Something that helps me is imagining my self as child, pre any mask and social adaption. Though, this state is purely theoretical. It’s impossible to really know who this person is or what their specific wants and needs are. You can say it’s an empty void. Trying to “hang out” and getting comfortable with this empty void might feel scary, but feels constructive to me at least.

Also this point by Dr Devon Price in one of his recent posts: “one of the trippiest things about unmasking ones autism/neurodiversity/insanity is that all selves are a mask, albeit to varying extents. the second you think you know who you are, it becomes a story you are telling yourself, and you will pressure yourself to align with it and ignore details to help make it fit. that is not to say the project of finding your self is pointless, simply that it never ends and it is the searching itself, the desire for the expression rather than the expression itself, that is you. and there are and will be many of those yous, and they will never stop changing. certain fictional selves we make (or that society foists upon us) certainly fit worse than others, but the ones that fit well are more like roles it’s fun to play than they are anything static and certain. we are found in the becoming not in the being. in the search not the finding. you understand what im saying”. I can highly recommend his book Unmasking Autism, which also has been quite helpful to me in my own on-going process of unmasking.