I feel like we really need to draw the connection between masking and dissociation. the way that masking is a result of the conscious or unconscious feeling of ‘I don’t feel safe to be myself around these people’ that leads to mimicking their behaviour to fit in. typically associated with lower supports needs in autism, I wonder if it also could be associated with a higher sensitivity to nervous system signals of unsafety and threat (as in the pda profile, though likely not exclusive to it).
dissociation is a trickier one to pin down because it’s almost always a product of trauma (and burnout which is a trauma in of itself). it’s ‘this situation is not safe let’s channel a more functional version of me to survive it and ignore the rest of me’ again and again and again for years on end, often starting during childhood, impacting things like memory and ability to access your own emotions, in more severe cases different versions of you not integrating into one whole person.
you can see how similar this is to masking. If you have to mask again and again for years because it doesn’t feel safe (which might not be due to abuse or the like, could be because of your nervous system finding a lot more things unsafe and not being accommodated) and just occasionally ‘switch’ to the version of you that’s been bottling everything up for years unintentionally and melt down and let it all out (which isn’t going to feel like you! it’s going to feel like someone else!) you can see the parallels I’m drawing here. and for many neurodivergent folk this is a regular occurrence. for decades, and even by the time someone figures out what’s going on—it’s gonna take a lot longer to rewrite those brain pathways.
