Madi Kish, Solution Focused Hypnotherapist at Inspired to Change Tunbridge Wells, explores the hidden impact that masking neurodivergent traits can have on adults. Drawing on both her professional experience and her own lived experience of ADHD and autism, Madi looks at why masking can become an automatic way of navigating social situations, relationships and work, and how the constant effort of monitoring and changing yourself can contribute to stress, overwhelm and burnout.
Madi also explores what it can mean to start unmasking, and why this doesn’t necessarily mean stopping every behaviour that could be considered masking. Instead, it’s about having more choice over when you use these strategies, creating a safe space to be yourself and finding ways to feel more comfortable with who you are.
The Hidden Cost of Masking: Neurodivergence, Stress and Burnout
When people talk about burnout, they often focus on workload, stress, and trying to juggle too many responsibilities.
Whilst these can certainly contribute, many neurodivergent adults are carrying an additional burden that often goes unnoticed. Before discovering my own ADHD and autism, I spent years believing that everyone found everyday life as mentally exhausting as I did. I had no idea how much energy was going into managing myself, fitting in, and trying to meet expectations that didn’t feel natural to me.
Looking back, I can see that much of the exhaustion I experienced wasn’t caused by the demands of life itself, but by the relentless effort of masking my way through it. Masking neurodivergent traits is quiet, invisible work, and it adds up.
What Is Masking and Why Does It Happen?
Masking is a strategy often developed by people who are neurodivergent, as a way of appearing neurotypical in order to better fit into society’s standards. This can be done through suppressing or changing the way they want to behave, such as engaging in eye contact when it is more comfortable for them to look away, rehearsing conversations before speaking to others, or joining in with activities that they don’t fully understand.
There are a few reasons why masking neurodivergent traits can come to feel like the best course of action.
Firstly, it can be from a social safety standpoint, so as not to be seen as ‘weird’ or ‘different’, and so that they can fit in. This is often formed in childhood to avoid being bullied or excluded by classmates.
Secondly, more specifically for adults, it can be a way to seem more professional in the workplace, again from a safety point of view, in order to be seen to be doing the work properly (i.e. the same as everyone else) and being a part of the team.
Finally, we cannot dismiss the impact that internalised stereotypes about neurodivergence can have on a person.
It is only in recent years that we have had a better understanding of what it is to be autistic, to have ADHD, or how living with dyslexia or dyscalculia can affect how you cope in the world. But if you grew up before it was more widely known about and supported, you may have been labelled as the ‘naughty’ or ‘difficult’ child, or tried to cover up your struggles so as not to be seen as being ‘stupid’.
When these messages are repeated often enough, they can become internalised, meaning that instead of recognising that you are struggling with something because your brain works differently, you may begin to believe that there is something wrong with you.
You might learn to question your own needs, hide difficulties that you think you should be able to manage, or push yourself to behave in ways that feel more acceptable to those around you. This can create a powerful cycle where the fear of being judged reinforces the need to mask, while masking itself can leave you feeling increasingly disconnected from who you actually are.
When Masking Neurodivergent Traits Becomes Automatic
When you have spent years learning that certain parts of yourself are not accepted, hiding them can eventually become second nature. What may have started as a conscious attempt to fit in can become an automatic way of protecting yourself from judgement, rejection or exclusion, meaning that masking may happen without you even consciously realising you are doing it.
When a behaviour repeatedly helps us avoid something that feels threatening, the brain can learn that the behaviour keeps us safe and make it increasingly automatic. To understand why this happens, we need to look at one of the brain’s most fundamental jobs: keeping us safe.
Masking Neurodivergent Traits and the Primitive Brain
It really does all come back to the idea of safety, and this is because masking is a learnt behaviour that the primitive brain uses to protect you from perceived danger. We talk about the primitive brain all the time in Solution Focused Hypnotherapy: it’s the part of your unconscious mind that is ruled by the amygdala and is responsible for keeping you safe.
If we think back to the first humans, they needed to use this brain to live and survive, because there was life-threatening danger all around in the form of predators or other tribespeople attacking. It was important, therefore, that the brain could switch to being highly alert and aware, and that the body could prepare to run or to fight. Once the danger had passed, they could switch back and stop being vigilant.
Every time they would successfully avoid danger, the brain would recognise that what they did worked, and that behaviour pattern would be stored in the brain, ready for the next time the same danger appeared.
This worked very well for our primitive ancestors, who were living a much more dangerous life than us today. Unfortunately, our brains and bodies haven’t evolved yet to match the much safer society we live in. This means that we respond to potential threats, such as social situations, emails and phone calls, in the same way that our great-great-great-great-great grandparents responded to nearly being eaten by a wild animal!
Why the Brain Learns Masking Neurodivergent Behaviours
We learn behaviours that keep us safe from danger and, when it works (i.e. you don’t die), the brain is encouraged to do this behaviour again.
This is why so many neurodivergent people learn masking as a tool to protect them from the stresses and anxieties of coping in a society that doesn’t quite fit their understanding of the world. By acting in a way that neurotypical people do, they are pretending that they aren’t uncomfortable and can therefore avoid the social danger of being different.
Again, thinking back to historical context, humans have always lived as ‘us’ and ‘them’, with ‘them’ being different and therefore dangerous.
The Hidden Cost of Masking Neurodivergent Traits
Although masking can help neurodivergent people to fit in more easily in social situations and avoid unwanted attention or judgement, the problem is that it requires a huge amount of mental and emotional effort to maintain. It also relies on the brain being constantly self-monitoring and scanning for potential danger.
When the primitive brain thinks that there is potential danger around, we end up on red alert, because it wouldn’t make sense to relax and ignore the danger, as you’d end up missing the potential cues that a wild animal is about to eat you!
Being in this survival mode means that physically, you are more likely to have an elevated heart rate, more adrenaline and cortisol (stress hormones) running through your system, and be unable to relax. This leads to higher levels of stress on the body and nervous system, which in turn can increase levels of anxiety.
Not only are you having to be on red alert to monitor the situation and scan for danger, you also have to be monitoring yourself and your behaviours.
Imagine that you are on the plains of Africa and a pack of lions are approaching. You would be monitoring how you move, stand, breathe and what you’re looking at, constantly checking that your behaviour is appropriate to stop the lions from pouncing!
Translate that into a work meeting where you just want to fit in and be ‘normal’: how are you sitting, are you using too much or too little eye contact, did you answer that question properly, did you info-dump or speak too bluntly, was that question you asked rude or simply clarifying?
Exhausting!
For so many people with a form of neurodivergence, this relentless effort can contribute to overwhelm, increase the risk of mental health difficulties such as anxiety or depression, and eventually lead to burnout. The National Autistic Society has more on autistic fatigue and burnout.
Creating a Safe Space to Unmask
Learning to unmask can also be a scary experience, as it can feel like you’re letting go of the safety net that has kept you in place for so long. If masking has helped you navigate social situations, relationships or work, it makes sense that the idea of changing those behaviours could feel uncomfortable.
Rather than viewing masking neurodivergent traits as something you simply need to stop doing, we can instead reframe what it means and think about when and where it feels safe to practise being more authentic.
Reframing the Role of Masking
Reframing is where we take a thought or belief and change the way we approach it. When it comes to masking, this might look like changing the belief from, ‘I have to do this in order to fit in or I won’t be safe,’ to, ‘I have this skill available to me when I need it, but I can still be myself and be enough.’
The aim isn’t to suddenly remove every behaviour that could be considered masking. For many people, some of these behaviours are useful skills that they may actively want to use in certain situations. Instead, it can be about having more choice over when you use them, rather than feeling as though you have no option but to mask all the time.
This is just one example, and reframing is something that we explore a lot with our clients during sessions. What this looks like for one person will be different from the next, because not all neurodivergent people are the same.
The goal is to understand which behaviours actually support you, which ones are leaving you exhausted, and where you might be able to make small changes that allow you to feel more comfortable being yourself.
Managing Stress and Creating Space to Unmask
Another important part of this process at Inspired To Change is learning how to manage your stress levels safely and effectively. When your stress bucket is already overflowing, it can be much harder to make changes, challenge long-standing beliefs or feel comfortable stepping outside of familiar coping strategies.
We work on this in a number of ways.
Firstly, we support you in improving the quality of your sleep, giving your brain the opportunity to process the events and emotions of the day.
Secondly, we help you understand how to move out of your primitive brain and reduce the amount of time you spend feeling as though you need to remain in survival mode.
Thirdly, we help you retrain your brain to become more solution focused, rather than automatically directing your attention towards problems and potential threats.
As your stress levels come down, you can have more mental space to notice what you actually need, recognise which situations feel comfortable and begin experimenting with different ways of responding.
Unmasking doesn’t have to mean making huge changes overnight. Sometimes it might be as simple as allowing yourself to stim, taking a break when you need one, wearing headphones or saying that you need more time to process something.
A Neuro-Affirming Space to Be Yourself
It’s also important that the therapy itself is a place where you feel comfortable and can be yourself without needing to mask. This is why our therapists provide neuro-affirming spaces that take your individual needs into account.
For some people, working in person can feel uncomfortable or bring about additional anxiety, so we offer online sessions where you can speak to your therapist from the comfort of your own home. There is also a clear structure to our sessions that we follow each time, which can help reduce uncertainty and avoid unnecessary surprises or changes.
The question isn’t whether you should mask or not mask, because masking can be an important skill that can truly help in certain situations. The important part is having a choice.
When masking neurodivergent traits becomes something you feel you have to rely on constantly, it can contribute to exhaustion, overwhelm and burnout, as well as leaving you feeling disconnected from yourself.
Learning to recognise when masking is helping you and when it is costing you too much can give you more freedom to decide how you want to show up in the world. You can keep the skills that serve you, while gradually creating more space for the parts of yourself that you may have spent years hiding.
Book your free consultation with one of our hypnotherapists today to learn how Inspired To Change can support you on your mental health journey.
About the Author
Madi Kish is a Solution Focused Hypnotherapist at Inspired To Change Tunbridge Wells. She works primarily with adults experiencing anxiety, overwhelm and low confidence, including many who identify as neurodivergent or are exploring a late diagnosis, an area Madi is particularly passionate about through both her professional and lived experience with ADHD and autism.
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