Day 6: Unmasking
The Neurodivergent Philosopher: Daily Mediations
“If you wish to be beautiful, you will be continually tormented.”
— Epictetus, Discourses 4.9
You’ve spent years learning to appear normal.
Hiding the fidgeting. Rehearsing conversations. Over-explaining to preempt judgment. Performing focus when your mind is elsewhere.
The clinical term is masking. The lived experience is exhausting.
The Stoics understood the cost of living for external approval.
Epictetus: “If you wish to be beautiful, you will be continually tormented.”
Replace “beautiful” with “normal” and you have the ADHD experience.
Masking isn’t just performance, it’s an override of your nervous system. You’re constantly monitoring, adjusting, code-switching. Your energy goes to appearing regulated instead of being regulated. And the cost is more than exhaustion. It’s self-abandonment.
The most ironic thing about masking…is that we tend not to realise when we are masking, it can run deep.
Very deep.
I’m still unravelling years later.
When you mask, you exile the parts of yourself that don’t fit “society”. The restlessness. The tangential thinking. The emotional intensity. The need to move, interrupt, redirect.
Not flaws, but inbuilt regulation strategies.
And that’s ok.
I often wondered…”if we were so comfortable and didn’t mask, would our emotional intensity be sooo intense?”
Today:
Notice when you’re performing vs. when you’re present.
Where do you mask? With whom? What does it cost?
You don’t have to unmask everywhere.
But you need to know where the mask is.
Because the Stoic goal isn’t to be loved by everyone.
It’s to be yourself without apology.