Pretending to be someone I am not - Unmasking my Autism

Anxiety is pretty high at the moment and I'm in a period of transition and thinking about how I coped in the past, and it's because I used to pretend I was someone else. I used to put on a persona of a character on tv or a film etc, and I'm wondering if I still do this or if I've dropped it completely. Do other autists do this? Did it really protect me? And why is my anxiety so high? The unmasking process is full of surprises!
Thank you for watching these videos. I know I have said this a few times, but it has been so helpful to me to help me make sense of my own experiences by reading your comments.

[@user-js5et3gc8q]

I can relate to your experience Gina, as I have had to deal with anxiety of one degree or another my whole life. I am sure that when I was young my imagination helped me to cope with the uncomfortable reality of being a "weird" kid living in a family and going to school. When I was about 10, I read the book Robinson Crusoe and it was very easy for me to imagine myself as the main character of the book surviving alone on a tropical island with no need to fit into society. This form of escape really did lower my anxiety level. Later on I became adept at another form of escape; I would physically remove myself from the stressful situation. That worked also but it did generate problems at the same time, such as getting in trouble with school authorities. It is really hard sometimes to alter or abandon ways of getting along that have helped us to survive in a confusing world and I know that from years of experience myself. I hope that your anxiety subsides. Just know that you are not alone in what you are going through.

[@TheGreatReveal]

Thank you so much for sharing, you have made me feel less alone in my escape tactics! Removing ourselves from stressful situations is the most preferred approach, I feel. I read something recently that Simon Sinek said about how the environment dictates whether people are successful or not, and to encourage people to thrive then you need to look at the environment. I have heard this before many times. This feels so right to me. And thank you, my anxiety has finally subsided!

[@Hermitthecog]

Yep, not just you. I'm not aware of a recognized technical term for it but I consider the adoption of a persona "immersive stimming" i.e. the projection one uses to explore a new social role is an embodied or whole-body stim behaviour with an adaptive goal. And it serves its purpose, but as one achieves one's goal of learning the particular new social dynamic, the cost of maintaining that persona gradually begins to outweigh the lessons learned from it. Unmasking as a late diagnosed person seems to parallel the persona adaptation (which explains the current anxiety) except that the "new" identity one is trying on is simply one's long-suppressed core identity as an autistic person. Of course the benefit to this is that one ultimately uses less energy to mask because the new "adaptation" is, at long last, a return to our natural autistic state.

[@tracirex]

I love the term immersive stimming. thank you for putting words to this common autistic adaptation.

[@TheGreatReveal]

Oh my goodness, I absolutely love what you have written here. It makes so much sense to me. And I also love that term "immersive stimming". Thank you so so much!

[@dianak4461]

Apparently, what you are describing is a thing. I have encountered multiple references to this in research I've done. I wish you all the best in the days and weeks ahead as you navigate your new job and getting to know yourself in a new and affirming way. I am on the same journey.

[@TheGreatReveal]

Thank you so much!

[@frantri3246]

Yes, I know it and I think it is relatively common. If you do not intuitively know how to behave in certain situations (and likely got negative feedback in the past), you adapt behavior that you know works: from people around you (can cause trouble when the copied person realizes and feels made fun of :/) or - like you - Films and books. But besides normal masking (adapted to certain situations) there is also "dissociative identity disorder", which means you have more than one IDENTITY, each has their own history, age, traits, abilities, ...

[@TheGreatReveal]

Yes I have heard of dissociative identity disorder, I have fortunately come to the conclusion that I do not have this as I am fully aware of the role I am performing to survive a situation, and apparently (according to family members) I don't do this as much as I used to. Although, I have been caught out by copying people's accents before!