more. Take me as I am or go away.
Also, I've always thought Finnish social behavior would be so much easier to deal with than what's expected here in the US
Easier / better than in the US does not equal easy or good. Just (somewhat) less terrible.
Source: I am a physically disabled & neurodivergent Finn with family and friends in the US
@@ronjaj.addams-ramstedt1023 yeah, I guess better than the US is setting the bar really low
Oh god the panic texting is something I do
Lol
i just recently quit a dishwashing job i've had for about 2 years. Frequently enough id get so overwhelmed id mentally and physically shut down, going at a snails pace till i got it done and could leave. sometimes itd be so bad that id puke and cry. when it wasnt too busy id be allowed to go sit down for like 15 min, maybe 30. then people would assume im good to go. Sometimes i would be, but sometimes id still be a little slow. and people would be upset with me because "you just had a break" and "its really busy we need you to be putting in more effort". Id feel awful, id say to myself "i cant work here anymore, if we dont get a second dishwasher this is going to kill me".
then id go home, think to myself "i need to eat, it took me a solid 2 years of sending out all the resumes i could every day to get this job. Itll be fine, ill get used to it."
But I never did. Sometimes id have a good week, a good month even, and Id think "this isnt so bad". but then 8 hrs later id be a jittering, incorporeal mess. People would be upset with me, asking me why im not doing enough. and id say to myself, "i cant work here anymore, this is going to kill me".
im hoping i can get a job at a small, downtown coffee shop with like, 2 tables. or an adult store. somewhere chill. one of the local hobbyshops would be fun