When My Inside Is Falling Apart and the Outside Looks Fine

Welcome to my Unmasking Autism series. This is where I share what I’m learning as I begin to understand my autistic experience and gently come home to myself. These posts are personal, honest, and written with tenderness for the parts of me that have spent years surviving.

For as long as I can remember, it has felt so strange to live with two realities at once.

On the outside, everything around me can look steady and unfazed. People are talking, moving, laughing, continuing on like nothing happened.

But on the inside, my world is crumbling.

And what made it even harder is that I never really felt validated in my emotions. When I look back, what I recall most is holding them back. Swallowing them. Managing them. Trying to keep them from spilling out in a way that would make me seem dramatic or difficult or “too much.”

➡️ Sharing my stimming & hyperfocus favorites here ⬅️

I am still trying to reconcile whether that came from fear, trauma, or both. But either way, I always knew something about my experience was different.

I always seemed to be more upset than everyone else. Or more giggly. Or more sensitive. Or more affected. While other people seemed to have a moment and then move on, my whole body would stay in it. My thoughts would stay in it. I would feel it in waves that did not end just because the moment passed.

And honestly, I have envied that ability at times. The ability to feel something and then let it go.

What I am learning now is this.

My experience has always been real.

This is how my autistic brain processes life. Big emotions come with the territory. I get big excited, big sad, big angry, big overwhelmed. And it is not because I am weak or immature. It is because my nervous system experiences things intensely, and sometimes it takes longer to regulate.

Unmasking has been teaching me that I am not broken. I am not a problem that needs to be fixed. I am a person with a nervous system that has been working overtime for years.

One of the hardest things to admit is something I have felt ashamed of for most of my life.

When I get overstimulated, I rage scream as an outlet.

That sentence alone used to make me feel ugly.

For years, I hated this about myself. I thought it was a character flaw. I thought it meant I was out of control. I thought it made me unlovable.

But I am learning something different now.

It is not that I am “bad.” It is that my nervous system is begging for relief. It is my body reaching for an outlet when it has hit its limit. And while I am still learning healthier ways to regulate, it matters that I stop labeling my distress as a moral failure.

I am not ugly for having a nervous system.

I am human.

And lately, I have been crying more than I ever have.

Not because I am falling apart, but because it finally feels safe.

I do not know how many times in my life I wanted to cry and felt like I could not. For so many reasons. Because I did not want to be a burden. Because I did not want attention. Because I was afraid of being misunderstood. Because I felt like I had to stay composed. Because being “strong” felt like the only option.

But now I am unmasking.

And unmasking is teaching me to let my body do what it was created to do.

So now I let myself cry whenever I dang well feel like it.

Because tears are not weakness. Tears are release.

They are honesty. They are regulation. They are proof that I am listening to myself instead of abandoning myself.

Maybe this is what healing looks like for me.

Not being less emotional.

But being more gentle with the emotional person I have always been.

Thank you for being here. If any part of this resonated, I hope you feel a little less alone. I’m still learning, still unmasking, and still choosing compassion over shame one moment at a time.

xo,

jd

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