Like a lot of language that is tied to mental health, “masking” has become a bit of a buzzword—but what is it, exactly? And why do people do it? At its core, masking is the habit of consciously or unconsciously covering up parts of yourself to blend in, avoid judgment, and stay safe. Sometimes that self-protection may be necessary for psychological, emotional, or even physical reasons. But it can also come at a cost, including intense exhaustion, feelings of disconnection, and not being totally sure who you are beneath the mask.
Masking has long helped explain how neurodivergent people navigate the world, and the term is still most connected to those communities. As a reminder, “neurodivergence” is an umbrella term used by mental health professionals to cover autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), as well as other forms of cognitive and neurological variation. Today, though, as use of the term grows, some mental health experts are broadening who it gets applied to, as others seek to expand the definition of neurodivergence itself.
We asked some of these experts, including neurodivergent-affirming and trauma-informed therapists, to explain what masking looks like, why it happens, and who’s most likely to do it. We also asked them about the process for figuring out when you’re masking and learning how to unmask, with a focus on ways to unmask that feel both safe and empowering. Whether you’re someone with neurodivergence (roll call for my fellow ADHD'ers!) or just starting to notice how you’ve been conditioned to edit yourself down, this conversation is for you.
Ahead, we break down what masking is and what it means to start reconnecting with parts of yourself you’ve learned to hide—because those parts deserve care, not shame.
What is masking?
If you’ve ever downplayed your emotions, adjusted your tone, or hidden parts of yourself just to feel like you fit in, you’ve already brushed up against one form of masking. Deeper than “putting on a face,” it’s often a way to stay safe in environments that expect sameness, and over time, it takes a toll.
For neurodivergent people, that toll may be particularly inescapable. According to neurodivergent therapist Malia Rogers, MS, LMHC, masking is “the exhausting effort of concealing traits that are seen as not typical, or not part of the ‘normal’ structure and neurotypical world that we live in.” It’s often “so ingrained,” they say, “that most folks don't even realize they're doing it.”
Rogers, who largely works with neurodivergent and queer patients, says masking is frequently an unconscious behavior, which makes it distinct from code-switching, another pattern of behavioral concealment that's common among those with marginalized identities. In a queer context, code switching is “a way of concealing your queer traits in spaces that might not be safe,” she explains, and is consciously or semiconsciously done; masking, though, is “not necessarily as intentional.”
“It’s so ingrained in us because we’re taught what traits are right and wrong through social feedback loops, and sometimes explicitly, especially as you're growing up,” Rogers says. “Through all of that kind of negative feedback, people just learn to conceal pieces of themselves that would otherwise naturally be how they function and how their mind and body would be most comfortable.”
Scott Ephemere, MS, LPC-S, NCC, CCTP, a professional counselor specializing in late- and self-diagnosed neurodivergence, describes masking as falling “under this umbrella term of ‘camouflaging,’” along with compensation (forcing yourself to act in ways you naturally wouldn’t) and assimilation (falling in step with what you’re told is “normal”). Each arises for a specific purpose, Ephemere says, but they “sort of interplay on one another too.” And for many people, camouflaging starts early enough that it shapes how we move through the world before we even realize it’s happening.
Masking doesn’t occur in a vacuum. It is shaped by culture, identity, safety concerns, and early feedback about what is considered acceptable. So, what specifically can drive people to mask, and who’s most likely to fall into the pattern?
Why do people mask, and who is most likely to do it?
On some level, most of us have masked. Rogers believes it’s something “everyone does from, probably, as soon as you are old enough to recognize, Oh, if I do this thing, I receive some sort of negative response.” That said, there’s a difference between one-off situational concealment—like acting happier than you feel on a random bad day—and what she calls the “insidious mind shift” that’s typical of ingrained masking and common of neurodivergent realities. Adds Rogers, “I truly believe that no one is safe from masking who is neurodivergent.”
Within neurodivergence, certain populations—such as women and femme-presenting people—may be even more conditioned to mask, potentially impacting if and when they receive a diagnosis. A 2021 study of late-diagnosed autistic adults found a nearly 10-year gap between the average age of diagnosis for women (29 years old) and men (20). This gap also exists well before adulthood: Girls are four times less likely to be diagnosed with autism than boys, per the CDC, with a 2022 study indicating that nearly 80% of ASD cases in girls remain undiagnosed by age 18.
One big reason for that may have to do with something researchers call “social compensating abilities.” Encouraged more often in people socialized as girls, these behaviors can feed into high-masking autism, according to a 2023 scientific review of studies on camouflaging and gender. Says Victoria Rodriguez, PhD, LPC, CCTP, NCC, a neurodivergent-affirming therapist who works with patients discovering their neurodivergence in their teens all the way to their 70s, “The women I see in my practice are taught from very young ages, ‘Don't fidget when you're at your desk,’ ‘Don't say something weird at work,’ or ‘Make sure that you are smiling, making eye contact, and performing in that way with your body.’”
She explains further, “I think, especially teen girls…just receive a lot of socialization from school on how to behave a certain way, trying to fit in, and what it means to be a ‘good girl’ or to follow the rules.”
Sometimes encouragement to mask can even come from therapy itself. “When we first started talking about autism and ADHD as a discrete diagnosis, there was this idea that, ‘Well, we have to teach them to mask,’” Rodriquez says, adding that traditional applied behavior analysis (ABA) therapy may focus on this. But “you’re really not ‘getting rid of’ those behaviors,” she points out. “You’re just teaching children and teens how to hide those autistic or neurodivergent traits.”
For those outside the fold of traditional neurodivergence definitions—including trauma survivors—cues to mask can still exist. Meira Ellias, LCSW, a trauma-focused therapist and co-owner of Good Company Therapy Group, calls masking “a coping skill” and says that those who “experienced a trauma at a young age and grew up living in trauma environments” may be more likely to adopt it. “They’ve had a long time of learning that they need to mask their true feelings and their true identities in order to stay safe and cope,” she explains.
While some groups may be more conditioned to masking, ultimately, there’s no way to neatly categorize or predict who does it. As Ephemere puts it: “We can't know who's masking because they're probably really good at masking!”
Regardless of why a person does it, though, Ellias says, it’s important to understand that masking is not about “being fake and pretending”: “It’s more about the understanding that there are systems in this world that make it really hard for people to function…. and that people are coping with the best skills that they have at the time.”
What’s the impact of masking?
Like most survival strategies, masking serves a purpose, helping you move through spaces that might not feel safe or accepting. Over time, though, what starts as a protective measure can take a toll, making its impacts more complicated.
With what Rodriguez calls “internalized masking,” the line between your masked self and real self can become blurred even to you, leaving little sense of what your needs truly are. She says further: “What I find is, it makes it really difficult for you to even identify your needs, because—since you were a child—you've been learning how to turn off those needs; how to not pay attention to that just because it wasn't emotionally safe for you to.”
This disconnection can run deep. “I get a lot of adults who aren't realizing that they're masking, and have been masking for decades, because they don't even realize they have needs,” Rodriquez explains, adding that buried needs can be emotional or psychological as well as physical. “I'll have a lot of adult autistic or ADHD people that won't realize their hunger cues or thirst cues, or even when they need to go to the bathroom, because they spent so long masking their needs socially.”
The energy cost of masking, regardless of whether it’s consciously or subconsciously done, can be tremendous. “The harm of [masking] is the amount of mental and physical energy it takes to fight your natural impulses,” Rogers says. “Even if it becomes this unconscious process, it’s still happening. There’s still parts of the way your brain is physically structured that you are directly fighting all the time, and that leads to so much more exhaustion."
They add, “It just makes everything feel so much harder than it should be, because you're not working with your brain—you're working directly against it.”
For those who are not aware they’re masking, the path to burnout isn’t just exhausting; often it’s also confusing and painful. In Rodriguez's experience treating high-masking teens, she says, many of them “are going to school every day, going to work, and kind of performing neuronormativity, and they just cannot figure out why they don't have energy for anything else, like social events."
She continues, "They can't figure out why they're not connecting with people and just have this intense feeling of not belonging, or feeling like an alien—feeling like you can't find your group and not being able to figure out why.”
Eventually, Rodriguez says, that “performance of masking” can “lead to ADHD or autistic burnout, which we know can be way more intense than neurotypical burnout.” For some of her clients, thoughts of self-harm have been part of the burnout stage. “The masking got way too intense for them,” she explains. “They just can't imagine a world where they have to continue to mask, to feel out of the group, or to work so hard at that performance.”
Chronic masking can damage your relationship to self, as well as connection with others. “It costs a lot of energy and self-concept and compassion towards self and even relationships,” Ephemere says. “How do we have authentic relationships when we're not sure who it's safe to be us around?"
He continues, "At a certain point, I think we might even lose touch with who we are, because we've just kind of become this curated, masked version of ourselves…. Some of us might just stop looking for the people who share our interests and resign to, ‘Well, this is just what you do.’”
In a world set up for neurotypical people, we can’t ignore that in some situations, masking comes with benefits; however, Ephemere says, finding where the benefit ends and harm begins can be tricky. “It’s really complex, but I do imagine that there are people out there who have materially, relationally, personally, and in some kind of values-oriented sense benefited [from masking].… I imagine there’s someone out there who masks their way to their goals. ‘At what cost?’ is my question.”
For Rogers, corporate spaces are a clear example of a “rigid framework” where the need to mask shows up. Ideally, everyone should be able to be themselves at work, she says, but “unfortunately, in the world we live in, if you want to be successful in certain spaces that are very ingrained with this neurotypical culture…masking often is a necessity and could very much impact your work environment.”
Beyond the question of climbing a career ladder, there’s also the very real cost-benefit analysis many marginalized people have to do in order to calculate when and where to be their full selves. “With the current climate, it could also be a safety thing,” Rogers says. “Certain spaces may not feel legitimately safe to be seen as different or to be othered in that way.”
How can I tell if I’m masking?
Recognizing when you’re masking can be tricky, especially because, for many people, it’s become second nature. But paying attention to subtle cues in your body and behavior can help you start to notice when it’s happening. Often, the earliest signs show up as moments when you minimize your own needs or silence small parts of yourself just to get through a situation.
According to the experts we spoke to, some signs you might be masking include:
How can I start unmasking?
Before determining that you’ve been masking and rushing to undo or “fix” it all at once, pause, take a breath, and reframe. Unmasking is gradual. Rogers calls it “a lifelong process, because this was a lifelong thing we all learned to do, right? So it’s a lot of years of unlearning those things.”
Additionally, in some contexts, unmasking may not actually be the best or most helpful choice to make. Says Ephemere, “I don't know that it's safe to unmask in all situations.”
He adds, “I wish there was a simple answer, like, ‘Oh, once you hit your 18th birthday and you’re an adult, or you get your college degree, or you move out of your parents’ house, just stop masking.' But we live in a society that can be really implicitly judgmental and also really explicitly judgmental. I think you get to trust your gut and take every situation as its own, individualized experience. A person could unmask in one context and be really successful there, and unmask in another context and come to regret it.”
Because of that, Ephemere says, working with a mental health professional who can “help you go through the pros and cons and think about [unmasking] in nuanced ways” is an important step.
Ellias agrees, pointing out that coping skills “develop for a reason”: “They develop to protect you from something, so when we start to strip them away, it means there's probably something really painful underneath,” she says. “It can be really helpful to do that with a trusted person.”
Beyond working with a licensed therapist or counselor, there are also small, everyday ways that you can unmask—little by little, and safely—in other parts of your life. “I think the most important thing is to find a neurodivergent-affirming community," says Rodriguez. "Typically, we look for communities that may have shared special interests. I’ll have clients go to Comic-Con or Star Trek conventions where they might find other neurodivergent people who share a strong interest in that fandom.”
Finding this community, she continues, helps “normalize some of those traits for you so that you can start to feel more like yourself. I try to tell teens, ‘Think of that one person or group of people you feel you can just be totally yourself with, and that might be a good sign those are the types of people you can unmask around.’”
Spending time privately taking stock of your needs can be another way to begin unmasking. “Even just doing some depth work yourself—journaling, writing lists, or talking with a loved one about your needs—can in and of itself be a way to unmask. Identifying your needs, identifying your wants, and—before you dismiss them—just putting them on paper and recognizing, Oh, I do have these needs.”
For Rogers, this approach—gently peeling back micro behaviors and choices, one at a time—is a good starting point. “It's about getting back to instinctually what your mind and body want to be doing, and I recommend always starting small,” they say, citing how you choose to sit in a chair as an example. “Is it really the most comfortable, or is there something you could do that would make yourself just a little more comfortable that maybe isn't necessarily sitting the way you feel a neurotypical person would?”
Something as small as “playing around with movements,” Rogers says, can help you find where you end and the mask begins. “It's so insidious that, any behavior you do, I really think you could pause and ask yourself, Why am I doing it this way? Is there a way I would feel better doing this?” they say. “Just those little tweaks can start to get you in tune again with your true self—the natural part of you that wants to exist and just be comfortable.”
