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Neurodivergent members

Masking in a clinic appointment and getting nothing useful

Started 20 April 2026 · 11 replies · 85 hearts · read 1.2k times

TarqWindsor, UK · 20 April 2026
3 months ago

Masking in a clinic appointment and getting nothing useful — putting it in its own thread so it does not get lost in the check-in.

I have been sitting on this for a month.

I have read a great deal about the physical side of this and almost nothing about the part I am actually struggling with.

I am not in crisis and I do not want anybody worried. I am flat, and I have been flat for longer than I would like, and I am naming it here first.

That is all. Thank you for being the kind of place where this can be written down.

28

NixLeith, UK
#1

Coming back two years on to say the system held, that it is elaborate and it works, and that I no longer apologise for how elaborate it is.

7

WilfStoke, UK
#2

To the opening post rather than to the thread: Tarq, this is my version of it.

Interoception is the whole thing for me. I have never reliably known when I was hungry, and a change in appetite signalling was always going to be complicated.

6me too 8

ObieNashville, TN
#3

Tarq — taking your question as you asked it, because I think the thread has widened it.

The thing I would flag is that a change in routine for any reason has knock-on effects for weeks. Plan for that rather than being surprised.

8

KikiFacilitatorGlasgow, UK
#4

Holding for a moment. Nobody in this circle is required to justify the size of their own reaction, and if the thread has begun to read that way I would like to take that back out of it.

16

Bryn MNeath, UK
#5

Coming back to what Wilf wrote further up, because it is the bit I keep thinking about.

Sensory change was real. Textures I had eaten my whole life became impossible for about two months and nobody had warned me.

5

TobiasHamburg, DE
#6

Executive function was where this got hard. Not the doing, the initiating, and building a rigid structure around it was the only thing that worked.

2

AnnikaStockholm, SE
#7

My routines carried me through the first year. The parts that were routine were effortless and the parts that required judgement were exhausting.

7

GwilymCaernarfon, UK
#8

Same here, and I am glad you said it first.

4

LeifTrondheim, NO
#9

The masking cost at appointments is real and I now bring somebody with me, which halves the exhaustion afterwards.

7

KikiFacilitatorGlasgow, UK
#10

Facilitator note: the agreements for this circle are stricter than the sitewide ones and they are stricter on purpose. They are linked from the circle landing page.

13

EsmeAix-en-Provence, FR
#11

Picking up Kiki’s point rather than starting a new one.

My experience is that the medical part has been simple and the logistics have been the entire challenge.

10me too 7