Masking ADHD: What Lies Beneath the Surface
- kaitlynboudreault
- 1 day ago
- 10 min read
Has anyone ever told you that you don’t look like you have ADHD?
Perhaps you have been told that you are too organized, successful, productive, outgoing, calm, or high-achieving to have ADHD.
Maybe you avoid telling others that you are struggling and instead try to compensate for these challenges in different ways.
You’re the individual who tends to arrive extra early at all the birthday parties, stays late at work or school to make sure you get the project done on time, or suppresses your stimming and fidgeting to appear professional.
When people see you, from the outside, they may think that you’re doing well or that you have it all together.
However, beneath the surface, you’re struggling and carrying an invisible weight that others can’t see. You continue to hide your ADHD traits and challenges, which causes others to think ADHD couldn’t possibly be a thing for you.
This phenomenon is known as ADHD masking, which occurs when an ADHDer, such as yourself, spends years trying to hide their struggles to fit into a world that wasn’t built for their mind.
Instead of openly showing that you feel overwhelmed or that you experience emotional dysregulation, forgetfulness, executive dysfunction, and sensory sensitivity, you learn to mask these traits.
In the short-term, this masking may help to avoid criticism, judgment, rejection, or shame. After years of rejection for being different, this masking often becomes an automatic protective mechanism to fit in.
But oftentimes, you may not realize how much energy it takes to maintain this mask. Over time, this masking may lead to burnout, anxiety, depression, and shame. You may also lose touch with your identity.
If this resonates with you, support is available. An Ontario ADHD therapist at Bee Kind Counselling can support you in understanding why you mask and the consequences of long-term masking and deciding on how to navigate the world in a way that works for your brain, not against it.
In this edition of Bee Kind Counselling’s neurodivergent blog, I’ll explore what ADHD masking is, why it happens, what it can look like in daily life, and the emotional toll that can exist beneath the surface.
What Is ADHD Masking?
ADHD masking, also known as ADHD camouflaging, is when an individual with ADHD consciously or unconsciously hides their ADHD traits to appear more “socially acceptable” and fit in with societal norms.
You may try to hide, minimize, or overcompensate for your struggles so that you can form connections with others and they won’t notice your challenges.
If you engage in masking, this does not mean that you are acting inauthentically. Masking is a learned response to societal views and neuronormativity. When you have been rejected for so long, it makes sense that you’d want to fit in, and masking is a survival strategy to do so.
This ability to engage in masking to survive and adapt socially tends to be learned in childhood.
Some masking behaviours may appear helpful on the surface, but they often come at a high emotional and physical cost over time.
If you’re looking for resources to learn more about ADHD, check out Additude magazine. It’s a magazine providing helpful tools, resources, and encouragement to empower you to live your best life.
Related: What Is ADHD?
What Does ADHD ADHD Masking Look Like?
Masking looks different depending on the individual, and different forms of ADHD can cause different masking symptoms.
Individuals with predominantly hyperactive-impulsive type ADHD, which involves fidgeting, excessive movement or talking, or being unable to wait, may engage in masking by:
Staying extremely quiet during conversations to avoid interrupting
Constantly monitoring behaviour to appear “normal” or remain calm.
Suppressing stimming or fidgeting
Rehearsing conversations beforehand so that you don’t speak for too long
Force themselves to sit still
Smile despite emotional distress
Bottle up emotions until burnout occurs
On the other hand, masking for individuals with inattentive-type ADHD, which can include difficulty focusing or paying attention, trouble following multi-step instructions, poor organization, forgetfulness, and a lack of time management, may look like the following:
Writing everything down
Overusing planners, reminders, alarms, or lists
Over-preparing to avoid mistakes
Pretending to understand or follow conversations despite zoning out
Overcompensating by being extra early to events
Pretending to hyperfocus during conversations
Checking your work over multiple times to avoid making mistakes
Powering through the work right before the deadline to complete the tasks when no one is watching
Giving more palpable excuses for being late
Constantly checking the clock
Feeling panic if schedules change
Creating detailed routines
Obsessively organizing belongings
Checking items repeatedly before leaving home
While these systems may appear “organized” on the outside, they are often driven by anxiety, fear of failure, or the pressure to avoid judgment. They may hide the challenges underneath the surface.
Regardless of the type of ADHD, most individuals with ADHD tend to mask by forcing eye contact, rewriting assignments repeatedly, staying up late to “catch up,” feeling panic when things are imperfect, or using perfectionism as a way to compensate for their challenges.
If you live with ADHD, you may feel as if you can unmask when alone or around those you are comfortable with, but you have to hide yourself when around those you don’t know. You may feel as if you are living a double life.
What Others See vs. What May Be Hidden
One of the reasons that ADHD is often misunderstood is that people may think you don’t have ADHD because people tend to only see the outward presentation. The internal experience is often hidden underneath, especially when you engage in masking behaviours.
Others may see that you seem busy, productive, organized, punctual, helpful, calm, or outgoing, or that you are doing well academically or professionally, and they may make assumptions.
They may assume that ADHD only looks one way, and that someone who is high-achieving or doesn’t appear to be struggling on the outside can’t possibly have this condition.
But masking hides plenty beneath the surface. When an ADHDer engages in masking, it can hide what is truly going on. Others may not see:
Chronic overwhelm
Executive functioning struggles
Nervous system dysregulation
Anxiety and perfectionism
Fear of failure or rejection
Emotional dysregulation
Exhaustion from constant self-monitoring
Shame and self-criticism
Sensory overload
Difficulty keeping up with daily demands
Sometimes, when people can’t see things, they assume all is fine.
However, the people who appear to be functioning the best may actually be carrying the heaviest and most invisible load, so it is important to go beneath the behaviour you can see.
Why Does ADHD Masking Happen?
The society that we live in is shaped by neuronormativity.
Neuronormativity involves societal norms and expectations about how people should think, communicate, learn, behave, and function. If you are outside of these norms of expectations in any way, you are often seen as “too sensitive,” “too loud,” “careless,” “too emotional,” “lazy,” “disruptive,” etc.
Over time, masking was developed from a young age as a protective mechanism. You learned to hide the parts of yourself that others rejected, punished, criticized, or misunderstood so that you could feel safe, belong, and be accepted.
For example, if you were frequently punished for being too talkative or walking around the classroom too much, you may have forced yourself to sit still and quietly to avoid punishment.
These masking behaviours are a survival response developed when an environment does not feel safe to be authentic.
The Emotional Cost of ADHD Masking
For many people, masking may help someone in the short-term with surviving socially, academically, or professionally.
However, it can also exhaust a ton of mental and emotional energy, which can take a toll over time.
Many ADHDers describe masking as the feeling of constantly trying to tread water. You feel as if you need to constantly perform or hold yourself together just enough to get through the day.
Over time, the toll of ADHD masking may differ from person to person, but some common challenges include:
Chronic exhaustion and ADHD burnout
Developing anxiety and depression from untreated ADHD
Low self-worth or self-image
Perfectionistic tendencies and shame when you make mistakes
Difficulty identifying personal needs
Feeling disconnected from your authentic self
Feeling isolated, alone, or misunderstood
Difficulty understanding what’s real and what’s being masked
Some individuals may also find it difficult to find support for ADHD challenges, since others may downplay what you are going through or not believe your symptoms are that severe due to the masking. This can also complicate an ADHD diagnosis and lead to misdiagnosis with depression, anxiety, or a personality disorder. It may also delay an ADHD diagnosis and lead to challenges involving untreated ADHD.
You may become so skilled at masking that others dismiss your struggles entirely because you “seem fine.” This can make it far more difficult to receive support.
ADHD Masking Burnout
Masking requires constant self-monitoring, emotional suppression, and overcompensation to avoid others seeing your challenges, which can cause you to reach a point of burnout.
The signs of ADHD masking burnout may differ depending on the individual, but some common signs can include:
Mental and physical exhaustion
Difficulty completing even basic tasks or tasks that you once enjoyed and felt easy
Increased emotional dysregulation
Sensory overwhelm
Withdrawal from social situations
Loss of motivation
Feeling numb or emotionally depleted
Increased anxiety or depressive symptoms
Feeling disconnected from yourself and your identity
What may look like success or “high-functioning” on the outside to others may actually reflect the fact that you have been operating in survival mode for far too long, and you are now in a state of burnout, operating on autopilot.
ADHD Masking in Women, BIPOC, and 2SLGBTQIA+ Individuals
Masking, in the long term, can lead to consequences for anyone. But masking does not affect all ADHDers in the same way.
Individuals with intersecting marginalized identities, such as women and AFAB individuals, BIPOC individuals, or 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals, may face greater pressure to hide their ADHD traits. This is often due to combined stigma, discrimination, and safety concerns.
Women and AFAB Individuals
Women and assigned-female-at-birth (AFAB) individuals are often taught from a young age that they should be polite, calm, organized, and helpful/accommodating of others' needs. This population group is often taught that others' needs should come before their own.
As a result, many women and AFAB individuals learn to hide or internalize their own struggles rather than letting others see their challenges. ADHD struggles may be hidden versus expressed outwardly.
Masking can make it more difficult to obtain an ADHD diagnosis, especially for women and AFAB individuals.
Women and AFAB individuals with ADHD are less likely to be diagnosed than men and AMAB individuals with ADHD because they are more likely to engage in these compensatory mechanisms and masking behaviours.
When women and AFAB individuals engage in masking, it may also contribute to a misdiagnosis. The medical system is filled with misogyny, which means that women and AFAB individuals are more likely to experience medical overshadowing. When masking leads to mental health symptoms, symptoms of ADHD are more likely to be attributed to anxiety, mood disorders, or borderline personality disorder, as opposed to ADHD.
Other than delayed or misdiagnosis, women and AFAB individuals may also experience people-pleasing tendencies, perfectionism, and chronic exhaustion and burnout due to masking.
BIPOC Individuals
Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour are more likely to have their ADHD traits stereotyped.
Systemic biases, cultural misunderstandings, and a historical lack of representation in diagnostic research cause ADHD traits in Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) to be frequently misidentified, punished, or overlooked, rather than supported.
For example, traits like impulsivity, emotional dysregulation, or hyperactivity are more likely to be seen as aggression, laziness, or defiance in BIPOC individuals than in white individuals. Whereas, in white individuals, these traits are more likely to be seen as a sign of neurodivergence and supported.
Due to these differences in responses to ADHD traits, BIPOC individuals are more likely to mask as a protective survival strategy in environments that penalize their differences.
2SLGBTQIA+ Individuals
Many 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals already mask parts of their identity to keep safe and be accepted in society.
For those who have ADHD, ADHD masking can add another layer of hiding who you are. It involves added self-monitoring, which can lead to an increase in exhaustion, anxiety, or emotional and physical burnout.
Unmasking ADHD
Unmasking involves the process of unlearning the learned behaviours used to hide your ADHD. It is a process of shedding the exhaustion and consequences that come from masking.
However, it is important to note that even with the consequences of ADHD masking being extensive, the benefits of unmasking may not be safe or outweigh these for everyone.
Therefore, it is best to assess your personal situation to see if the cost to your mental health from masking outweighs the cost or potential challenges involved with unmasking.
Masking also does not necessarily mean removing every coping strategy or disclosing your ADHD everywhere.
Masking can be a valid coping mechanism for safety, survival, or acceptance.
Unmasking, in these instances, may involve the following when alone:
Allowing yourself to stim or fidget
Acknowledging sensory needs
Setting internal boundaries
Practicing self-compassion
Recognizing that your worth is not based on productivity
If you feel up for it, unmasking may later involve letting trusted people see your struggles or asking for accommodations. But unmasking should happen on your own time, or it doesn’t have to happen at all if you don’t feel safe or ready to do so.
Unmasking is a deeply personal process, and it doesn’t feel freeing or healing for everyone. For some, it may not always feel safe or accessible in every environment. There is no “right” way to navigate masking, and unmasking does not need to be the only way to cope with the exhaustion that comes from masking.
Support for ADHD Masking Consequences or Unmasking
If you are experiencing the symptoms of ADHD masking burnout, or you feel as if masking may be impacting your daily functioning, you do not have to navigate ADHD masking alone.
Neurodiversity-affirming therapy can help you better understand your masking behaviours, emotional experiences, nervous system needs, and coping strategies without shame or judgment.
Support may help you recognize harmful masking patterns, reduce self-criticism, build self-compassion, and learn boundaries to accommodate your needs.
You may also develop emotional regulation strategies and sustainable routines and reconnect with your authentic self.
Book a Free Consultation With Bee Kind Counselling
If the challenges of ADHD masking resonate with you, know that your struggles are valid, and you don’t have to navigate this alone.
At Bee Kind Counselling, neurodiversity-affirming therapists support individuals navigating ADHD, masking, emotional overwhelm, burnout, and self-understanding in compassionate and affirming ways.
Email admin@beekindcounselling.com, call 519-757-7842, or visit the website below to book a free consultation with a therapist in Ontario, Canada.
Take the first step toward understanding yourself beneath the mask.
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