Masking for Aspies and Feeling Inferior

According to Wikipedia, "Masking is a process in which an individual changes or "masks" their natural personality to conform to social pressures, abuse or harassments. Some examples of masking are a single overly dominant temperament, or humor, two incongruent temperaments, or displaying three of the four main temperaments within the same individual. Masking can be strongly influenced by environmental factors such as authoritarian parents, rejection, and emotional, physical, or sexual abuse. An individual may not even know they are masking because it is a behavior that can take many forms."

Just FYI: I never wear any of the masks that 2020 made so popular.

I "mask" at many various levels. There is the level for strangers and casual acquaintances, where I say pretty much nothing at all unless asked a direct question or are required to talk to them and even then, I usually give short answers. There are many levels for friends and coworkers, where we share goals and/or interests and I may or may not be open to them and talk freely with whatever is on my mind, depending on the depth of our friendship. There are also the times when my mask is completely or almost completely gone and that is when I am alone or feel like no one is around to judge or be offended or surprised by anything that I do or say. Or on the really rare occasion when I really don't care who sees me or what they think of me. One gauge that I have found, that at least lets me know where my mask is at, is how "into" the Patch stories that I can get. Anywhere from just listening with occasional smiles, to making the proper facial expressions to go along with the lines, to quoting the lines, to quoting the lines with all the proper tones and noises and everything else that goes along with it. When I was at work I could listen to the stories with my headphones and stay at the 1st or 2nd level when surrounded by people and I could get by with little or no attention drawn to me. Sometimes when I was by myself in the clothing room, I could let my mask slip off a little more, even though I know that people can walk in at any point. When I was in the car riding home at night, I can go all the way to the last level and know that no one is around to think that I am crazy or to judge me, especially if it is dark outside and no one in the other cars would see me either. It is a fun, crazy and freeing feeling and something that I keep myself from doing around people, including family and those that know me pretty well. I have come pretty close once or twice with a specific coworker or two and they were just glad that I was happy and enjoying myself. They are people that I feel free to be myself in front of because they know me and won't judge me the way I think that others might. They may not agree with me on everything or share many of my interests, but they let me be me. I may get to almost there sometimes with family, but I cut it short to keep them from looking at me too weirdly. Even they don't know the real me deep down behind the mask, but maybe they will one day get to see the real me. No one really does yet because no one is close enough to me to see me without at least some of my mask on. Someday I hope I can find someone who I can remove my mask completely for and they will love me for what is behind the mask and they can make it easier for me to keep my mask off more around other people too.

When it comes to social stuff, I feel inferior to the other people involved and always follow and never really lead, even with my own family members. I may make decisions to do something different than everyone else, like stay behind while they go do a certain activity so that I can be alone and recoup, but I never make a decision for the whole group and have them follow my lead. I also feel, in my own mind, like they are the only ones whose ideas of what to do matter and their time is more important than mine. I give up a lot of what I would want to do when I am with someone else. Sometimes I choose to be with them and do what they want because I enjoy it or the time and energy spent is worth it in the end, but that is not always the case and I don't know how to do it any differently other than to not let myself get drawn into certain situations in the first place when I know the chances of it being miserable for me in the end are pretty high. Once I am in a miserable situation, I have a hard time finding a way out of it because I am afraid of offending someone else. If someone asks me what I want to do with them, it is really hard to come up with an answer because my mind is always trying to figure out what they would want to do that I would enjoy too, not just what I want to do. This makes interacting with others very difficult.