AUTISM
'I now understand myself’
To mark World Autism Acceptance Week (March 27 – April 2), Jane McNeice shares how she was diagnosed with autism age 45, how it helped her make sense of life, and why she’s now reaching out to other women.
I WAS THE CHILD WHO fitted in, but not quite. I had a loving family, I had friends, was a high achiever in school, and so, to the outside world, all was well. But all was not well within, and everything was a façade. I learned from a very young age to hide my true [autistic] self to “fit in” – a common feature in autistic females. I hid the fact that I did not know how to stand up for myself, and that I liked things other people thought were boring and nerdy; I hid the music I liked, the fact I loved reading, and my strange obsessions and compulsions. I socially masked.
Social masking is where we mimic and copy our peers – a quick hair flick here, a quirky smile there, we check out what they are wearing and how they wear it. If you mask effectively, you camouflage neatly into the tribe, and they accept you.
But who was I fooling? No matter how many times I tried, I knew I didn’t really fit in, and yet my masks were so well curated that at times I even fooled myself. Yes, we all mask – a social self, a work self – but what I’m referring to is amplified and is totally and utterly exhausting.
Masks withstanding, the chinks in the armour were there, the evidence that I wasn’t really part of “the tribe”. For example, I didn’t know how to initiate friendships, always feeling I shouldn’t put myself forward, that it would seem too pushy. I’d always wait for others to do the initiating so I could reciprocate. I didn’t have the words to make friends. I was okay if the interactions were one-to-one, but I would feel high levels of discomfort and anxiety if in a small group of girls. Somehow, I would always be the child who was “it” when playing tag, or always “piggy in the middle”. And to an eight-yearold, day-in and day-out, that was a big deal, but I did not know how to assert myself or say “No, not anymore”.
I also wasn’t as daring as others, instead being coerced into bravery by older peers, and into situations which didn’t feel safe. I was unfashionably bright, nerdy and plain, and so it wasn’t long before my nickname became Plain Jane Super Brain, just like the character Jane Mangle from the Australian soap Neighbours. I was told my hair wasn’t right, my clothes weren’t right, sometimes very directly, other times by a look. To make matters worse, I was hypersensitive to insult and criticism, which autistics so often are.We see every facial expression, we hear every comment, and we internalise it. And the one you thought we didn’t see, or hear, we did, but we hide it well. Furthermore, we never ever forget it. I have an exceptional long-term memory, the downside of that is it includes an exceptional
