“Masking with ADHD Is the Ultimate Energy Drain”

Long before I knew my first fact about ADHD, and well before my own ADHD diagnosis, I knew that to be around people was often work. I had to be “on.”

When I’m “on” it feels like my mental faculties are on steroids. It’s like all the electrical fibers of my being are jacked up to the max, all in the name of social camouflage. I am ON.

Call it masking or impression management. Regardless, it’s a cover for us normally fidgety, possibly shy, and distracted interrupters who inhabit ADHD land.

Masking with ADHD Is Draining

“Masking” doesn’t feel how it sounds. “Herculean Hide” or “Backbreak Fake” sound more accurate. If you’ve ever masked, you know why: you’d give anything to be wearing a real mask in these situations.

Imagine having a roomy mask covering the entire front half of your skull, doing the work of being Fake You while Real You got to relax underneath. How luxurious would that be? You could stand there and not do or say a thing. You could relax and take a social nap behind Wonder Woman or Superman.

[Read: 7 Masks We Use to Hide Our Faults]

I wish it were as simple as wearing a literal mask – maybe one with talking powers.

Instead, masking is arduous, confusing, complicated, and draining. It’s multi-tasking to the nines while on stage without a lifeline, no parachute. That’s a far cry from chillaxing behind a cozy Wonder Woman mask. It’s having to be Wonder Woman, blindfolded.

A life with ADHD can give us the sense we’re less than. A mask temporarily fixes that. A mask takes the focus off us. It’s like hiding in tall grass while our hunters say to each other, “Nothing to see here. Let’s move on.”

It’s true that masking gets easier over time. We can become so expert at the practice that it’ll take a while – sometimes decades in the case of a late-stage ADHD diagnosis – until we learn about this ability that we’ve honed since childhood. It dawns on us that the arduousness and exhaustion we experienced all along in social interactions was not a given in the big universe of human experience.

But the maddening thing about masking is that, as we develop the skill, we also worry about how well we’re masking — a worry that sometimes ramps up into depression or anxiety.

So we put all this energy toward suppression, and for what? To only mask more and more until it drains the essence of us.

[Read: “We Are Who We Are. There’s No Shame in That.”]

Masking with ADHD: What Happened When I Let Go

As I began to educate myself on ADHD, I started to experiment with new ways of thinking and doing. One day, not long ago, I asked myself, “What if I let go of some of this masking? Would life be calmer? Would I survive without it?”

It turns out, yes.

I started small, in social situations where I had little to lose, or where I could practice taking off the mask without much notice. As soon as I decided I didn’t have to pretend I was Unreasonably Amazing Stephanie, the world got serene. It slowed down — my interior power grid stopped buzzing so loudly — and not one person seemed to care or notice. I learned that others do not have their attention glued to me as I had feared or assumed.

Since I’ve built the skills to better manage my ADHD, ditching the mask means I can manage my glitches as usual but without excessive social worry. I can’t tell you how freeing (and energy efficient) this is.

Making with ADHD: Next Steps

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