Masking: The Exhausting Art of Pretending to Be Fine

I've spent decades performing "normal." It's cost me more than I can calculate. And I'm finally learning to put the mask down.

Masking is the art of pretending to be fine when you're absolutely not. It's the performance of "normal" that neurodivergent people—especially women—learn from a very young age. It's exhausting. It's invisible. And it's slowly killing us.

I've been masking for as long as I can remember. As a child, I learned to sit still when my body wanted to move. To make eye contact when it felt like staring into the sun. To laugh at jokes I didn't understand because everyone else was laughing. To nod along in conversations while internally screaming because the fluorescent lights were buzzing and my sock was twisted and someone was breathing too loudly three desks away.

I learned to monitor my face. Is this the right expression? Am I smiling enough? Too much? Do I look interested? Concerned? Am I reacting the way a "normal" person would react? I became a student of other people's faces, studying their expressions, cataloguing what "looked right" so I could replicate it later.

I learned to script conversations in advance. What will I say when I arrive? What if they ask about work? What if there's an awkward silence? I'd rehearse entire dialogues in my head, preparing for every possible branch, every potential deviation. By the time I actually arrived at the event, I was already exhausted from the preparation.

I learned to suppress my stims. The leg bouncing. The finger tapping. The need to move, to fidget, to release the constant hum of energy in my body. I learned to sit still, to look calm, to appear relaxed even when my nervous system was screaming.

I learned to ignore my own needs. To tolerate environments that were painfully loud, bright, crowded. To push through exhaustion because "everyone else is fine." To say "I'm okay" when I was drowning. To smile when I wanted to cry. To show up when I needed to rest.

Masking is a survival strategy. For many neurodivergent people—especially women and girls—it's the only way to navigate a world that wasn't built for our brains. We learn early that our natural way of being is "wrong." Too much. Too sensitive. Too weird. So we hide it. We perform. We become what the world expects.

And it works. People believe the performance. They think we're fine. They think we're coping. They think we're just like them, just maybe a bit quiet, a bit anxious, a bit "quirky." They don't see the cost.

The cost is everything. Masking takes enormous cognitive and emotional energy. Every interaction is a performance, and performances require effort. By the end of a "normal" day—work, socialising, just existing in public—I'm depleted. Not tired. Depleted. My battery isn't low; it's been running on empty for years.

The cost is also a loss of self. When you spend decades performing, you start to forget who you are underneath the performance. What do I actually like? What do I actually need? What would I do if no one was watching, if no one was judging, if I didn't have to be "normal"? I'm still figuring that out. At 52. After a lifetime of pretending.

The cost is burnout. Not regular burnout. Autistic burnout. ADHD burnout. A deep, prolonged exhaustion that comes from years—decades—of masking. It's not fixed by a weekend off or a holiday. It's a nervous system collapse. It's your body finally saying "I cannot do this anymore." I've been there. Multiple times. Each time, it's taken months to recover. And each time, I've gone back to masking because I didn't know there was another way.

I'm learning there is another way. Slowly. Imperfectly. I'm learning to notice when I'm masking and ask: "Is this necessary? Is this serving me? Or am I just performing out of habit?" Sometimes the answer is yes—masking is necessary. In a job interview. In a difficult conversation. In situations where my safety or wellbeing depends on being seen as "normal." But often, the answer is no. I'm masking for people who don't need the performance. I'm masking out of fear, not necessity.

I'm learning to unmask in safe spaces. My locked room. With trusted friends. In my writing. On this website. Places where I can be exactly who I am—anxious, sensitive, stimmy, quiet, overwhelmed, honest—without performing. These spaces are rare. They're precious. They're where I remember who I actually am.

I'm learning that unmasking is terrifying and liberating in equal measure. Terrifying because I've been hiding for so long that showing my real self feels like standing naked in a crowd. Liberating because every time I drop the performance, I reclaim a little piece of myself. I get a little bit of energy back. I remember what it feels like to just... be.

If you're masking—if you're performing "fine" while falling apart inside—I see you. I know how hard it is. I know how invisible the effort is. I know how lonely it feels to be the only one who knows what's really happening behind the smile.

You don't have to perform for everyone. You don't have to perform all the time. Find your safe spaces. Find your people. Find the moments where you can put the mask down and just breathe. You deserve to exist as you are, not as the world expects you to be.

Anxiously Ever After is written by me, Jennie, a 50-something-year-old woman who has spent decades masking and is finally learning to stop. I write from a rented room with a locked door, where no performance is required.