The cost of masking
Masking from a young age can be a form of self-harm — pretending to be someone else has a cost (exhaustion, anxiety, not knowing yourself) and makes it harder to recognise your own neurodivergence.
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Background
Masking has a real price. Forcing yourself to be someone else from a young age is described as a form of self-harm — with serious consequences: post-school/work exhaustion, anxiety, feeling physically ill, and in adulthood not knowing who you are and turning to alcohol to ‘be normal’. Successful masking has a second catch too: it removes the visible deficits, so a high-functioning person uses their own competence as ‘evidence’ that ADHD doesn’t apply to them (‘if I had it I’d know’) — yet that perfect, masking self is precisely not the real you. The purpose of masking also differs: in ADHD it’s bending into a given situation, in autism it’s more about constructing a whole role/persona.
Methods for this mechanism
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Unmasking in small steps
Addresses the mask growing into identity — hence small steps, not a sudden break.
C · weak / preliminary 4 sources -
Decompress after school before demands
After-school collapse is the direct cost of masking all day — the tank is empty when they get home.
C · weak / preliminary 1 source -
Override the 'I'm fine' script
Automatic camouflage of distress is a direct cost of long-practised masking.
C · weak / preliminary 1 source