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”
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“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”.
Totally. What do you think we should call it?
I don’t know. “Functional rebalancing” would be more accurate, but kind of clunky. I can’t think of anything more pithy.
Baselining is pretty much just that. You work your ass off for 6 weeks and then you’re super unproductive for a week to get back to baseline.
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.
I’m sure that’s definitely part of it!
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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.
It sucks so much.
Oh boy, I’m so excited
