If you have ever felt like you are constantly performing a role just to fit into the world around you, you are not alone.

In a recent solo episode of the Left Unattended podcast, host Ron Sosa dives deep into a topic that many neurodivergent individuals know all too well: masking. This is not just about being polite or professional. It is about the profound, soul-level exhaustion that comes from hiding your authentic self for years, sometimes decades, until you can no longer remember who you are underneath the performance.

For Ron, this conversation is deeply personal. As someone who was diagnosed with ADHD and autism only a few years ago, he spent most of his life becoming an expert at pretending to be someone he was not. In this post, we explore the mechanics of masking, the devastating reality of identity erosion, and the complicated journey of unmasking.

What is masking, and why do we do it?

The first thing to understand about masking is that it is rarely a conscious, calculated choice. It is not as if you wake up and decide to hide your personality. Instead, masking is often a survival mechanism learned in childhood. It starts when you realize that the way your brain works, your interests, the way you move, or how you interact, is perceived as “weird,” “too much,” or somehow off by those around you.

Early on, neurodivergent children may begin to make small adjustments to avoid negative feedback. Over time, those small adjustments can harden into a permanent shield.

• Learning to stay still in class even when your body craves movement.
• Forcing eye contact even when it feels startling or uncomfortable.
• Laughing at jokes you do not find funny because everyone else is laughing.
• Suppressing stims or repetitive movements that help regulate your nervous system.

Eventually, you can become so good at masking that people say things like, “You do not look autistic,” or “I never would have guessed you have anxiety.” While these comments are often intended as compliments, they can also reveal how much of yourself you have successfully buried.

The Mac vs. PC dilemma: a translation error.

Ron uses a powerful analogy to describe the neurodivergent experience: you are a Mac operating on a Windows system.

On the surface, the computer seems to be running fine. It opens the files, joins the meetings, responds to emails, and checks the boxes. Underneath the hood, the processor is running at full capacity just to translate the code. Every social interaction requires a translation program to run in the background.

You are constantly calculating the appropriate amount of eye contact, monitoring your facial expressions, and filtering your thoughts to make sure they are palatable for a neurotypical world.

The bone-deep exhaustion.

This constant translation leads to a specific kind of fatigue. It is not the kind of tired that a good night’s sleep can fix. It is a bone-deep, soul-level exhaustion.

You might spend all day sitting at a desk, seemingly doing nothing physically demanding, yet return home and collapse. This happens because your nervous system has been under siege all day, managing sensory input that may feel like tiny knives while you pretend everything is fine.

The danger of losing track of yourself.

The most insidious part of chronic masking is what Ron calls identity erosion. When you perform a character for long enough, the line between the performance and the person begins to blur. You eventually lose track of what is authentic and what is a mask.

Ron shares the heartbreaking example of a client who realized they did not even know what their favorite color was. They told people “pink” because they thought it was the expected answer for a woman, but they had no internal connection to the choice. When you mask, you do not just hide your struggles. You can also hide your preferences, your passions, and your true personality.

The cycle of high-functioning burnout.

Many people can sustain a mask for decades. They hold down jobs, maintain relationships, and check all the traditional boxes of success. Because they are not visibly struggling, the people around them may have no idea that a crash is coming. Masking has an expiration date.

Unlike regular burnout, which may be triggered by a specific stressful project, neurodivergent burnout can be the result of a nervous system that simply says “no” after years of overextension. One day, you wake up and realize you physically cannot sustain the performance anymore. The mask breaks, and you are left facing a stranger in the mirror.

The road to unmasking: anger and grief.

If you are realizing that you have been masking your whole life, the process of unmasking is not always a beautiful journey of self-discovery. Often, it begins with anger. You may feel a primal rage at how much of your life you lost, and how many authentic moments you missed because you were busy managing other people’s perceptions of you.

Unmasking is also a process of grief. You have to grieve the person you thought you had to be. You have to let go of the perfect version of yourself that was palatable to everyone else but miserable on the inside. It is a process of letting yourself be different, even if that difference is too much for some people.

Finding your own face.

Unmasking is terrifying, but it can also be a path toward liberation. As Ron Sosa points out, the goal is not just to find yourself. It is to stop the exhausting performance that keeps you from actually living. It is about moving from constant translation toward a more authentic existence.

If your Mac has been trying to run Windows for too long, it might be time to shut down the translation program. It will be messy. It may involve anger. It will likely require a lot of rest. On the other side of that performance is a life that actually belongs to you.

Are you ready to settle in and explore who you are underneath the mask? The journey of unmasking is heavy, but it is also a path toward a life that finally feels like home.