As a high-masking, late-diagnosed autistic woman, I’ve spent most of my life concealing my autistic traits. This self-suppression, unfortunately, has taken a toll on my health, both physical and mental. I mastered the art of masking early in life, even my autistic meltdowns. But there was a time when this wasn’t the case.

An autistic meltdown is an intense loss of control in response to being stuck in an overwhelming situation. It stems from a dysregulated nervous system, and it isn’t something an autistic person can reason themselves out of. The only way to really “get over” an autistic meltdown is to remove yourself from the situation and go somewhere quiet where you can use coping mechanisms to try to regulate yourself. But, in a lot of situations, this isn’t possible. So, the meltdown serves as the process of releasing tension and energy and finding homeostasis.

But meltdowns come at the grave expense of the person experiencing them. They leave you exhausted and in pain. Because you’re so overwhelmed during meltdowns, it’s easy to lash out at others or say things you don’t mean. And even if that doesn’t happen, meltdowns are seen as childish or even selfish in nature. Children having them are seen as having tantrums and might result in being labeled “a spoiled brat.” As an adult, having a meltdown in public (or just in front of the wrong person) can result in damaged relationships or missed opportunities.

When I was very young, too young to have learned to mask, I had autistic meltdowns. They usually happened in public places and usually when shopping with my mother. Today, I know that shopping centers (especially grocery stores) remain the most overwhelming places for me, to the point that I never step foot inside a grocery store if I can help it. I order my groceries and pick them up.

But as a young child, I obviously didn’t know why I felt so overwhelmed, and, generally, the triggering point of the meltdown would come when I was told “No” about something I wanted. Because of this, like so many autistic kids, my behavior was brushed off as that of a spoiled brat. I was looked down upon, judged, and even mocked for being such a brat, and my mom was heavily judged for “giving in” to my tantrums when she would buy me the things I wanted to get me to calm down.

Due to the judgment and mockery (which often came from those closest to me), I quickly learned to internalize these meltdowns. I would suppress my natural reactions to being overstimulated, in pain, or just plain overwhelmed until I couldn’t function anymore. Then, I would have what would appear to my family members to be a complete mental breakdown over the tiniest thing at home. Even then, I felt such intense shame and guilt over not being able to control myself in these situations that I would hide away in my room and cry for hours with none of the skills I needed to self-soothe and no support or comfort.

I internalized all of the cruel things said to me and vehemently believed that there was something wrong with me. I thought that the “tantrums” resulted from some moral failing and that I deserved everything coming to me. And, of course, none of this helped me actually deal with the overstimulation that led to the meltdown in the first place. If anything, it escalated my feelings and dragged out how long the meltdowns lasted. It also reinforced terrible coping mechanisms that do more damage than good.

Even today, when I start to get overstimulated, I struggle to recognize it for what it is. I don’t always remove myself from situations when I should and try to push through. I get tense and find myself snapping at peers or shutting down, retreating into my head. To prevent this from happening, I have to constantly remind myself where these sorts of behaviors actually stem from and that I’m an adult now.

As a child and even a teenager, I might not have had any control over the situations I was in, and I might not have had anywhere to go where I felt safe and protected. But that’s no longer true. Today, I don’t have to grin and bear through. I can remove myself from overwhelming situations, and I have a support system in place (an excellent therapist) to help me regulate myself and take the time I need to recover. This understanding and acceptance have brought me relief and comfort, knowing I am not alone in this journey.

As an adult, I struggle with chronic fatigue and pain, and some as-yet-undiagnosed inflammatory condition (that all started when I was still an adolescent) is the result of (or at least was exacerbated by) masking for so many years. Because internalizing meltdowns doesn’t mean the meltdowns don’t happen. They still do, but instead of being big and loud and relatively short, all of that happens internally, damaging my mental health and my body.

But because it’s all happening internally, most people still see me as “too normal” to be autistic. They don’t see how much it takes to appear “normal,” nor do they see how much it hurts me.

I wish I could say that things have gotten better for the next generation of autistic kids and that they won’t struggle to be helped and accommodated in the same way that I was. But the truth is that more often than not, what I see is the same sort of people who think I’m “too normal” to be autistic, refusing to believe that their child might be autistic or thinking that making accommodations for them might “spoil” them. The majority view still seems to be that being autistic is bad or some sort of failing and that they can make their kid “normal” if they push them hard enough. But, of course, this isn’t how it works, and no amount of pressure to appear normal will make an autistic kid non-autistic. It will only force them to mask to appear normal and result in long-term mental and physical health implications that will hound them for the rest of their lives.