Link to an Instagram reel Audio “I will grow under any conditions” Text “Me before I unmasked, working myself to what looks like irreversible ASD burnout”
Audio “I’m allergic to tap water” Text “Me after unmasking and learning how real skill regression is”
“Skill regression” is such an awful term. It would be like taking a severe workaholic who is getting stress ulcers, having them develop a proper work-life balance, and calling that “productivity regression”.
I don’t know either, but from context clues I think it’s what happens when you find out masking is harmful to you, and you try to stop it. Some people do this by losing social skills and regressing into a less social person. Probably also other things but I’m no expert.
If I'm not wrong it also refers to when you develop skills that are 100% bound to a mask that you use for a specific place or environment (for example at work), but then when you unmask, or when you don't "wear" that mask for a long time and lose connection with it, you also lose access to those skills.
Since realizing I’m autistic I have had a few big areas of skill regression that have really concerned me. Mainly sensory sensitivity leading to overstimulation, and just total exhaustion after any kind of social activity leading to a deep sense of need to be alone for a long time, like many many days in order to recover.
I think about this a lot about what it means because I used to mask everything so much that I could go all school semester passing as a normal human, just quirky. Then during break I would get sick and fall apart like my body was just waiting for permission to take a break.
Summers were always a time of much deeper depression and I think about it now as burnout. But I always pulled myself back together to perform the requisite behaviors.
Now I have given myself permission to give myself accommodations with regards to sensory overload and recovery after socializing, I recognize it better and understand more what I’m feeling. But that makes it seem like it’s there * more *
For me I am wondering if/realizing it may be Frequency illusion, partly from reflecting more. I do agree that reading what other people experience and understanding/listening to what I and my body need makes it seem like it is worse/more for me.
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