8 min read
For most of my life, I didn’t know I was masking.
If someone had asked me what masking was, I probably wouldn’t have had an answer.
I simply thought I was doing what everyone else did.
Trying to fit in.
Trying to say the right thing.
Trying not to stand out.
Trying to be the version of myself that other people seemed most comfortable with.
Looking back now, I realise I became incredibly good at it.
So good, in fact, that I stopped noticing where the mask ended and where I began.
I learned to study people.
How they spoke.
How they joked.
How they reacted in different situations.
What seemed acceptable.
What didn’t.
If something about me didn’t seem to fit, I quietly adjusted it.
Not because anyone specifically told me to.
Because I wanted to belong.
Over time, those small adjustments became automatic.
I wasn’t pretending.
I genuinely believed this was simply how adulthood worked.
People often described me as calm.
Capable.
Reliable.
Confident.
The person who could handle things.
And to be fair…
Sometimes I could.
But what people couldn’t see was how much effort it took to appear that way.
Every conversation.
Every meeting.
Every social gathering.
Every change of plans.
Every unexpected interruption.
There was an invisible amount of mental effort happening behind the scenes that nobody else ever saw.
Including me.
One of the strangest things about masking is that the better you become at it, the less you recognise you’re doing it.
You stop asking yourself what you need.
Instead, you become incredibly skilled at noticing what everyone else expects.
Without realising it, your attention shifts outward.
You become an expert at reading the room.
Adjusting.
Adapting.
Keeping the peace.
Meeting expectations.
Meanwhile, your own needs slowly fade into the background.
Not because they disappear.
Because you’ve become so accustomed to putting them aside.
Looking back, I can see there were times when I left social situations completely exhausted.
Not because I didn’t enjoy the people.
But because I’d spent hours monitoring myself.
Making sure I was saying the right thing.
Responding the right way.
Keeping conversations flowing.
Trying not to appear awkward.
By the time I got home, I didn’t just feel tired.
I felt empty.
At the time, I thought that was normal.
Now I understand that what I was really feeling was the cost of constantly performing.
The hardest part wasn’t that other people didn’t know I was masking.
It was that I didn’t know either.
I had become so used to adapting that I no longer knew what came naturally to me.
What did I actually enjoy?
What environments suited me best?
What conversations gave me energy instead of taking it away?
Those questions felt surprisingly difficult to answer.
Not because I didn’t have answers.
Because I’d spent so many years focusing on everyone else that I’d stopped paying attention to myself.
My diagnosis didn’t suddenly make the mask disappear.
It simply helped me notice it.
That awareness changed everything.
Now, instead of automatically pushing through every situation, I pause.
I ask myself:
“Is this something I genuinely want to do?”
“Am I doing this because it matters to me, or because I feel I should?”
“What would make this situation easier for me?”
Those questions sound simple.
But for me, they represented something entirely new.
Permission to consider myself.
I still mask sometimes.
Most people do.
There are situations where adapting to those around us is part of everyday life.
The difference now is that it’s a choice rather than a way of surviving.
I’m becoming more comfortable allowing people to see the real me.
The version that doesn’t always have the perfect words.
That sometimes needs quiet.
That becomes overwhelmed.
That gets excited about things other people might not understand.
The version that’s simply… me.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this:
The better I became at hiding my struggles from other people, the harder it became to recognise them myself.
Understanding that has been one of the greatest gifts of my diagnosis.
Because I no longer measure success by how well I can hide who I am.
I measure it by how comfortable I feel being myself.
And after spending decades becoming a professional at masking…
I’m finally learning the much more rewarding skill of taking it off.