Autistic Masking: Understanding Identity Management and the Role of Stigma - Summary

Executive Summary

This comprehensive work examines how autistic masking emerges as a rational response to systemic stigma rather than individual pathology. The authors trace the historical construction of autism through eugenicist frameworks, revealing how deficit-based diagnostic criteria and epistemic injustice have denied autistic people authority over knowledge about themselves. The book introduces novel frameworks including motor resonance as a mechanism of embodied discrimination and positions masking within trauma-informed understandings of survival responses. Central to this analysis is the double empathy problem—the recognition that communication difficulties arise from mutual misalignment between autistic and non-autistic people, not autistic deficits alone. The work emphasizes intersectionality throughout, demonstrating how race, gender, sexuality, and disability status compound marginalization. Rather than framing unmasking as a universal solution, the authors argue for systemic change enabling genuine authenticity while recognizing safety constraints. The book provides the Rose Advoc8 framework (Acceptance, Agency, Autonomy, Authenticity) and emphasizes that mental health vulnerabilities in autistic populations reflect cumulative stigma and masking, not autism itself.

Overview and Historical Context

The Historical Construction of Autism and Its Impact on Autistic Identity

Autism’s conceptualization emerged in the early 20th century within a eugenicist framework that valued human worth based on productivity. Eugen Bleuler coined “autism” (from Greek autos, meaning “self”) to describe social withdrawal in schizophrenia patients. Hans Asperger and Leo Kanner developed distinct approaches in the 1930s-1940s, both influenced by eugenicist thought and categorizing children as “educable” versus those deemed incapable of contributing to society.

Bruno Bettelheim’s harmful “refrigerator mother” theory—blaming parents for causing autism—persisted into the 1970s. This history established autism as inherently pathological and deficit-focused, directly shaping how autistic people internalize negative self-perceptions. Contemporary diagnostic criteria in the DSM-V and ICD-11 still define autism through “persistent deficits,” though the ICD-11 acknowledges environmental context.

The medical model approach became dominant, leading to harmful interventions like ABA, which historically used aversives including electrical shocks. This medicalization has impacted autism discourse for nearly 100 years. The concept of a “normal” child became prevalent as compulsory education reinforced conformity requirements—limited specialized educational support made uniformity among students a practical necessity.

Parent-shaming facilitated by Bettelheim remains commonplace; parents are blamed when children fail to meet normative expectations. The desire for homogenous student bodies and workforce productivity continues to drive pressure toward normalization, even as recognition of neurodiversity increases. Autistic people internalize these conformity pressures and develop strategies to suppress authentic ways of being.

Epistemic Injustice and the Erasure of Autistic Knowledge

Epistemic injustice—the creation of knowledge about a group that marginalizes and misrepresents their experiences—has fundamentally shaped autism research and discourse. Two forms are particularly relevant: testimonial injustice (dismissing autistic people’s testimony about their own experiences based on assumptions they lack self-awareness or cannot reliably report their experiences) and hermeneutical injustice (excluding autistic people from shaping the language used to describe their experiences).

Early research claiming autistic people lacked theory of mind, empathy, or self-insight excluded autistic voices from knowledge production, treating autobiographical accounts as unreliable unless validated by non-autistic researchers. This exclusion from defining autism meant autistic people internalized deficit-based conceptualizations and lacked authentic language to describe themselves.

Damian Milton’s concept of “autism from the inside out” highlights how diagnostic criteria have been grounded in outsider perceptions rather than lived experience, creating a power/knowledge dynamic (per Michel Foucault) where the marginalized group has no authority over knowledge about themselves.

Consequently, autistic people cannot fully access affirming frameworks or develop coherent positive identities because the language available to them is inherently pathologizing. An autistic child may recognize that their natural communication style, sensory needs, and interests are different, but lacks hermeneutical resources to describe these differences as valid variations rather than deficiencies. This perpetuates what the authors term “epistemic infection”—the struggle to distinguish genuine self-perceptions from dominant, often deficit-based narratives about autism imposed by outsiders.

Identity Development and Stigma

Self-awareness develops through dynamic interplay between neurocognitive factors and social-ecological factors. William James distinguished between the “I-self” (the experiencing subject) and the “me-self” (the self as object of experience). Through symbolic interactionism (George Herbert Mead, Herbert Blumer), we develop selfhood through interaction with our environment and by imagining how others perceive us (the “generalized other”).

Erik Erikson’s psychosocial stages situate identity development across the lifespan through resolution of conflicts at each stage. An enactivist approach—central to understanding autistic identity—acknowledges that cognition and self develop through embodied interactions with the social world, meaning autistic development occurs within a context shaped by non-autistic norms and expectations.

For autistic people, the “generalized other” through which they imagine how others perceive them reflects predominantly non-autistic viewpoints, creating fundamental misalignment between internal sense of self and perceived external judgment. Research shows autistic people are judged negatively by non-autistic peers based on thin-slice video clips of movement and speech prosody, and non-autistic people display difficulty interpreting autistic facial expressions, leading to unfavorable social judgments.

Motor Resonance and Embodied Discrimination

Motor resonance—activation in the motor system when observing another person’s movement—increases when viewing movements present in one’s own motor repertoire, contributing to positive evaluation and increased imitation. Autistic people display differences in movement kinematics characterized by greater jerk, acceleration, and velocity compared to non-autistic peers.

These movement differences lead to lower motor resonance between autistic and non-autistic people during social interaction, contributing to lower quality interactions and communicative misalignment. When autistic people repeatedly encounter lower motor resonance and implicit negative judgment based on their movement patterns, they may come to view themselves as flawed compared to peers and develop compensatory strategies (masking). This mechanism operates at a pre-conscious, embodied level, shaping how autistic people are perceived long before language-based social interactions occur.

Historical research incorrectly concluded that autistic people lacked self-awareness because they performed atypically on tasks designed for non-autistic populations. Autistic people display differential patterns in eye contact, facial expressiveness, prosody, and movement kinematics—not because they lack self-awareness, but because these skills develop along different pathways. Gernsbacher et al. argue that atypical attentional cues should not be interpreted as impaired socio-cognitive development; instead, autistic people may use alternative strategies (e.g., monotropic attention) to develop self-awareness.

Stigma As the Fundamental Driver of Masking

Stigma is defined as “the presence of a characteristic or attribute that renders a person ‘discreditable’ or ‘disgraced’ through the perceived negativity of its presence” (Erving Goffman, 1963). Bruce Link & Jo Phelan (2001) identified stigma as relational and power-dependent: stigmatization occurs through (1) labeling individual differences, (2) forming negative stereotypes based on dominant norms, (3) creating in/out-group distinctions, and (4) diminishing outgroup status with poor real-world outcomes. Power is critical—without it, negative perceptions have minimal systemic impact.

Public stigma involves direct discrimination (preventing resource access, service participation), while self-stigma occurs when stigmatized individuals internalize negative perceptions, accepting lower status as deserved. This creates minority stress through both distal processes (discrimination, prejudice) and proximal processes (internalization, rejection expectations). Oyserman et al. (2007) demonstrate that experiencing unfair treatment due to marginalized identity status creates a bias toward harm-reduction regulatory focus—people become vigilant to threats and develop avoidance strategies including stigma-reduction identity management.

Autistic people show elevated social anxiety levels compared to non-autistic populations, partly driven by perceived lower social status and visible difference. The minority status of autistic people means that outsider perceptions of “difference” shape development of an “othered identity” even before formal diagnosis, with negative social judgments beginning in early childhood.

Dehumanization and Stereotypes

Dehumanization is perpetuated through research, media, and professional discourse. Autistic people are frequently dehumanized through: being labeled as “childlike” or lacking agency; comparisons to non-human animals and robots; stereotypical, deficit-based print media representations; and polarized screen/literature portrayals (negative stereotypes versus “supercrip” narratives).

Research reveals pervasive negative stereotypes: Botha & Cage (2022) found 55% of autism researchers endorsed a medical-model approach, 60% expressed dehumanizing views; Wood & Freeth (2016) found the top 10 autism associations included poor social skills (56%), introverted/withdrawn (31%), poor communication (29%), and 8 of 10 characteristics were rated negatively. These stereotypes are cross-cultural and influence professional and public training, policy, and material outcomes (underemployment, heightened bullying, elevated suicide rates).

Internalization of Stigmatizing Narratives

Autistic people internalize stigmatizing narratives in complex ways. Some develop “Aspie supremacy,” viewing themselves as superior to both “low-functioning” autistic people and neurotypicals—a response aligned with white supremacist ideals of superior intelligence and rationality. Others embrace “supercrip” narratives framing autism as a superpower, perpetuating ableism by suggesting compensation is needed for inherent deficits.

Others engage in depersonalization and epistemic infection, minimizing their own uniqueness to accept stereotypical descriptions of autism. Late-diagnosed autistic people particularly struggle with this, questioning their authenticity if they’ve achieved normative milestones (relationships, careers), with some experiencing lateral ableism from others questioning whether they’re “autistic enough.”

Intersectionality and Compounded Marginalization

Race and Autism

Autism does not exist in isolation but intersects with race, gender, sexuality, disability status, and socioeconomic position. Research demonstrates significant underrepresentation of Black autistic individuals, autistic women and girls, transgender and gender-diverse autistic people, and those from low-income communities in autism research and diagnosis.

Black autistic people and autistic people of color face marked diagnostic disparities, poorer health outcomes, and exclusion from research despite being known to professionals. Racist stereotypes lead clinicians to misinterpret Black children’s autistic behaviors as “conduct disorder” or “challenging behavior” rather than autism, resulting in punitive rather than supportive responses.

Black autistic boys experience disproportionate school exclusion; Black autistic women and girls face compounded harm from racist and sexist stereotypes (hypersexuality, aggression, independence) that intersect with adultification—leading to heightened risk of psychopharmacological intervention rather than behavioral support. High-profile cases document Black autistic people experiencing arrest, violence, and murder due to interactions with law enforcement shaped by racism and white supremacy.

Within the autistic community itself, Black and racially minoritized autistic people experience both overt racism (slurs, stereotypes) and covert racism (microaggressions, false equivalences), which pushes them out of broader community spaces. Some experience “triple consciousness” (W.E.B. Du Bois’ double consciousness extended)—navigating distinct identity spaces, masking autism-related stigma in Black spaces while masking racial stigma in white autistic spaces.

Gender and Autism

The Extreme Male Brain (EMB) theory and narrowed diagnostic criteria reinforced autism’s association with maleness despite weak empirical support. This resulted in gender disparities (4:1 to 7:1 male-to-female diagnosis ratios), with girls who internalize distress (anxiety) rather than externalizing it (aggression) remaining undiagnosed because diagnostic criteria were developed from male presentations.

The Female Protective Effect (FPE) posits women require greater genetic load to express autism; the Female Autism Phenotype (FAP) suggests women present differently (more social interest, “normative” interests, internalized difficulties, masking ability) leading to underdiagnosis. However, as Gillan Rose argues, underdiagnosis reflects “not a different kind of autism, but a different kind of prejudice.”

Critically, the FAP essentializes sex and gender, problematically creates a “true autism” versus “female autism” distinction, and is based predominantly on research with white autistic women, thereby enshrining whiteness in conceptualizations of female autism.

Drawing on Judith Butler’s theory of gender as performative (constructed through gesture, movement, stylization), autistic women’s greater apparent interest in social relationships may reflect socialization and gender performance rather than expression-specific autism. The distinction between masking (developing interests to match peers and avoid derision) versus individual variation is difficult to disentangle, yet the field applies gendered scrutiny to autistic interests in ways not applied to neurotypical people.

Gender Expression and Transgender Autistic Identity

Transgender and non-binary autistic individuals face barriers in diagnostic processes due to not meeting stereotypical autism expectations, and binary gender phenotyping (e.g., labeling trans men and non-binary people assigned female at birth as having “female autism”) invalidates their gender identity.

The concept of “autgender” describes how one’s gender can be inherently intertwined with autistic identity due to embodied autistic ways of being. Neuroqueer theory provides a framework for understanding how neurological otherness can enable transgression of binary gender and sexuality norms as an emancipatory stance.

Autism and Disability

While 18-40% of autistic people also have learning disabilities, autism and learning disability have become somewhat synonymous in public consciousness despite autistic people with learning disabilities being frequently excluded from autism research.

Recent proposals for “profound autism” subcategories (autism + intellectual disability + minimal spoken language) risk further stigmatizing non-speaking autistic people and those with learning disabilities by implicitly devaluing them. Assumptions about capacity and agency based on communication style or IQ prevent appropriate support access; non-speaking and high-support-needs autistic people face paternalism, barriers to alternative communication (AAC), and assumptions that they cannot understand or advocate for themselves.

Communication and Cognitive Frameworks

The Double Empathy Problem and Reframing “Communication Difficulties”

Milton’s Double Empathy Problem (DEP) depathologizes social communication difficulties by recognizing that misalignment can occur bi-directionally between any two people. When autistic and non-autistic people interact, both parties may experience difficulty understanding the other, yet historically only autistic differences have been framed as deficits.

When two autistic people communicate, research shows dramatically improved rapport, flow, and mutual understanding compared to autistic-nonautistic interactions—even when the autistic strangers have just met. This suggests that matching communication styles reduces the cognitive burden and allows more authentic interaction.

The implication: masking is not solely about autistic people adjusting, but about unequal cognitive labor distribution in interactions where neurotypical norms dominate. Non-autistic people develop expertise in and preference for movements similar to their own, fostering affinity with similar others. This means cross-neurotype communication requires asymmetrical effort from autistic people, who must track non-autistic expectations while preventing non-autistic people from experiencing discomfort—a fundamental injustice in how communication is structured.

Monotropism and Alternative Cognitive Frameworks

Murray et al. (2005) proposed that autistic people display a more monotropic (singularly focused) attentional style compared to non-autistic polytropic attention that shifts more fluidly between states.

Monotropism explains multiple aspects of autistic experience:

Deep focus or flow states on “passions” (reframed from “special interests”)
Attention to competing sensory information requiring filtering
Differences in social communication (direct information-focused communication vs. indirect non-autistic language)

When two autistic people communicate, their narrowly focused attention may synchronize around shared interests, creating what the authors describe as a “hyper-confluence of cognitive environments”—dramatically increased rapport, flow, and even improved individual communicative competence.

Executive dysfunction (difficulties starting or switching tasks) can be understood through monotropism as reflecting sensorial and emotional dysregulation during attentional shifts. This framework is particularly useful for understanding autistic children and young people in educational environments with near-constant macro and micro transitions, providing alternative explanation for difficulties without pathologizing language.

Autistic Identity Development Across the Lifespan

Adolescent Identity Formation

Contrary to stage-like developmental models, autistic identity follows a “rhizomatic” (non-linear, seemingly random) trajectory influenced by what Milton terms “chrononormativity”—expectations to progress through life stages at particular times. Autistic autobiographical integration may involve “fragmented personal constructs” with “endless connections” that vary in relevance and coherence, rather than organizing around a core construct.

Autistic identity comprises two dimensions:

Personal identity: how individuals define themselves through autistic characteristics like being “detail-oriented” or “blunt”
Social identity: how they position themselves within the broader autistic community

These are shaped by outsider perceptions and clinical conceptualizations of autism. The concept of “epistemic infection” describes how autistic people struggle to distinguish their genuine self-perceptions from dominant, often deficit-based narratives about autism.

Autistic adolescents navigate intense social pressures while attempting to understand social hierarchies they don’t naturally perceive. Research shows that some engage in impression management (IM) to “fit in,” while others report not caring about fitting in. Importantly, studies reveal that autistic young people demonstrate awareness of external social judgments and attempt to shape their behavior accordingly—contradicting assumptions that autism precludes understanding others’ perspectives.

While some value the diagnostic label for self-understanding and advocacy, others find it stigmatizing and distance themselves from it due to stereotypes. A positive autistic social identity correlates with improved self-esteem, lower anxiety and depression, though viewing autism as a core identity component can paradoxically increase social anxiety—possibly reflecting internalized stigma and fear of negative social judgment.

Late-life Autism Identification

For late-diagnosed autistic adults, diagnosis triggers an identity crisis requiring reprocessing of lived experiences through a new lens. While this can foster self-understanding, meaning-making, and self-compassion, it can also provoke significant emotional distress as people grapple with questions about their “true selves” after years of masking.

Those identified longer tend to hold more positive attitudes toward their autism; newly identified individuals show less positive attitudes initially but become more positive over time as they process their experiences. The experience of diagnostic gatekeeping—where professionals hold power over identity legitimacy—can deny autistic people self-determination and agency in understanding themselves.

Community Connectedness and Political Identity

Connection to the autistic community, particularly through events and campaigns like TakeTheMaskOff, provides crucial spaces for authentic self-expression, belonging, and political advocacy, with community connectedness moderating stigma’s impact on mental health.

Strategic essentialism (Ellis, 2023) defines “strategic essentialism” as a “strategically adopted response to current realities,” whereby claiming essentialist narratives provides a basis to reclaim and advocate for change through developing shared political identity. Autistic people experience “othering” (being treated as different) based on perceived differences in social style and neurocognitive functioning regardless of formal identification.

Many autistic people experience relational similarity to other autistic people through shared sensory experiences, embodied differences (movement patterns), and shared trauma. An autistic personal identity may develop through viewing autistic characteristics as inherent to personality, while autistic social identity emerges through group membership in the broader autistic community.

Identity-first language (“autistic person” rather than “person with autism”) is preferred by most autistic people and reflects this identity-centered approach.

The Neurodiversity Paradigm

The neurodiversity paradigm provides a value-neutral understanding of neurodivergence as divergence from assumed neurotypical norms, rejecting deficit-focused constructions. Rather than erasing disability or adopting only strengths-based approaches, neurodiversity acknowledges that autistic “functioning” (flourishing) emerges from the relationship between individual and environment (Beardon’s “golden equation”: autistic person + environment = outcome).

An enactivist approach to neurodiversity recognizes how constructions of normality shape who is considered “abnormal,” moving beyond both the medical model (“fix the person”) and social model (“fix the world”) to acknowledge interactive co-construction.

Nick Walker’s concept of “neuroqueering” positions autistic people as queer to neurotypical expectations, proposing emancipatory potential in rejecting normative standards including assumed defaults about gender, sexuality, and race.

However, autistic people cannot fully escape the impact of historical epistemic injustice; they internalize deficit-based conceptualizations and lack adequate hermeneutical resources (accurate language) to describe themselves authentically. The increasing uptake of neurodiversity among autistic people has established autism as a shared political identity fostering emancipation from pathology, though this identity remains constrained by limited access to affirming language and concepts.

Understanding Masking Across Domains

Masking manifests across linguistic, behavioral, sensory, emotional, and cognitive dimensions, and often operates unconsciously. Recognition is the first step toward understanding its impact.

Linguistic Masking

Scripting conversations
Rehearsing interactions
Aligning syntax with non-autistic patterns
Adjusting voice pitch/tone
Using advanced language to project competence
Staying silent to avoid attention

Autistic people often display different markers of rapport with other autistic people (lower eye gaze, different back-channeling) versus non-autistic people, demonstrating conscious adaptation.

Behavioral and Sensory Masking

Suppressing or redirecting stimming
Masking emotional responses (not crying when distressed, not showing joy)
Mimicking others’ movements
Engaging in “emotional mirroring” where autistic people absorb and reflect others’ emotions
Forcing eye contact despite sensory pain
Restricting natural movement patterns

Identity and Interest Masking

Hiding passionate interests
Aligning hobbies with peers’ interests to gain social access
Suppressing personal identity/values

Related is “fawning”—people-pleasing behavior where autistic individuals say yes when they mean no, take on more than they can manage, or take blame for things they didn’t do—which creates vulnerability to coercion and exploitation.

Recognizing Masking

Recognizing masking involves noticing:

Discrepancy between private and public behavior
Exhaustion disproportionate to social activity
Inability to articulate preferences
Difficulty knowing what one actually wants
Emotional dysregulation following social contexts

The Cost of Masking

Mental Health Consequences

Autistic burnout results from chronic mismatch between autistic needs and neurotypical environments combined with sustained masking—it is a systemic problem, not individual failing. Burnout is defined by complete resource depletion, reduced functioning, inertia, shutdown, meltdowns, and loss of coping mechanisms.

It occurs when personal demands exceed available resources, with masking as a key risk factor. Protective factors include autistic community connectedness, acceptance, agency, authenticity, and environmental accommodations.

Mental health vulnerabilities (anxiety, depression, PTSD, substance use) in autistic populations are predictable consequences of cumulative stigma, victimization, and masking—not features of autism itself. Meta-analyses show exceptionally high rates of co-occurring mental health diagnoses (anxiety 40%, depression 30%, elevated PTSD rates).

Educational Trauma

Educational systems perpetuate masking through sensory overload, normative enforcement, and lack of agency, creating cumulative sensory trauma and teaching autistic young people that their authentic selves are incompatible with educational participation.

Schools designed without autistic needs in mind force autistic students into a false choice between masking (losing ability to learn) or appearing disengaged (risking punishment). Practices like “whole body listening” (eyes front, still body) force autistic students to choose between eye contact (which causes sensory overwhelm preventing learning) or stimming for regulation (which results in being labeled disengaged or defiant).

This creates lasting educational trauma and reinforces neuronormative supremacy. The “coke bottle effect” describes how autistic students suppress distress in front of teachers but dysregulate at home, with educators attributing home behavior to parenting rather than school trauma.

Compliance-Based Interventions and Vulnerability

Behavioral interventions (particularly ABA) directly encode masking as a learned necessity by teaching compliance and self-suppression, increasing vulnerability to abuse and polyvictimization. Rather than helping autistic people, compliance-based interventions teach autistic children that their authentic needs are invalid and others’ comfort takes priority.

This creates vulnerability to manipulation, abuse, and continued exploitation while establishing masking as an ingrained survival pattern. Autistic adults harmed by childhood ABA report physical restraint, feeling dehumanized, and being “taught to fool people,” resulting in shutting off their “true selves” and long-term mental health difficulties.

Supporting Autistic Flourishing

The Rose Advoc8 Framework: Four A’s for Supporting Autistic Flourishing

The framework identifies four interconnected objectives that reinforce each other:

Acceptance

Acceptance involves self-acceptance (understanding and validating one’s own needs) and external acceptance (being valued by others). This means genuinely valuing autistic ways of being, not merely tolerating them.

Agency

Agency means having choice and understanding oneself well enough to make meaningful decisions about one’s wants and needs. This requires access to accurate information about autism and oneself, and the psychological safety to make choices.

Autonomy

Autonomy means being enabled and supported to act on those choices, either independently or with support (interdependence). This looks different for each person and context but always involves respecting autistic people’s capacity to understand and decide about their own lives.

Authenticity

Authenticity is the result of the above three working together—feeling in greater control of oneself and one’s environment, which creates sufficient safety for authentic self-expression.

Implementation requires: reducing shame through affirming frameworks; building self-knowledge through reflection and community connection; creating genuine choices about environments, relationships, and activities; and dismantling systems that pathologize autistic difference.

Disclosure Decisions and Safety

Disclosure of autistic status involves constant, ongoing decisions (Love et al. found average 6.42 disclosure decisions over 2 months in workplace/community settings). Disclosure creates a “double bind”: disclosure risks negative responses due to negative autism perceptions, but non-disclosure risks being judged as “weird.”

Decisions are context-dependent, motivated by desire for support/understanding versus fear of being patronized or othered.

Practical Guidance for Disclosure

Assess context: Will disclosure likely result in genuine support/understanding or increased discrimination/gatekeeping?
Consider timing: Early disclosure may prevent later misinterpretation, but late disclosure may prevent accumulated judgment from affecting earlier interactions
Plan for responses: Anticipate both positive and negative reactions and decide what support would be helpful
Remember privilege variability: Safety to disclose varies dramatically by race, gender, sexuality, disability status, and employment security
Recognize disclosure as cognitive/emotional work: Love et al. found disclosure was only considered worthwhile if positive outcomes were likely, as disclosure is cognitively and emotionally resource-heavy

Trauma-informed Support and Healing from Masking

Understanding masking through a trauma lens helps explain why masking is so difficult to “simply stop” and why its impacts are so severe. Healing requires:

Recognizing Accumulated Trauma

Masking emerges as protective response to invalidation, bullying, microaggressions, and systemic exclusion—often so pervasive it becomes normalized and difficult to recognize as trauma. Autistic people may not recognize sensory bombardment, relational rejection, and behavioral correction as traumatic, yet they accumulate across the lifespan.

Processing Complex PTSD

Autistic people show elevated rates of complex PTSD from accumulated relational trauma, attachment difficulties, and sensory trauma. Autistic cognitive differences—such as non-linear, “rhizomatic” memory and possible alexithymia (difficulty identifying emotions)—may impede integration of traumatic experiences and require specialized trauma processing approaches.

Understanding Behavioral Responses As Trauma Responses

Autistic behavioral responses associated with autism (meltdowns as “fight,” shutdowns as “freeze,” fawning as appeasement) can be understood as trauma responses. Supporting healing involves recognizing these as understandable protective mechanisms rather than pathology requiring suppression.

Breaking Intergenerational Transmission

Undiagnosed autistic parents who have internalized stigma may recreate trauma by pressuring autistic children toward normative behavior. Recognition of shared neurodivergence between parent and child can break this cycle through conscious reparenting and modeling of authentic self-expression.

Environmental Accessibility and Support

Creating Environmental Accessibility requires modifications at multiple levels:

Individual Development

Developing self-insight—understanding one’s sensory needs, social needs, authentic interests, and recognizing where masking operates. Processing the trauma of invalidation and reprocessing one’s autobiographical narrative in light of new autism understanding (especially for late-diagnosed people).

Learning to recognize and assert boundaries, particularly for those who grew up in environments where boundary-setting was unsafe or impossible. Engaging in “radical self-acceptance,” grounded in Buddhist philosophy, involving developing embodied awareness of self and freedom from shame.

Relational/Interpersonal Safety

Validating spaces where autistic people can be authentically themselves—neurodivergent-only spaces, communities, and also cross-neurotype relationships built on mutual respect and genuine curiosity. Research emphasizes that non-autistic people can create safety through emotional openness, warm curiosity about autistic experiences, and willingness to learn autistic communication patterns.

Connection with other autistic people dramatically reduces isolation and validates experience.

Creating Environmental Accommodations

Environmental modifications—sensory accommodations, flexible scheduling, clear communication, respect for autistic communication styles—enable flourishing. This might include:

Sensory accommodations (lighting, noise reduction, flexible seating)
Flexible scheduling and remote work options
Clear written communication reducing ambiguity
Respect for alternative communication styles (e.g., allowing time to process questions before responding, accepting non-eye-contact communication, honoring stimming as regulation rather than pathology)

Critical Considerations and Safety

Safety Considerations Around “Unmasking”

While this book advocates for authenticity and reframing of masking, it is critical to note: unmasking is not safe for all autistic people in all contexts. Autistic people in precarious employment situations, unsupportive families, hostile communities, or experiencing intersecting marginalization (particularly Black autistic people, trans autistic people) may face real danger if they unmask.

Encouraging universal unmasking without addressing systemic oppression and creating genuine safety can inadvertently harm those most vulnerable. Any approach to supporting autistic authenticity must include genuine choice and respect for autistic people’s own assessment of what is safe in their contexts.

Limitations of Self-Diagnosis in Formal Systems

While self-identification as autistic can provide valuable self-understanding and community connection, many formal systems (healthcare, education, employment accommodations) still require professional diagnosis for access. The book emphasizes participatory approaches and validity of autistic self-knowledge, yet acknowledges that diagnostic gatekeeping remains a structural reality.

Risk of Lateral Ableism Within Autistic Community

As autism identity becomes more visible and community grows, the book notes risk of lateral ableism—where autistic people pathologize other autistic people for not meeting community standards of authenticity or “autistic enough.” Late-diagnosed autistic people have experienced gatekeeping from professionals; they should not then experience gatekeeping from community.

Intersectional Approaches Are Essential

The book emphasizes repeatedly that autism research and practice have historically centered white, male, educated, middle-class presentations. Any contemporary approach to autism must intentionally center the experiences of Black autistic people, autistic people of color, autistic women and girls, transgender and non-binary autistic people, non-speaking autistic people, autistic people with learning disabilities, and other historically excluded groups.

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Autistic Masking Understanding Identity Management And The Role Of Stigma