What is Unmasking?

In the neurodivergent community, we use the term unmasking to describe a sort of liberation from mainstream expectations of behavior. Another way to think about unmasking is that it’s an experiment with prioritizing authenticity, whatever that may look like for a particular person. In other words, there is no one way to unmask.

We all mask, whether neurodivergent or neurotypical. When I was a child, my mother had a “business voice” she would use when making phone calls to strangers and businesses. She sounded different to me. She had a more limited range of emotional expression, lower and quieter vocal tones, and she said the word “ah” between words instead of “um.” This was my mother’s version of masking, or making her voice seem presentable to the outside world. I respected my mother’s “business voice” and thought it was skillful that she could do that. Now I realize that what she was doing was a form of masking. It was also likely exhausting to her, since it was not her normal way of conversing.

For those of us who are neurodivergent, we likely learned early on that our authentic way of being was odd or off-putting to others. We may have discovered rocking back and forth in class as a way to discharge sensory overload from the classroom setting. We may have gotten very excited about a topic of interest and shared with others about it in a long, uninterruptible “info dump.” We may have preferred “soft pants” to pants with buttons or restrictions. Any of these authentic ways of being likely felt good and relieving to us, like a form of taking care of ourselves.

But we are social animals, and the need to belong is powerful. Each of the examples I describe above was likely to be met with rejection of some kind, or were not likely to get us the sense of belonging that all humans need. We likely sensed, perhaps with an elevated sensitivity to social interactions, that those choices were not popular with others! So if we had the resources to stop doing them, we likely stuffed that urge away somewhere in the body, and stopped doing it. What happens to a body that extinguishes urges to take care of oneself? In my body, it creates muscle tension and restricted breathing.

At its core, unmasking is about safety. If it is safe to move and act in a way that feels good to me, I will likely do that. For me, unmasking has been freeing, joyful and feels like a relief. I accept the odd parts of myself and allow them to move. Because I enjoy relative privilege via my various identities (I appear white and female, pass for heterosexual, am educated, and enjoy relative financial stability), it is fairly safe for me to explore unmasking in certain environments. For those who don’t enjoy privilege for various reasons, unmasking may not be as safe. There are very good reasons to mask, including maintaining one’s job and livelihood, and even avoiding a dangerous interaction with the police. Folks experiencing less relative safety may need to mask more for their own well being. However, we can potentially choose where and if to mask, especially when we grow awareness of our automatic masking responses. For example, a neurodivergent born-female teen may successfully fit in at school, but come home irritable and exhausted from the great effort this takes. This is a form of masking at play.

So how do we create spaces in which we can safely unmask?

And what happens when my unmasking impacts another person in an unwanted way? Should my unmasking be solely for my own liberation, or does my impact on others factor in to the process?

My interest is in this very intersection: what is it like to unmask in a relational way? How can I stay curious about my impact as I unmask and attend to it, while also staying true to myself? How can this inherent tension lead to healthy conflict, conflict in which we stay relational as we negotiate the various, sometimes opposite, needs? Because the answers to these questions are not black and white, built into the Relational Unmasking model is a commitment to relational repair. In the Relational Unmasking groups I guide, we actively give and receive feedback about impact. My unmasking will likely impact others I care about. I want to know about that and take care of it. And I am also interested in being more and more myself in the face of others being more and more themselves in a way that is different than me. The negotiation of that space is Relational Unmasking.

Photo by Jenny Epstein Kessem

Masking as a defense

What is neurodivergent masking and how do you know when it’s happening?

My husband likes to tease me that I’m the Mayor of Boulder. This is because I am a natural networker. I like making connections. When I get into a large group, I go into what we might call my Mayor mode—I am connecting and connected, introducing people to each other, tracking the whole group and the individuals, and making people feel comfortable.

However, after one of these gatherings, we frequently have a conversation that goes something like this:

Husband: How was that for you? You looked like you were having fun!

Me: It was horrible! Why did we stay so long? I’m so exhausted.

Husband: Well that’s confusing. When I looked across the room several times, you looked great.

Me: Maybe, but I felt stuck in interactions and wanted to get away. I’m peopled out.

What’s really going on here?

As a neurodivergent person, identified later in life, I am learning that modes I thought were me—like the Mayor mode—are actually unconscious defenses. It’s not that the Mayor mode isn’t a part of me, or isn’t even a great skill. I am great with people, and enjoy being great with people. It’s just that it is a learned way of navigating overwhelm. It is a mask.

One reliable indicator of masking for me is my energy level. If something is depleting for me, that’s a good clue that I’m using masking to get through it, even though I am not always aware I am masking in the moment. Defenses can arise automatically in the face of threat, often without conscious awareness of that threat, nor awareness of the defense. If I pay enough attention, sensations of masking for me are habitual muscle tension, a forced smile, and restricted breathing. I don’t feel fully alive, but rather, like I am getting through something.

We born-female neurodivergent people may mask more readily than others. The drive to belong socially may be especially strong in many born-female people. That drive to belong may at times feel at odds with the drive to be authentic. This is especially true in a place of developmental need: as little people, we play with the tension between having an authentic self and belonging to our people. When these (equally important) developmental drives are at odds, we may prioritize belonging over being authentic. This prioritization would be another definition of masking. When we are young, masking can be an adaptive response to an environment that isn’t designed for people like us. However, masking can become a well-worn and unconscious habit that has high costs. I like to say masking isn’t wrong, it is just expensive.

Now that I understand how expensive masking is to my system, I consider social opportunities differently. Do I have enough juice for this big expense? Is it worth it? This decision making is not unlike deciding how to spend money. Occasionally a big spendy item is totally worthwhile. But on an average day, with the various demands on my “budget”, an energetically expensive item is often not worth the cost. Self compassion allows for me to stand by whatever “budgeting” decision I make without regret.

Wisdom from a Sea Turtle

I had the privilege to swim in a bay with hordes of sea turtles, and learned from their bodies something important about effort.

I had just finished treatment for breast cancer, and I was exhausted. A dear friend invited me to visit her place in Hawaii for a week of repair and rejuvenation.

Sea turtles weigh about 200 lbs. and swim and dive through the water as if flying, with ancient ease and grace. They are beautiful old souls, gentle and curious. married to the water. But they also like to congregate on land to rest, in a tiny cove in the sun that is reached by crossing the shallow water atop a coral reef. How do the heavy turtles get from the deep water, their place of ease, to the beach where they congregate in the sun? These heavy and gentle creatures do not have proper legs, but only fins. How would I exit the ocean to join my turtle friends in the sun if I did not have legs?

I didn’t understand this crossing until I watched it, imitating with my body what I saw the turtle do. The turtle fits its body into the shallow water by extending its endpoints—four fins, head and tail in opposite directions—to become more flat. From there, the turtle waits. I too, got my body flat by extending my head, arms and legs out. I waited.

When a swell of the gentle waves reaches the cove, the turtle gives a paddle of its fins. It moves forward. When the water ebbs, the turtle does not resist the ebb, but simply waits. With the next swell, the turtle paddles forward again. As I tried this in my body, I found that the ebb tugging me backward, away from my goal, actually felt pleasurable if I did not resist it. Waiting for the swell to assist propelling me forward made the journey interesting, and not draining.

From finding turtle wisdom in my body, I have learned about effort, especially when drained. Pause. Do not effort on the ebb. Rest on the ebb. Wait for the swell to propel you forward. Be a part of the ocean’s momentum and it will offer an assist toward the destination. Far from Hawaii now, my body could practice the sea turtle’s dance for decades and continue to learn to effort less, and less, and less even still.

Poetry for a time of many losses

Kindness

By Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Fallow times: A Rough Guide to Navigating a Health Crisis

As the coronavirus continues to change just about every aspect of life as we knew it, I can feel the collective impulse to panic or resist. To plan ahead, as if we really could know the future. To buy our way out of this, as if one extra purchase of toilet paper or sanitizer could protect us from anxiety of the unknown. To predict the future to avoid pain, as if we really could. To make, or do, or monetize, or strategize to get away from the discomfort of watching the structures of our complex lives dissolve. These are such understandable impulses.

Instead, I am noticing in moments a certain kind of peace. A fallow peace.

The truth is I have been in fallow times anyway. I was diagnosed with breast cancer in fall 2018, and have recently completed the major forms of treatment. Before that, I was sick with mold illness and our family was displaced from our home for six months. We lost most of our possessions and our financial security. Life as we knew it has really fallen apart over the last three years for us. Because of longtime compromised immunity, I have been quietly thinking about infectious vectors, with hand sanitizer in my purse, for a few years. Weirdly, my (perhaps neurotic) measures are suddenly the cultural norm. Strangely, the unwanted crises of the last few years have actually seasoned me for this new Covid-19 reality. So perhaps I can be of service, to share what lessons I have learned from being a few years into a Health-Driven Change of Fortune.

Improvisation

First, the reality has asked me to be in a constant improvisation with life. I make plans with some amusement, as I can never really know what will happen next. And yet, plan we must, to some degree. For example, since cancer treatment I have been enamored with swimming. It helps with many of the side effects of cancer treatment and also elevates my mood. Because of coronavirus, I have not been in a pool for about two weeks. While this makes me very sad, I have tried to keep swimming. The other day I put my belly on a wood floor and lifted my limbs into the strokes, rolling slightly back and forth on my organs. I’m pretty sure it helped, even because it makes me laugh to think about it. And no need to change into a bathing suit! The key has been to hold on lightly to any plan, allowing for the plan to evolve. Crisis is not a good time to hold on to being consistent, but rather a time to pivot, to be open to the unknown, to change former habits and perceptions, and to truly clear the slate.  I found recently on a scrap of paper a quote my husband had scribbled down, “It is easier to pivot while in motion.” This improvisational state requires letting go, and constant commitment to reorientation. I honor that this is a scary practice. And also a worthwhile one.

I used to work with a woman that used crisis as opportunity in a way that still brings tears of wonder to my eyes. She had been sold from her own war-torn country into indentured slavery for a very wealthy and abusive family in the Middle East.* This family had business in New York, and as their domestic servant, she flew with them into JFK airport. On September 11, 2001. On that historic day, as utter terror and chaos was unfolding around her in the airport, this brave woman let go. She cleared the slate. She ran away. She was able to get asylum in the United States and is now safe from her abusers. If it weren’t for the crisis on September 11th, that brave woman might still be a domestic servant in the Middle East. How can the current crisis conditions also open us up to new unexpected freedoms?

Fallowness

In farming, the fallow time is the time that builds the soil. The soil is potent, full of creative potential, but the wise farmer does not try to extract every resource from the land until it is depleted. Instead, she waits, trusting the time to plant will come. This not-so-wise farmer once impatiently planted a dahlia in the most visible spot in our yard, but I did not take the time to treat the soil first. I am ever hopeful each year when the dahlia greens poke up from the soil, but it has yet to flower. I am tolerating fallowness. Fallowness, in the current public health crisis, allows us to unplug from the great assumptions, the great fullness of life. We step off of the frenetic treadmill of constant busyness and then ask, now what? What is essential? What is necessary today? What matters, really?

Allowing grief

As my health has improved, I have felt impulses to do more, to make life complex again. The pattern goes like this: I have some energy again! If I have energy, I should use it. I will resume an identity that I had previously let go! It will be great. So far, most frequently I realize that it is better not to take each new opportunity or impulse, not to fill the empty space, but instead to be quieter for now. This has been a time for me to practice tolerating simplicity, and my own fallowness. It is not so comfortable for my ego. But I am trusting that if I wait long enough, rest long enough, the right action becomes clear. If I really exhale all the way to the bottom of empty, I cannot help but feel the innumerable losses of this time. There is incredible grief, personally and also collectively.  The emptying process of grief cannot be skipped. And, at some point, after the grief, the next right action, and the next inhalation, will come reflexively.

Welcoming the Unknown

None of us will see life in quite the same way after living through this public health crisis. Many of us are being forced to slow down, to do less, to focus on the essentials. When we are stripped down in this way, we lose the buffers that insulate us from looking at vulnerability, the vulnerability to illness and death that has been here all along, but brushed under the rug. That rug has suddenly been pulled out from under us. Let’s take this fallow time to really take a look—what is under that rug? When our stark vulnerability and the inevitable reality of death feels so very close, what is most important? How do I want to spend this precious moment now?

We have never seen times like these. I can allow myself to be forever changed by this experience, and welcome it. I look forward to the as-yet-unknown outcomes of this time.  I am curious what we will learn, how we will live differently now, how this crisis makes both our interdependence and our unsustainable ways so nakedly evident. What unexpected fruits will come from this fallow time?

….

I am feeling moved to share more, in a way that I hope will be of service. Stay tuned here for an evolving rough guide to navigating a health crisis.

*Identifying details of this story have been removed to protect the safety of those involved.

Cancer

I have now been dancing with a diagnosis of breast cancer for 8 months. The process is like getting unpeeled, and then unpeeled again, and again. Many parts of the unpeeling are quite unappealing, and yet what is revealed underneath is precious fruit. As I lose what I did not know I even had, I begin to appreciate with fierce wonder. I feel my essential nature underneath what has been lost. The journey is a gift I would not wish on anyone, but a gift nonetheless. My work cannot help but be informed and transformed by cancer. I am graced by this, and excited about this. I am ever more direct, precise, playful, spacious, and able to connect with the essence of things. I look forward to sharing the fruits that only an unpeeling can give.

How to Stay Sane if Trump is Driving you Insane: Advice from a Therapist

Photo by Jenny Epstein Kessem

Sharing this fantastic article from Robin Chancer:

https://medium.com/@robin.chancer/how-to-stay-sane-if-trump-is-driving-you-insane-advice-from-a-therapist-42e982195e22

Distress Tolerance: Skills for when things don't go our way

It is the morning after the election, and I am in shock with the results. People around me are in shock also. I am posting for myself as much as for others, but I feel an amazing source of energy to serve here.  I want to share what I know about Distress Tolerance*. 

When things don't go our way, we tend to go into either fight or freeze, or a vacillation between the two.  Meaning, we either gear up to resist reality, or we go limp and give up.  Distress tolerance is about finding a middle way, a way that accepts reality as it is. This does not mean we agree with the reality or are complicit with it, but rather we have the wisdom to ask: how much can I relax into what I cannot change right now?  How I can survive this?  It is much like the Serenity Prayer from AA: I commit to change whatever I can, also accept what I cannot change, and pray for the wisdom to know the difference.

The benefit from these Distress Tolerance skills is that we can focus on what works in the moment.  We can let go where we need to let go.  Here is an analogy: Let's say I really need to get somewhere by car and I must be on time. But I find myself in a standstill traffic jam and there is no visible way out in this moment.  What can I do in this moment?  Blare my horn and rage at my car or at myself?  Understandable choices, but not so effective.  I can soothe myself.  I can have compassion for myself and the others around me.  I can breathe.  I can laugh about how much I am not in control in this moment.  These are Crisis Survival Strategies, or Distress Tolerance skills. There are other DBT skills that help us make external changes, and we will need these skills in the upcoming months too.  But also in equal force we might need skills that help us accept reality as it is.  This does not mean we approve of the current conditions, but we are surviving them with as little harm as possible.

Some specific ways to foster Distress Tolerance with examples of each skill:

1) Distract with:

• Activities: clean, visit a friend, chop wood, move your body.

• Contributing to others: do something for others.

• Comparisons: put your experience in perspective.

• Emotions: do things that produce an opposite emotion (for example, jump on a trampoline, watch a funny movie).

• Pushing away: put the pain away for a while. You can come back later.

• Thoughts: get your mind to do other things, like puzzles.

• Sensations: hold ice in your hand, take a hot shower, have sex.

2) Self-soothe with your five senses

• Vision: look at beautiful things, go to a new place and take it in.

• Hearing: listen to soothing or invigorating music. Pay attention to sounds in your environment or in nature.

• Smell: Use a favorite lotion or scent. Boil cinnamon. Use lemon oil on furniture. Smell a fire or burn incense.

• Taste: Have a good meal. Drink tea and really notice the flavors. Chew on fennel seeds. Enjoy flavors mindfully.

• Touch: Take a bubble bath. Pet a dog or cat. Put lotion on your hands. Hug someone. Lay on a soft rug.

3) Improve the moment

• Imagery: imagine a safe place and let yourself go there in your mind, filling out the details of your sensory experiences.

• Meaning: create some purpose or value in the pain.

• Prayer: open your heart to greater wisdom or something larger. Ask for strength.

• Relaxation: try muscle relaxing by tensing and releasing each large muscle group. Breathe deeply. Massage your own scalp.

• One thing at a time: focus your entire attention on just what you are doing right now.

• Vacation: give yourself a brief vacation. Hide under your covers for 20 minutes. Unplug your phone. Take a break from hard work.

• Encouragement: tell yourself statements like "This is temporary." "We can do this." "I am doing the best I can."

4) Use Pros and Cons

Make a list of the pros and cons of tolerating the distress.  Make another list of the pros and cons of not tolerating the distress.  Focus on long-term goals.   Remember what has happened in the past when you used impulsive action to escape the moment. 

*This material comes from DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy), a treatment whose roots come from Buddhist practice, and specifically from the book Skills Training Manual by Marsha Linehan (1993). 

“All the world is full of suffering, it is also full of overcoming it.”

— Helen Keller

Roadrage Compassion

Theme of the month is to notice all the places you experience a polarity or occupy an extreme. How can we learn to embrace paradox, allowing many things to be true at once? This makes compassion much more accessible.

Example story: I was driving with my family down Broadway when a woman in a minivan pulled right into my lane as if I weren't there and caused a very near-miss accident. It was very scary and I was furious. What was she thinking? Was she trying to kill us? I followed her down the road as she made all the same turns I was making and finally pulled up at our same destination--our child care. She was one of the moms at the child care and had her three kids in the car with her! She immediately apologized, and said her kids were having a scene in the car and she was distracted. Suddenly, I had empathy for the same woman I had just hated. How many times have I been in the same position, driving while distracted and trying to deal with a kid situation?