Autistic masking drains energy
Pretending not to be autistic or to be like everybody else takes so much energy and effort that there's little left for dealing with the things that come up as part of everyday life. We can manage the energy output for a while, but at some point, each of us reaches our limit of how much energy we have to give, and our reserves are depleted and we can't cope anymore.
For some people, this shows up as burnout. For some, it's an emotional breaking point - anger and other feelings lash out at the world around them. For others, we resist any kind of expectations or external pressures, being told to do things or having to do things, because all of those are associated with that pretending that we instinctively know is wrong for us.
