My thoughts on masking and Neurodiversity/Mental Health.

Hello all! Another day! I actually thought it was Saturday because in England it is a public holiday! Wowee! And it is also raining! Wow, wow. Anyway, here I am again, Simon. Some random bald-headed guy from the north of England who likes to share and be as transparent as possible. Although if I was fully transparent, I'd be here recording for the next 10 years because there is so much to talk about. 

I believe sharing about my own experiences of dealing with mental illness and neurodiversity.

So neurodiversity for me is having a completely differently wired brain, or whatever that means. I am still navigating neurodiversity, what it means. However, the good thing is I enjoy exploring and educating myself, finding out, listening to other people, reading, speaking to professionals. 

Now one of the things that comes up a lot around neurodiversity is something called masking.

Masking. Now actually when I've read about my own version of masking, the thing is we all have our own versions, which is okay, of what masking is. When I hear about masking, and this is around neurodiversity, however I believe it's around society, I would call masking, hiding. 

Hiding symptoms and who I am. Because I come from my own perspective. What other people believe masking is, is absolutely correct for them. My feelings around masking are that I utilised hiding a lot of things, because in childhood it served me a purpose to not speak up, to not talk too much about myself, to not talk about what was going on, because I feared abuse, bullying, and lots of other extremely difficult things. However that went into adulthood, I continued it because it became a belief system. 

We all have a belief system formed either, depends what you believe, generational, pre-birth, whilst you're being carried, and then in childhood. That belief system, unless there's some kind of intervention, will continue into adulthood. Hence why a lot of behaviours and difficulties don't seem to appear, or are properly looked at, or even start to be understood until one is an adult. 

Although I do believe looking at children is getting a little bit better. However the difficulty is, is if you are masking, it could probably mean that you look okay, because people have learned to look okay, and be okay. Now for me, my belief is that there is a balance when discussing mental illness, or these difficulties that I manage. 

Too little can mean how can friends support me, how do professionals support me, if I am not speaking up. I see it as my responsibility, nobody else's. My responsibility is to speak up for what I require, the support I require, how I would like to be treated, healthy boundaries, asking people how to treat me, and not to treat me. 

And the more that I do that and speak up, the more that people may be able to have understanding, have empathy, show concern, and support me. And there are a number of friends who I don't aim, I don't actually aim to hide anything. 

However, my belief is, for instance, on social media, is that sometimes it can go too far, and then people may question it. The amount of times I've, I actually, for transparency, have watched somebody and thought, hmm, is that a little bit too much? However it's not for me to choose, or even judge, whether somebody is speaking too much, or whether they are speaking too little. 

Again, for me, it's a spectrum, and we are all at very different places, and we will all be at the right place for where we are meant to be. 

Some of us have done more work, some of us have healed more, some of us are starting that journey, some are not doing that healing work. It goes without judgment in that way. 

Masking for me has become a learned behaviour around stigma. If I speak up, will I lose friends? If I speak up, will somebody make a derogatory comment? If I speak up, will somebody believe me? What will the response be? 

Now the way that I have learned to deal with this is to be as transparent as I believe I can be to help people believe. So not saying too much like, hey I want to kill myself today, which may scare some people. Also not saying too little. 

How people react to me now being transparent. Now I don't believe people can have it both ways that don't understand these things. They complain often when people are not speaking up, saying how can I support you for not speaking up, and then when some people like myself and others speak up, they then get told, hey maybe you shouldn't speak about that. 

Hence for me it comes down to a very personal view of how much you show, how much you do not show. Because that can be dependent on partners, friends, family, work, lifestyle, belief systems. It can be down to so many things and what I ask people to do is, hey be as transparent as you can. 

Maybe don't complain if people are not able to support you, because if you aren't showing symptoms, showing what's going on, telling, asking, communicating, educating people about what's going on, well how can they fully support you. 

So for me I aim to find that middle ground balance of showing what I believe is appropriate to do some good, and not showing so much that it can become overwhelming for people. Imagine me trying to describe 14, 15, 16 symptoms, which is why I'm doing this, so that I can each day maybe share something different about symptoms. 

People can listen in their own way, they can ask questions, people can come and ask me questions, I will happily go and record something to educate people. So masking probably has served a lot of people to keep them alive. 

What I wonder is, or the point I got to was, is masking helping me as an adult? Is masking helping me get the correct support that I require? The correct people around me? Is it getting me to the best place? 

Masking doesn't fully help me. However again, these are all my own thoughts. Everybody has their own thoughts and everybody is correct about their own thoughts and belief systems, which is why I come from that I perspective and sharing what I believe to be true. Anyway, until next time.