Unmasking Autism Diary #5: I am Harry Too
Unmasking Autism Diary #5: I am Harry Too
Read now (6 mins) | Family secrets: from inside Angela's Autistic mind
January 13, 2023
Dear Diary,
I’m super triggered by the response to Prince Harry’s memoir.
On the surface it feels like I’m frustrated with feedback that is illogical, like people complaining, ‘If they don’t want to be famous, why write a book?’ He never said they don’t want to be famous! He said they want their family to stop being assholes to them.
Second, the people who say, ‘Why not handle this privately?’ Half the book is about years of trying to handle it privately, only to have his own family leak it to the press.
Have you ever told one person a secret and then the secret gets out so you KNOW it was the person you swore to secrecy who spread the rumor? It’s pretty upsetting when it happens without the media, never mind with millions watching!
But those issues aside (sort of) what is really troubling to me is that that’s what this unmasking autism diary is all about and one reason why it’s so hard to do.
Growing up, I HATED taking showers and brushing my hair. I would scream my head off when my mom came at me with a brush, and I’d stick my hair under the faucet and get my hair wet and put on a towel and pretend I showered. My mom usually guessed correctly that I had not showered and I’d get in trouble for lying, which seemed fair.
Lying was always wrong.
Except when it wasn’t.
My dad liked work more than family vacations. My mom would negotiate a trip for the five of us, but my dad’s time and money was always at the center of it. It needed to be in a place he would like, of course, since he was paying and missing work—this was just the given. And to make sure that we would be allowed to go on another trip in the future, my mom had to make sure he had fun and that meant the children should be grateful, smiling, and upbeat at all times.
No one spoke of these rules, and even if they had, I don’t think a seven or nine-year-old could understand them. What we did talk about was how life with my dad was all about walking on eggshells. (His fault of course, no other option). He had a temper and we needed to become master egg shell walkers! And so we apprenticed with the best: my mom.
On vacation, “Wipe that puss off your face,” would be forcefully—but discreetly—whispered into my ear behind coat closet doors as we were about to step out for the day. To which I—not understanding the rule that dad could not know that the smiles were orchestrated by my mom and not genuine—would scream loudly back in my dad’s ear shot, “THIS IS JUST MY FACE.” (We didn’t have a word for resting bitch face yet.)
The screaming undermined my mom’s attempts to keep my dad calm and happy. ‘Why was he spending so much money to be around a bunch of unappreciative assholes?’
Presumably, my mom feared that if there was too much of this, we’d never have a vacation again—or arranging one would be a lot more work for her. And so she became a master teacher in how to use masking to control a situation and the people around you. (For my part, I was a terrible student.)
The tension was always thick with masking, people-pleasing, “behaving,” and I didn’t understand the game. Being autistic, it was all like a maze of lies and yet, one of the big stated rules was, “Never Lie.” But wasn’t smiling when you were sad to make your dad think you were happy so he wouldn’t have an explosive episode a form of lying?
One vacation to Wildwood on the Jersey shore, everything was going wrong. My sister somehow put her contact lenses into Hawaiian Punch and I forgot a bathing suit. The weather wasn’t cooperating and everyone was in bad moods, but our job was to keep smiling and saying we were having a good time. We had a plan, and we were sticking to it. “You will smile. You will have fun. And you will thank your father.”
I was in a constant state of being gaslit. I was feeling one way, but there was a demand that I act as if I was feeling a totally different way. And look, I’m not saying this is terrible, bad parenting, child abuse, or anything that out of the ordinary for parenting in the 80s. I am just saying I was confused as fuck, and this mode of operation is very counter to how straight-forward autistic communication works.
I was in a constant state of confusion when the rules were:
1. NEVER LIE.
2. LIE ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS.
3. NEVER EXPRESS CONFUSION ABOUT THE RULES.
Anyway what does this have to do with Harry and why am I so triggered? I guess because all families have rules—mostly unwritten rules. Rules you don’t even know are there.
The spoken rule is: ‘Never lie.’
The reality is: ‘If you lie when you are on vacation so dad thinks you are having a good time, you will be rewarded.’
But if you lie when you wash your hair but don’t take a shower but say you did, you will be punished.
And whatever happens, never talk about this contradiction.
In Harry’s case, the spoken rule about negative press coverage was “Never complain. Never explain.” Okay, got it.
But then in practice his father, brother, and step-mother all seemed to do the opposite. They would have a private conversation. It would be all nods and smiles. And then a press story would come out making it clear they were complaining about or explaining another situation by using a private conversation with Harry and/or Meghan to cover it up.
So what’s the rule? Say outwardly don’t complain or explain, but exploit others to do exactly that while maintaining deniability. “Oh dear boy, don’t read that trash.”
See how it’s the same?
Never explain or complain.
Explain or complain when and how it serves you.
Never express confusion about the rules.
These double standards are destructive. But how do you get out of them? They are baked into a family’s culture. More specifically they were baked into my family’s culture. And breaking out of those paradigms is not easy if the other people in the family aren’t willing to even talk about it.
And now, I see these attacks on Harry for doing just that.
He tried playing by the rules and it didn’t work. He’s tried discussing how the rules don’t work to build consensus and that didn't work. And now he is exposing the rules publicly because the quieter methods didn’t work and he is not willing to give up his family without a fight.
I can’t say it’s something I haven’t contemplated.
I refuse to continue in a system that destroys my soul, but going away quietly and hiding under a rock feels worse than fighting to try to change things.
People are saying he should shut up and that ‘this isn’t the place.’ But how else do you break these unhealthy cycles if you don’t speak about them? He’s fighting for his family because he loves them with the best tool he can think of.
Is doing it privately better? Sure. But what about when that doesn’t work?
And if you don’t speak out, what is the cost to your future?…And your kids’ future?
Over 1.4 Million people bought Prince Harry's memoir, ‘Spare,’ on its opening day. That’s the biggest opening day for a Penguin Random House book ever—by a lot. (The runner up is Barak Obama’s A PROMISED LAND which sold 887,000 copies in 2020.) The first printing was 2 Million copies and it’s already gone to a second printing and this is just sales in US, Canada, and the UK. A lot of people will hate the book and the author, but he only wrote it for six people.
He wrote it as a Hail Mary pass in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, something would get through to his dad and his brother.
He wrote it for his wife to make a clear public statement that he was breaking out of this cycle of generational trauma and building something different for their kids.
He wrote it for his kids so they would have a record of what happened from his perspective.
And most importantly, he wrote it for himself so there could be no take backs. He said what he said, and if there is a way within this paradigm to have his family back, he would love nothing more, but if not, there is no going back.
I feel that deeply.
The rest of us get an option: be inspired by his commitment to have REAL relationships or none at all, or keep playing the games that serve and reinforce the power structures of the past.
If you are on team ‘Harry Shut Up,’ then what you are saying is even if a family system doesn’t work for you, that’s on you to handle within your own mind.
You aren’t just telling Harry to shut up, you are telling every adult child who doesn’t want to live in a family structure that harms them to shut up.
And I guess that’s why I’m triggered. Because I am Harry, too.
***
The Dear Diary Project is a public journaling project where I’m publicly sharing my diary entries as part of my annual goals. No harm is intended by these posts. My goal is to gain clarity for myself and hopefully help others, especially autistic adults, who are trying to make sense of the communication challenges we face.
“Masking is a common coping mechanism in which Autistic people hide their identifiably Autistic traits in order to fit in with societal norms, adopting a superficial personality at the expense of their mental health. This can include suppressing harmless stims, papering over communication challenges by presenting as unassuming and mild-mannered, and forcing themselves into situations that cause severe anxiety, all so they aren’t seen as needy or ‘odd.’”
—Unmasking Autism, Dr. Devon Price
*Background note: Most people only have a vague (often, highly stereotyped) version of autism in their minds and believe that autistic children need (traumatic) ABA therapy to "overcome" their disability and appear "normal." After receiving an autism diagnosis in her thirties, Dr. Angela Lauria realized that she too had been mostly unaware of what it means to be Autistic. Like so many people, she started her journey by first gathering information and resources from the omnipresent (and problematic) Autism Speaks, but eventually moved away from the 'autism community' in favor of the 'Autistic community,' where she found kinship with other Autistic individuals and learned to let go of pathologizing language like 'autism spectrum disorder' and 'Asperger's Syndrome.' This autism blog (and her autism podcast, "The Autistic Culture Podcast") is meant to share her lived-experience insights to support others on a similar journey of diagnosis, understanding, and community. Embrace Autism--differences are not deficits.