I have been trying my best to unmask more lately. It is not an easy thing, but I am finding myself less exhausted each day.

As an autistic teacher, there is a lot to unmask. First of all, I have hypersensativity. (HSP), which makes things harder. HSP basically means I feel what others feel. I don’t understand the feelings, I just feel them. If I am with a small group, the strongest emotion leaks over. But if there are a lot of different emotions I get stopped.

So when I joined my new school, four years ago, there was a lot of emotions. Some of the older teachers didn’t feel that the new batch of “Covid-Teachers” were going to be any good. I could feel that. Some where sympathetic. I was told by my grade level lead that If I told anyone about my autism, the parents of the school may demand my resignation. It shook me. I never mentioned it around him again, or anyone else.

The problem with HSP & Autism is that I can sense how someone feels near me. I just don’t know why, or how to fix it. So the first thing that happens is my mind goes into hyper-analyzing everything to solve this problem. Did I cause this? How? Did I look like I don’t understand, or did I come off as smug. I come home and think over everything. This is energy and mental capacity that SHOULD be used to analyze my students. But I cannot focus on those things.

I have been taking a lot of time in the last 2 years to try and spend time doing what I need to relax, and disconnect. This means, I spend more time locked in my corner behind Homework books. There I listen to my music, and rock in my rocking chair. I dance in the corner to my headphone music when the kids are in other classes. I take more time to do things, and set reasonable goals for each day.

I did download an autism manager app for my phone, but I have not had the energy or motivation to get in the routine to use it, yet.

It is hard to break through the fear of exposure though. I naturally do not like being the center of attention. I abhor it. On top of that, I still have ingrained into me the fear that if I go completely unmasked, I will have a lot of unhappy people around due to outdated stereotypes.

Despite this, I think the most important part of unmasking, has been being able to talk to a couple of my coworkers that I trust about my autism. When I started, 4 years ago here, I had 1 friend who knew. each year I gained 1 more. All where friends from my previous school. But in the last month, I have shared my autism with 5 new people and had positive responses.

I told my new Vice Principal, and I told her that I felt scared my coming out may cause me to lose my job. She thanked me for sharing this, but then she did the opposite of my old Grade lead. She assured me that It would not make any difference to my work situation. She then asked me about my support system, and if she could help in any way.

I just realized I lost track of my topic.

AUDHD stands for Autistic with ADHD. This means that I get distracted easily, and then beat myself up over it immediately, but then analyze it when I am alone. This is frustrating for me, but to help I have informed my class that I cannot hear when there are more than 1 person speaking at me at the same time. Or that in noisy rooms, I cannot hear. In fact I get massive headaches.

I explained to my students some of the difficulties I have because It helps them understand me better and me them. I have seen a few students with similar traits. and I should have filled out their assistance recommendation forms, but I get exhausted just looking over all the paperwork.

My HSP does help me deal with children, except the beginning of this year was hard because of the amount of fear and anxiety these children came in with. It was a lot to deal with, and I felt like I was carrying around an elephant everyday. It was very hard to do anything.