u/AORATHIAN

I had my NDE in 2020 and have been undergoing a sort of living afterlife ever since : Very heavy on the life review and impeccability aspect. My karma is nearly instant and my life demands near perfection from me, or else things turn very fast - instant accountability.

I believe this is part of the physics of a "final life" deal but I'm also becoming crippled by it - constantly scanning myself for slip-ups and feeling generally stuck and helpless in life - it's in the hands of a higher power ... and I'm sort of tired of this reality. Especially as the higher power just continually tests me to my limits : patience, humility, strength, endurance, blah blah blah. Few rewards. Lots of trials. Lots of being alone in a world that pushes against every step I take.

I get the negative feedback amply but positive feedback is withheld - no one is saying "good job you're a great person" only "you should have held your tongue in that one moment" etc etc.

Whatever I put out, however good it is, I feel like all I get back is just enough to survive - crumbs and critique

What's your experience here? Thoughts? Am I causing this? How can I break this loop?

A few things I'm noticing now that the mask is coming off

I worked my whole life to be hyper-functional and pleasant to be around. I beleived that this would keep me safe and keep other people happy.

In the long run this never really worked both because the mask would eventually slip AND because I was giving off an aura of hiding something or faking - which would feel to others like deceit or plotting etc.

I get that - they were picking up on a mask I didn't even know I was wearing. They thought I was angling, playing a game - I was never playing a game. This disconnect between how I was and how people assumed I was hurt like hell, was dangerous, and was impossible to understand - until recently.

My mask made me seem strong and maybe scary

Without my mask I come across as vulnerable and meek

And ironically I think this vulnerability may actually make me safer

The mask made me seem like a threat that needed to be "taken care of" - real me is just a woman who needs to be .... taken care of

What was / is your experience with unmasking? Has life gotten safer or more dangerous?

Hello, everyone. This is my first post in an autistic community. Probably the first of many. It's sort of the origin story of the day the engine broke on the really really sophisticated mask I didn't even know I was wearing. I'm going to continue sharing things as they unfold if you all are interested. I will say for now that reading all of your posts has made me feel for the first time in my life like I'm not a singularly impossible problem in the world.

I am really happy to be here and even though I feel Like I'm picking up where I left off when I was 5 and even though I'm terrified.

Here's the story:

I had an incident recently in which someone lost their temper with me in a big way. It happens. Without warning. Often enough to make me constantly feel the need to reevaluate and reengineer myself. The triggers are often banal IMO to the point that sometimes just walking into a room is enough to make a stranger upset.

I had become used to regulating myself in these situations and then regaining my strength afterwards and reentering the world with a “new battle plan”. But this time my body refused. Something in me broke - an engine that had been running on god-knows-what. I could no longer speak or move or even think like I had been. I began to stutter and slow down and spasm.

The following evening I had a storytelling class in the city.

Instead of telling my rehearsed story I shared what has happened and how this had been happening to me since I was a child and I could not figure it out.

A woman in the class later asked me if I was autistic and then proceeded to share her experiences with the same problems throughout her life. She began to say things like “people like us get misunderstood” and “we are perceived as a threat”. This was the first time in my life I was part of a “we” that actually felt like it fit.

Everything she said made perfect sense. It was like a curtain had been pulled back and she was showing me a whole world where there was a language for everything I was going through and where I was not singularly broken or problematic, but rather part of an entire population of people who experience the same thing.

I broke down and cried all the way home with a relief I haven’t felt in ages.

I’m aware of a feeling of shame around who I was pretending to be. Also grief because that persona is literally dying inside of me. She was working so hard all day every day to keep me safe but she was only making it worse. I think.

I feel meeker now, slower, simpler. But I also feel calmer. I have lost the ability to give people what they want in conversations but I also, to my delight, don't care (as much). I. Just. Can't

It feels like a big elephant just got off of me. I was sort of crumpled up underneath it and am slowly coming back to life now that it’s gone. I feel lighter but also dense and confused about how to speak and be.

Who knows what sort of person exists on the other side of all of this. We will find out. I am only so so sorry that I stomped her out for so long. I had no idea I was doing it.