My AuDHD Masked Persona Helped Me Succeed at Work. Now I Can’t Let It Go.
Have you ever felt trapped by your masked persona?
Masking has become my monotrope. It’s been a special interest since I first understood what masking was and how it contributed to my understanding of my autism and my AuDHD.
I study it. I research it. I want to understand how it works.
Recently, during a conversation with one of my coaching clients about the masked personas we develop at work, I had a big realization:
My masked persona helped me succeed. But it can also make it incredibly hard to figure out who I am underneath it.
That’s become an important part of how I think about AuDHD masking, unmasking, burnout, and finding my way back to play.
What does AuDHD masking look like for me?
For me, masking has often been about protection.
A lot of my masking happens instinctively. I’m not necessarily making a conscious decision to do it.
It can show up through scripting conversations, rehearsing what I’m going to say, mimicking other people’s behavior or speech, studying social situations, changing how I communicate depending on the group, or monitoring my words, tone, cadence, and behavior.
For most of my life, I didn’t think of those things as masking.
I thought that was simply how I moved through the world.
Once I understood what masking was, I started becoming more aware of when I was doing it and, importantly, what was happening inside my body while it was happening.
I learned how to study other people
I grew up mimicking TV shows, sitcoms, cartoons, science fiction, personalities, speaking cadences, mannerisms, and eventually entire ways of existing.
That continued into my career.
When I became a manager and started doing management and leadership training, I would latch onto people I considered mentors. I studied how I thought a manager should behave and tried to model some of their style, behavior, and thinking.
And for me, that actually worked incredibly well in some ways.
It helped me learn.
It helped me become a manager.
It helped me understand corporate environments.
After enough years working in corporate settings, I developed what I think of as a corporate filter in my brain. I could understand corporate language and translate it for my teams. I could understand systems and figure out how to move through them.
There were benefits to that.
But there was another side to it.
My masked personas became part of my identity
The more I learned how to adapt, the more personas I developed.
There was a persona for family.
A persona for church.
A persona for school.
A persona for friends.
Eventually, there were personas for work.
As I got older, those personas became more choreographed and precise.
I can remember learning very early that certain parts of myself needed to be hidden. I was a goofy, silly, funny kid, but things that came naturally to me could attract attention, questions, teasing, or punishment.
I also grew up in a high-control religion where there were very specific rules around how I was expected to behave. Our school was connected to that environment too.
So I learned to suppress.
Suppress.
Suppress.
Suppress.
Years of suppressing things that felt natural.
But when I was alone, I didn’t have to do that in the same way.
I may have been better at unmasking as a kid
I looked forward to being alone in my room where I could just play.
Nobody was watching me.
Nobody was judging me.
I wasn’t performing for anybody.
I was simply having fun.
I didn’t have the language for masking or unmasking then, but I could feel the difference.
As an adult trying to understand my own burnout recovery, I’ve realized how important that sense of play still is for me.
But adulthood also brought more personas.
When I entered professional and corporate environments, I learned to adapt even more.
And somewhere underneath all of those versions of myself was the question:
Who am I when I’m not performing for anybody?
My masked persona helped me succeed at work
This is where masking gets complicated for me.
Some of my masked personas genuinely helped me.
When I was a journalist, for example, I had what I now think of as a newsroom persona.
That persona allowed me to do the job.
When I eventually left journalism and moved into publishing and digital content strategy, I used to joke that my humanity was growing back.
I didn’t understand what that meant at the time.
Looking back now, I think I was freeing myself from that particular masked persona. The newsroom version of me had learned to suppress a lot of emotions, feelings, and thinking because I needed to perform in a particular way to do that job.
Then I moved into a different industry and became a different version of myself.
I sometimes compare these transitions to regeneration in Doctor Who. A major life change happens, and suddenly I’m becoming another version of myself.
Another persona.
Another way of existing.
And it happens so instinctively that I don’t always have much control over it.
That’s why I don’t experience masking as consciously deciding to lie or pretend.
For me, it just happens.
Masking became even more intense as an executive
Later in my career, I became a VP.
One part of that role involved presenting quarterly reviews covering things like revenue, earnings, projects, and the work happening across my area.
Those presentations could be incredibly stressful for me.
I watched how my colleagues performed. I studied their mannerisms, how they spoke, and the confidence they brought into those meetings.
Then I incorporated some of those things into my own performance.
I would prepare extensively.
What are the points I need to hit?
What do I want people focused on?
What don’t I want them focused on?
How much context should I provide?
What questions might I get?
What data do I need immediately available?
I’m naturally somebody who likes to give a lot of context. In these situations, I had to learn how to compress everything.
What was the problem?
What did you do?
What was the solution?
Go.
I learned how to do it.
But afterwards, I could be exhausted.
That’s one of the things I wish I’d understood about masking much earlier: being able to successfully perform doesn’t mean the performance isn’t costing me something.
What does masking actually feel like in my body?
This has become one of the most important things I’ve learned about my own masking.
I can feel it.
For years, my body was doing things I didn’t understand. Now that I have language around masking, I’m more aware of those sensations.
For me, there can be a tension.
A block.
Almost like a wall.
I’ve described it as an invisible force field that comes down around my body, my brain, my thoughts, and certain actions.
Sometimes I genuinely feel like I cannot move past it.
It’s kind of like Star Trek when they say, “Shields up.”
The more I have to mask, the more intense those shields can feel.
If I’m not sure what’s happening, what someone expects from me, what a conversation means, or what I’m supposed to do, I start monitoring more.
My heart rate may increase. I may sweat more. My mind starts working faster.
What are they saying?
What aren’t they saying?
What’s their body language doing?
What words should I use?
How should I deliver them?
How fast am I talking?
What’s my tone?
Suddenly, I’m doing an enormous amount of cognitive work just to navigate the interaction.
Masking can feel like a clogged drain
There’s another metaphor I use to describe what happens next.
A clogged drain.
Some information is getting through, but not everything is getting through.
The more cognitive work I’m doing to monitor myself and the situation around me, the harder it can become for me to fully process what’s happening in the moment.
Something might happen during a meeting or conversation that I don’t completely understand until hours later.
Sometimes days later.
Occasionally, much longer.
I’ve even had the experience of realizing after the fact that somebody I was attracted to had been flirting with me.
In the moment?
Nothing.
Later?
“Oh my God. They were flirting with me.”
That’s a simple example, but it helped me understand something bigger about myself.
Sometimes I’m using so much processing power to navigate the moment that I don’t fully understand the moment until later.
Why I need an unmasking plan
Once I became more aware of these patterns, I also became more aware of what I need afterwards.
After a particularly intense masking situation, I usually need recovery time.
For me, that might mean lying down, watching something comforting, being alone, allowing myself to feel exhausted, and avoiding anything that requires a heavy mental lift.
I also need play.
Creating videos, editing, podcasting, and making things can feel like play for me.
As I became more senior in my career, people would sometimes tell me to stop doing those things and let somebody else handle them.
But I didn’t want to let them go.
At the time, I didn’t understand why.
Now I do.
That stuff was my play.
And the more senior I became, the less access I had to it.
Why I usually need to unmask alone
For me, unmasking and safety are deeply connected.
I don’t like fully unmasking in front of other people.
Maybe I can unmask 70%.
Maybe 60%.
Maybe 50%.
But completely?
I usually need to be alone.
My therapist may be one of the few exceptions because that environment feels safe enough for me.
When I’m around other people, there can still be a part of my brain scanning for judgment.
What are they going to say?
What are they going to do?
How are they going to respond?
I have a friend who wants me to sing when we’re driving together. I won’t.
Part of the reason is that when I’m being silly, goofy, or having fun, that friend has taken out their phone, recorded those moments, and posted them online.
I’ve told them I don’t want that.
I want to be able to have a silly moment without feeling like I’m performing for somebody else’s audience.
And I can feel the difference in my body.
That force field comes back up.
That’s why I don’t think a high-masking person should be forced to unmask.
For me, safety has to come first.
Is all masking bad?
That’s not how I experience it.
Masking helped me learn.
It helped me navigate corporate environments.
It helped me become a manager.
It helped me move between different social situations.
Some of the personas I’ve tried on even helped me discover things that were genuinely part of me.
I could model myself after someone I respected and eventually realize:
Wait.
I actually believe this.
I actually feel this way.
The problem for me comes when maintaining all of those personas takes so much energy that I become exhausted or lose track of what I actually want.
That’s when I can begin to feel trapped behind the masked persona.
Unmasking has meant finding my way back to myself
As I got older, I started pulling at a thread.
I don’t actually like that thing.
I don’t want to be around that person.
I don’t like how I feel after that interaction.
That doesn’t bring me joy.
Every time I pulled that thread a little further, I understood something else about myself.
That has become a huge part of unmasking for me.
I’ve spent years doing this work. Losing my job and spending much of the last year working through burnout recovery gave me a kind of space I hadn’t really had before.
I’ve been able to think more deliberately about my unmasking plan.
About play.
About recovery.
About what feels good.
About what doesn’t.
And about who I am when I’m not trying to figure out who everyone around me needs me to be.
That doesn’t mean I’ve stopped masking.
I haven’t.
Sometimes I don’t think I can.
But I’m more aware of it now. I’m better at recognizing what my body is telling me, and I have more control over what I do before and after those experiences, even when I can’t completely control what happens during them.
For me, that’s part of finding my way out from behind the masked persona.
Frequently Asked Questions About AuDHD Masking
What does AuDHD masking feel like?
For me, masking can feel like an invisible force field around my body and mind. I become more aware of my speech, word choice, behavior, and how other people are responding to me. The more uncertain the situation becomes, the more I may monitor everything happening around me.
What is a masked persona?
When I talk about my masked personas, I’m describing the different versions of myself I’ve developed to navigate particular environments or groups of people. I’ve had different personas for family, school, church, friends, journalism, corporate work, and leadership.
Why do I prefer to unmask alone?
When I’m alone, I don’t have to scan for judgment or wonder how somebody else might respond to what I’m doing. That makes being alone one of the places where I feel safest fully unmasking.
Is masking always bad?
That’s not how I experience it. Some masking strategies have helped me learn, navigate workplaces, become a manager, and understand different social environments. The difficulty comes when maintaining those personas requires so much energy that I become exhausted or disconnected from what I actually want.
I’m still figuring out who I am without the masked persona
This has been a bit of a thesis for me: understanding my masking, what it feels like in my body, how my masked personas developed, and what it takes for me to find my way back to myself.
I’m continuing to explore the relationship between masking, masked personas, play, burnout recovery, and unmasking.
I’ll be writing and talking more about unmasking and the masked persona on my Substack.
I also offer coaching for autistic, ADHD, and AuDHD professionals in the workplace, as well as workplace talks about masking, unmasking, neuroqueer experiences, neuroinclusivity, autism, ADHD, and management.
You can learn more about my work at AuDHD Boss.