What does it mean to be high-masking?
Everyone with relatively "normal" social awareness understands that they need to calibrate their dress, behavior, and manner of speaking to fit the context of their interaction. For example, what one wears and how one speaks at a formal event or job interview is, in most cases, going to differ from when one is casually spending time with close friends. This is called adapting, NOT masking. Masking involves hiding/suppressing one's natural way of thinking and being in the world out of fear of significant negative consequences. It is a complex trauma response developed in childhood/youth and gradually refined over years of trial and error, observing other people, and/or receiving coaching or "therapies" that reward masking behaviors and punish being one's authentic self.
Masking is fear-based, anxiety-producing, and mentally exhausting. Imagine, for example, trying to learn a language that is foreign to you. In one scenario, you do so because of the social and/or economic opportunities it would bring. In the other, you perceive that your life depends on not only learning this language but consistently passing as a native speaker from that country. You are acutely aware at all times that if you slip up in public—mispronounce a word or use an odd sentence structure—you will be exposed and henceforth treated as an undesirable foreigner. Thus, simply making small talk with acquaintances is, for you, a terrifying mental obstacle course. This is masking.
In the context of neurodivergence, masking is when one attempts to pass as neurotypical by consciously using rehearsed scripts, rules, and formulas to mimic behaviors and conversational patterns that neurotypicals use instinctively. Not all neurodivergents are capable of successfully masking, and those who do so develop health problems (e.g., acute anxiety, depression, digestive issues, etc.) from the stress it puts on their nervous system. High-maskers tend to eventually hit burnout, resulting in "skills regression" and a lowered life expectancy.
How did I figure out that I'm high-masking?
After a lifetime of trying to articulate how tiring most social interactions are for me and being told "everyone feels that way," I found and took the CAT-Q (Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire), which finally gave me quantitative data that what I was experiencing was well beyond the range of typical. The CAT-Q is a way of measuring the amount of mental energy a person exerts attempting to mask their autistic traits. My total score on the CAT-Q was 152. For comparison, below are average scores from a study that was done. In other words, I have been devoting so much of my bandwidth to masking that I'm on the far end of the bell curve, perhaps even an outlier.
Who is the Taylor behind the mask?
I've spent this past year exploring that question, and I will share more publicly if/as I feel ready to do so. I'll begin with talking more generally about the commonalities among monotropes.
As masking is a safety-seeking strategy, I have had to be strategic about where and when to remove the mask and experience being me in public. Some settings will frankly always be too unsafe, and so in those the mask must remain on firmly. However, for the sake of my overall health, I don't wear it nearly as much as I did in the past. I've been taking a hard pass on non-obligatory masking situations—which can look a lot like me becoming more of a hermit—, and, among people I decide to give a chance or in settings where it doesn't matter to me what observers may think, I have been gradually lowering the mask. The deliberate unmasking is first paired with conversations with the people I want in my life about the changes they will probably notice in me and how to make sense of them.
Note: As neurodivergents tend to gravitate to fellow neurodivergents, this conversation frequently becomes liberating for others as well. I recently took a risk and came out as a high-masking monotrope to a small casual gathering of my husband's colleagues, and what could have gone poorly (sometimes it does; hence it is a gamble) became a beautiful moment where a room full of closeted neurodivergents dropped their masks and started sharing authentically about their own struggles.
What does monotropic mean?
One could write dissertations on this question, so I’ve created/memorized this script to help keep me from going into a flow state when answering: Monotropic people’s brains are wired so that when we begin to think/talk about a subject that greatly interests us, we experience an all-encompassing pull into a hyper-focus flow state. This has its benefits, as it gives us the ability to excel at research and identify connections and patterns that others have not noticed. Monotropic artists can create amazing innovative things with such levels of focus. It does, however, have a downside. The flow state creates a tunnel effect, making it difficult to simultaneously pay attention to off-topic inputs (think of the stereotypical absentminded professor). Most neurotypicals misunderstand/interpret the nature of flow states (read more about the double-empathy problem), leading monotropes to experience repeated social rejection for this neuro-difference, often causing us to develop Complex PTSD.
Because of our flow-state nature, monotropes find the ping-pong exercise of small talk tiring (and pointless) and prefer what we call "info dumping" conversations, where we take turns sharing in detail about topics we find interesting/important. Despite the stereotype of us being poor communicators, studies have shown that verbal monotropes are actually better at having meaningful conversations than neurotypicals, provided that each group is speaking with members of their own neuro-type.
People are born with monotropic minds primarily because at least one close genetic relative is monotropic. Monotropes also tend to marry other monotropes and have monotropic best friends, which explains why we are currently seeing a tidal wave of adults figuring out that they are high-masking monotropes (all it takes is one monotrope to share their discovery with their favorite people, and the word spreads exponentially).
Monotropes are part of a family of neurodivergents, and scholars are still figuring out who all belongs under the monotrope umbrella. We know for certain that it includes autistics and ADHDers (i.e. monotropes with executive dysfunction), and increasingly folks are realizing that they are AuDHD (a autism-ADHD combo), forcing researchers to rethink their categories. Some scholars argue that there is a third category of monotropes that is being called "gifted," but there is great debate if there is such a thing as a gifted monotrope who isn't also a high-masking autistic and/or ADHDer.
A few additional resources
I've spent a large chunk of today in a flow state writing this blog post, and it is now time to retrieve my offspring from school. So, I leave you with some additional links to begin your journey down this rabbit hole:
I created a FB group, Monotropic Me, for people interested in seeing what posts from others I've seen on the topic and wanted to share.
For more on monotropism as a theory and who first developed it, start with this link.
To take the monotropism assessment for free, start here.
Monotropic Love Languages: I should write more on this at some point, but for now enjoy this article someone else wrote based on growing grassroots consensus on the topic.
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