Worrying About What to Wear

It’s been said that girls on the spectrum are good at coming up with ways to mask their symptoms and thus hide their AS/autism.  One way I’ve been doing this is by obsessing about wearing the right thing in the right situation.  Maybe I have a belief that if I look like everyone else, I’ll fit in just a little better or at least until I open my mouth and start talking.

Social events are a great source of wardrobe anxiety for me, especially when they involve large numbers of women.  I wish people would always write the dress code on an invitation so there would be a clear set of rules to follow!

Instead, there’s one way of dressing for a bridal shower (one of my biggest social nightmares in terms of the number of “things that must be said”, “compliments that must be given”, “gifts that must be bought in an unspoken minimum price range”, etc.).  There are different ways of dressing for the subtypes of holiday parties – work, friends, and family.  Each one has variations according to the venue, too.

Maybe no one really notices and I might as well be wearing a potato sack for all my awkwardness!  But when I feel like I have so little control over how I come across to people, being able to control some of what I look like gives me just a tiny bit more confidence.