Masking, Identity and Burnout
24 Sept – written by Katrin Kemmerzehl – Blog
People in your life might see you as capable, reliable and organised. You might be the person others turn to when they need something, want to talk or need someone to keep things on track.
You might be juggling work, family responsibilities, relationships, pets, your own interests or all the everyday things that need doing. At work or around other people, you may also have become good at reading the room, adapting and seeming like you’re doing just fine.
From the outside, it might look like you manage everything pretty well. But that may not be how it feels on the inside. What others don’t necessarily see is how much effort goes into keeping everything going.
Perhaps a normal working day leaves you needing quiet and rest when you get home. A simple phone call can take far more mental space and preparation than it seems like it should.
Plans with friends might be something you genuinely want to do, but getting ready, being switched on, being around people and getting home again can leave you needing some time to recover afterwards.
There may be days when you can manage an enormous amount, and other days when even replying to a message feels like too much. From the outside, this can be difficult for other people to understand. You might wonder about it yourself.
For some women with autism, ADHD or AuDHD, understanding your neurodivergence later in life can bring a mixture of feelings (Bargiela et al., 2016; Hennessy et al., 2025). Things that never made sense can start to fall into place.
You might find yourself looking back at parts of your life differently, perhaps wondering whether some of your experiences make more sense now. You might think about the way you approached school or work, a friendship that was difficult to understand, or how you have navigated relationships.
Perhaps you start to think about the ways you’ve learned to cope, the parts of yourself you’ve hidden or adapted, or even what it means to be yourself.
It can be a lot to take in, especially when you have spent years simply getting on with things.
When coping becomes second nature
Some women become very good at picking up on what seems to be expected of them. They notice how other people behave and adjust accordingly, often without consciously thinking about it.
At work, this might mean knowing how to come across as confident and engaged. Around friends, family or colleagues, there can be a constant process of adapting, holding things back or working out where you fit (Hull et al., 2017).
Sometimes it seems to work. There may be a sense of knowing how to get through different situations and what is expected. At other times, there can still be that feeling of being slightly out of step.
Perhaps you find yourself wondering whether you said the wrong thing, whether you missed something everyone else seemed to pick up on, or why some social situations seem to come so much more naturally to other people.
This kind of adapting is sometimes described as masking or camouflaging. It isn’t always conscious, or necessarily something that feels negative. For some people, it is part of how they have learned to manage work, friendships, family life and everyday situations (Hull et al., 2017).
Adapting or masking can make social situations easier, help with connection or make it possible to get through something that feels difficult. The harder part can be when it becomes so constant that there is little energy left for anything else.
After years of doing this, it can be very familiar and difficult to know where coping ends and being yourself begins.
What feels like you?
This can be one of the more complicated parts of discovering that you might be neurodivergent.
Some women have spent years getting a sense of what other people want from them, learning to be helpful and pleasant as daughters, sisters, friends, mothers, partners or colleagues, flexible when plans change, and careful not to make things difficult.
You may have become skilled at understanding the situation, knowing when to engage and when to hold back, while working hard, completing tasks and being someone others can depend on.
When you have spent so much time thinking about what other people need, it can be surprisingly difficult to work out what you actually want yourself.
Someone asks where you’d like to go for coffee and you don’t know. A friend suggests meeting at the weekend and you say yes without really thinking about it, only to realise later that you were already exhausted. You have a free afternoon, but find yourself catching up on all the things you feel you ought to be doing instead.
This isn’t necessarily because you don’t know yourself. Sometimes you have become very used to considering everyone else’s needs alongside your own, or even before them.
It can be tempting to wonder who you really are underneath all the ways you have learned to cope and adapt. But perhaps there isn’t a completely different version of you waiting to be uncovered. These ways of managing life have become part of your story, and they may have helped you navigate situations that felt difficult or uncertain.
Maybe the question is less Who am I really? and more What feels comfortable and natural for me, and what takes a lot of effort? That can take time to work out.
Studies have found that being able to be yourself, rather than constantly adapting to those around you, can make social interactions feel more relaxed, open and spontaneous. Work with autistic women has also highlighted the importance of having space to be yourself while still adapting to different situations (Cook et al., 2023; Sunagawa, 2023).
When coping takes more than it gives
One of the difficult things about being good at coping is that other people may not realise how much energy it takes. You can get through a full day, talk to people, keep up with work and deal with everything that needs doing. Then you get home and realise you have nothing left for the rest of the evening.
You might want to see a friend or family member, but even something as small as having a conversation or meeting for coffee can feel like too much sometimes. Even things you normally enjoy, such as hobbies, can start to feel like more than you have the energy for.
For some neurodivergent people, constantly adapting, managing everyday demands and pushing through can eventually contribute to burnout.
A review of autistic burnout described experiences including profound exhaustion, reduced capacity and finding that things that would normally feel manageable suddenly become much harder. Sensory and social demands, everyday pressures and prolonged masking were among the factors associated with burnout (Ali et al., 2025).
For women with ADHD, a lot of energy can also go into keeping everything together. You might rely on calendars, reminders and routines to stay on top of things, while still forgetting things, struggling to get started or finding that a simple task takes far more effort than it seems like it should. You can know exactly what needs doing and still struggle to make yourself do it.
With AuDHD, some of these needs can pull in different directions. You might want routine but struggle to stick to it, really enjoy being with people but need plenty of time alone afterwards, or have periods when you can get an extraordinary amount done, followed by a crash when you realise how much energy it took.
Sometimes the hardest part is working out where the line is between what you can do and what you can keep doing without exhausting yourself. You may have spent years measuring yourself by what you are capable of, rather than noticing what it costs you to keep going.
It can take time to understand what your energy actually allows. Having some space to step back, make sense of what you need and explore what might work can be a helpful part of that process.
Friendships, colleagues and wondering where you stand
Relationships can be a complicated part of this. You might really want close friendships and meaningful connection, while also finding the day-to-day demands of friendship tiring.
Keeping in touch, replying to messages, making plans and being available for other people can sometimes feel like a lot to keep up with. You might enjoy spending time with someone and still need a bit of time to yourself.
For some women, there can be a real contradiction here. Perhaps you can want people in your life without wanting lots of contact. You might prefer friendships where you can go quiet for a while and then pick up where you left off, without either person taking it personally.
Some women have a small circle of close friends. Others have plenty of people in their lives through family, work or everyday life. Some may not have many close friendships, but would like more connections. Others are quite happy with very little social contact.
There isn’t one right amount of friendship or connection. What matters can be less about how many people you have around you and more about whether the connections you do have feel meaningful and comfortable for you (Zimbardo et al., 2021).
There can also be a lot of uncertainty in relationships. A conversation might be replayed afterwards, a change in someone’s tone noticed, or a missed message or cancelled plan might leave someone wondering whether they have done something wrong.
For some women with ADHD and AuDHD, perceived rejection can feel particularly intense. Autistic women may also find unspoken social expectations and misunderstandings difficult to navigate. Close relationships can be deeply important while still bringing uncertainty and difficulties that are not always easy to make sense of (Rowney-Smith et al., 2026; Bargiela et al., 2016; Sunagawa, 2023).
Sometimes a relationship can become one-sided too. One person may find themselves doing most of the checking in, remembering, suggesting meet-ups, accommodating or trying to work out what the other person needs. Over time, this can leave someone wondering where they stand, or whether the friendship means the same thing to both people.
And for some women, there may be a growing awareness of what makes a friendship feel comfortable. Perhaps it is having someone who accepts you, understands that closeness doesn’t always mean constant contact, or being able to spend time together without having to work out how to be.
There isn’t one way for friendship to look. For some people, connection may mean a small circle, a few people spread across different parts of life, being part of several groups, or simply having one or two relationships that feel easy and genuine.
What matters is finding connections that fit with who you are and the life you live, where you can simply be.
When life changes
Sometimes life changes, and the ways we cope no longer seem to work in the same way. A new job, a change in a relationship or family life, moving somewhere new, loss, burnout, or simply reaching a different stage of life can leave us wondering what we need now.
Sometimes there isn’t something obviously wrong. There may just be a feeling that something has shifted, or that the person who used to manage everything is finding it harder to keep doing things in the same way.
Perhaps life has started to feel different without there being one clear reason why. There might be a sense of being stuck, overwhelmed or unsure about what comes next.
It can be a time to look back at yourself with a little more compassion and understanding and become curious about what might be needed now. What matters to you? What do you want to make more room for? What would you like your relationships, work or everyday life to feel like?
These questions don’t always have clear answers, but sometimes they are worth asking.
How counselling can help
People come to counselling for many different reasons. Sometimes it is helpful to have some space to slow things down, talk openly about what is going on and explore what matters to you.
It can be a place to understand yourself with more kindness, make sense of what you have experienced and think about what you need and want from the next part of your life.
There doesn’t need to be a clear plan or an answer before you begin. Sometimes having someone alongside you can help you make sense of where you are now and think about what you might need.
If you’d like to explore this, please feel free to get in touch.
References
- Ali, D., Bougoure, M., Cooper, B., Quinton, A. M. G., Tan, D., Brett, J., Mandy, W., Maybery, M., Magiati, I., & Happé, F. (2025). Burnout as experienced by autistic people: A systematic review. Clinical Psychology Review, 122, 102669.
- Bargiela, S., Steward, R. and Mandy, W. (2016). The experiences of late-diagnosed women with autism spectrum conditions: An investigation of the female autism phenotype. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 46(10), 3281–3294.
- Cook, J. M., Crane, L., & Mandy, W. (2023). Dropping the mask: It takes two. Autism, 28(4), 831–842.
- Hennessy, E., et al. (2025). Adverse experiences of women with undiagnosed ADHD and the invaluable role of diagnosis. Scientific Reports.
- Hull, L., Petrides, K. V., Allison, C., Smith, P., Baron-Cohen, S., Lai, M.-C., & Mandy, W. (2017). “Putting on my best normal”: Social camouflaging in adults with autism spectrum conditions. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 47, 2519–2534.
- Rowney-Smith, A., Sutton, B., Quadt, L., & Eccles, J. A. (2026). The lived experience of rejection sensitivity in ADHD: A qualitative exploration. PLOS ONE, 21(1), e0314669.
- Sunagawa, M. (2023). How much of my true self can I show? Social adaptation in autistic women: A qualitative study. BMC Psychology, 11, 144.
- Zimbardo, P. G., Johnson, R. L., & McCann, V. (2021). Psychology: Core Concepts (8th ed.). Pearson.
Katrin Kemmerzehl
I’m a qualified counsellor based in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Please get in touch if you’d like to arrange a consultation.