Day 8: The Cost of Chronic Masking
The Neurodivergent Philosopher: Daily Meditations
“We wear the mask that grins and lies…[…]…worn as a social debt to conceal inner torment from the outside world.” — Paul Laurence Dunbar
Masking is the performance of neurotypicality. It’s not always intentional.
You’ve been doing it so long you might not even know where the mask ends and you begin.
It looks like:
Forcing eye contact during conversations while you feel totally uncomfortable internally
Suppressing stims (hand-flapping, rocking, fidgeting) that regulate your nervous system
Scripting responses to sound ‘normal’
Modulating your voice tone and volume to appear calm when you’re screaming inside
Pretending to follow conversations you lost three topic-switches ago
Hiding your interests because others find them ‘weird’ or ‘too intense’
Performing interest in small talk when it feels like sensory sandpaper
Smiling when you’re overwhelmed to avoid questions
Making your ADHD brain appear organised through unsustainable compensation strategies
Laughing at jokes you don’t understand to blend in
This is exhausting. The relentless fear you hold inside that turns to shame as you blame yourself. This is a full '‘nervous system override’…you are overriding your actual state to appear acceptable to others.
No wonder the clinical research found that chronic masking leads to increased anxiety, depression, identity confusion…and critically….burnout.
The effort of pretending to be someone you’re not, all day, every day, is unsustainable.
Masking doesn’t just hide your distress from others. It hides it from you.
That’s why I said it’s not always intentional. You have been acquiring social constructs all your life, from your culture, from authority figures in your life, teachers, parents, everyone.
As a woman, the patriarchy culture has played a big part in my life. Being told no 20,000 times before the age of 12 and being queer on top of that…I think like was priming me to wake up and push back ;)
The problem is…you become so skilled at masking, you don’t know you are doing it…you lose access to your own internal signals. You don’t listen to your body anymore. You don’t notice sensory overload until you’re in shutdown. You don’t recognise exhaustion until you physically collapse.
You can’t name your needs because you’ve spent decades suppressing them.
Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote about masks as survival strategy under oppression. Your mask is similar…it’s a response to a world that punishes neurodivergent authenticity.
The survival strategies that worked at seven may be killing you at thirty-seven?
Today:
Notice one moment when you masked today.
What did it cost? What would unmasking have looked like?
You don’t have to change anything yet. Just notice.
The first act of resistance is seeing the cage.