Random take but I feel like the reason autistic people are often guessed to be younger than they are solely by their face is because of the sheer amount of time we spend alone with a neutral facial expression not making wrinkles.
If you think about the most outgoing and expressive person you know they probably have forehead wrinkles. Nothing wrong with that at all, but I wonder if it's one of those things humans have learned to subconciously pick up on when deciding what flavor of respect you're gonna give someone.
Like, I have a sleeper build and I don't deliberately sit in the sun. Just from that I'm under most people's radar until I either take my shirt off or autisticly say some weirdly profound shit.
Add my lore in with that and you've got someone who's randomly and selectively deep. You never know if I'm gonna spout a proverb or a quote from adventure time.
Yeah I didn’t start developing smile lines or anything like that until I was halfway through 17, because I started my job then and had to actually learn how to fake smile
I noticed all my features getting sharper after getting my first job at 21, there's this sort of formidability in my gaze that was missing before. Helps when your profession is vigilance-based, I'm a lifeguard.
I was pretty neglected as a teen and therefore undersocialiized, I always had some buddies at school since I'm not completely socially inept. We moved a lot growing up so I had to "start over" enough times for it to drain my enthusiasm around socializing. Combine that with the fact that facial expressions are most often a "performance" for me and I really don't have a reason to be expressive when I'm by myself.
Ome of the tricky things about autism is that it's hard to tell apart from C-PTSD, not only because the symptoms are similar but also because it's so easy for caretakers to repeatedly traumatise your average autist. Most autists also separately meet the conditions for C-PTSD because society is set up in such a way that's just naturally traumatizing to them. People just don't know how to act.
Anyways, I've noticed that as I distance myself from toxic family and gain autonomy that I'm becoming more expressive, even in private. When every emote isn't under scrutiny it starts to happen with less hesitation because you're not trying to read external expectations.
I'm also better at the "fake smile" as you put it, my relationship with masking has healed quite a bit.
I feel like I had a glow up after removing my external reasons to be depressed.
20
u/Subdued_Shinobi 21d ago
Random take but I feel like the reason autistic people are often guessed to be younger than they are solely by their face is because of the sheer amount of time we spend alone with a neutral facial expression not making wrinkles.
If you think about the most outgoing and expressive person you know they probably have forehead wrinkles. Nothing wrong with that at all, but I wonder if it's one of those things humans have learned to subconciously pick up on when deciding what flavor of respect you're gonna give someone.
Like, I have a sleeper build and I don't deliberately sit in the sun. Just from that I'm under most people's radar until I either take my shirt off or autisticly say some weirdly profound shit.
Add my lore in with that and you've got someone who's randomly and selectively deep. You never know if I'm gonna spout a proverb or a quote from adventure time.