What’s normal? What is typical, when so many of us hide who we are and therefore hide so much of the human condition itself? Normal has always been challenged but the perception of normal is now rapidly changing whether people like it or agree with it—or not.
There is a difference between someone who identifies as autistic and someone who is diagnosed with Austism Spectrum Disorder (previously known as Asperger’s). Autism, ADHD, and several other ‘invisible’ struggles present differently in women. Recent and more inclusive studies support the reality.
It isn’t just my reality, it’s the reality of many people. It is possible to be autistic without having it categorised as a disorder according to outdated criteria based on young and adolescent white males. In some ways this might be a good thing; it means a person doesn’t get saddled with another label. In other instances, an individual might be misdiagnosed for lack of a more accurate diagnosis due to ill-fitting criteria. The criteria remains unchanged because the research hasn’t yet been supported for females or people of colour or basically anyone diverse enough to not fit into one tiny box.
On a personal level, this is especially difficult when a misdiagnosis comes with additional stigma and zero support alongside contending with functional struggle itself and also the misidentification issues that crop up when there is relatability with a community that a lack of a formal diagnosis can disrupt.
Having said that, any formal (mental health) diagnosis comes with stigma and sometimes, what it comes down to, at least for me, is finding solace in community where possible and finding courage in myself, sometimes through shared experience, to authentically identify no matter what others perceive me to be.
There is strength in being able to do that. There is a necessity to fully self-assess limits, to pay careful attention to what is rejuvenating and what drains me, and finding a way to balance it.
This only became possible when I dropped the mask. The mask keeps me pushing myself past my limits: ‘that music volume is fine’, ‘yes, I’ll have one more drink’, ‘okay, I’ll meet you this weekend’, ‘I don’t mind’, ‘no thank you, oh, okay then, it’s fine’ (when it’s not). The mask tells me to keep the peace, not rock the boat, to go with the flow because it’s been perpetuated by those around me who needed someone who would do those things because it made it easier for them. Leaving a situation or person, or saying no — over time, this wired my brain to not only mistrust my own judgment but to favour the judgment of someone else (particularly males—damn it, patriarchy!)
Through shared experience, there seems to be a prevailing pattern: most of us have spent a chunk of our childhood and adult lives bending and suppressing (or being oppressed into dismissing) pieces of ourselves to fit in as best we could within culture and society.
I was labelled toxic for making boundaries and standing up for those boundaries, for having an opinion instead of being a yes-woman, for taking time for myself to focus on tasks or projects that are fully my own. In these moments, I, too, became toxic, returning the toxicity that had been given to me and forced upon me. Within those moments, or at some point afterward there is a realisation that most of us are going through these same cycles: trying to stand our ground, figure out what works for us and trying to stand by that. Some of us are lucky enough to have someone in our life to help us through that. Sometimes, these people are taken advantage of in bad ways instead of a reciprocal manner. Sometimes, these people are us, being used, and used up, being taken for granted, becoming enablers. Sometimes, the lengths we go to keep a relationship becomes too exhausting but even when we detach, the risk is still there, elsewhere in our lives: the risk that people might mistreat us, cause mayhem, trigger us intentionally, look for potential opportunities to repeat what is normal for them. And sometimes, it’s still us.
Either way, it becomes necessary to change what is or has become normal—to embrace the atypical—but those around us cannot always see the need behind this. They don’t always understand the quirks between a couple or within a family. And so, their questions become intrusions. Their intrusions become perpetuation of masking we dropped or temporarily put down, and suddenly, we’ve regressed, and the intruders are rewarded with proving their theory that we are as dysfunctional as the stigma tells them we are.
With each stage of recovery comes renewed realisation that I am not broken in a way that cannot be mended, but rather that I have spent too long placing my focus on adjusting and flexing and negating too many of own needs that it taught my brain and body that I was overreacting. What I am doing is addressing the need, and more often than not, I can do so considerately.
I don’t share my story or experience to gain attention or sympathy but to raise awareness, because what happened as a result of this almost involuntary preference for external validation was manipulation and exploitation of me that ate its way through most of my life. It caused regression and exacerbation of mental health struggles which gave way to behaviour I can barely live with having succumbed to. Beyond that, the exploitation and violation itself has been yet more trauma to accept and deal with. The mental, physical, and emotional cost of that is so high that life is… sometimes… almost unbearable.
Without awareness of the long term damage that social masking can cause, we as a society are doomed to repeat the generational cycle that results in what skeptics are now terming an epidemic, when truly, these circumstances are not new; what is happening is that people are more attuned to themselves than before, and are breaking free from the shame that comes with something as basic as self-care.
Self-care ensures that we can keep caring. Negating ourselves eventually causes disruption, not just for ourselves but those around us. When we’re told to ‘keep a lid on it’, ‘deal with our shit’, we throw this about among our kin, creating isolation and more shame. It creates personal responsibility for something that is very much a shared and societal issue. Some of us internalise this, or are expected to beyond the healthy boundary of what is personally responsible.
Sometimes, trauma bonds endure because those who are affected (and that’s all of us humans, by the way—in different measures) rely on one another for understanding and more. But is possible to form healthy attachments with others and one another. It is possible to set healthy boundaries and make good progress amidst chaos. What is sustained becomes key to whether or not a relationship lasts in a healthy way and sometimes the progress of that is as invisible to outsiders as the struggle itself, even though, we are often, ironically, perpetually, the outsiders.
Censorship is being challenged. Shame is being held up to the light. Responsibility is being shared.
Awareness grows.
