Aisha presses the button for her office floor and turns on her script like some people turn on a badge. She puts on a tight smile, makes contact with exactly the right kind of eyes, is reminded to ask how someone got along over the weekend, and follows up with a pleasant "That sounds nice." To most people, it means nothing. Background noise. But for Aisha, these things have to be decoded step by step, as if interpreting a foreign language that’s constantly being spoken in real time. For autistic people, this is what it can be like to go about their daily lives: It’s like living in another country where all of your neighbors speak a different language, one that no one has ever taught you. The nuances of tone, timing, facial expression, small talk, sarcasm, and implication are taken for granted by neurotypical people—those who absorb social rules intuitively rather than consciously. It’s as if autistic people have to figure it all out by hand. This process is often called masking or camouflaging: the effortful adjustment of behavior, speech, and expression to appear socially acceptable, which requires mental labor that is always left unseen but is also closely linked to social translation fatigue.
This is not just social exhaustion but the hidden toll of continually decoding the social interaction, minute by minute. Rohit, the young analyst, has no trouble deciphering the complex financial concepts. It is the show of understanding when the precise moment occurs to say something without interrupting, how to state an argument without sounding negative, and reading between the lines of “Interesting…” and the actual “I believe this is terrible.” By the end of the meeting, Rohit had performed not just as the junior analyst but as the junior social engineer as well. Similarly, another autistic adult can converse easily in one-on-one dialogue, but during lunchtime in the company of the whole office, it is as if they are conversing in multiple languages and regularly juggling multiple conversations at once. They pay attention to the speaker, the indications of smiling, and the punchline of the jokes. By the end of the day, their social batteries are drained from the activity of continual regulation and interpretation. But the term "blunt" doesn't cover the complexity. In fact, not all or most autistics are blunt; they are simply speaking the truth as they see it. But if they can soften their message to express an acceptable translation of their thoughts, this can be the same as running translation software in the background for every conversation you are engaged in. It's hard work and often invisible. This constant internal calculation is invisible labor, and it accumulates. If you've ever tried to translate conversations in loud rooms, when you are using translation software on an app on your computer or tablet or whatever device you are carrying, you know the process brings the brain's temperature soaring.
It is known that camouflaging also comes with a cost. According to the UK National Autistic Society, camouflaging is known as the effortful imitation of social interactions to appear as if one is not autistic. It was found in several pieces of scientific research that camouflaging is linked with increased symptoms of both anxiety and depression. Research suggests that sustained camouflaging can contribute to anxiety, depression, and emotional exhaustion. In one of the biggest reviews that were conducted on camouflaging in scientific research, autistics camouflaged more than their typical peers, and this chronic effort led to stress and mental health strain. The impact goes further than exhaustion, though. Autistic adults also experience an increased incidence of mental health issues, and many studies indicate significantly higher rates of suicidal thoughts and actions relative to non-autistic individuals. A literature review indicated a notable number of autistic individuals experiencing suicidal thoughts and attempts in the recent past, showing troubling evidence of the psychological cost of having to navigate a world that necessitates a process of endless mask-wearing and interpretation. Such figures aren’t mere statistics; they represent what occurs when the social adaptation hurdle disproportionately impacts those whose minds navigate the world in a significantly different manner.
However, many autistic people persist with camouflaging because it pays off on the surface level. Aisha earns the status of “professional.” Rohit prevents himself from being labeled “difficult.” While masking may safeguard the individual against bullying, it may not safeguard the individual against exclusion or organizationally motivated punishment. It may even serve as a means of acceptance. This acceptance often comes at the cost of quiet self-erasure. Being part of the crowd comes with the cost of background hard work in the form of stress and burnout. This misunderstanding points to a deeper issue: the double empathy problem. Communication breaks down not because autistic people lack social ability, but because autistic and non-autistic people use different communicative frameworks. A misunderstanding of even greater profundity, namely that autistic individuals are somehow inept at social skills. It is more helpful to understand that many autistic individuals are beset by a double empathy problem, which is a mismatch between communication styles, which are, in turn, different between autistic and non-autistic individuals, where both groups are apt to misunderstand one another. The social translation fatigue is, therefore, when all of this is done by—and is clearly expected of—the autistic individual. It’s, of course, exhausting when you consider that you yourself have to calculate acceptable levels of truthful conversation, parlay indirect signals, and withstand sensory pain and then act as if it were no trouble at all.
The lessening of this kind of fatigue, then, is not about encouraging autistics to be less autistic. Rather, it is about creating more literal, more predictable, and more accommodating societal setups. This can be achieved through the implementation of clear, literal communication; multiple modes of participation, such as written input; and environments where rest is not treated as rudeness. Perfect inclusion, it can then be said, would mean no performance of a translation they’ve never learned in the first place.
Social translation fatigue is what happens when connection mandates performance, and every conversation is now a test you never signed up for. Autistic people will often figure out the code and nail the cues and be fantastic translators. The autistic brain will adapt. Everything will seem fine. And then they go home and crash. The message here is that if we’re serious about inclusion as more than just acceptance in theory but acceptance in reality, we’ve got to stop rewarding the mask and start rewarding the person. People shouldn’t have to qualify their belonging by filtering their lives word by word, smile by smile, until they can’t hear themselves anymore.
Sources:
- National Autistic Society. (n.d.). Masking. https://www.autism.org.uk
- Alaghband-Rad J, Hajikarim-Hamedani A, Motamed M. Camouflage and masking behavior in adult autism. Front Psychiatry. 2023 Mar 16;14:1108110. Doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1108110. PMID: 37009119; PMCID: PMC10060524.
- Jonathan Summerill, S.J. (Ash) Summers, The consequences of social camouflaging in autistic adults: A systematic review, Research in Autism, Volumes 121–122, 2025, 202556, ISSN 3050-6565, https://doi.org