RACHAEL BURNS - 2025 Writers series
Yes, masking and more
When I talk about my experiences of ‘masking’ I am often met with the same three words:
‘But everyone masks.’
My response?
Yes, and masking is—to a degree—inherently human.
Yes, and masking as a neurodivergent person is not the same as masking as a neurotypical person.
Masking is typically understood as putting up a facade, not all that different from ‘code switching’—or in simpler terms, the ability for us to change our personality slightly to adapt to whatever situation or environment we are in.
I want to make clear that humans of all neurotypes do this to an extent. We have an inherent need to be accepted, to fall into the expectations of the status quo.
It’s the premise of any stereotypical high school or coming-of-age movie: a tropic character experiences an internal conflict as a result of a mismatch between who they are and who they feel they must be. A footballer who loves to dance, or a popular kid who is secretly a math whiz. Everyone with access to a TV knows that in the end, the main character hits a point of realisation or of embrace as they overcome the (sometimes real, sometimes trivial) things that make them their own being.
Another truth to consider is that we live in a society where it is the norm for people to be constantly one-upping each other. To compare and compete with who has ‘struggled the most’, vying (often subconsciously) for some kind of validation based on who has endured the most hardship.
In my experiences, I have found that it is only when people truly understand what adversity is and the absolute havoc that it can wreak that they recognise the reality and understand that the ability to endure pain and to carry heavy loads well is not something to strive for, and certainly is not something that determines our value us as a human.
It also fundamentally ties back to the reality that life is not a competition, and when we try to make it one the only person who will ever lose is ourself.
When it comes to the true meaning and experience of masking, it is usually only among other neurodivergent folks that conversations around the realities of masking tend to exist and blossom.
Masking is—to me—a version of myself. It’s far more than the cliche of ‘putting on a smile’ (which I’ll restate is a completely human behaviour); it’s more an art. For me, masking is simultaneously conscious and unconscious. It is so enmeshed with my identity and self-concept that there is no clear definition of my mask.
Masking is reflective of the numerous experiences that have shaped who I am and the subtle microaggressions that have shaped how I see myself.
It is awkwardly holding my hands by my side like my classmates after being told that I hold them weirdly.
It is wishing that the teacher would stop referring to me as ‘gifted’ when I am known as the
resident ‘smart freak’ and purposely trying to fade into the background to avoid this.
It is darting my eyes around the room in an attempt to not make ‘too much’ eye contact while also not being perceived as ‘rude’, and zoning out of the conversation to ruminate over how intensely I am staring.
It is my attempt to stifle my personality after being told on numerous occasions that I am ‘too much’.
We often talk about masking as something temporary that we use to present a more appropriate version of ourselves according to the situation. But perhaps for neurodivergent folks, it is not something that can just be switched on or off, but a formative experience—a mask that is stuck to the skin with superglue as opposed to a fancy-dress masquerade.
It is important to understand that how autism and ADHD present is different for everyone. There is no singular rule (as much as that would be far easier). The way I perceive it is that people all mask to different extents within what we know as neurodivergence. Those that are deemed as having lower support needs are often those that are able to mask convincingly-enough that they are able to pass as neurotypical when they need to.
Building further, it is now well evidenced that those assigned female at birth often experience neurodiversity in very different ways from those assigned male at birth, whose presentation is usually more in line with stereotypical depictions. In many cases, this translates to a deeper resonance with the idea of ‘masking’.
Given I’m a cisgendered woman who has lived my life as a ‘gifted’ student and someone who is very attuned to the emotions of others, it makes perfect sense that nobody questioned or likely even suspected that I was autistic for a number of reasons. One is that I was so far from the depictions of Dustin Hoffman’s Rainman and Young Sheldon, who seem so emotionally and socially disconnected—I most certainly felt empathy, and to an extreme. I have always felt others’ pain as though it was my own, to the extent of sensing emotions that are not necessarily present. But I’ve come to understand that this is a characteristic way that neurodivergence shows up for me.
Perhaps more significantly, I mastered the art of performance at a very young age. My complex brain retained every comment, every glance, every tonal shift. Every piece of information had meaning and value, and thus became integrated within the web and formed the framework of my personality. It allowed me to build a persona that passed as ‘normal’ and that centred around academia, which was an acceptable and societally praised hyperfixation. It also taught me to mask pain, including the pain I felt when my mental health spiralled into crisis after years of living in denial. I’d had plenty of practice at disconnecting from my truth and was pretty good at convincing people that I was fine.
What followed was years of torment that can be described as nothing short of hell.
At the beginning of last year, I began to accept and embrace the reality that I am autistic. More importantly, I began to accept that this poses challenges in my daily life (and is inherently disabling)… but at the same time can also be my greatest asset.
The process of unmasking is not complete and likely never will be. It is a part of me, it always has been a part of me, and is integral to the formation of the person I am now, the experiences I have had, and the views I carry.
To me, unmasking has been about finding connection and community that I never imagined possible. The relief that I feel in gaining permission to unashamedly stim, talk about my hyperfixations, feel intensely, and think ‘outside the box’ without filters is indescribable.
Unmasking is not about erasing the parts of me that developed to protect me and keep me safe in a world that didn’t understand me. Instead, it’s about leaning into the ambivalence and grey space that is often missed.
It is about embracing imperfection and messiness. Accepting that things exist the way they are and that life can be both beautiful and terrible and exciting and terrifying all at once.
It is going all in on projects (even when others see it as excessive), sitting in positions that earn a sideways glance on the bus (but that are SUPER comfy) and making intentionally bad art.
It is understanding that truth does not negate another and that, yes, we all mask at times, and there is so much more complexity to this than we often grasp.