For myself as I unpack and work with my masking I’ve found there’s a lot to be said about the intentionality of the process.

I’ve found a lot less stress and mental strain from conscious and deliberate crafting of masks than in previous times when masks developed ‘naturally’ or without the knowledge of my ASD. Those times when I knew that friend groups couldn’t cross streams because I was an entirely different person around different people.

I guess a way to put it is rather than having a bunch of separate masks to select from and put on I try now to have layers to put over my actual self. Like different parts of a scene on tracing paper that make a different picture depending on how you stack them. But still all the same pieces and the same face underneath.