Dear John,

So I’ve said that I’ve learnt lots of skills and so on, so that I don’t come across as autistic a lot of the time. Does that mean I’ve “got over” autism, or if that is even possible?

Short answer – no.

Imagine you move to France or somewhere, and you use French all the time. Eventually, you learn to think in French too, and it stops being extra work translating from English (unless you are thinking or speaking about things before you moved there). That’s how it is with some things – for me that would be taking initiative, or reading neurotypical body language. I’m not necessarily great at it, but I’m not awful at it either any more and I don’t think I find it much harder than anyone else does.

But not for other things. Some things get a bit easier, but are always much harder work than they are for neurotypical folk. I see those things a bit like doing stuff while balancing a book on my head. It can get easier with time, but it never gets to be my native language. So, for example, I can socialise with people while using “normal” body language, but it’s hard work and tires me out. Let alone the amount of concentration it takes to follow a conversation in a room with background noise!

I think the technical term for that is “masking” – like wearing a mask to hide that I’m autistic. I don’t like the term, because masks feel kind of dishonest to me, and I’m not trying to be dishonest – I’m trying to show the other people in the conversation that I value them. In any case, I find masking really tiring.

I find it much less work socialising with people when I can revert to using autistic body language myself. But there aren’t many places I can do that, because I know how easy it is for me to be misunderstood.

I think that’s partly why I function like a fairly extreme introvert most of the time.

All the best,

Future John