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When I took the Values-Based Integration training, I hesitated to engage with the concept of unmasking again. I had already tried unmasking, and it went really badly. The only reason I showed up was because I had read about the process of finding values within your stories, which resonated with me in a way that allowed me to overcome my trepidation. 

Because I take words very literally, my initial interpretation of unmasking was imagining the act of removing a mask that exists on top of the “real me.” So I approached unmasking as stripping away. If I could only peel off the surface layer, a whole unmasked autistic person would magically exist underneath. I thought it was simply allowing myself to stim or look weird or awkward (which I often did anyway, despite my best efforts). Or ignoring social rituals or conventions entirely. By focusing on external behaviours, I approached unmasking as a reverse social skills training, where I was ridding myself of “fake” behaviours without questioning how I actually felt about them. 

I still didn’t know who I was behind the mask, so stripping away my neurotypical suit was unhelpful and dangerous. Our masks, damaging as they are, are formed to protect us, and I ended up socially punished. Without any sense of self or understanding of my values, this punishment was devastating. I had no armour left, so I created new social messages that I was “bad” or “wrong” to replace those I had been working to remove. 

It also meant that I was trying all these different things I had read were autistic traits and stims. Still, I had no real connection to whether or not they felt helpful or like me outside of external validation. Which is pretty circular because that’s what is at the root of my mask. My mask constantly creates a version of me defined by how others tell me I’m coming across or what I have been told is the right way to be. So I was reading books and seeing how I lined up with other autistics to evaluate if I was doing “unmasked autistic” right. I was approaching myself as yet another problem to be solved. 

Focusing on revealing my external behaviour also made me take certain behaviours as innate to me that weren’t. Many of these things were driven by panic, trauma, and the consuming anxiety caused by the conflicts between my values and contradictory messages. I wasn’t even aware of this deep anxiety because I had denied and disconnected from my feelings and physical needs. 

This focus on unmasking as an external process broke me. I went through a year of intense depersonalization as my nervous system tried to protect me from the consequences of this kind of unmasking. I no longer recognized myself in the mirror. Every movement and action of my body felt like it was coming from outside me. It was only when I began to work on listening to my body and revisiting my understanding of unmasking with the Values-Based Integration Process that I started what has been (and still is) a long process of returning to myself. 

Other approaches to unmasking did not allow me to make the process or the language around unmasking my own. What I love about the permission to define my values is that it is also a permission to redefine unmasking in a way that works for me. Even if it means using a different term. Language is incredibly evocative for me, and having permission to write my own words and definitions for my experience has been an essential part of the process. I find that the word “unmasking” no longer fits me. I once told someone, “I’m not unmasking; I’m conducting a whole archeological dig.” I still use the term “unmasking” publicly because it has an essential and established shared context, and privately I imagine a process of “unearthing” instead. 

Discovering my body’s needs and values gave me access to a part of the process I had been missing. It became less about revealing myself to others and more about finding myself. I began to connect to how my body feels to have some sense of what my body needs. Finding the pieces of the values that feel important to me and putting them back together again. It’s an inside-out process, not an outside-in process. Repairing something does change the shape of it and what it looks like, but it’s not the same result as removing a facade.

As I repaired my sense of self, I found that I was thinking less about the behaviour of looking autistic or not. I was thinking about embodiment. How does my body feel right now? How does it feel when I’m doing small talk? When I’m stimming? And the process of unmasking became so much more flexible. I am no longer stuck between a dichotomy of assimilation vs. opposition. Instead, I’m gaining the ability to make deliberate and conscious choices rooted in my access needs and values.

I have gained a sense of choice and agency in expressing myself that I didn’t have before. I’ve found much less panic and more stability in approaching unmasking, not as a set of behaviours but as examining my embodied responses and making informed decisions about what matters to me. I’m no longer frozen trying to figure out how to act according to conflicting external models. 

I’ve found that when my values lead, it is easier to stand firm, feeling I did the right thing even when the “rules” tell me it was wrong. I can compromise without compromising myself because I’m learning what is most important to my well-being. I can use external models and scripts to facilitate communication, but with an intention that matches my values. I can better protect myself and my energy by knowing when relying on social scripts or systems is a tool for accommodation rather than a denial of myself. 

I can choose seeming weird over causing harm and recognize when seeming weird might cause me too much damage. I can assert my access needs instead of questioning whether they are justified. I can find new and creative ways to integrate how my body works into social systems, so they cannot be torn away. They are enmeshed in my system, taking root and growing in new directions. I can notice the parts of me that are driven by panic at feeling like I’m supposed to control a body that is “wrong.” This panic often harms others regardless of their neurotype.

Unearthing me means making aligned choices, knowing I will not always do it perfectly. I don’t have to be caught up in getting external rules “right.” I can and will make imperfect choices, and that’s actually in line with my values. Unearthing also speaks to the speed of my process. To unearth precious things without damaging them, we have to go slowly. In fact, I just discovered that one of my heaviest and longest-standing masks is rushing to hide the speed at which I genuinely move and process. So to become aligned with my embodiment, I must slow down. It’s an ongoing process of self-discovery that I expect to engage with for the rest of my life.