Masking
Camouflaging hides autistic traits. The camouflaged person does not leave the room. The aim is for their autism to remain invisible. The language used in this area varies a bit between authors. I suspect this is because our understanding of the issues is still developing fairly quickly.
In the main article here, I've tended to use the word masking to describe the overall methodology for surviving. A short blog piece at Psychology Melbourne takes the same approach as me, and is an excellent summation of camouflaging. But there is language which breaks down the components, and I think it's useful.
I've lifted a schema from a Nature index to show this:
"Camouflaging: The use of deliberate or automatic strategies to mask or compensate for autistic traits in social interactions." They seem to be using this as the overall description of this clutch of behaviours that I have tended to collect together as masking. What is perhaps missing here is the rider that even very deliberate strategies can be unconscious of what energises them. I had heaps of strategies to get through life, but had no idea I was autistic.
"Masking: The suppression or concealment of characteristic autistic behaviours to appear neurotypical." Again, this can be unconscious of the underlying autism. I learned not to fidget (aka stimming), for example, because it caused trouble with adults and authority figures. In stressful situations I tend to sit very still.
"Compensation: The adoption of learned scripts, routines or behavioural strategies to manage social demands despite underlying challenges." This is huge, the story of my life. I shaped my life everything around managing social demands.
"Safety behaviours: Actions aimed at reducing perceived social threat, often overlapping with masking tactics in social anxiety contexts." This is a new sub-category for me, but makes immense sense, and deserves its own category. And again, we can work to remain safe and minimise anxiety whilst unconscious that the major contributing factor is that we are autistic.
All of these things are good. They minimise anxiety and stress, and keep us safe. The cost is the extra mental processing energy. I've recently been thinking about a local farmer near us. Eliot ran a mixed farm on his own, just like my dad. He did everything with occasional help from his school age sons and his wife, just like our farm. Except Eliot did all of that on crutches. How tired he must have been, especially as he grew older. I think autistic compensation is analogous to that. Everything takes that little bit—or maybe a big bit—of extra effort.
Andrea Oct 22 2026
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