Your work focuses on the toll that it can take on a person's mental health, and it seems that that toll is more pronounced because an autistic person might be masking in the everyday way, and then they are also masking their autistic traits perhaps.

Absolutely.

I think you've, you summed it up really well there that, you know, autistic people have multiple complex identities, so you're not necessarily just masking your autism at any one time.

But as you say, on top of all the masking everyone else does, you are also masking autistic characteristics, which the act of masking autism might be actually more effortful than, than impression management or masking of other characteristics is because a lot of autistic characteristics involve social communication and social interaction.

And so the fact that you are having to mask those characteristics when you are doing those very actions is harder than masking of other aspects of your identity that might not be at the forefront in an interaction.

Um, and I think, as you say, it's the fact that for a lot of people, autistic masking is something that's occurring across a huge range of situations.

So it's not just in one particular quite controlled situation like a job interview.

I thought that was a really interesting idea, and I think it ties to this possibility of, um, and, and, and becoming addicted to a version of yourself that you access via drinking.