You rehearse the conversation beforehand. You copy other people's expressions. You suppress the movements that help you think, monitor your tone, and afterwards you cannot speak to anyone for the rest of the evening.
Masking is the effort of appearing neurotypical — hiding traits, imitating others, and managing yourself continuously in order to fit. It is described most often in autism and ADHD.
Why it costs so much
Because it is sustained cognitive work performed on top of whatever else you are doing. Watching yourself, monitoring the other person, and running the correction in real time — for hours.
People who mask well are frequently described as fine. The exhaustion arrives later, alone, and looks like nothing to anyone else.
What it involves
- Rehearsing conversations in advance, sometimes for days
- Suppressing movement, stimming, or the things that actually help you concentrate
- Forcing eye contact that is uncomfortable
- Copying other people's phrasing, humour and expressions
- Hiding confusion rather than asking
- Collapsing afterwards, sometimes for a whole day
Why it is missed more often in women
Girls are typically socialised earlier and more heavily to manage other people's comfort, so masking begins younger and becomes more skilled. Diagnostic criteria were largely built on how these conditions present in boys, which compounds the problem.
The result is women assessed in their thirties or forties who have been told for years that they are anxious, sensitive or difficult rather than neurodivergent.
Also read: ADHD in adult women: the signs that get missed →
What happens when people stop
Unmasking is usually messier than people expect. Relationships built around the masked version may not adjust smoothly, and there is often a period of not knowing which parts were the mask and which were you.
It is also rarely all-or-nothing. Most people keep some mask for work and drop it elsewhere, which is a reasonable compromise rather than a failure.
What helps
- Working out where masking is genuinely necessary and where it is habit
- Building recovery time in deliberately rather than collapsing into it
- Finding at least one relationship where you do not do it
- Assessment, if you have never had one — knowing changes what you ask of yourself
Also read: ADHD, autism, or both? How the three actually differ →