Masking: Why Many Neurodivergent Adults Hide Their Traits

Introduction

If you've spent years — perhaps your whole adult life — learning to present a version of yourself that fits more comfortably into social and professional spaces, you may already know exactly what masking feels like. It might be the careful rehearsal of facial expressions. The suppression of physical movements that feel natural. The relentless monitoring of how you're coming across. The script you run before a meeting or a social event. The exhaustion at the end of a day that, from the outside, looked perfectly ordinary.

Masking — also sometimes called camouflaging — is one of the most common and least discussed aspects of life for many neurodivergent adults. Understanding it, naming it, and beginning to unpick what it costs you is an important part of living more authentically and sustainably.

What the Research Says

Research into masking has expanded significantly since the term began to be used in autistic community discourse in the 2010s. A foundational study by Hull and colleagues (2017), published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, formally defined and measured camouflaging in autistic adults. It identified three main components: assimilation (trying to fit in), compensation (using strategies to cover differences), and masking (hiding or suppressing autistic traits).

Subsequent research, including work by Lai and colleagues (2017) and Cassidy and colleagues (2018), linked high levels of masking to increased rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation in autistic adults. Masking was also significantly associated with delayed diagnosis — the better a person was at camouflaging, the less likely professionals were to recognise their autism.

In ADHD research, the picture is similar. Adults with ADHD — particularly women — frequently describe extensive effort to appear organised, attentive, and composed in professional settings, while managing considerable internal chaos. This has been described in clinical literature as "effortful compensation," and it carries significant mental health costs.

Why This Happens

Masking is not a conscious choice in most cases — or at least, it doesn't start as one. It develops through a process of social learning and feedback over years, often beginning in childhood. When children are consistently rewarded for certain behaviours and punished, excluded, or ridiculed for others, they learn. They learn to suppress the behaviours that attract negative attention, and to replicate the ones that earn acceptance.

For many neurodivergent people, particularly those who were not identified early, this process becomes deeply automatic. The mask is not something they put on in the morning — it is woven into how they move through the world, and removing it can feel impossible, or even frightening.

Cultural and social pressures compound this. In many workplaces, schools, and family systems, there is very little tolerance for visible difference. The implicit message — and often the explicit one — is: adapt or be excluded.

How This Shows Up in Real Life

Masking can show up in countless ways. You might recognise:

• Watching how others interact and mentally scripting your contributions before speaking
• Suppressing stimming — physical movements or sounds that help you regulate — because they feel socially unacceptable
• Mirroring the tone, vocabulary, and body language of whoever you're with
• Feeling completely different with close friends than with colleagues or acquaintances
• Being told you seem confident or outgoing, while feeling nothing like that inside
• Arriving home after a social event and feeling completely hollowed out
• Having a very different internal experience to how others perceive you

The disconnect between the internal and external experience can be profound, and over time it can erode your sense of who you actually are.

Practical Takeaways

The goal isn't necessarily to unmask completely and all at once — particularly in environments where safety is not guaranteed. Unmasking is a gradual, personal process.

Start by noticing when you are masking. Not to judge it, but to become aware of it. What situations trigger it most? What does it cost you?

Begin to create spaces in your life where masking is not required. This might be time alone, a trusted friendship, or a community of people with shared experiences.

Stimming, if you mask it, can be an area to gently explore. Research by Kapp and colleagues (2019) found that stimming serves important regulatory functions for autistic people, and suppression of stimming increases anxiety. Finding private or low-judgement contexts to allow natural movement can be genuinely beneficial.

Consider working with a therapist familiar with neurodivergence to explore the origins of your masking and the feelings that come up when you begin to let it down. This is meaningful, if sometimes emotional, work.

And know this: the fact that you have masked so effectively for so long is not evidence that you don't need support. It is evidence of just how hard you have worked to navigate a world that wasn't built for your brain.