To Disclose or Mask...That is the Question
TL/DR: We may have come a long way in treating mental illness, but we still have a ways to go.
Welcome back! I realized that it’s been 10 days since my last post, and I realized that I had travelled down a series of interconnected rabbit holes over that time instead of giving you my views. And, when I came up for air, I had NO IDEA where I had been… So, I’m going to speak to you about another subject near and dear to me - mental illness and one of the ultimate questions that always comes up: “Do I disclose my issues or do I mask them?”
This has been a question for a long time. When my father was growing up in the early 1950s, mental illness was treated like unwed pregnancies - they were hidden away like Mr. Rochester’s wife. My paternal grandmother was diagnosed with depression in 1951, and so my grandfather sent her and my dad to live with her family in Trinidad for a while. There was little known about depression and mental illness at the time, so they often took people with “melancholia” and tried to surround them with friends and family to help them be happy again. So, my dad went to kindergarten and first grade in Trinidad, and my grandmother seemed to get better being around her family. (TBH, I have the feeling that the added sun helped pull her out of it, and being part of a family that was well off by Trinidadian standards probably helped as well.)
So, my grandmother and dad went back to New York City to face low income life, winter and shorter days again, and guess what happened? Yup, she slipped right back into it. So they moved to the next step and she was sent to a hospital to get electroshock therapy to shock her out of the depression. Needless to say, these regular treatments didn’t do anything, either, and most likely sent her even further into the depths.
At about the same time, my maternal grandparents were dealing with depression as well. However, my grandfather wasn’t as bad as my grandmother was. He had gotten a job at a local mental hospital as a janitor, and was able to continue working without anyone knowing he had depression. However, he must have known something was wrong, since he refused any help my maternal grandmother suggested. He said he wasn’t like those people in the hospital he worked at. That was the attitude towards mental illness - it was something to be ashamed of and hidden away. So, needless to say, the culture back then was a masking one.
Fast forward to me as an adult. My wife and I got married at 25, she got her law degree and began working at a law office, and I was doing PhD work in paleontology. After 8 months at her job, she was let go, and started to exhibit anxiety about having enough money to get by. She was always upset, and nothing ever seemed good enough. On the other hand, I was going through, looking at the silver linings of anything that happened. I knew we would be ok, but my wife wasn’t happy, and nothing I did changed that. So, noticing that I was starting to get depressed (having seen it in both my grandparents growing up), I sought out the college psychologist and went through counseling for a while. It was the late 1990s and our culture was still in the masking phase. However, there was some movement towards people disclosing their issues and seeking help for them My wife, however, refused to seek help and, instead, masked her unhappiness, anxiety and depression. She was afraid of what other people would think of her. However, I was on the spectrum (even though I wasn’t officially diagnosed yet) and had grown up knowing that I was different, and learned to be comfortable in who I was, not caring what other people thought about my issues.
Five years later, I had become a teacher, and had started teaching at a school for students on the spectrum. My wife was a stay at home mom, and took care of the kids while they were young. We weren’t doing great financially, especially since private school salaries are really low, but we got our housing paid for, so it wasn’t too bad. My wife was still dealing with anxiety, and wasn’t afraid to show it in private, but when she went out with friends (which I promoted she do often - she was happy with her friends and she needed adult company) or we went to social events (which I absolutely HATED, but I went because it made her happy). However, a few years into my tenure there, the headmaster started trying to make me quit (he thought I was stubborn and wouldn’t listen to him, but it was my own autism that caused it). This never-ending stress pushed me back into a depressive cycle, which I, once again, sought out help for. When I finally left this school, my wife had something like a panic attack. We were already not financially stable, and the sole income earner was now unemployed. I was able to collect unemployment over the summer, and before the month was out, I had landed another job.
Finally, when I was diagnosed with autism, I had a choice to make - I could either disclose my disability to my employer and ask for reasonable accommodations under the ADA, or I could continue to mask as I had done regularly at the boarding school. I decided to disclose, and it was the best choice I ever made.
Now I work in a job I love at a large company, and have regular accommodations that I can use when I need them. My stress level is almost nothing, and even though I am still in counseling, my depression has been in remission for 10 years. I am learning to be more social, which makes my wife happy, and I am starting a disability group at my employer to help others with physical and mental differences, and those who are neurodiverse. There are autism groups that still suggest people like me to mask, since they are afraid of those who would be biased against them, either intentionally or subconsciously. But I learned the hard way - by masking, you are hiding the real you. It may LOOK like you fit in with everyone else, but the stress it creates isn’t worth it. I have had former students who I am friends with on Facebook who have started using me as a model and coming out as who they really are. My wife has admitted that she has anxiety (it only took three counselors diagnosing it and her sister even starting on meds for anxiety to happen), and she is open about it with her friends and family, but still masks when in other social situations. She still seems unhappy, but not nearly as frequently. My two kids have also disclosed who they are. My oldest, who is on the spectrum as well, is proud of who she is. My youngest has come out as non-binary, and although they don’t mind when I screw up their pronouns (I am old and stuck in my ways, but they know I’m trying), they are now comfortable in their own body and mind.
The lesson in all this is that everyone is different. The whole idea of masking was forced on a neurodiverse humanity when they were told that they had to be just like other people. So, for people like me who were way off that norm ended up being hidden away to make society comfortable. Or, we were forced to mask to extremes, sometimes losing ourselves in the process. So, next time you’re in a group of people, look around and see who might not fit in with the crowd. Talk to them, try and help them be who they are. Because the next time it might be you, and you’d want that support as well.
Love to see parents supporting their non-binary kids!
Hi! I really appreciate reading you and being able to "see" your life, and extrapolate to what my adult son may be feeling (since he is either "everything is great!" or "Everything is bad!" without anything more, usually. You mention, I think, "mentally diverse" and "neurodiversity" (I may have that wrong.) I was curious as to how you describe the difference, if in fact you do see those states differently. (And now I have to go back and see how you really phrased it, and find my charger too.😊) btw, I love emojis - hope you don't mind.