When my GR friend Ashley rated this book five stars shortly afterwards, I immediately placed a hold on it.

Unmasking Autism: The Power of Embracing Our Hidden Unmasking Autism: The Power of Embracing Our Hidden

Unmasking Autism is at once a most deeply personal and scholarly account of the damage caused by autistic (and all) people leading masked lives, and how unmasking is essential to creating a self-determined, authentic life.It contains various self-help-style elements like tables and worksheets, but the exercises are, as another reviewer said, the type of thing you could easily find on pinterest. Autistic people are often afraid of saying the wrong thing because of past experiences, and become hypervigilant about how they express themselves. To unmask is to lay bare a proud face of noncompliance, to refuse to buckle under the weight of neurotypical demands. The final thing that bothered me is at the end, when he started getting into accommodations that we as Autistic people need, and how to push for said accommodations. Neither of those things have anything whatsoever to do with autism or accommodating Autistic people.

Unmasking Autism, The Power of Embracing Our Hidden Unmasking Autism, The Power of Embracing Our Hidden

Being closeted doesn’t make it so you can’t leave your bedroom for months at a time because the entire world is too stimulating. And when it comes down to the final summation of advice, the author says that unmasking (disclosing one's autism diagnosis) can potentially result in the loss of one's job, relationships, and so on. it started out good, but especially in te second half of the book I really felt this was written for a specific type of autistic person. For him, unmasking was, 'No, I'm going to keep a bunch of fidget toys all over my desk, and I'm going to have a foam roller under my desk so that I can kind of fidget it with my feet during meetings.To lump the struggle of gender identity, race, and social class into the same bucket as an ASD diagnosis feels extremely problematic to me and it undermines the struggles ASD carries all on its own. I love that he points out specific ways that Autistics who are minorities in other ways as well (such as transgender people, Black and Brown people, etc) are further harmed by society's misconceptions and cultural demand for "normality". This book mostly stayed on the topic of how LGBTQ seems to almost have a symbiotic relationship with autism and how they are under diagnosed or have slipped through the cracks. Finally, just a personal gripe: this book talks a lot more about "autistic identity" than about autism itself. When I read Hannah Gadsby's brilliant memoir Ten Steps to Nanette last month, I was shocked to discover how much I related to things she said pertaining to her being Autistic.

Unmasking autism – unlearn shame and nurture a more - NPR

I really loved that he talks so much about the social - not just ableism and stigma, but also aspects of racism, impact of poverty, and transphobia, among other things. May be highly self educated, but will have struggled with social aspects of college or their career.As an adult with Spina Bifida, a birth defect often associated Autism, and someone who works in the field of Autism, I have often found myself doing exactly what Dr. I had been thinking of my relationship to some noise-heavy music as strange, and now I can understand it as a (very rewarding) auditory stim. Lucky, We went to dinner at his Aunt's house the next weekend she sit me down and told me everything. For the last few years in my grad program, I've had a low-key special interest in how academic psychologists errantly describe autism and I hadn't been able to place why, as someone who considered themselves allistic.

Unmasking Autism - Google Books Unmasking Autism - Google Books

Then, he goes into what masking can look like, how we might decide to unmask, and ending with what we need to do as a society to make it a safe place for people to live unmasked. Masking is a common coping mechanism employed by autistic people in an attempt to fit into a neurotypical society.I don't even know if I should be referring to myself as autistic, or if I should think of myself as displaying a lot of sub-diagnostic-threshold traits and tendencies. I went into this hoping for some answers in regards to my own neurodiversity and while I did get some answers, I feel like I also left with some questions but that is okay. This obsession with details makes Autistic people really good at certain types of work like cataloging and coding.