What I’ve been pondering a lot since my self-diagnosis, and subsequently my formal diagnosis, is where does my mask end and the real me begin? I’ve obviously been thinking about that in a personal sense, but also in my professional life.
I was at a conference recently and I gave a keynote presentation. I find myself tending towards giving a ‘performance’ during a presentation, I suppose everyone does to some extent as that is the purpose of delivering something to a group of people. In the process of giving a keynote presentation I think about what I am going to say, what visual aids I want to use, the way in which I use my voice, and how I position my body, and where I make eye contact with the audience. I usually reherse the presentation, and although I don’t script my words, I do think carefully about what I want to say and have some particular concepts, key phrases or points that I know I want to get across.
I realised how much of that keynote delivery was similar to my daily masking ‘performance’. I am constantly aware of what I am doing with my body. I am deliberate with my use of eye contact. I sometimes script what I want to say. I sometimes rehearse how I think a conversation might develop. I am concious about modulating the tone of my voice to avoid sounding monotone.
If you are not familiar with the term ‘masking’ in relation to neurodivergent people, masking is the behaviours that a person uses to hide or suppress their neurodivergent characteristics. That can include mimicking perceived neurotypical behaviours to try and pass as ‘normal’ and meet the societal expectations for behaviours.
I am high masking (one of the reasons why I’ve got to my 40’s before even considering that I might be neurodivergent!) and I have carried out this work performance and work masking for every day of my entire working life. Of course it is only recently where I realise this is not the typical experience. While neurotypical colleagues may have some concious awareness of their professional behaviours it is not likely to reach the extent of my concious awareness that I feel I must have over everything I say, every little thing that my body is doing.
The questions I find asking myself now, is where does the mask end and where does the real me start? How do professional behaviours interface with all of this? I feel it is more of a disentangling the mask than it is simply lifting, dropping or even swapping the mask. I really don’t know where to start.