What is neurodiversity masking?

Lately, on a deeply philosophical level, I have slowly been changing my mind about masking my neurodiversity. And no, I’m not talking about the face mask we all wear on our faces for protection from COVID-19. However, something about wearing a literal mask in public has forced me to think about this complex issue. It’s also my excuse for not writing anything on this blog for months on end. I wanted to push myself to mask my neurodiversity far less, and I’m still working on what that will look like.

The only real definition out there that I actually like is Neurodivergent Rebel’s definition:

It may also, depending on where you are reading, be called camouflaging because (an) Autistic person will often camouflage their difficulties, their struggles, the things that make them uncomfortable, make them different, or stand out.

Although they are describing what masking looks like for Autistic people, this is a societal pressure that is extremely common amongst all types of neurodiverse people.

In fact, I did a tweet about masking recently. That’s when I found out that a Twitter follower who also has Dyspraxia has had the same experiences with masking:

That’s the thing about masking though. It’s not meant to deceive. It’s meant to adapt to a world that is not neurodiversity friendly enough. I have used masking to do everything from getting by in social situations, to working through yet another zoom call. I have lived with Dyspraxia and known I have Dyspraxia for so many years. At this point, I don’t tell myself “okay, I’m going to mask,” I just do it without thinking about it. Masking happens because the world isn’t accommodating enough. Here’s how it has and hasn’t shown up in the work I do for my clients.

1) Timing and context matter

When a client assigns me a new project, roughly 80-90% of the time they’re stressed out, overwhelmed, and wanted the work done yesterday.

The “finish this yesterday” side of things is often beyond my control. Because I didn’t even know that this project was a thing yesterday. The other ten per cent of the time, people are super chill and say: “just finish this whenever”.

When people are visibly stressed out, and an opportunity hasn’t come up to mention my neurodiversity masking is a necessity. Because all they really care about is the work getting done somehow.

But I can still avoid masking in ways that count.

The best part of my lifestyle is that working remotely puts me in control of my environment. I have worked remotely for so long that I can take all sensory distractions out of my environment. This reduces my chances of information overload while making focus a lot easier.

I talked about why I have worked remotely for such a long time on an episode of That Blind Lads Podcast. I have worked and studied in a lot of different environments, and most of them weren’t ideal places for me to thrive and succeed. Working remotely was the very first time I could focus more on the results, and less on other peoples’ expectations of what my environment should be.

2) Clients with disabilities are the best time to avoid masking

I’m not sure why but a very high percentage of my website editing experiences have involved working with people with disabilities. I never planned for it to be that way.

So I guess it’s my approach as someone who has a disability anyways that makes other members of the disability feel comfortable and at ease. I have thoroughly enjoyed these experiences because not masking is in the best interests of my clients. Clients with disabilities that I haven’t worked with before often worry that I won’t be able to adjust to the challenges of their disability.

Once I say: “guess what, I’m neurodiverse”, and am open about what that actually means their concerns (sometimes) evaporate.

As a person with a disability, I have had nothing but good experiences working with other people with disabilities. Since a shared understanding is much more likely, I rarely have to mask.  For example, this year I did some website editing work for a writing instructor who is also deaf.

Since I don’t know sign language and haven’t worked with a lot of deaf clients communication was the first hurdle we had to address. When the technology that we used to communicate didn’t work, I came up with a quick, creative solution. My solution was based on what was already working best for her. It was nothing too fancy really, just an observation that she was extremely articulate in emails.

So I suggested switching all revision-based communication to text chat platforms and Google Docs. In the end, she was happy with the results. And honestly, that’s all that matters really!

3) The most empowering thing though, about not masking is the opportunity for education

Really, this is one of those: “it depends” circumstances. There are some people that you can never enlighten and educate. I have met far too many people who fall under that category.

Lately, though my negative world view of how people will react to my disability has been challenged. Prior to that though, most of the kind people who “got it” were moms of kids with disabilities. My openness about my Dyspraxia experiences has led to a lot of people realizing that someone they know might live with it.

I love that part of my following and platform.

Often they’re the ones liking and sharing my tweets, updates, and blog posts. And sometimes they pay money for my consulting services or send a referral my way. Or, at the very least they’ll invite me on their podcast. Lately, though, not masking has provided to make more people feel more comfortable with my way of doing things in general.

Sometimes though, I have been open about it, and people have thought that I was making things up. Then I’m reminded of why masking around people can make things so complicated. You hadn’t mentioned it before, so people ask questions and wonder why I didn’t mention this sooner than I did.

But what those people often don’t know is that I am only trying to balance out other parts of my identity, while “getting by” in everyday situations. But so are most people, really. Not everyone makes it easy to say: “I’m Dyspraxic, what up, friend?” My husband made talking about my Dyspraxia easy by our very first date, but that was one of many reasons why it worked out.

My platform’s overall priorities are changed. I don’t want to just continue to get more work. I want to educate and collaborate with others in the process. By doing that and helping people use their digital platform responsibly and tactfully, hopefully, people just like me can seem like a little bit less of an unknown to other people.