Throughout my life, as an autistic person, I had many and mostly negative social interaction experiences with neurotypical people, partly due to mismatch between autistic individuals and neurotypical people in experiences and many features (double empathy problem, Milton et al., 2023). However, past few years, when I started connecting with many autistic people, I realized that I can actually socialize and interact both effectively and enjoyably with most autistic people. This is aligned with the research literature (Watts et al., 2025 systematic review).  I had enjoyable social experiences that I rarely had before. I am be my natural self, with limited masking when I interact with most autistic people. I can infodump excitedly about common interests together with autistic people. I can stim together with autistic people. We interact well with each other in unique and different ways. 

​

I wanna emphasize positive social interaction experiences are not solely limited to interactions between autistic individuals, but also with a smaller proportion of neurotypical people who understand autistic individuals well. There are non-autistic individuals that I interact more well and naturally with limited masking. I think interactions when both individuals mask less, is actually beneficial for building better rapport and sustainable relationships in which both individuals truly understand each other.  Social interactions involve at least two persons – improving mutual understanding can benefit both neurotypical people and autistic people in the long run. 

​

While masking is obviously needed sometimes and can be adaptive in some situations, finding and/or creating contexts where autistic people can be natural selves with less masking, is truly important in improving mental health. I hope there will be more safe contexts for autistic people to mask less or unmask, at home, in social gatherings, at some workplaces, schools, etc. Let’s build a truly inclusive society together!