A fellow Dr. Neff fan 😀 My psychologist loves her too. Also as a bonus point, there are also people who have never felt the need to mask, (me) if people have a problem with me that's their problem
She's so amazing, I'm so glad to have found out about her work earlier on in my post diagnosis journey. So glad you included that piece! I feel like there's just SO much to talk about on the topic of masking/unmasking and I appreciate you sharing that some people have never felt the need to mask.
I guess I've just been lucky. It was my parents who fought for my diagnosis, they suspected I might have "Aspergers" since I had relatives that had a cousin that was diagnosed with Autism, so they kinda knew. It was my school that actually refused to get me diagnosed so when the principal changed and and my grade 6 teacher fought for my diagnosis I was able to be diagnosed.
I'm so glad to hear that both your parents and a teacher fought for you to get diagnosed-that sounds really supportive and I'm so glad you had that experience! Although uggg re: school refusing to get you diagnosed before the principal changed.
This resonated so incredibly with me. I’m a self-diagnosed non binary autistic human and I have been masking for safety most of my life. Both hiding my autistic traits and queer traits.
In my early 30s I came out as queer, and as I got more comfortable with being public about those aspects of myself, I started to find community with other neurodivergent humans, and found myself being so…comfortable.
For nearly two years I ran a community space that became a safe haven for neurodivergent queer humans and the people who love them and I miss it so very much (they raised the rent to an untenable amount so I couldn’t manage it). We moved to a new province where I’m using my heart name (that I’ve been using as my take handle for 25 years) and only my heart name and it feels amazing.
Now I’m out as queer and autistic at work and it’s been revolutionary for my mental health and reclaiming my energy.
The fact that the people I work for are celebratory of the things that make me…me…is so affirming that I’m excited to go to work.
The customers I interact with are thoughtful, and by being my true self , I’ve met so many more autistic folks out in the world.
When I’m excited I flap my hands really quickly and do this little hop skip jump thing. When I’m overwhelmed I let myself cry instead of trying to yawn my way out of crying. I finally starting wearing my noise-canceling headphones at the airport, and oh my goodness…airports aren’t scary anymore!
This week I’m being interviewed for a position with a pro-autistic organization that helps autistic folks find community with each other, and if I get the job it would be facilitating gatherings for autistic youth.
That I might get to help within my own community and help affirm other people…it makes my heart so very happy.
Thank you for writing the way you do, I appreciate you.
Ohhh, I love your shares so much and I want to share that reading this comment filled me with so much queer & autistic joy! I'm so glad that my newsletter resonated with you and I truly love all of these shares of you unmasking in your queer and autistic identities. I often think of unmasking as "coming home to my authentic self" both in my queerness and neurodivergence. Yeah for flapping your hands and doing the hop, skip, jump stim-stimming is so joyful! Also thank you for all the ways in which you're showing up for the autistic community, both through the community spaces you've created and now by interviewing for a position for a pro-autistic organization. I am wishing you lots of good luck and ease in your upcoming interview-I hope it goes really well :) Thank you very much for your lovely comments, I appreciate your words and you!
Thank you for the time you took to respond full-heartedly to my comment. You very much made my night! I so look forward to reading your future words, and thank you again for what you do! 🫶
I enjoyed this so much, and I really appreciate that you focus on the safety/privilege aspect of our ability to unmask! Being with a supportive partner has made all the difference with me in terms of unmasking (and I still mask in a lot of situations). The other day, I told him I really felt like moving my arms around when we were walking and that I was forcing myself not to. He told me to just do it, and it was so liberating! I think also because those moments are part of what he loves about me, like it's not just someone "putting up with" a behaviour they find weird or disturbing. I want to limit my time on social media like you do, but as a freelance writer, I'm finding it really hard, as I feel the need to always promote myself and my work. Do you mind me asking how you've managed that and what boundaries you have for yourself around social media?
I'm so glad to hear that you enjoyed this piece-thank you so much for sharing that with me. I'm happy to hear that you have such a supportive partner, I think it can be so healing when we unmask around people who celebrate us, our stims and neurodivergent traits! I love your question about social media and super happy to answer :) So I've currently been more on social media recently because I've been launching a program and I honestly haven't figured out a way to completely market my work off of social media. So while I'm investing in ways to be off of short form social media (such as blogging, SEO and Substack) what I do now is I approach social media in a way of "How can I make this work for me and my needs?" So right now my need is to promote my business AND to not get sensory overloaded in the process. So I download a specific social media app, publish my content and then log out and delete the app again. I've also experimented with not allowing comments/DMs as a way to protect my limited social battery. A great book is Digital Minimalism-which has so many great gems! I also keep my social media content super simple: like on TikTok I just sit in front of the camera and share some education on a specific topic, I don't do trends or try to make trendy content. Feel free to ask me more specific questions, happy to share!
I really appreciate you sharing your social media strategy with me! I'm definitely going to check out the Digital Minimalism book. I've really been struggling with it. Last year, I almost went off social media entirely, and I can tell that my brain was genuinely so much calmer and healthier for it. But I wasn't working last summer due to some medical issues, and I know it just isn't really realistic to have the same kind of limitations with it that I did last year. It's actually really relieving to hear you say you don't do trends! I tend to want to create content (ugh don't even really like saying that) just in ways that I find funny or satisfying, but I've always wondered if I'm shooting myself in the foot by not paying more attention to the trends. If you don't mind me asking, how many platforms do you focus on? As of right now, I'm really only doing Substack and (at a much more minimal level) Instagram, but I've been wondering if I should be trying to focus on more platforms (but also have no idea how I'd be able to maintain that).
Absolutely! Honestly, I struggled with social media for YEARS and I feel like I'm still exploring what feels best to me. I think having these conversations with others can be so helpful! So when I took my six month social media break I had this idea of pursuing how to market off of social media but honestly I think I really just needed to rest and enjoy life off of social media. I think making content in a way that works for YOU is so incredibly important. So like in the example of TikTok that I shared in my previous comment, some people might find my content really boring-and that's okay! They probably aren't my target audience. I'm sure there are people who absolutely love your content! So as a coach I do think of my target audience when I'm creating content-so there is kind of that focus, but I also sometimes just post what feels good to me. So like I might post the majority of posts that have a specific call to action/purpose but then like a random post where I'm like "here I am in the middle of the woods!" So in terms of platforms, in my opinion each social media platform has a different feeling and vibe. I wonder which platform feels most doable and least autistic/sensory hell for you? Right now I'm exploring which platform feels best to me. Right now I'm doing both Instagram and TikTok, but I'm thinking of potentially focusing more on TikTok since my content sometimes seems to do better over there. Sometimes Instagram feels better for me and sometimes TikTok feels easier, so it kind of depends. I also have an active blog (I usually tried to write 1-3 blog posts a week when I was off of social media) and when I publish a post I make Pinterest graphics too. People usually suggest to focus on one platform-which I think is a great idea. I will say that I think you can 100% recycle content. I'm not sure if this is helpful but for marketing Substack newsletters I do this in a few ways: 1.) I have opt-ins on my website, people get a free workbook and opt in to my newsletter list and 2.) When I publish a new newsletter post I make screenshots of it and make a "sneak peek" that I publish to Instagram. This was probably a lot of information but I love talking about this topic! Feel free to let me know if you have more questions or if you'd like to share more about marketing on/off social media. P.S. I absolutely love the name of your newsletter!
I so appreciate all of this info and you being willing to talk with me about this topic!! I really struggle with this, and I sometimes feel like I've shot myself in the foot as a writer over the years by not engaging with social media more. Before Twitter became X, I kind of liked that format, because I often just had a funny little random thought I wanted to share. But now I just find it WAY too much to take. I'm trying to maybe translate what I used to do on Twitter to Instagram- like I'll do some more political sort of posts (my academic background is as an anarchist researcher, so I try to also hold onto that as part of what I talk as a writer now) or share other people's posts about topics that are important to me, but then occasionally I try to do just a "here's something funny I saw and what I think about it" quick thing on my story. I definitely get overstimulated by Instagram as well, though, so I need to maybe have some ground rules for myself around it. Right now, I promote any non-Substack writing on Instagram, and so far I’ve just kind of kept Substack as its own thing, but I may change the way I do that. I think one helpful (and surprising) thing that has come out of that for me is that most of my Substack subscribers are actually people I don’t know or who probably haven’t read my work before, which is really cool! One thing I've noticed that helps me a lot with the overwhelm is to stop using it quite early in the day (like by 6 PM or even earlier if possible) and then read a novel or something before I go to sleep. I think I just need to keep in mind that the more I'm on social media of any kind, the more I will probably need to also factor in decompression time around it. I really appreciate the advice of keeping a target audience in mind! Sometimes I think I get too caught up with saying the wrong thing or being perceived as "cringe", but I'm not for everyone, and that's okay! Anyway, I really like what you’re doing and I’m looking into your website and stuff to find more about it! It’s so comforting, validating, etc. to feel like there are other people sort of similar to me out there! Haha, glad you like the title of my newsletter! Born out of a brainstorming session with my husband one morning in a coffee shop!
Thank you for sharing all of this with me! I love how you named needing to decompress because I've been specifically doing things like stimming, going for a long and sweaty walk after using social media. I think it feels helpful to be like "okay, this really isn't ideal and there IS an impact so what are some ways I can support myself?"
I wonder if it's helpful to ask yourself: "how can I make this easier?" or "how can I make this more accessible to me?" Like I find stories on Instagram very sensory overloading so I sometimes just write out story content ahead of time and then go ahead and post. I think small ways we can make things more accessible and doable are supportive. I also want to name that I try to point people towards longer content (not sure if I previously shared this) off on social media to support my longer term plan of being off of social media. So like I'll make an educational post on something and then be like "read the rest at...."
Thank you for sharing that you're enjoying the work I'm doing-I really appreciate you sharing that! I love that your newsletter name came out of a brainstorming session with your husband :) It's truly such an amazing name!
Love Dr Neff too. I love the points about creating safety and exploring your authentic self on your own too, noticing the moments of joy as you do so. I love discovering my autistic joy as I let myself follow my natural impulses, however weird, and I feel more in touch with the little quirky girl who was so shamed back in the day. Also resonating with what you're saying about supports around us. A huge turning point for me was meeting a fellow unmasking autistic 2 years ago in person. All the online stuff helped SO much, but it wasn't until I met him and we began a supportive friendship, that the pieces really started to slot into place. The mirroring and validation was so tremendously helpful, and we continue to have regular chats about autistic life when we feel no one else around us quite gets it.
Thank you so much for this comment! I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed the points about creating safety, exploring your authentic self on your own and noticing moments if joy. I also really resonated with what you shared about meeting a fellow unmasking autistic. I know that my autistic friends were a huge part of my unmasking journey and just autistic wellness after receiving my diagnosis. Having autistic friends who just *get it* can be so healing and for me personally it really helped me feel seen, heard and celebrated in my autistic identity and experiences. Also autistic friends just bring me so much autistic joy!
So fun to see other Dr. Neff fans here! Thanks for reaching out about the Feeler Calls :) If you're interested in exploring if working together in The Autistic Mentorship (or in the Intro Coaching Package) would be a potential good fit, I'd love to connect. You can either fill out an application (by following the link in the newsletter post) or reach out to me by sending me a message here: https://www.tiffany-landry.com/contact. Whichever option you choose I'll then be in touch via email :)
A fellow Dr. Neff fan 😀 My psychologist loves her too. Also as a bonus point, there are also people who have never felt the need to mask, (me) if people have a problem with me that's their problem
She's so amazing, I'm so glad to have found out about her work earlier on in my post diagnosis journey. So glad you included that piece! I feel like there's just SO much to talk about on the topic of masking/unmasking and I appreciate you sharing that some people have never felt the need to mask.
I guess I've just been lucky. It was my parents who fought for my diagnosis, they suspected I might have "Aspergers" since I had relatives that had a cousin that was diagnosed with Autism, so they kinda knew. It was my school that actually refused to get me diagnosed so when the principal changed and and my grade 6 teacher fought for my diagnosis I was able to be diagnosed.
I'm so glad to hear that both your parents and a teacher fought for you to get diagnosed-that sounds really supportive and I'm so glad you had that experience! Although uggg re: school refusing to get you diagnosed before the principal changed.
This resonated so incredibly with me. I’m a self-diagnosed non binary autistic human and I have been masking for safety most of my life. Both hiding my autistic traits and queer traits.
In my early 30s I came out as queer, and as I got more comfortable with being public about those aspects of myself, I started to find community with other neurodivergent humans, and found myself being so…comfortable.
For nearly two years I ran a community space that became a safe haven for neurodivergent queer humans and the people who love them and I miss it so very much (they raised the rent to an untenable amount so I couldn’t manage it). We moved to a new province where I’m using my heart name (that I’ve been using as my take handle for 25 years) and only my heart name and it feels amazing.
Now I’m out as queer and autistic at work and it’s been revolutionary for my mental health and reclaiming my energy.
The fact that the people I work for are celebratory of the things that make me…me…is so affirming that I’m excited to go to work.
The customers I interact with are thoughtful, and by being my true self , I’ve met so many more autistic folks out in the world.
When I’m excited I flap my hands really quickly and do this little hop skip jump thing. When I’m overwhelmed I let myself cry instead of trying to yawn my way out of crying. I finally starting wearing my noise-canceling headphones at the airport, and oh my goodness…airports aren’t scary anymore!
This week I’m being interviewed for a position with a pro-autistic organization that helps autistic folks find community with each other, and if I get the job it would be facilitating gatherings for autistic youth.
That I might get to help within my own community and help affirm other people…it makes my heart so very happy.
Thank you for writing the way you do, I appreciate you.
Ohhh, I love your shares so much and I want to share that reading this comment filled me with so much queer & autistic joy! I'm so glad that my newsletter resonated with you and I truly love all of these shares of you unmasking in your queer and autistic identities. I often think of unmasking as "coming home to my authentic self" both in my queerness and neurodivergence. Yeah for flapping your hands and doing the hop, skip, jump stim-stimming is so joyful! Also thank you for all the ways in which you're showing up for the autistic community, both through the community spaces you've created and now by interviewing for a position for a pro-autistic organization. I am wishing you lots of good luck and ease in your upcoming interview-I hope it goes really well :) Thank you very much for your lovely comments, I appreciate your words and you!
Thank you for the time you took to respond full-heartedly to my comment. You very much made my night! I so look forward to reading your future words, and thank you again for what you do! 🫶
You are so welcome! Thank you again for you kind words, I really appreciate them :)
I enjoyed this so much, and I really appreciate that you focus on the safety/privilege aspect of our ability to unmask! Being with a supportive partner has made all the difference with me in terms of unmasking (and I still mask in a lot of situations). The other day, I told him I really felt like moving my arms around when we were walking and that I was forcing myself not to. He told me to just do it, and it was so liberating! I think also because those moments are part of what he loves about me, like it's not just someone "putting up with" a behaviour they find weird or disturbing. I want to limit my time on social media like you do, but as a freelance writer, I'm finding it really hard, as I feel the need to always promote myself and my work. Do you mind me asking how you've managed that and what boundaries you have for yourself around social media?
I'm so glad to hear that you enjoyed this piece-thank you so much for sharing that with me. I'm happy to hear that you have such a supportive partner, I think it can be so healing when we unmask around people who celebrate us, our stims and neurodivergent traits! I love your question about social media and super happy to answer :) So I've currently been more on social media recently because I've been launching a program and I honestly haven't figured out a way to completely market my work off of social media. So while I'm investing in ways to be off of short form social media (such as blogging, SEO and Substack) what I do now is I approach social media in a way of "How can I make this work for me and my needs?" So right now my need is to promote my business AND to not get sensory overloaded in the process. So I download a specific social media app, publish my content and then log out and delete the app again. I've also experimented with not allowing comments/DMs as a way to protect my limited social battery. A great book is Digital Minimalism-which has so many great gems! I also keep my social media content super simple: like on TikTok I just sit in front of the camera and share some education on a specific topic, I don't do trends or try to make trendy content. Feel free to ask me more specific questions, happy to share!
I really appreciate you sharing your social media strategy with me! I'm definitely going to check out the Digital Minimalism book. I've really been struggling with it. Last year, I almost went off social media entirely, and I can tell that my brain was genuinely so much calmer and healthier for it. But I wasn't working last summer due to some medical issues, and I know it just isn't really realistic to have the same kind of limitations with it that I did last year. It's actually really relieving to hear you say you don't do trends! I tend to want to create content (ugh don't even really like saying that) just in ways that I find funny or satisfying, but I've always wondered if I'm shooting myself in the foot by not paying more attention to the trends. If you don't mind me asking, how many platforms do you focus on? As of right now, I'm really only doing Substack and (at a much more minimal level) Instagram, but I've been wondering if I should be trying to focus on more platforms (but also have no idea how I'd be able to maintain that).
Absolutely! Honestly, I struggled with social media for YEARS and I feel like I'm still exploring what feels best to me. I think having these conversations with others can be so helpful! So when I took my six month social media break I had this idea of pursuing how to market off of social media but honestly I think I really just needed to rest and enjoy life off of social media. I think making content in a way that works for YOU is so incredibly important. So like in the example of TikTok that I shared in my previous comment, some people might find my content really boring-and that's okay! They probably aren't my target audience. I'm sure there are people who absolutely love your content! So as a coach I do think of my target audience when I'm creating content-so there is kind of that focus, but I also sometimes just post what feels good to me. So like I might post the majority of posts that have a specific call to action/purpose but then like a random post where I'm like "here I am in the middle of the woods!" So in terms of platforms, in my opinion each social media platform has a different feeling and vibe. I wonder which platform feels most doable and least autistic/sensory hell for you? Right now I'm exploring which platform feels best to me. Right now I'm doing both Instagram and TikTok, but I'm thinking of potentially focusing more on TikTok since my content sometimes seems to do better over there. Sometimes Instagram feels better for me and sometimes TikTok feels easier, so it kind of depends. I also have an active blog (I usually tried to write 1-3 blog posts a week when I was off of social media) and when I publish a post I make Pinterest graphics too. People usually suggest to focus on one platform-which I think is a great idea. I will say that I think you can 100% recycle content. I'm not sure if this is helpful but for marketing Substack newsletters I do this in a few ways: 1.) I have opt-ins on my website, people get a free workbook and opt in to my newsletter list and 2.) When I publish a new newsletter post I make screenshots of it and make a "sneak peek" that I publish to Instagram. This was probably a lot of information but I love talking about this topic! Feel free to let me know if you have more questions or if you'd like to share more about marketing on/off social media. P.S. I absolutely love the name of your newsletter!
I so appreciate all of this info and you being willing to talk with me about this topic!! I really struggle with this, and I sometimes feel like I've shot myself in the foot as a writer over the years by not engaging with social media more. Before Twitter became X, I kind of liked that format, because I often just had a funny little random thought I wanted to share. But now I just find it WAY too much to take. I'm trying to maybe translate what I used to do on Twitter to Instagram- like I'll do some more political sort of posts (my academic background is as an anarchist researcher, so I try to also hold onto that as part of what I talk as a writer now) or share other people's posts about topics that are important to me, but then occasionally I try to do just a "here's something funny I saw and what I think about it" quick thing on my story. I definitely get overstimulated by Instagram as well, though, so I need to maybe have some ground rules for myself around it. Right now, I promote any non-Substack writing on Instagram, and so far I’ve just kind of kept Substack as its own thing, but I may change the way I do that. I think one helpful (and surprising) thing that has come out of that for me is that most of my Substack subscribers are actually people I don’t know or who probably haven’t read my work before, which is really cool! One thing I've noticed that helps me a lot with the overwhelm is to stop using it quite early in the day (like by 6 PM or even earlier if possible) and then read a novel or something before I go to sleep. I think I just need to keep in mind that the more I'm on social media of any kind, the more I will probably need to also factor in decompression time around it. I really appreciate the advice of keeping a target audience in mind! Sometimes I think I get too caught up with saying the wrong thing or being perceived as "cringe", but I'm not for everyone, and that's okay! Anyway, I really like what you’re doing and I’m looking into your website and stuff to find more about it! It’s so comforting, validating, etc. to feel like there are other people sort of similar to me out there! Haha, glad you like the title of my newsletter! Born out of a brainstorming session with my husband one morning in a coffee shop!
Thank you for sharing all of this with me! I love how you named needing to decompress because I've been specifically doing things like stimming, going for a long and sweaty walk after using social media. I think it feels helpful to be like "okay, this really isn't ideal and there IS an impact so what are some ways I can support myself?"
I wonder if it's helpful to ask yourself: "how can I make this easier?" or "how can I make this more accessible to me?" Like I find stories on Instagram very sensory overloading so I sometimes just write out story content ahead of time and then go ahead and post. I think small ways we can make things more accessible and doable are supportive. I also want to name that I try to point people towards longer content (not sure if I previously shared this) off on social media to support my longer term plan of being off of social media. So like I'll make an educational post on something and then be like "read the rest at...."
Thank you for sharing that you're enjoying the work I'm doing-I really appreciate you sharing that! I love that your newsletter name came out of a brainstorming session with your husband :) It's truly such an amazing name!
Love Dr Neff too. I love the points about creating safety and exploring your authentic self on your own too, noticing the moments of joy as you do so. I love discovering my autistic joy as I let myself follow my natural impulses, however weird, and I feel more in touch with the little quirky girl who was so shamed back in the day. Also resonating with what you're saying about supports around us. A huge turning point for me was meeting a fellow unmasking autistic 2 years ago in person. All the online stuff helped SO much, but it wasn't until I met him and we began a supportive friendship, that the pieces really started to slot into place. The mirroring and validation was so tremendously helpful, and we continue to have regular chats about autistic life when we feel no one else around us quite gets it.
Thank you so much for this comment! I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed the points about creating safety, exploring your authentic self on your own and noticing moments if joy. I also really resonated with what you shared about meeting a fellow unmasking autistic. I know that my autistic friends were a huge part of my unmasking journey and just autistic wellness after receiving my diagnosis. Having autistic friends who just *get it* can be so healing and for me personally it really helped me feel seen, heard and celebrated in my autistic identity and experiences. Also autistic friends just bring me so much autistic joy!
Also a Dr Neff fan and interested in the feeler calls you mention
So fun to see other Dr. Neff fans here! Thanks for reaching out about the Feeler Calls :) If you're interested in exploring if working together in The Autistic Mentorship (or in the Intro Coaching Package) would be a potential good fit, I'd love to connect. You can either fill out an application (by following the link in the newsletter post) or reach out to me by sending me a message here: https://www.tiffany-landry.com/contact. Whichever option you choose I'll then be in touch via email :)