What is masking?

Transcript

 Ah, masking. It is a strategy that I, myself, and many other neurodivergent folks use to suppress our autistic traits and blend in with neurotypical society. As a student, I used to mask a whole lot trying to appear as the perfect, quiet and calm student while all chaos was going on inside, and because I was terrified of being labeled as a challenging or problem student, I would suppress everything and mask until I would get home, lash out and break down almost weekly, which was not good for my wellbeing as a student.

While not every autistic person masks, there are a lot of reasons why we do. One of them is to avoid rejection socially, or discrimination. It's also to suppress discomfort we might be feeling in environments that are not inclusive. And it's also, especially in my case, to make sure we're not gonna cause a fuss or draw any type of negative attention.

To help neurodivergent students bring their authentic selves to class, it's really important to understand and embrace neurodiversity and to make it the norm for students to be able to ask for accommodations when they need them. If this was helpful, you're going to love to learn more about our professional development, which we have for schools and districts on socialcipher.com.

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