Forget camouflaging at work; do it at home
Tiny Blowing a Bubble, Seattle 1983, by Mary Ellen Mark
Camouflaging is what women do to make sure no one thinks we’re weird. This means we end up camouflaging at work and being too exhausted to do it at home. But home is where we really need it, because the effect of camouflaging is to be more agreeable t0 other people. And the workplace doesn’t reward agreeableness.
We intuitively camouflage when dating; don’t do a bait-and-switch.
Once the kids were gone, I found myself choosing bras more carefully. I only have one real bra. The rest are running bras that squoosh. But I started wearing my real bra when Nino came over for dinner. We had not spent a whole dinner alone in 20 years. I wanted to look like someone he might like, so I put on makeup, but not enough for him to be able to tell that I put on makeup just for him.
It took about four dinners before it felt like before we had kids, when everything was fun if we did it together. When he met me I never wore bras – only bathing suit tops. So I quit the bra. And the makeup.
Aim for the tricky camouflage middle between controlling and a doormat.
We were spending so much time together that we needed a TV show to watch. Nino rejected all suggestions. We watched films that seemed to exist only in film school courses. I resigned myself to the fact that we are old enough to remember when TV was not cool and that Nino is not going to let that go.
I watch The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel without him. When the kids were around, I hid the fact that I did nothing but watch Mad Men for five days straight. Now I can be irresponsible. I can go to bed at 5am because I must see if Mrs. Maisel goes back to her ex-husband.
Cooking is a part of camouflaging. Don’t do too much or too little.
It’s a luxury to not have to pretend to be a competent parent. Now I can dine on Clif Bars and Diet Coke. Child services is not looking in my refrigerator. And I have a nutritional safety net, because I cook for Nino four days a week.
I hate to admit how happy I am not to cook for all four of us all the time. Z is a great cook, but somehow I always end up being his sous chef — under poor working conditions. And Y is vegan, so I’m a Svengali of egg substitutes that work 80 percent of the time.
Remember that the point of camouflaging is to be easy to get along with.
By October Nino and I were branching out. Before we left for the Isabel Stewart Gardner Museum, I asked Nino if my pants matched my shoes. He was shocked that I was asking. But I’ve gotten accustomed to the kids critiquing my clothes before I leave: Are they clean? Do they have holes?
Nino and I peek at the Mary Ellen Mark exhibit in the museum annex. We agree that she took advantage of the kids she photographed, and she was mostly just interested in getting credit for getting access. No need for us to stand in the long line.
We wander around on the top floor looking at old European art in poorly lit rooms. Nino finds a door and says, “It’s like your drawings.” He knows what I like.
We get along so well that the kids ask if we’ll remarry. It’s a definite no. The kids ask if we’ve become asexual. The thought has crossed my mind. I should have had hormone replacement therapy ten years ago. But sex would complicate my life. So maybe sliding too deep into menopause has a silver lining.
Accommodating other people is exhausting. Don’t attempt to do it all day long.
The kids used to ask Nino why he left us. He’d always say, “I didn’t leave you, I left your mom.” Now that the kids are gone, they’re shocked that he’s happy to spend time with me. I am not shocked, but I worry that the kids are insulted. I wonder if it’s selfish to feel close to Nino when the kids cannot.
I notice that when the kids come back home, Nino and I move farther apart to make room in my head for the kids. My parenting skills have given up any pretense of being natural. And I worry I have fake relationships that I prop up or pull down depending on who is coming for dinner.
I don’t think I have the energy to keep so many separate parts of my life on track. I picked Z up at the airport last week after staying up all night trying to make everything in our apartment the way he likes. I got myself to the right terminal and I was at our meeting place five minutes early – a miracle for me.
Then I noticed my shirt was on inside out.
I had to decide if he’d be more disturbed that my shirt was inside out, or that I was late because I went to the bathroom. Then I realized that I could switch the shirt right there in baggage claim, because I was wearing a sports bra underneath.
—–
Want to know how much you camouflage? Take a test.
I have said I’m not allowed to comment anymore because I don’t read articles properly/ do it for dopamine.
I just need to say this is what most refer to as ‘masking ‘ for Neurodivergents. Neurotypicals don’t find it as hard.
And we are all doing the best you can and trying to be happy x
I got a 104
That’s why I always look forward to your comments!
I accidentally bumped the link for the quiz. I rarely do such things but I answered the questions which were not applicable to me overall. When I saw that I was going to have to calculate my scores, I was surprised. I wouldn’t have taken it if that was the case. It isn’t meaningful to me at all so I don’t care and don’t have any idea what label I would get except something not autistic. I know you believe that everyone who reads your blog is autistic but indeed, I am not autistic. In case you are interested, I am an ENFJ who isn’t too strong on the E even though I am very gregarious and people assume I enjoy lots of socializing with groups of people but I don’t. . Not that any of this matters at all but just to let you know that I read your blog because I am interested in how people think. That’s a trait of ENFJs, after all. Have a good one.
Thank you for taking the time to tell me all this. I do find details like this interesting. And I think you’re right about the test needing to be automated. Or have an alert on top that it’s not. I didn’t really think of putting a test up for everyone to take until the last minute. So your feedback is helpful.
Penelope
I also took the test and was surprised to have to score it myself. So I didn’t bother scoring it. The older I get, the less I care about what people think of me, so I realized that the score simply didn’t matter.
39. That feels dysfunctional in the other direction based on your scoring norms.
Thinking through the questions a little further, I probably do some of those things, but they’re so ingrained I don’t realize it. Like mimicking body language or facial expressions. I know I modulate the volume and expressiveness of my voice with people who are fairly quiet because I catch myself doing it sometimes. But I don’t think about it at all.
You’re right that 39 is a problematic score. But it probably just means you didn’t understand the questions. It’s difficult to score yourself on ANY test. I mean, self-testing doesn’t really work. If anything, it tests self-knolwedge about a specific topic. Almost all camouflaging is unconscious. Autisitic women do it on average of three times a minute when we’re with other people. It doesn’t register as camouflaging — it just feels like BEING. The impact is the mental and physical exhaustion from fitting in with other people.
I tried to take the test, but math and I don’t get along, and then I had to do algebra? (Maybe not literally, I don’t know…as I said…mathhhh!) Is it possible to get one that scores itself?
Yes. I agree. Terrible that it doen’t score itself. It didn’t occurr to me how bad that was. So I’m fixing it. Hold tight…
Thank you- I appreciate that! I have a lot of math anxiety and that is a “me” problem, but I do think it will be more useful with self-scoring, even to those without my issues. :)
I just had to read the questions and then look at the scoring system to know my score would be embarrassingly high. The thing that sucks is that without some degree of camouflaging – especially, as you explain, with people important to us – we can’t maintain relationships. We might tell ourselves we can “be ourselves” and just let our extreme levels of impulsivity take off in everything we do or say when we’re around people we trust, but it’s disastrous.
I think to some extent masking is really just exercising tact and considerateness, which autistic people don’t inherently come ingrained with, so it’s difficult and feels unnatural.
It’s really hard to come to terms with the fact that the people most important to us, and who we love the most, are the very people for whom we need to put ourselves through that difficulty.
Thanks for this comment, Nami. This is the same way I would use the test. To understand what people are measuring. I don’t think the actual score is very interesting – these self-tests are the epitome of confirmation bias because the questions are subjective about ourselves. So if you want to learn about yourself from the test you will. And if you think the test is stupid, or you think you already know, then you won’t learn. It reminds me of personality type. No one ever is disappointed or horrified by their results; they just retake the test to get a result they like.
I can’t be arsed to take an online test and then fiddle around with a pencil and paper to add it all up, but I guess it’s worth pointing out that some of the questions are so silly that the test is as meaningful as the typical quiz from Cosmo. Specifically, some of the questions are ones which every person would answer affirmatively if they are honest. Here are examples:
“5. I will repeat phrases that I have heard others say in the exact same way that I first heard them.”
Yes, that is how language acquisition works. It’s not a matter of psychological profile. It’s a matter of people being born not knowing language, and then progressively acquiring more, through methods like this.
Likewise,
“8. In my own social interactions, I use behaviours that I have learned from watching other people interacting.”
Anybody who says they don’t is either remarkably blind to their own behavior or lying. Yes, we learn behavior from watching other people behave. All of us. And from fiction, and TV, and movies. In every one of our cases it is 100% true that this happens.
What is determined from an answer to such questions? Does it discriminate among people, and on what basis? Most of the questions are of this sort – all of us do these things. “I adjust my body language or facial expressions so that I appear interested by the person I am interacting with.” Yes, of course you do. Everybody does this. Is anything revealed by an answer to this beyond the current mood of the person taking the test, or their current level of fixation with such questions?
I am certain that PT did not develop this quiz herself, but copied and pasted it from elsewhere. The person who developed it was probably English, based on the spellings. Also, the developer was not very good at research.
I am reminded of a survey a student association wanted me to give to one of my classes back when I was teaching. One of the questions was like this:
“Does the teacher give the correct amount of homework?”
(This was accompanied by bubbles from one to five).
If 50% of the class thinks the teacher gives too little homework, and 50% of the class thinks the teacher gives too much homework, then 100% of the class feels the teacher gives the wrong amount of homework, but actually it’s on average the right amount of homework. A question like “On a scale from one to five, with one being too little and five being too much, how much homework does the teacher assign?” might have gathered useful data.
I told the student association that if they were taking statistical methods with me I would fail them. Gathering data is a pointless exercise unless you can specify what the data means.
WRT “camouflaging,” is the distinction between autistic women and allistic women really how much more the former camouflage? Or is it just how uncomfortable it feels for them to do so?
Anybody who has seen a pack of female college first-years walk down the sidewalk will surely recognize that they camouflage to a degree perhaps unmatched elsewhere in society. Is this the year of white jean shorts and black tank tops? Or is it the year of high ponies with scrunchies? Groups of high school and college girls not only dress and do their makeup and hair almost exactly the same, but they speak and move their hands in almost the same way. Concretely, the behaviors described here are applied by these groups to a very high degree (higher than anyone reading this). But will they think of this matching as camouflage or as bonding?
Is the difference between autistic and allistic the exhibition of the behavior or the feelings about the behavior?
I agree that the test should be automated. I’m working on it. Meanwhile, I didn’t create the test. It’s one of the only tests related to *anything* about neurodiversity that was developed and validated specifically for women. Here’s the peer reviewed research that validates the test (I should probably just include this with the test.)
Hull, L., Mandy, W., Lai, M. C., Baron-Cohen, S., Allison, C., Smith, P., & Petrides, K. V. (2019). Development and validation of the Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire (CAT-Q). Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 49(3), 819-833. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-018-3792-6
References
Baker, S., Smyth, C., Bartholomew, E., Buchanan, B., & Hegarty, D. (2024). A Review of the Clinical Utility and Psychometric Characteristics of the Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire (CAT-Q): Gender-Specific Norms, Percentile Rankings, and Qualitative Descriptors.
Cook, J., Hull, L., Crane, L., & Mandy, W. (2021). Camouflaging in autism: A systematic review. Clinical Psychology Review, 89, 102080. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2021.102080
Cook, J., Hull, L., & Mandy, W. (2024). Improving diagnostic procedures in autism for girls and women: A narrative review. Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, 20, 505-514. https://doi.org/10.2147/NDT.S372723
Fombonne E. (2020). Camouflage and autism. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, and Allied Disciplines, 61(7), 735-738. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.13296
Hull, L., Mandy, W., Lai, M. C., Baron-Cohen, S., Allison, C., Smith, P., & Petrides, K. V. (2019). Development and validation of the Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire (CAT-Q). Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 49(3), 819-833. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-018-3792-6
Hull, L., Lai, M. C., Baron-Cohen, S., Allison, C., Smith, P., Petrides, K. V., & Mandy, W. (2020). Gender differences in self-reported camouflaging in autistic and non-autistic adults. Autism, 24(2), 352-363. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361319864804
Lai, M. C., Hull, L., Mandy, W., Chakrabarti, B., Nordahl, C. W., Lombardo, M. V., Ameis, S. H., Szatmari, P., Baron-Cohen, S., Happé, F., & Livingston, L. A. (2021). Commentary: ‘Camouflaging’ in autistic people – reflection on Fombonne (2020). Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, and Allied Disciplines, 62(8). https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.13344
I took the test and had a really low score. I interpreted the questions as, “Do you do this consciously? Do you have to think about it when you do it?” Of course I do all of those things. Do I think about them? Is there a cognitive load to doing them? No.