WHERE TO GET THE BOOK: http://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=F6B31A8DAFD6BD39A5986833E66293E6
Audiobook format (expires 1/27): https://litter.catbox.moe/l3298q.m4b
So, this post will be "Introduction" in the sense that it will introduce us all to the book club and the book, and we will also be covering the introduction. The emotional content is pretty heavy; as such I figured it deserved its own discussion. It's not especially long, but it covers Dr. Price's journey into accepting his autism, and if you're on the spectrum or even just neurodivergent in general you'll probably strongly relate to a lot of what he lays down here. You, like me, may read this chapter and find yourself thinking he's literally me, he just like me, he just like me fr ong no cap
Dr. Price is a transgender social psychologist born in Ohio, who graduated from Loyola University Chicago where he teaches as a professor in continuing studies. He wrote and published Laziness Does Not Exist before this one, and it's also worth a read. In this book, Dr. Price also discusses his gender identity and how there's a very high incidence of gender non-conformity amongst neurodiverse people. So in addition to folks with ADHD and autism, or those with other neurodiversities, it can also benefit LGBT+ folks who have to cover up their true selves for safety or social acceptance.
I plan on making another post about chapter one on Sunday or Monday of next week, depending on whether I can make time, and then one post about each chapter every week or every other week depending on what people's feedback is.
In the intro, Dr. Price discusses his personal and emotional problems, social isolation, autistic self-discovery and research, entry into the autism self-advocacy community, and official diagnosis. He discusses how people who don't fit the stereotype of autism are often neglected by medical professionals. How this neglect harms neurodiverse people of all stripes, and how unmasking can be a key to a full, authentic life. (Here's hoping.)
He describes unmasking as a frightning and, indeed, potentially dangerous prospect, but provides tools throughout for approaching the process and beginning to know yourself, find where the mask ends and you begin, and believe that the person underneath is worth knowing in the first place.
First, discussion questions:
- What interested you in this book club?
- Are you neurodiverse? Do you know someone who is?
- What stood out to you about the introduction? Any choice quotes? Anything you relate to?
He ends with an exercise called the Values-Based Integration Process, which we'll go over below.
VALUES-BASED INTEGRATION PROCESS (by Heather R Morgan) STEP ONE
"Think of five moments in your life where you felt like you were FULLY ALIVE. Try to find moments throughout your life (childhood, adolescence, adulthood, school, work, vacation, hobbies)
Some of the moments might leave you with a sense of awe and wonder -- 'Wow, if all of life was like that, it would be amazing!'
Some of the moments might leave you feeling deeply recharged and ready to face the next challenge, or satisfied and fulfilled."
The books says to write it down in as much detail as possible, but I don't actually expect anyone to post all that stuff here. Just a personal exercise to get the juices flowing. I'll post some of my own personal thoughts in a comment below.
CARCOSA@hexbear.net , I was asked to tag you for a sticky on this. I think a few mods are in my tag list as well if you can't get to it.
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That's understandable.
I participated in the training that Heather Morgan authored/delivered which the book's exercise is a distillation of and it was challenging for me as well (I have a pretty extensive history of childhood trauma).
What I'd encourage you to do is to not focus so much on coming up with 5 but instead just try to come up with a couple. They don't need to be some huge watershed moments in your life, they can also be "small" experiences that resonated with you.
I can elaborate on the purpose of this exercise if you feel like understanding it better would be helpful for you.
It might be worth discussing this exercise with someone who you trust because if you're high masking or you're carrying a lot of trauma then it can be difficult to recall moments where you've experienced this in your life but talking it through with another person might be helpful.
Do you think you could DM me that elaboration when you get the opportunity.
I was planning on discussing this with someone else yes, but the suggestion is still vwery much appreciated. Thank you a lot for your input
[CW: mild discussions of child abuse used in the context of analogy]
Sure, I'm about to sleep and I'm a bit flat today so if there's anything I have realised that I've missed I'll post another comment so you'll get notified but also feel free to ask if I'm not being as clear as you need.
I'm going to put the explanation for the process here. I guess spoiler warning(?) but tbh there's nothing that will get spoiled by understanding the process better unless someone is planning to intentionally sabotage a self-conducted exercise but if that's the case then there's bigger stuff to worry about than encountering a spoiler for this.
So the heart of the exercise is based on the understanding that masking is a fundamental disconnection from your "authentic" self (I hate that term but we're going to use it for shorthand in this case.)
This fundamental disconnection from yourself leaves you feeling a variety of negative things - being without direction or purpose, feelings of emptiness or meaninglessness, depression, anxiety etc. and ultimately doing things not from a place of what you need, what you want, and what is in line with your true values but instead it's doing things from a place of internalised expectations placed upon you by others (individuals, family, community, society, the media etc.)
The opposite of this is feeling a strong connection to your authentic self and doing things that are in harmony with yourself, your needs, your desires, and your values.
What comes from this strong connection to your authentic self and acting upon it is feeling enlivened, something that is likely quite rare for a late-diagnosed or undiagnosed autistic adult.
To try to connect a person who is high-masking to their authentic selves is difficult because each facet of their masking is typically very strongly associated with external expectations, even if they've been internalised by the individual, and so asking a high-masking autistic person "What is most important to you?" is a bit like asking an abused child what a healthy relationship looks like - you're going to get answers that are primarily filtered through their experience (either of abuse or of masking) and what has developed in response to that rather than something deeper.
So for a high-masking autistic person, if you asked them straight up what they value then they're very inclined to give you answers that come from a place of meeting the expectations of others or ways to avoid experiencing rejection/ridicule/humiliation etc. from others.
This isn't really a connection to the authentic self, however. This would just be an exercise in articulating the necessity for masking and the reasons why masking is important. (Obviously this is the complete opposite of what the exercise is supposed to achieve.)
As an analogy, an abused child might tell you that a healthy relationship is one where neither party has arguments. This would be because they've associated arguments with threat and suffering. But if we took that child and they used that as their basis for achieving a healthy relationship then you end up with an adult who will constantly compromise on their own needs, who will avoid conflict at any cost, and who doesn't know how to achieve conflict resolution but only appeasement; they might have achieved a relationship that is minimal-conflict but that alone is not a recipe for a healthy relationship because there is necessarily going to be a degree of conflict that comes from asserting things like needs and boundaries, and so it's not unusual to have arguments in relationships. In fact a relationship where there are never any arguments is usually a good indication that there's something really amiss.
So to circumvent getting answers about values and purpose "from the mask" and instead from the authentic self, the exercise asks you to identify times when you felt strongly connected to your authentic self on an experiential level - hence the question about moments when you felt really alive.
Once a few experiences have been identified from that place of feelings very alive - from being connected to and acting upon your authentic self - then the next step is to develop an understanding of what values were being enacted or embodied during these experiences to draw out what really matters to you as a person so that you can start to find ways to reconnect with yourself and to embody your authentic values in your life.
If masking is basically like method acting (and in a lot of ways it really is) and you ask the method actor what they are feeling, they're going to tell you what their character is feeling. In a similar way, if you ask a high-masking autistic what they value they're going to tell you what is important to their masking. A method actor is capable of switching all of that off though. On the other hand, a high-masking autistic person might not even realise that they are masking or understand what's beneath the mask. So the exercise is designed to try and catch those (often rare) moments when you haven't been performing the mask but rather embodying and enacting your authentic self and connecting to that outside of masking (even if you aren't able to identify that you weren't masking at the time) in order to draw out what that looks like so you can set about actively pursuing this in your life going forwards.
It's important to note that the exercise is like a short summary of what the process really is and the process is something that ideally takes place over the course of more than a few hours of discussion and self-reflection and stuff like that.
Anyway, I hope that makes some sense.
It's difficult to describe an experiential process like this, especially because it's necessarily going to be different for each individual, so apologies if it still seems vague or confusing.
If you are struggling with this process I just want to let you know that you aren't alone, there isn't something wrong with you if you're having difficulty doing this exercise, and that everything is okay. You won't miss out on getting stuff from reading this book even if you struggle with this exercise or if you can't do it at the moment. The process of unmasking can be confronting and challenging; if it was easy then we'd already be doing it instead of needing to read books and exercises on it even just to get started on our unmasking journey.
Anyway, that's a lot of rambling on.
I'm going to try and check in on how you're feeling about this exercise in about a week's time but I'm terrible for forgetting things and letting them slip off my radar. I'd encourage you to reach out to me if you don't see me replying to this comment in about a weekor if it's between then and now and you would appreciate some more input from me.
I hope this has helped clarify things a bit!
I'd be entirely stuffed without masking, so for me my authentic self can take a nap in the boot while my surviving self takes the wheel
But to contribute for others, dropping the ADHD masking looks like roaming around alone in nature.
I'll come back (maybe) once (if) I read the book
thank you this was very clear and i think I get what youre saying.
this is going to be hard
Hey, sorry this got away from me; my health has been shitty.
I'm just checking in with you to see how you're going with this exercise - how's progress? Is there anything that you would like help with?
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That's cool.
It's not an easy exercise for everyone and I just want to reinforce to you that it's not a reflection of some deficit in you - some people have been through a lot of shit, and some people's experience of masking is especially deep and pervasive so trying to pinpoint those rare glimpses of existence outside of masking can be really difficult to do.
If you are interested, I can make time to talk this stuff through with you the way that a coach trained in this model would do. I won't promise that we'd arrive at the end point of the exercise and there's no pressure, but if you're interested we can arrange a time. What it would look like is a conversation (text chat or voice chat) over approximately an hour. The conversation is very much focused on the positives and it's not gruelling emotional work like you might experience in therapy. It might take more than one conversation and I'm happy to see the process through and to make further meet-up times if you feel like it would be helpful.
(If needed I can pull up stuff to show that I attended the training if you want to verify. And just so it's clear from the outset - this is something I am offering to do without charge and I am not going to ask for anything nor do I want anything in exchange, I'm not going to try and sell you anything, and I'm not going to use this to try and draw in potential clients for coaching or anything like that.)
I'll leave the ball in your court - if you want to more info or you want to line up a time with me then feel free to. If not, that's totally fine - I am not of the opinion that there's one model or exercise that works for everyone. If it's not for you or it's not the right time at the moment, that's cool. If this is something you want to do by yourself or with someone else, likewise this is completely fine with me.
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Of course. There's absolutely no pressure on my end so don't feel like there's some expiry date to this offer or whatever.
Tbh if you're really high masking, and it sounds as though that would probably describe you, then it might be more than enough personal work just to read through the book and to process what it brings up for you and that's cool. If this is the case then taking on additional emotional work could very well be counterproductive and I wouldn't want to put you in that situation.
Take all the time you need.
If you want to get more info to arrive at a decision then I'm happy to talk it through with you as much as you need. Fyi I work from a trauma-informed model and one of the things that I draw heavily upon in this sort of space is Vikki Reynolds' concept of 'structuring safety' (PDF warning & academic jargon warning). I guess in short what I'm driving here is that it doesn't have to be a decision that comes with any committment on your end (aside from a commitment to your own needs & safety) - you can decide you've had enough at any point and withdraw without consequence.
To be really transparent about it, my approach to this is that (in this situation) masking starts at the decision-making process, wayyyy before one even commits to something. In my experience there's a lot of mental preparation that goes into trying to figure out what sort of social role you need to fulfil and getting yourself into the "right" headspace to do what's expected of you before agreeing to do something. This is a very normal response to navigating the world as an autistic person and it's a survival strategy which is tried and true, so I'm not about to stigmatise it by any means, however my intention is to create a space where this is optional, where you have the opportunity to decide if you need to do it and, if so, doing it to the extent that you choose to; unmasking isn't an all-or-nothing deal and unmasking needs to be integral to every step of the process rather than it being some destination that you arrive at when you cross the finish line.
With that in mind, if you do choose to take me up on the offer I would encourage you to start from where you are rather than focusing on getting yourself to a place where you are prepared to meet expectations. If starting from where you are means needing to understand the process better or figuring out if it's something that's going to work for you or even if it's about figuring out if my approach is a good fit for you (or anything else for that matter), it's cool with me.
I hope that makes sense and sorry for all the rambling lol