Ned, Regression & The Mask Behind The Mask (autism)
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- Опубліковано 29 сер 2024
- A video about diagnosis, functioning labels, autism "regression" and a level of masking we rarely talk about.
#EngageAutism #AutismAcceptance #ActuallyAutistic
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Regression and burnout is real, and is so frustrating! I feel for "Ned" as this mindset will only hinder their growth and it will be a shock when their coping mechanisms fail. Sad situation.
I feel sorry for Ned. He is at the beginning of a journey, it is possible he will grow. I imagine Ned was a ‘gifted child’ as some of us were. This expectation of over achievement, and the bitter sadness when you don’t reach the ‘potential’ you thought you had brings out a whole other set of issues. Gifted children who go on to become late diagnosed autistic adults often struggle to accept themselves as autistic in my experience.
Very compassionate insight. Great to hear the collective wisdom being shared here.
Thing is, I think a lot of those people did have the "potential" it just wasn't reached because of the lack of support and accommodations for adult autistic people.
Honestly, I was there for years. It got so bad that I had MULTIPLE mental health professionals plead with me to just consider that I might be autistic because they didn't have the expertise or resources to treat me and I needed to have a diagnosis to be referred. Just got my diagnosis in April this year at 33. It's been a roller coaster of emotions and epiphanies.
Once again you've put words to a concept I hadn't realised could have them. When I was diagnosed it was in the midst of a maelstrom in my life, and for my own sake I let both masks slip without realising it. The people I was living with at the time, while self-proclaimed familiar with autistic people and their experiences, had clearly never seen behind that second mask - and neither had I. It's a self I want to learn to work with and embrace. Now I have one more way of communicating with and about it.
Beautifully written!
Ned seems to be barely coping with the diagnosis by holding onto their specialness. What they need isn't a rude awakening, but a skilled psychologist helping them with their deep shame. The more you try to shame Neds, the more they'll retreat. Don't do it
That sounds like a good point, k kkk. Definitely worth thinking about, so I’m glad you spoke up.
I am very sorry to have found this video just now, six months from the day you recorded it. I genuinely hope you are feeling better, finding ways to be less sad and scared. Hard times can be brutal. You are such a good human, Quinn. You do a lot of good.
It's amazing that this particular video of yours pops into my home feed just as I think I'm having significant executive problem issues for the first time in years. Your reference to the second mask of hiding autism from yourself is also particularly acute. I think it's taken about twenty years for it to be lowered enough to recognise the autist busy cataloging and classifying the bricks of their internal walls.
Thank you for the color change when you switched characters. It was rather helpful
I’m 65. Can’t convince any “professional community “ that a diagnosis might just help, and certainly can’t afford to pay for it. I’ve known my likely diagnosis and how much even the criteria match since fourth grade - could have self diagnosed then, I list a wife tragically, a father, a 30 year career I had because a kind man took me in… my mum 3 months back… had a heart attack. I did begging declining by 60, have melted down, burned out, am beginning to recover, NEVER have been as “high functioning as you seem on camera anyway - can’t speak well except in infrequent spurts (thank God for those). And so on, But? Thank you. This “hits hard” in the best ways… if I could understand my feelings. I follow sone helpful autists who are very, very helpful, Tonight - 12:43 AM - this is the best and most comforting thing I’ve heard in all these years trying to understand and cope/prosper. If your pain has helped only one, it has helped me. Carry on!
Man, I feel for you and so can relate. Listening to you talk is like listening to my own internal dialogue.
I lost my old man 21/2 years ago and been off work (for the first time in my 50years) for the last two. The depression, desperation, confusion, complete lack of emotional stability and the lifelong internal feeling I was broken in some way…. searching for answers to why I was divorced after 2 years, lived alone ever since and cannot maintain any relationship whatsoever. After going through two councillors, 3 different antidepressant meds and numerous health issues, finally, three weeks ago, my new councillor, who had only seen me for two sessions, gave me a book by Alis Rowe and just asked me to look at it.
Wow. Just wow. It was like waves of recognition pouring over me…. I asked him “what is this?? This is me! I need to know what this is!” Incidentally he recommended your channel to me.
My GP has kindly referred me for testing and I’ve had the form for over a week. My anxiety for filling it out incorrectly or making a mess is driving me up the wall but I’m sure I’ll get round to it soon.
Now I completely have lost all confidence in my own judgment. Have no idea what my reference point is for being ‘plumb” so have no idea how off it actually is. Searching for help has proved completely useless. Depression and men’s self help clubs are a plenty, but ASD is not catered for at all.
Sorry to drivel on like this.
Thank you for this. You put into words the struggle I had last year - my Nan passed away after about a year of terminal illness and at the end of her life, about 6 weeks in hospice so it wasn’t unexpected. I hadn’t even considered that it was truly unmasked autism.
I found your channel today and it’s amazing, especially as I was only diagnosed a couple of years ago. Realising that so many things in my life weren’t just me being at my core inept or deficient is strange, it’s like trying to unlearn ideas about myself that I battered into myself. So thank you for your videos, they are incredibly helpful, and I hope you’re doing ok :~)
I'm so sorry for your loss. 🥺
I think it was regression after a traumatic illness that alerted me to my proper place on the spectrum.
Thanks for sharing Quinn. I fear how poorly I'll cope when I lose my parents. So much so that this video had me in tears. I can understand why you are experiencing regression. Thank you for producing this video in the midst of these experience. I can't overstate the value of your videos. I hope you feel better soon and continue to take care of you
Initially I just wanted to give "Ned" a good kick in the butt.
But as you progressed further I realised how futile it is to give ourselves labels, such as "high functioning" - which I totally admit doing myself.
This has helped me immensely, as I've somehow managed to ignore my regressions - which honestly happen extremely frequently.
I think my "cognitive demands" threshold must be rather low actually. 😁
This vid actually awakened my mind to my "other reality" - the "unacceptable" one that I've ignored for so long.
Lesson learned here: include the Whole of myself - not just the part I deem socially acceptable.
Also thank you for all your wisdom and insight! I only just subscribed today, but you're changing my life one video at a time.
That was so real and so true and so helpful. Thank you. You’re right-at any moment, life can overwhelm whatever ability we’ve developed to hold up a “normal-functional” mask. Those moments are guaranteed to come. So thanks for helping to make that inevitable experience a bit more ok for the rest of us by sharing your experience of it so candidly and honestly. That’s a real gift.
Every video has such thoughtful subjects - ones that I don't see others even handling - and how you approach and discuss them makes me wish ALL my classes and course work would have been like this. I just feel like a better person, like precious nuggets of truth.
Well said Quinn, welcome back. You've been missed.
Welcome back, Quinn. I'm glad you're feeling a bit better.
Thank you for putting words to the "second mask", I have found this helpful!
Thankyou for this, i had such intense stress and grief in 2018 which nearly destroyed me, stripped me to my raw self. I couldnt hide or do anything. It was something beyond a burnout. I hope you are going okay now and healing along nicely. I still find it hard even after all these years. Thankyou for making this. Sending you a beam of light ❤
It's really interesting, I never thought about the movements at the scale of one autistic brain, relatively to why functionning labels are ableist and simplistic.
I do feel a bit estranged among other autists sometime because althrough I'm an autism-adhd, I escaped most traumas through social luck and avoidance in general (just protection, not pathological avoidance or schizoid lack of affects, though it can look like a light version of it), that mask behind the mask should hold on without problems until I get forcefully removed from my day to day happy life doing what I want, or lose someone very close.
Thank you so much, Quinn. Your deep-dive explanations of how the autistic mind works are so incredibly clear and easy for me to understand. My therapist and I think I might be autistic, and I have been struggling with the label because it's been hard for me to acknowledge my difficulties in life. I'm just now coming to terms with the fact that I've had a tough time. Your channel is both educating and healing me. Yes, I "regress" when I'm overwhelmed, and people around me notice that I pace and sway. These are things I can usually manage to keep hidden, but I can't suppress them all the time. God, I can't imagine losing a parent. My heart goes out to you.
So beautifully articulated and shared. Thank you.
I'm currently in a state of regression. I'm working hard to get out of it. But I've decided I'm not going back to what I was doing before. It took me 3 burnouts and my diagnosis to get to this point. I'm working hard to find a healthier version of me.
I dislike functioning labels. People would label my life (before by third burnout) as high functioning. But now, I'm not functioning at all anymore.
My condolances for your loss, such a big one that a Father is or can be.
I am so sorry for your loss. Hugs. It's hard going through loss and process things we have often ignored or suppressed. So having them come up, isn't regression, so much as giving yourself a new chance to comfort that child and maybe even that memory of the parent from a new more compassionate & knowledgable perspective. Being fully autistic may even be purposeful to see things in a fully accepting point of view to heal.
Thank you for this insight. It seems deeply courageous to share such a valuable teaching point, when your own experience is still so raw. Message received with gratitude.
Welcome back to the big, wide world, Quinn! Your gentle voice and reassuring presence have been missed, but it's welcome news that the hiatus and time to process have been good for you.
Thank you so very much for being you. Snap, Your truth resonates as a mirror of understanding calm inside of me like a vibration of bright gold warmth and compassionate tears I feel you well. Fellow Autist x
Thank you Quinn for creating such informative and thoughtful videos!
Regression is something I know about. I’ve been in that place for a couple of months. I do feel for Ned and hope he’s right.
It’s good to see you back, I have mi your videos and advice
Glad you’re back. Your videos have been missed very much 🌻
I'm not Ned. But I am newly aware and struggling to find the path out of, what seems to me to be, a whopper of a regression. I've ordered Devon Prices book.
I appreciate advice. (54f, 30 year career, currently operating at age 8-ish)
I read Devon Price’s book earlier this year. Hope you find it beneficial when it arrives.
This is interesting, my wife was pointing it out how I'm more autistic than she's noticed. For me it's work causing it, I'm sure of it. I'm using a lot more mental bandwidth at work to deal with sensory issues. I never though about regression. Those thing I had to deal with in 20s popping up again. I thought it was just age, been googling does Autism get worse with age but finding nothing. This makes a lot more sense to me.
Brought a tear to my eye. I know this so well… I love how you put this reality into words. Most times I can’t even say what is wrong or different though I know something is. Perfect. Thanks
High functioning or not High functioning… Sure, my autism becomes all too obvious sometimes, but I have seen many a professor colleagues of mine collapse into child-like behaviour when things don’t go their way. It seems to me that it is all about When and How one collapses, and not about long run functionality.
I got my diagnosis 8 years ago. Just a couple of weeks ago that 2nd mask you talk about started to crumble. Now watching this video, going by bus, I started to cry but also strangely feeling happy.
You've put words on parts of my life and given me some new red threads to follow and a couple of new ideas and tools to go forth with. And you do it with a presentation that excells in humbleness and clarity.
Thank you from my heart. ❤️
This explains so much of my past year…
Thank you for another excellent video. Take care
I deeply appreciate your work. Thank you for doing it.
I’ve just recently come across your channel and I’ve been bingeing a lot of videos.
Simply put you’ve brought me a lot of comfort in more ways then I can accurately articulate. so again thank you. Please keep up the good work.
Very well said and Insightful thank you
I am new on this journey of discovery, and have realised I am very high masking.
The last decade, I have been under increasing stress and duress and over the last few years in particular, it's really gotten to be WAY too much.
Then odd things started cropping up that I couldn't explain and that doctors couldn't explain. Weird things with my voice, etc.
And the worse things continue to get, the worse those weird things get...and yet still nobody can explain them. (I've even been to see neurology)
...then I began this journey of discovery probably 4ish months ago, including learning the vocabulary (incl. masking, etc).
...then some long buried memories started to resurface from when I was a kid, and I began to wonder if I had also been masking against myself all these years. Enough so that I had assumed I'd "grown out of" those things and then just forgotten them.
...but in my learning journey over these past few months, in all the talk I've seen about masking, I can't really recall anyone talking about masking to themselves. So I wasn't sure that it was even really much of a thing.
So like everything else with my life to this point, I just assumed it was yet another way I was "just different" from everyone else, and carried on.
...until you spoke here about masking to yourself.
About that second, deeper, layer of masking.
Thank you for that.
I'm sorry that you had to discover it the way you did...but I am thankful for you choosing to share your experience with it.
I am feeling a little less alone in that now.
You are a saint for sharing. Hope you feel better.
Welcome back Quinn. My condolences on your loss.
Thanks Quinn, great to hear this!
Always appreciate your work
Thank you for this. It makes sense how that layer of selves can be affected and fall away easily and catch us off guard, now I understand better when I’m having spells of slipping down. It’s ok.
I'm so sorry for your loss, loosing a parent is never easy 😥
I'm not sure if I could have prevented that from happening. Chain of events let me to what you described as slipping 2nd mask down. I called in sick at work and extended sick leave 3 more times. I couldn't leave bed for 2 months, i live because i have that food stockpiling trait that's so often ridiculed, otherwise odds are I would starve to death, my flat looked like rubbish bin by then. I was never ill and I called in called in sick 1 week once before, because my ex forced me, thinking I've got flu
Sounds familiar. Thanks for creating this and take care!
Ned sounds like a textbook description of someone struggling with NPD.
Thank you for this video
If Ned genuinely does have all the answers then he’s being very selfish by not sharing them. Also I don’t think he understands the simple fact that just because someone is different from you doesn’t mean you can’t learn from them.
Got it. I'm experiencing that now. But how do you differentiate between those who can function well enough to have a job, family, etc. and those who will never be able to. Or why is that not a trait worth naming?
God I’m so grateful of this video
Thank you for sharing
Hi Quinn, thanks for the video!
Could you say something about phobia and autism? I've been struggling my whole life with some fears and feeling like a coward in many situations...
Hi, can someone please explain to me what words "autistamatic" is made up from? I know one is "autistic", obviously, but I'm not a native english speaker and I've been wondering since I found this channel yesterday and binge-watched many of the videos. I'm grateful for any answers as I can't seem to let it go 😅.
Hi. It relates to hyper-focus. When we are hyper-focused on a task or an intense interest we are often our most inspired, absorbed, productive and joyful selves. We can become so immersed in what we're doing that the world outside becomes an irrelevant distraction and we can produce our best work, sometimes way beyond anything our NT peers might achieve in the same time. At such times I feel like I'm operating on autopilot because it takes little or no effort to perform the task at hand - operating on automatic, if you like.
Autistamatic is a portmanteau - a compound word of "Autistic" and "Automatic". When I'm hyperfocused (aka "in the zone") I'm not just autistic - I'm Autistamatic😁
@@Autistamatic Thanks for the explanation :) (I was thinking that maybe it's automatic but the "a" in the middle of the word made me uncertain.) Now I know for certain and maybe I'll think of something in my native language.
@@Autistamatic Thank you for explaining this! English is my first language, but I was also confused as to the meaning. I think it's creative and I like the meaning behind it
Narcissism and autism are not mutually exclusive 😅
So sorry for your loss 🙏 I understand your frustration and confusion being so overwhelmed by the situation but I’m afraid to tell you that that is a human experience what you’re feeling except that maybe most people in the world don’t share their struggles like some of us do. I think it’s a little arrogant to believe that only autistics suffer more than the average person. 😔
Thanks for commenting but I'm a little puzzled. I don't recall suggesting that grief is any deeper or more difficult for us than other people. That's not what the video is about, nor is it an opinion I hold, so I don't understand.
Oh I guess I confused the point? It appeared to me that you were trying to portrait all autistics, especially intelligent autistics like you, to have a disadvantage compared to an average human in the world, and I highly disagree with that argument because it’s linked to the victim mentality regardless of your ned friend’s story. There will always be ecotistic or arrogant ppl in the world but compared to most, ppl like Ned have a better shot at a happy life because he believes he can, VS he can’t. Which is what I preach to the ppl I care about. At the end of the day no one will care for you. You have to care for yourself. I would love to interview furthermore on this topic?
Ned sounds narcissistic. It's best to avoid (to ignore) people like that because they are not willing to listen, to learn, to admit their own mistakes, to take responsibility for their actions, so there is no point in communicating with them.
no time for thoughtful comment so algorithm boost
And no thanks Spell check, can’t edit my previous comment on my phone!
Xdddddd
Notice that you are using ridiculing as a way of teaching
Describing someone who is actively and unironically _behaving_ _ridiculously_ is IMO qualitatively different from ridiculing someone. I have met several Neds since 1988, first a few times in engineering college: they were usually asking a lot of leading questions, trying to prove themselves smarter than a professor or lecturer, later a hundred or more online, also trying to prove themselves smarter than anyone else in some discussion.
If one is to describe such behavior honestly, letting the ridiculous show is IMO better than e.g. a pitying or patronizing approach. And trying to describe something so ridiculous with a completely straight face could a) be really difficult to pull off and b) easily come across as passive aggressiveness.
Wot?! Where is the ridicule? It’s an illustration, and one that offers Ned as a standard which may be unachievable.
Show your working pls
Not sure what’s gotten into me tonight, but everyone’s insights seem so worthwhile and right-on to me! Maybe I just feel grateful for a forum where everyone seems to be sharing from an intention to be genuinely helpful (not just to trump someone else’s views, as is so common today).
@@gregjs9665 🌝