ADHD Masking: Real-Life Examples, Costs, & How to Unmask

ADHD masking is a hot topic these days, and for good reason. After a lifetime of cultivating ways to hide your challenges, it’s validating to finally understand why you’ve struggled, all the ways you’ve hidden it, and the extent to which you’ve internalized these camouflages without even realizing it. These masks help us see just how hard we’ve been working to look like we function the way we’re ‘supposed to.’

I don’t know about you, but seeing all the work I’ve put into appearing ‘normal’ invites self-compassion. All our lives, we’ve been swimming to keep up with the people around us, never realizing ADHD was a boulder attached to our ankles, dragging us down.

What is ADHD Masking?

ADHD masking is an intentional (or unintentional) process in which we hide our symptoms in order to protect ourselves from stigma, judgement, harsh consequences, or shame. These behaviors often revolve around covering deficits, controlling or containing certain actions and traits, or copying socially appropriate behavior. 

In my example above, ADHD is the anchor weighing us down; masking is anything and everything we do to keep people from seeing the boulder or the struggle it’s causing us. It isn’t about being ‘fake’ or disingenuous. ADHD masking is a form of self protection.

High ADHD masking is often synonymous with ‘high functioning’. Both terms refer (in a clinical sense) to how much support you require in order to live or function independently with your struggles. Contrary to popular belief, high functioning/high ADHD masking does not mean low struggle. In order to be diagnosed at all, your symptoms have to present clinically significant difficulties in your life. Functioning or masking is a measure of how successfully you can deal with those hardships on your own, not how easy it is.

ADHD Masking: Real-Life Examples

There are a thousand ways we hide our symptoms from the people around us. Instead of giving you clinical examples like ‘suppressing strong emotions’ I’m plucking examples right out of my own life and a few I’ve heard from clients and ADHD friends.

The Fishing Tactic

Fishing for ways to get someone to repeat themselves when you zoned out. Examples include, “I’m sorry, I don’t think I’m fully understanding. Could you say it one more time?” And “I’m confused–can you explain it a different way?” Anything to avoid admitting you weren’t paying attention.

The Smile and Nod Technique

This technique is used when you have no idea what is going on but a verbal response doesn’t seem necessary. So you smile. And you nod. And you hope it ends before they discover how lost you are. 

The Autopilot Response Conundrum

Automatic bot responses for when you aren’t paying attention but the subconscious part of your brain needs to make it look like you are. Examples are “Yep” and “Mhmm” and “I know what you mean.” Do I know what you mean? No. In fact, I probably don’t even realize you’re talking.

The Social Chameleon Disguise

Social Chameleon-ing is where you adopt whatever you can from the person in front of you so they don’t think you’re too weird to talk to. You mirror their behavior, you laugh when it seems like you’re supposed to, and may even mimic their tone or phrasing. This mask can come at a high price, especially if we use it too often. 

The Barbie Dreamhouse and the Mess Under the Bed Debacle

Displaying the ‘put together’ look for the obvious places people see but hiding the mess where people don’t notice. Like making your bed perfectly but shoving a mountain of dirty clothes underneath it. I present as organized and prepared on the surface but if you look in my bag, my backpack, my desk, my car, my house, or even the files I’m supposed to keep (especially the ones rarely seen by others)–those are all a giant mess. You’d never know it by looking at me. 

This is a big, big reason most of the people in my life balked when I was diagnosed with ADHD. This ADHD mask even snowed my fellow therapy colleagues.

The Excessive Caution Maneuver

There are so many examples of this technique to choose from. 

• You show up way too early to keep from being late. 
• People think you have OCD because you obsessively check that you haven’t forgotten or lost things. 
• You’ve turned into a church mouse to keep from over-sharing or talking too much. 
• You frequently go into ‘waiting mode’ where you can’t do anything except wait and watch for whatever is about to happen just to make sure you don’t miss it. The handy man is scheduled to come at 2? I’m standing sentinel at the window by 1:45 just in case he shows up early. I’ll stay there until he finally shows up just so I don’t forget it’s happening. 
• Using a crazy number of alarms, notes, and reminders to keep yourself from forgetting things.
• The list goes on…

The Cover Up Scramble

This ADHD mask is all about finding socially acceptable ways to engage in ADHD behavior without appearing odd and/ or avoiding the consequences our symptoms saddle us with. I use this one a lot. Common examples for me include: 

• Going to the bathroom just because I need an excuse to get out of my seat in a meeting. OR
• Pretending my back hurts so I can stretch in the back of the meeting
• Taking a sick day if I haven’t met a deadline just to give myself an extension. 
• Cropping pictures I post on socials so no one sees the mess. 
• Creating socially acceptable excuses why we shouldn’t use my disastrously messy car when carpooling. 
• Cleaning in a mad panic when someone says they’re coming over
• As a kid, I’d tell my teacher that I was still looking for the homework I forgot to do so I could do it during class and turn it in at the end.
• Again, the list goes on.

Related: When You Think it’s Anxiety, But it’s Really ADHD

The Supress the Stim Struggle

This is when we swallow the urge to stim/fidget and either replace it with a more ‘acceptable’ option or fight the urge and attempt to remain still. I bite my nails–always have. A supervisor criticized me for it once, saying I looked childish and unprofessional. Mortified, I did my best to swallow it and sit still. When that didn’t work, I ended up snagging the end of my long hair and fidgeting with it discreetly. Now I keep my hair waist length so it’s easier to do under the radar. Then bite my nails in private.

The Scrappy Sherlock

Forgetting and losing things on the regular can turn you into a phenomenal finder. It has certainly turned me into an everyday Sherlock. I’m a master at finding the un-findable, all the needles in the haystacks, and wiggling my way around the consequences of forgetting things. One time I lost 4 out of 5 1099s (tax documents) but managed to replace all 4 without telling anyone I’d lost them.  

The Chanting Chatter Choir

Pardon the alliteration, but it makes my weird little brain so happy. Internal (and external) chanting and chatter are another form of ADHD masking aimed at helping us remember things. While I’m in the middle of doing something important, my brain knows there is a high probability I will forget what I’m doing…while I’m doing it. So I often narrate my every move. Sometimes as a British narrator, sometimes as a ridiculous song. 

If I need to remember to give my dog his medicine but I’m in the middle of a shower, I’ll chant ‘feed the dog’ over and over and over in my head until I’m able to do it. If someone is talking and I’m trying not to interrupt (but I’m also well aware I’ll probably forget what I want to say before I can say it), I chant those words in my head. Doing that is a bit problematic for social conversation, though. For obvious reasons.

The Emotion Converging Camoflauge

Because ADHD comes with big emotions, we often try to hide them, swallow them, deny them, or turn them into something else. Those efforts are a common form of ADHD masking. It can look many, many ways, but some common forms are:

• Swallowing anger or sadness and shoving it so far down, it turns into anxiety. 
• Pretending irritation is actually just tiredness when someone asks. 
• Hiding hurts behind people pleasing behaviors
• Concealing insecurities or anxieties with perfectionism and faked over-confidence 

This kind of camo comes at a high cost, though. If we do it too much, we’re at risk for Alexithymia. Even if we don’t develop that kind of emotional blindness, hiding our emotions is exhausting, and it disconnects us from other people. It’s one of the ADHD masks that cost us the most, I think.

Related: ADHD and Emotions: The Hidden Link You Need to Know NOW

ADHD Masking: Why do we do it?

There are many reasons we mask. On one hand, we use them to cover our symptoms or to reduce consequences of ADHD. But we also use them to manage shame and other big emotions, avoid Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, and in hopes of maintaining our connection with others. Many of us fear that to put down the mask means to lose people in our lives who might be too inconvenienced by our symptoms or too judgemental to handle our authentic selves.

Certain ADHD masks may be helpful–particularly the ones that are less about hiding and more about bridging the gaps our symptoms create. But hiding because of shame, hiding because we fear if people saw us clearly they’d reject us, keeps us in a constant state of ‘pre-shame.’ That ‘pre-shame’ is a soul-eroding place to live.

Related: What You Need to Know About Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria

The Costs of ADHD Masking

Not every mask harms us to the same degree–some of them may even be adaptive, which we’ll cover in a moment. Many of them, however, come with a high price tag. If ADHD masking is all about avoiding judgement, that means we’re constantly trying to outrun shame. It keeps us constantly focused, even hypervigilant, of our perceived weakness, failings, or deficits, and scrambling to keep others from seeing them. That wreaks havoc on self-esteem just by the nature of it.

On top of that, constantly hiding our struggles keeps us from fully connecting with other people. Connection requires vulnerability and authenticity–two things we sacrifice while ADHD masking. That leads to isolation and loneliness, which can screw with our mental and emotional health and magnify our ADHD symptoms further. 

A person can become so engrossed in ADHD masking that they lose connection with themselves as well. I spent so much time in the Social Chameleon Disguise that I woke up one day and realized I didn’t even know who I was. I’d spent so much time becoming who I was ‘supposed to be’ for other people that I lost myself in the process. The line between me and the mask had disappeared.

High ADHD masking also means we are less likely to receive a diagnosis. Since women tend to be better maskers, that may be one of the reasons our ADHD gets overlooked. Masking means we may not get the answers or the support that we need.

All of the scrambling and covering and compensating is exhausting. It leads to anxiety, tension, and eventually burnout.

A breakdown of the costs for ADHD Masking:

• The shame basis leaves us with lowered self esteem
• Anticipating and attempting to avoid shame with masking keeps us a constant ‘pre-shame’ state that prevents us from developing confidence, self worth, or learning to trust ourselves
• ADHD masking keeps us from connecting to others
• It makes it harder and less likely we’ll end up diagnosed
• The exhaustion it brings leads to more intense symptoms, which require more intense masking, becoming a viscous cycle we can’t maintain
• ADHD masking can cause you to lose connection with yourself
• Masks lead to more anxiety and depression
• They keep us stuck in imposter syndrome
• They interfere with our ability to accept ourselves
• Overtime it may reduce our functioning
• It leads to ADHD masking burnout

What is ADHD Masking Burnout?

With all the energy–physical, mental, and emotional–that it takes to maintain our masks, we inevitably end up depleted at some point. If you’re swimming with a giant boulder attached at the ankle and spending all your excess energy trying to prevent people from seeing it, you’re going to run out of steam well before anyone else.

So we end up in ADHD masking burnout. This kind of whole-being experience is characterized by:

• Chronic, unexplained physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion that seems to consume your entire being. You may even wake up in the morning already exhausted, already unable to deal with the day.
• Fighting a heavier load of depression and anxiety. If you already struggle with those, you’ll find that burnout magnifies them further.
• Using unhealthy coping skills like alcohol because they numb quickly and you don’t feel you have the bandwidth to let the healthier ones have time to work.
• Being social feels like too much and your relationships may be strained due to isolation or irritability
• Burnout often comes with feelings of hopelessness and cynical inevitability– what’s the point in trying to hide your shame when it will inevitably show itself anyway?
• Heightened ADHD struggles: it’s even harder than usual to focus, find motivation, control impulses, etc…
• The ‘ADHD Freeze’, which is that all-consuming, debilitating paralysis we sometimes experience even with things we genuinely want to do. When we get in this place, it’s like we are incapable of moving forward with anything, no matter how small, no matter how interesting.

ADHD masking takes up so much of our already too-limited energy supply, especially the shame-based masking. If we use this as a strategy too often, burnout is inevitable.

When is ADHD Masking More Helpful than Harmful?

As I mentioned above, the cost of every ADHD mask isn’t equal. Some are more about managing our struggles than hiding them–those are the “masks” we benefit from. They take less energy from us than their shame-based counterparts and they help us function and/or get our needs met. Since they’re less about hiding, we might call them means or methods of functioning rather than masks. 

The Scrappy Sherlock is a good example. While utilizing this detective muscle takes energy from us, it can also offer more benefit than drawback. Especially when you frequently lose important things. I’d say the same for the chanting chatter choir. It’s a low energy means of keeping your mind from forgetting something really important. Neither inherently comes with shame or hiding, though we may still struggle with those feelings.

Contrast those ‘means of functioning’ with people pleasing masks like shaping ourselves into the quiet church mouse to keep from saying something awkward. The amount of energy that suppressing yourself takes is deceptive–the actual cost is much higher than it may feel. In the moment, we may notice feeling tired or even down. But that kind of mask erodes your sense of self the longer you employ it. People pleasing acts as a constant reinforcement that you aren’t good enough as you are. Hiding yourself slowly chips away at your ability to connect with others and even yourself.

If your “mask” is more about bridging gaps your ADHD symptoms create, that’s sort of the ADHD equivalent of walking on crutches. It’s still tiring, but it helps you function. If your mask is more about saving yourself shame, judgement, or embarrassment, you’re hiding yourself and the energy cost will add up quickly.

The Difference Between ADHD Masking and Healthy Self Monitoring

Another ADHD masking ‘exception’ is self monitoring. The difference between masking and monitoring is subtle but important. Let’s use an example from the Excessive Caution Manuever category. Let’s say your ADHD makes you particularly chatty and, as a result, you’ve learned to be quiet and withhold your chatter so that you don’t over-dominate the conversation. Depending on the extent to which you do this, the way you do it, and the motivation behind it, it could be either an unhelpful mask or a way you self monitor. Let’s compare and contrast the two.

ADHD Masking:

• Rendering yourself all but mute in order to prevent conversation domination is masking. 
• Having a harsh, shaming inner critic reminding you of why you need to impersonate a Buddhist monk’s vow of silence is masking. 
• Silencing yourself in an effort to avoid shame and rejection is masking. 

ADHD Healthy Self Monitoring: 

• Recognizing your tendency to overtake the conversation and making a conscious effort to dial it back to a reasonable level of conversation is healthy self monitoring. 
• Wanting to engage at a healthier pace so others can share and so you can better connect is healthy self monitoring.
• Using a self-compassionate voice to remind yourself to pull back a bit is healthy self monitoring. 

Developing a healthy self monitor is very beneficial in helping us work on our symptoms and function better. As long as that self monitoring voice is kind, based on healthy desires rather than avoiding shame, and isn’t overly extreme in the ‘all or nothing’ way, we’re golden. If shame or ‘pre-shame’ starts creeping into our motivation, if rigid extremes start creeping into our behavior, or the inner voice is overtly or covertly shaming, we’re swinging back toward ADHD masking.

Unmasking ADHD: How do you do it?

Unmasking ADHD is a process, and one that we have to take little by little. Coping mechanisms that are born out of survival and shame avoidance are often sticky; they don’t go down without a fight. That’s why it’s important to start small. Pick a mask that’s costing too much, increase your awareness of how and when it shows up, then look for small, accessible ways to bring it down one piece at a time. By accessible, I mean something you can see yourself actually doing. If your method for pulling back the mask is too big or too scary, your brain will fight you and it will probably win. So start small.

Becoming more aware of your mask and the function it plays for you is an important first step. Learn to recognize it in the moment. Pay attention to the feelings and thoughts that motivate the mask. That in-the-moment awareness is key–if we don’t recognize when we’re using it, we can’t shift it. 

A Real-life Example of Unmasking ADHD

Once you’re able to catch it, you can start looking for small ways to bring down the mask. It might be allowing yourself to speak up a little more than usual. Or finding one person you feel comfortable with and being a little more honest with them. When I started working to put down the Social Chameleon Mask, I had to start by getting to know myself again. I’d lost sight of where I stopped and the mask began. Then I practiced being more authentic with my husband because he’s accepting and somebody I trust.

That was harder than I expected, but the practice was really important. From there, I started finding moments in conversations with others where I could assert something honestly while braving the discomfort. I started noticing how often I laugh at jokes I don’t find funny–or worse, even jokes I found offensive. Starting small, I changed the laugh to a smile, which became more strained the more I practiced it. I’m down now to a half smile, half wince, and working my way toward a blank stare for the offensive jokes.

These are the small steps I’m talking about. Find those places where your mask can be weakened and start chipping slowly away at it. Remember, big changes happen slowly and gradually over time. Don’t expect NASCAR speeds. You’re the tortoise, not the hare.

The three most important factors for unmasking ADHD are awareness, patience, and self-compassion. If you don’t have those ingredients, you won’t be getting far. So practice observing your masks, understanding the inside and out, then approach change with self-compassion and slow persistence. Berating yourself will destroy any progress you make. 

That’s ADHD Masking and Unmasking in a Nutshell

Now that you know the various ways we mask, it’s time to start a self inventory. What masks do you use most and why? Which ones are more helpful than harmful? Which one is costing you the most energy? Unmasking is a slow process, but worth the patience it requires. What would life be like if your ADHD masks weren’t eating up so much of your energy?

Tia Cantrell Clinical Mental Health Therapist

Tia Cantrell is a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor in NC. At the ripe old age of 28, Tia was diagnosed with ADHD and has been hyperfixated on what that means ever since. She started Little Miss Lionheart to help as many ADHD women as possible to better understand and work with their unique brain. She has a Masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling and a bajillion hours of formal and informal training in all things ADHD. She also has 2 crazy dogs that she's totally in love with, a husband who's best friend material, and probably 1000 Harry Potter themed knickknacks (she she stopped keeping count a long time ago).

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