Wearing a Mask

When looking like you’re coping doesn’t mean that you are.

For more than thirty years, I became very good at appearing to cope.

I learned to adapt.

I learned to observe other people.

I learned what was expected of me and, wherever possible, tried to meet those expectations.

I smiled when I was supposed to smile. I tried to say the right thing. I worried about whether my facial expressions looked right. I replayed conversations afterwards and wondered whether I’d said too much, interrupted, misunderstood something or somehow got it wrong.

From the outside, I could look confident and capable.

Inside could be a completely different story.

Today, I understand that much of what I was doing had a name:

Masking.

“But You Don’t Look Autistic”

When I began seeking an Autism assessment in my thirties, one of the questions I encountered was:

“Why now?”

I also heard variations of:

“But you don’t seem Autistic.”

“You’re not that Autistic.”

And that raises an important question.

What exactly is somebody supposed to “look” like to be Autistic?

For years, I had learned how to hide many of the things I found difficult.

People couldn’t necessarily see the sensory overload.

They didn’t see how much conscious effort could go into social interaction.

They didn’t see me trying to work out when it was my turn to speak or whether somebody was still interested in what I was saying.

They didn’t see how difficult asking for help could feel because asking meant admitting I wasn’t coping.

They didn’t necessarily understand how overwhelming busy environments could become or how much energy I could spend trying to control and predict situations.

They saw the version of me that had learned how to function publicly.

They didn’t see the cost of maintaining her.

What Is Neurodivergent Masking?

Masking — sometimes called camouflaging — describes the conscious or unconscious ways a neurodivergent person may hide, suppress or compensate for aspects of their natural presentation in order to meet social expectations, avoid judgement or feel safer within an environment.

It can look very different from person to person.

For me, masking wasn’t simply pretending not to be Autistic.

For many years, I didn’t know I was Autistic.

I was simply learning, through experience, which versions of me appeared to be more acceptable to other people.

Masking can include things such as:

• rehearsing conversations before they happen
• copying other people’s expressions, behaviour or communication
• consciously managing eye contact
• suppressing stimming or movement
• forcing yourself to remain in overwhelming sensory environments
• hiding confusion
• laughing because everyone else is laughing
• pretending you’ve understood instructions
• saying you’re fine when you’re overwhelmed
• avoiding asking for help
• changing your personality depending on who you’re with
• people-pleasing to avoid rejection or conflict
• monitoring facial expressions, body language and tone of voice
• suppressing tics or other natural responses
• holding everything together in public before becoming dysregulated somewhere safe.

Some people become so skilled at masking that they don’t realise they’re doing it anymore.

It simply becomes survival.

The Invisible Cost of Looking “Fine”

One of the most damaging assumptions we can make about a neurodivergent person is:

“They look fine, therefore they are fine.”

A child can achieve academically and still be struggling.

An employee can perform exceptionally well and still be approaching burnout.

Someone can maintain eye contact while finding it deeply uncomfortable.

A person can attend a social event and require hours — sometimes longer — to recover afterwards.

A child can appear calm throughout the school day and experience significant dysregulation when they return home.

Observable behaviour doesn’t always tell us what is happening internally.

This is why I encourage parents, schools, employers and professionals to look beyond presentation.

Instead of asking:

“Did they cope?”

sometimes we need to ask:

“What did coping cost them?”

People-Pleasing, Perfectionism & Trying to Get Everything Right

For me, masking was also closely connected with people-pleasing.

I spent a great deal of my life worrying about getting things wrong.

It could feel easier to agree.

Easier to apologise.

Easier to take responsibility.

Easier to keep somebody else happy.

Easier to push my own needs aside.

When you’ve spent years monitoring how other people respond to you, it can become incredibly difficult to separate:

“What do they expect from me?”

from:

“What do I actually need?”

Perfectionism can become another layer of this.

If I couldn’t instinctively understand all of the unwritten rules around me, perhaps I could protect myself by trying to get everything else right.

But constantly monitoring yourself is exhausting.

Sensory Masking Is Still Masking

Masking isn’t only social.

A neurodivergent person may also hide sensory distress.

I could be experiencing significant discomfort from sensory input while outwardly appearing to tolerate the environment.

Someone may remain in a noisy room while their nervous system is becoming increasingly overwhelmed.

A child may resist covering their ears because nobody else is doing it.

An employee may tolerate bright lighting, background conversations, phones ringing and constant interruptions throughout their working day and then wonder why they have nothing left when they get home.

This is something I understand very differently now.

Being able to tolerate something doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t hurting you.

Late Diagnosis Changed How I Understood My Past

Receiving my diagnoses in adulthood didn’t suddenly change who I was.

It changed how I understood who I had always been.

There was relief.

There was validation.

But there was also grief and anger.

I began looking backwards.

Why had certain things always been so difficult?

Why had I needed so much control?

Why had I worked so hard to fit in?

Why had nobody recognised how much I was struggling?

As a teenager, I experienced an eating disorder. Looking back with the understanding I have now, I can recognise how important predictability and control had become to me during a time when so much of life felt outside of my control.

I don’t reduce that experience to neurodivergence or suggest that Autism or ADHD provides a simple explanation for an eating disorder.

But understanding my neurodivergent profile has allowed me to look at my younger self with much greater context.

There were needs underneath behaviours that nobody — including me — understood at the time.

That realisation is one of the reasons I care so deeply about early understanding today.

“Why Do You Need a Label?”

I was asked this when I pursued my diagnosis.

For me, diagnosis wasn’t about acquiring a label.

I already had labels.

Too sensitive.

Too much.

Too emotional.

Too controlling.

Too particular.

Difficult.

Disorganised.

Overthinking.

The diagnosis gave me something different.

An explanation.

It gave me a framework for understanding my sensory experiences, communication, executive functioning, emotional regulation and lifelong need for predictability.

Most importantly, it allowed me to begin replacing judgement with understanding.

Instead of:

“Why can’t I just do this?”

I could begin asking:

“What is making this difficult for me?”

That is a very different conversation.

When Autism & ADHD Coexist

Understanding that I am both Autistic and ADHD — often described as AuDHD — added another important piece to the puzzle.

Sometimes these parts of my neurodivergence seem to pull in completely opposite directions.

My Autistic brain can crave predictability.

My ADHD brain can crave novelty.

I can desperately want organisation while struggling with the executive functioning required to maintain it.

I can need structure while resisting the demands created by that structure.

I can become intensely focused on something and then struggle enormously to begin something that appears far simpler.

Understanding this hasn’t magically removed those challenges.

It has allowed me to stop treating them as character flaws.

Unmasking Doesn’t Mean Removing the Mask Everywhere

Today, I talk about masking differently than I did when I first received my diagnosis.

I used to think:

“It’s time for the mask to come off.”

Now I understand that unmasking can be much more complicated.

Masks often developed for a reason.

They may have helped us stay safe.

They may have protected us from bullying, rejection or judgement.

They may have helped us navigate school, employment or relationships.

So I don’t believe we should tell neurodivergent people that they simply need to stop masking.

Instead, I think we need to create environments where masking becomes less necessary.

Unmasking can mean gradually recognising:

What actually feels comfortable to me?

What sensory needs have I been ignoring?

When do I need to say no?

When do I need help?

Which relationships allow me to be myself?

What does regulation look like for me?

Which expectations am I meeting because they’re important to me — and which am I meeting purely because I’ve learned that I’m supposed to?

For me, unmasking has been less about becoming somebody new and more about discovering the person who was underneath all along.

Why This Matters in My Professional Work

My lived experience of masking influences the way I work with children, young people and adults every day.

When somebody tells me a child is:

“fine at school”

I want to know what happens before school.

I want to know what happens afterwards.

I want to know whether they’re suppressing sensory responses, anxiety, tics, movement or communication needs.

I want to know how exhausted they are.

When an adult tells me:

“Everyone else thinks I’m coping.”

I don’t assume that means they are.

And when somebody has spent decades adapting themselves to other people’s expectations, I don’t begin by asking them to adapt even more.

I begin by trying to understand what is underneath the mask.

You Shouldn’t Have to Earn Support by Falling Apart

This is perhaps one of the most important things I’ve learned.

We shouldn’t have to wait until a child reaches crisis before believing that school is difficult.

An adult shouldn’t have to reach complete burnout before workplace adjustments are considered.

And a person shouldn’t have to visibly demonstrate distress before we accept that something is distressing.

Sometimes the people who appear to be coping the best are working incredibly hard underneath.

So when somebody tells us that something is difficult, we need to listen.

From Masking to Understanding

I don’t want my children — or the children and adults I work with — to spend decades believing that who they naturally are needs to be hidden.

I want neurodivergent children to have language for their needs.

I want adults receiving late diagnoses to be able to look backwards with understanding rather than shame.

I want schools to recognise that behaviour at home can tell us something important about the demands of the school day.

And I want workplaces to understand that appearing capable doesn’t remove somebody’s need for reasonable adjustments.

Most of all, I want neurodivergent people to know that asking for support doesn’t make them less capable.

You can be capable and need support.

You can be successful and struggle.

You can communicate well and still experience communication differences.

You can look calm and be overwhelmed.

You can smile and not be okay.

And you can spend years looking as though you’re coping while using every bit of energy you have to maintain that appearance.

I know because I did.

For more than thirty years, I thought fitting in meant becoming better at hiding the parts of myself that were different.

Today, I understand things differently.

The goal isn’t to become better at wearing the mask.

It’s to create a life where you don’t have to wear it quite so often.