Autism and Masking

Autistic masking is often described as a strategy employed by Autistic people to “fit in”. But this definition begs the question “why can’t we fit in as we are?”. If we mask to fit in then that means that we are not allowed in as we are. This course will explore why Autistic children and adults mask our true identity and the effects that has on our mental health and the relationship with ourselves and others. We will also look at how we can encourage Autistic children and adults to live more authentically.

Parents: Would you like more understanding on  post school meltdowns, tummy aches, exhaustion, acting differently in school, not being authentic, school not believing the behaviour you see?

Educators: Would you like to understand how to look out for early signs of distress? How to know when a pupil is under pressure in school but masking that?

Autistic Adults: Would you like to learn more about masking, what it means and how we can start to live authentically?

Professionals: Would you like to learn more about your Autistic clients? Would you like to learn how to support your Autistic clients to be their authentic selves?

Course Content:

• An introduction to Neurodiversity
• What is masking
• Why do Autistics mask?
• How masking effects our mental health and development
• The negative effects of social skills training
• Acceptance

This short course is delivered by Evaleen from AUsome Training. Evaleen discovered she was Autistic in 2014 and created “social skills” programs and books for children. In the beginning she thought her resources were just like other social skills courses but she soon realised that many resources encourage Autistic children to mask because they are created from the outside perspective, the non-autistic viewpoint which unfortunately supports the deficit model of Autistic people.

Evaleen is joined by Kieran Rose, the Autistic Advocate. Kieran has carried out extensive research on masking and has written many thought-provoking articles on Autistic masking , burnout and Autistic Identity. He has also recently published a paper A Conceptual Analysis of Autistic Masking

Kieran hopes that this analysis will help researchers to understand that some aspects of masking might be unique to Autistic people, but some aspects might be like other kinds of “pretending to be normal” that other people who are socially excluded use to try and fit in.

Like all of our courses at AUsome Training this has been designed by Autistic trainers.