Masking on Overdrive: How ADHD Amplifies Autistic Adaptation

By Michelle Labine, PhD

December 2025

There is a particular kind of tiredness that settles into my body when I think about the years I spent adapting myself to everyone around me. I hesitate to use the word masking because it has never sat right with me as it implies theatrics, pretending, or stepping into a role. What I was doing felt far more instinctive than that. It was adaptation in its purest form: reshaping, softening, stretching, and tucking in parts of myself so I could move through a world that didn’t know how to meet me where I was. And what I was doing, what so many late-diagnosed Autistic women do, was subtle and continuous an automatic adjusting of tone, pace, expectations, and emotional presence depending on the room I walked into.

I didn’t want to become someone else; that was never the goal. If anything, I was aching to be myself clearly, openly, and without translation. I wanted to be seen in the way I actually experience the world, not the way I thought I was supposed to. But somewhere along the way, I absorbed the belief that the only way to stay connected was to keep adjusting. That if I didn’t soften, slow down, speed up, or read the emotional temperature of every room, I’d be misunderstood or brushed aside. So, I adapted to keep a fragile sense of belonging intact. And over time, that survival instinct became so automatic that it just lived in my body pulling me away from myself even as I was trying so desperately to stay close.

And then there’s the ADHD layer, which intensifies that adaptation, accelerating and complicating it, turning it into a kind of ongoing mental juggle that feels automatic even as it drains every corner of my nervous system. ADHD brings this impulsive, quick-shifting energy to social life: I can sense the slightest change in someone’s tone and instantly adjust mine; I can feel tension rising and fill the space with humour before I’ve had time to think; I can match someone’s emotional energy without realizing I’ve stepped far outside my own. It can look seamless, as if I’m naturally fluid and socially attuned, but inside it feels like I’m constantly monitoring, recalibrating, and switching rhythms at a very fast pace.

The juggle relentless; it’s trying to stay present while my thoughts move faster than my words. It’s listening while also tracking my tone, my expression, the other person’s reaction, the sensory environment, and the rising swirl of ADHD thoughts that tug my attention away. It’s wanting to be genuine, but also wanting to keep the conversation smooth, not too much, not too intense, not too awkward. It’s the feeling of being five steps ahead and two steps behind at the same time. And no one sees it. They see warmth, social attunement, and the person who can make others feel comfortable. They do not see the internal effort it takes to maintain that ease.

The cost always arrives after the party ends. It’s a hollow feeling in my chest on the drive home, when the adrenaline drops and I can finally hear myself again, coupled with the sensory crash that makes even the softest sounds feel too sharp, along with that strange distance from myself, as if I’ve spent hours living just outside my own skin and now need time, real time, to come back in. That moment of thinking, Why does being with people require so much energy, even when I care about them? It’s the kind of fatigue that is a depletion of self.

What has been the most surprising, and honestly the most tender part of my late diagnosis is noticing what happens when the adaptation drops, usually in those moments where I don’t have the capacity to perform or adjust. Without the practiced layers, I sometimes feel like I’m meeting myself again for the first time, unsure of what parts are truly mine and what parts were created to make life smoother for everyone else.

I am unlearning and relearning to de-adapt. The process is a slow loosening, a series of small permissions; giving myself room to pause instead of filling the space, to say the thing in my own rhythm, to ask for comfort without apologizing, to let the intensity of my thoughts show instead of editing them into something more digestible.

What I’m also learning now is that I can choose when and how I shape myself, in some situations adaptation might be helpful and I’m finding my agency here instead of it being my default as a survival mechanism. The truth is that people who feel good for my nervous system don’t require the juggle, and I’m finally finding those people. With them, the world feels more honest.