Can high-masking autistics have social deficits too?

Play fighting as a young autistic kid was so hurtful and confusing. It felt like no one else had to follow rules but I had a thousand rules I had to follow but no one would tell me the rules. As a sensory seeking kid I loved wrestling and physically fighting other kids but it would always end with me unintentionally hurting someone for real too.

Specially relate to the not knowing when and how much or sometimes even what(like whats pertinent) to share. It has caused me so much embarrassment my whole life. I still cringe whenever I recall some of it(it was made clear to me that I over or under shared in retrospect after getting more new info).

I remember as a kid I would over share and the reactions I would get made me feel like it was a bad thing, so I stopped. When I got older, high school years, a friend told me "I know you're favorite colors, chips, etc, but I don't know you" as in how i grew up, and my pass. It was almost like I created a "2D" version of myself that helped me make others feel comfortable, but could never really feel emotionally connected, leading me to always feel burned out.

I've noticed that my son (diagnosed as a 7 year old), now 19, hasn't developed the crippling "social anxiety" many other undiagnosed family members have developed. I believe this is because knowing "why I don't fit", (also positive reinforcement from me & his grandma) made him accept himself enough to challenge all the bullies & "misunderstandings" that have driven the rest of us to eating disorders or substance abuse..

Tone and volume of voice is a HUGE trigger for me. I always get anxious when I hear raised voices, even if the people doing so are just being playful or bickering in a non-serious way, because in my past when the kinds of people I grew up around raised their voices, something bad was about to happen and it was probably going to involve me in a negative way. It's taken a long time to not get scared of people who talk loudly even when I know by the context that they're not angry

I want to say that part of being able to unmask around my partner is that once you're in a relationship of some kind with someone, there's a verbal contract in place. I can relax because they've said "I find you attractive and enjoyable to be around and I am actively signing up to spend more time with you because I want to spend more time with you." Then whenever I do question "are they actually enjoying this interaction/do they like me?" I can go back to the fact that there is a promise in place and reassure myself that they are with me for me and I am safe and okay.

In Australia we call play fighting “banter.” I’ve had so many conversations with other autistics around how it’s so hard to navigate. If you pretend you understand, inwardly you feel hurt. If you try to keep up with it you always run the risk of hurting someone else. It’s usually safer to just not engage, but then you get labeled as not being able to “take a joke.” It’s so confusing.

When I was younger, my masks were tied to situations moreso than to specific people. I knew that being in a classroom meant behaving a certain way and that just hanging out with friends was a different thing. I remember a friend I was in a class with in middle school pointing out how totally different I was in versus out of class, and how much that threw me because all I could think was, "Isn't that how it's supposed to be, though???"

Your inability to playfight absolutely cracked me up because it is so relatable 🤣🙂. Mindblowing to realise it is an autistic trait 🤯

I’ve got one that might resonate. Not recognising a social pattern, so just trying every way possible to handle it (eg. Someone says something unkind, so you ignore it. They repeat it and you disagree agreeably. They repeat it again so you just try to laugh it off. And so on. Just basically trying all the video game functions until one of them works, but usually if you get it wrong more than once it freaks people out.

I got really frustrated and pissed off when I realised there is no algorithm(like in old timey video games; once you figure out the algorithm of a stage you can easily pass it every single time from then onwards) to human interpersonal interaction. That people's personalities(psychology defines this as a set of repeated common behaviours a person shows) are inconsistent. Specially morally. Its all arbitrary. No formula for it no matter how much I tried to make sense of it using logic and reasoning. I had all these rules and categories in my head and I remember feeling so helpless and like I wasted so much energy all these years learning what I THOUGHT was how to deal with people and behave in society(but was actually just different masks for different situations).

I distinctly remember there being one person who straight-up did not like me at my first job out of college. As one of my managers, she went out of her way to assign me tasks that she knew I didn't like, made snide remarks about how I did the work (no matter how well it was actually done), and was just generally antagonistic. I thought I had her figured out... but then one day, I accidentally sent a text to her instead of my friend that described her by name and in less-than-flattering terms. (I was young and dumb. I called her a bitch.) The moment after I realized what I'd done, I started imagining all of the worst case scenarios about how this would play out. She could, at a minimum, write me up. She'd have been justified! But no. She laughed it off and carried on like nothing even happened. That woman terrified me from that point forward, because I realized I would never be able to predict her response to something.

I have never heard someone talk about undersharing like this but dang that’s me! The not speaking in class until you’ve been called on thing reminds me of how when people are making plans in my general vicinity they assume I know I’m invited to the thing because I’m hearing them but like unless they literally invite me specifically, I don’t know if they actually mean to include me or not. It’s the most frustrating thing ever, for me and for other people. Ugh

I think so called "play fighting" is very often toxic. It is totally ok to not accept being called "stupid" all the time, even if it is presented like a joke.

I really appreciate you sharing this stuff- these social deficits are honestly the reason why I started pursuing a diagnosis in adulthood. I also feel like these difference were made so much more apparent by "entering the adult world" and being forced to speak for myself on a variety of issues. It becomes so much more obvious how out-of-sync you are once you step outside of your nuclear-family neurodivergent bubble as a young adult.

I actually experience most of the things in this video, but i would like to expand on the whole undersharing vs oversharing. I actually think that one can lead to another both ways(undersharing—>oversharing and oversharing—> undersharing) kind of like how autistic people can start out outgoing but due to social issues and your peer’s and older people’s social development, can lead you to being introverted. I used to overshare a lot and i still do but much less. Due to how people react to me oversharing, now i either undershare or never share as a reaction to past experiences with oversharing and how people received it.

Ok I remembered another one. Being so used to assimilating to different cultures that you do it even when it’s not socially expected. Eg. Picking up an accent from the area you work on day 2. Or overly researching a friends cultural celebration to a point where it’s weird that you know that much without being a part of it. To be honest a lot of people appreciate this, and find it comforting and they see more of themselves in you and so treat you accordingly. But the usual situation I run into when this happens is another person witnessing me do this, and assuming one or both versions of me are fake. A lot of people don’t understand that fitting into the situation is often the best defence we have socially.

I've had a friend like that too, and I honestly, I don't think the girl calling you stupid was playfighting: I think she was putting you down and then trying to disguise it as a joke. Playfighting/banter is supposed to be fun for both parties involved - it's supposed to be both of you poking fun at things about each other that are kinda funny and dorky, in a harmless way. Not actually straight up insulting the other.

I relate so much on the play fighting part! I once had a friend that made jabs at me ALL THE TIME and one day I ended up jabbing back by saying something along the lines of her ex leaving her…That didn’t go well.. I was so confused as to why something I said was wrong and hurtful but everything she said was for fun. navigating those type of interactions are challenging and exhausting..

Playfighting has always been soooo stressful to me, because some people do it as a way to be horrible with plausible deniability, and it can be really hard to tell who is just teasing and who is genuinely being cruel.