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.