What Masking Really Costs: Neurodivergent Masking and Exhaustion in Adults
- 1 day ago
- 20 min read
You may come across as socially capable, thoughtful, and engaged.
You know how to respond in conversations. You can read the room, adjust your tone, and say what is expected. In many settings, you function well. Others may experience you as articulate, composed, and easy to be around.
In environments where being capable matters, you may have become particularly good at this. Sensing what is needed. Keeping interactions smooth, appropriate, and comfortable for others.
But the effort does not always show. In some cases, it is precisely because you are doing it well that it goes unnoticed.
After social interactions, you may feel a kind of exhaustion that is difficult to explain. Not just tired, but mentally drained. It may be harder to think clearly, to find words, or to stay present. You might need time alone, even when nothing “went wrong.” Sometimes, you replay conversations in your mind, checking what you said, how it came across, whether it was appropriate.
You can do it. And at the same time, it costs you.
During the interaction, you may have felt relatively fine. It is often afterwards that the impact becomes more visible.
For many neurodivergent adults, this pattern is often linked to neurodivergent masking and exhaustion: the ongoing process of monitoring, adjusting, and holding back parts of yourself to meet social expectations.
This does not necessarily feel like pretending. In many cases, it feels like trying to get things right, avoiding misunderstanding, and reducing the risk of being seen as different in ways that have not always felt safe or accepted.
Gradually, this kind of effort can become so familiar that it is no longer noticeable in the moment. It becomes part of how you move through the world.
But your nervous system still carries the cost, often in ways that only become visible when you are alone.
What Is Neurodivergent Masking in Adults
Neurodivergent masking refers to the ongoing process of adjusting, suppressing, or modifying natural behaviours in order to meet social expectations. For adults with ADHD, autism, or both, this can include managing eye contact, tone, movement, and emotional expression, often through sustained effort.
At first, masking is not always experienced as something deliberate.
It may feel like paying closer attention: noticing how others respond, adjusting slightly so the interaction goes more smoothly, and monitoring eye contact, timing, pauses, or tone. When this continues, these adjustments can become more automatic.
This process often involves several things at once: tracking social cues, predicting how you might be perceived, adjusting in real time, and holding back or reshaping natural reactions. Even small adjustments can place sustained demand on attention, working memory, and processing speed.
Some people describe this as having to “translate” themselves in real time. Others notice a tendency to rehearse what they want to say beforehand, or to replay conversations afterwards to check whether they responded appropriately.
Masking can also involve holding back natural forms of self-regulation. This might include suppressing stimming or repetitive movements, minimising visible signs of discomfort, or pushing through sensory environments that feel overwhelming. In some cases, it involves learning and reproducing social behaviours that do not come intuitively, in order to reduce the likelihood of misunderstanding or negative judgement.
For adults with ADHD, masking may also involve trying to appear organised, attentive, emotionally contained, or consistent, even when attention, energy, and emotional regulation fluctuate internally. This can include suppressing restlessness, hiding forgetfulness, over-preparing, over-explaining, or working hard to compensate for difficulties with time, transitions, or task initiation.
Over time, these processes can become so integrated that they no longer feel like strategies. They begin to feel like part of how you move through the world, while the effort becomes less visible to others and to yourself.
In psychological research, this is often described as camouflaging. Clinical literature on autistic camouflaging shows that masking is more than simply “pretending”; it can involve suppressing natural responses, compensating for social differences, and adapting behaviour to expected social norms.
Studies of autistic adults, particularly the work of Laura Hull and colleagues, describe camouflaging as involving masking, compensation, and assimilation: hiding or suppressing aspects of oneself, using strategies to work around social differences, and adapting behaviour to expected social norms.
While much of the research literature focuses on autistic camouflaging, many adults with ADHD also describe similar patterns of compensation, suppression, over-effort, and social adaptation.
It is not only about what is visible externally. It is about the internal coordination required to sustain that presentation.
Research suggests that this kind of sustained self-monitoring increases cognitive load and reduces available mental capacity, particularly in socially demanding environments. Over time, this can contribute to mental fatigue, slower processing, and a reduced ability to stay present or responsive.
This overlaps with patterns I discuss in High-Functioning Burnout: Why Capable People Crash Quietly, especially where a person continues to function outwardly while their internal capacity is reducing.
There is also a physiological layer. Continually monitoring for how one is perceived can activate a low-level sense of social threat, even in situations that are not overtly unsafe. When this happens repeatedly, the nervous system has fewer opportunities to fully settle, which can contribute to a background level of tension, anxiety, or exhaustion.
At the same time, masking does not develop randomly.
For many people, it reflects a history of learning what is acceptable, what is questioned, and what might lead to misunderstanding or exclusion. In that context, masking becomes an adaptive response to environments that may not always feel predictable, safe, or accommodating.
I explore this cognitive fatigue further in The Brain and Burnout: Why Willpower Stops Working Under Chronic Stress.
What Masking Often Hides
Masking is often described through what is visible: the ability to respond, adapt, and appear socially fluent. But its impact is often better understood through what is not immediately seen: the internal experiences being actively managed.
This can include forms of self-regulation that are natural and necessary. Movements such as fidgeting, shifting position, or repetitive actions can help the body stay regulated. When these are suppressed, the external presentation may appear calm, but internally, tension can build without a clear outlet.
Sensory needs are often part of this picture. Environments others experience as neutral can feel intense or overwhelming because of noise, light, movement, or unpredictability. Masking may involve continuing to engage while managing rising discomfort in the background.
There is also a layer of social processing that is not visible. Even when interactions appear smooth, you may be tracking tone, timing, and meaning in real time. Deciding when to speak, how much to say, or how something might be received can require continuous adjustment. This is not always conscious, but it draws on attention and working memory in a sustained way.
Emotional responses may also be shaped by masking. Feelings such as anxiety, confusion, or overwhelm may be held back during the interaction, only becoming more noticeable afterwards. At times, it can be difficult to access or name what you are feeling in the moment, particularly when attention is focused on managing the interaction itself.
I often find that, after repeated experiences, this can shift a person’s internal orientation, where attention becomes more focused on how they are perceived than on what they are experiencing.
There can also be a quieter form of isolation. When others respond positively to the version of you that is presented, it does not always lead to a sense of being fully known. Connection may be present, but still feel partial. You may be included, but not entirely understood. And gradually, that difference can become harder to ignore.
For some people, this can also overlap with the experience of bicultural work stress, where belonging, difference, and professional performance become closely intertwined.
Miscommunication can still occur. Because masking often involves approximating expected behaviour, something may feel slightly misaligned, even if it is not obvious on the surface. You may leave unsure whether you expressed yourself accurately, or whether others understood you as intended.
Taken together, masking is not only about effort in the moment. It involves managing sensory input, regulating emotional responses, monitoring social interaction, and sustaining a coherent presentation across all of these at once.
From the outside, this can look like coping well.
From the inside, it can feel like holding multiple processes in place, often without enough space for your own needs to be recognised.
Masking is not only what you do socially. It is also what your mind and body hold in order to keep that social presentation going.
Why Masking Develops (Safety, Learning, Adaptation)
Masking does not develop randomly.
For many neurodivergent adults, it emerges gradually through repeated experiences of learning what is expected, what helps interactions move more smoothly, and what appears to reduce friction in everyday life. These expectations are often unspoken. Rather than being taught directly, they are picked up through experience.
You may have noticed, at different points in your life, that certain responses were received more easily than others. Some ways of expressing yourself led to confusion, correction, discomfort, or distance. Other responses seemed to create fewer difficulties. Over time, these experiences begin to shape how a person approaches future interactions.
In that context, paying closer attention can become a way of navigating uncertainty.
For some people, this learning begins early. It may involve being told, directly or indirectly, to be quieter, calmer, more organised, or more attentive. In other cases, the message is less explicit. You may simply notice that being yourself creates friction, while making small adjustments helps interactions feel more manageable.
Over time, these experiences can begin to shape what feels safe. Masking, in this sense, is not simply about fitting in. It is often about reducing the likelihood of misunderstanding, discomfort, correction, rejection, or being seen as different in ways that have not always been met with understanding. Where previous experiences have made difference feel costly, paying closer attention to how you are received can create a greater sense of predictability in social situations.
This is one reason masking is often connected to belonging.
Humans are wired to seek acceptance and connection with others. When aspects of how you communicate, regulate, or respond are not easily recognised, monitoring yourself more closely can begin to feel safer than responding spontaneously, even when that monitoring comes at a personal cost. The adjustment remains useful because it helps maintain connection within environments that may not always feel accommodating.
Some environments place greater demands on this process than others. Fast-paced workplaces, highly evaluative settings, and situations where mistakes carry social consequences can all increase the pressure to monitor yourself more closely. The effort may become especially noticeable when there is uncertainty about how you will be perceived, or when acceptance feels conditional on getting things right.
Where these patterns are linked to earlier experiences of threat, criticism, or relational unsafety, my article on Trauma-Informed Therapy for High Achievers may offer a helpful companion perspective.
Cultural context can add another layer. Expectations about communication, emotional expression, professionalism, respect, or belonging are not universal. For people moving between different cultural environments, there may be multiple sets of expectations to navigate, each with their own unwritten rules. The challenge is no longer simply how to respond, but which version of responding fits where.
After enough repetition, these responses can become increasingly automatic. What began as something you consciously noticed gradually becomes part of how you move through the world. The original reasons for the adjustment may fade into the background, while the adjustment itself remains.
Seen in this way, masking is not a sign that something is wrong.
It is often the result of learning, adaptation, and repeated attempts to find safety, understanding, and connection within environments that have not always made those things easy to achieve.
Why Masking Can Be Difficult to Recognise
One of the things that makes masking difficult to recognise is that it often becomes familiar before it becomes visible.
Most people do not experience masking as a deliberate strategy. The adjustments develop through experience and become part of everyday functioning. By the time someone begins wondering whether they are masking, many of those responses already feel ordinary.
What tends to draw attention first are the consequences rather than the process itself.
People notice the exhaustion, the effort, or the sense that everyday situations require more energy than expected.
The adjustments happening underneath are often much less visible. When these experiences are viewed separately, they do not always appear connected. It is often only later that people begin to recognise that they may be linked by the same underlying process.
This is one reason masking can remain difficult to see. Not because it is absent, but because it has become part of how a person moves through the world.
This is often part of the emotional complexity I explore in Late ADHD or Autism Diagnosis as an Adult: What the Relief and the Grief Both Mean.
The Cost of Constant Adjustment
The cost of masking rarely becomes visible all at once. It becomes visible through a gradual change in how everyday life feels. Situations that were previously manageable begin to require more effort, and the amount of recovery needed after social interaction starts to change.
What makes this difficult to recognise is that the outward structure of life often remains much the same. Work continues. Relationships continue. Responsibilities remain. Yet something feels different. The demands may look familiar, but the experience of meeting them no longer feels quite the same.
Part of the reason masking can be difficult to recognise is that many of the processes involved happen quickly enough that they rarely stand out in the moment. People often become aware of the consequences before they become aware of what is creating them.
Part of the reason masking can be difficult to recognise is that many of the adjustments involved happen quickly enough that they rarely stand out in the moment. People often become aware of the effects before they become aware of the process itself.
Some people describe reaching the end of an ordinary conversation feeling more mentally tired than the interaction itself seems to justify. Nothing particularly difficult may have happened, and the conversation may even have gone well. Yet when they reflect on it afterwards, they realise how much attention was spent following meaning, interpreting responses, adjusting communication, and keeping track of how the interaction was unfolding.
These processes draw on the same attention and working memory that support planning, organising, decision-making, and responding to everyday demands. Because they often happen automatically, the effort is not always obvious while it is occurring. What becomes noticeable is what remains afterwards. By the end of the day, there may simply be less of you available for everything else.
For others, the impact becomes most visible in recovery. Social interaction no longer ends when the interaction itself is over. The conversation finishes, yet part of the system remains engaged. The body does not always settle at the same pace that the situation ends.
The effects are not limited to thinking and recovery. Masking can also shape where attention naturally goes. Some people become highly attuned to what is happening around them while feeling less connected to what is happening within themselves. They may notice themselves anticipating reactions, adjusting to the needs of others, or responding quickly to what a situation requires without consciously deciding to do so.
This is also why workplace and social systems matter. I explore this wider context in Workplace Culture and Mental Health: How Systems Shape Stress and Burnout.
Sometimes the first sign is not a feeling at all. It may be exhaustion, irritability, or a sense that something feels off without being able to immediately explain why. Only later does it become clear that a need, a limit, or an emotional response had been present all along. When attention has spent years orienting itself towards the outside world, returning inward does not always happen automatically. The same attention that monitors what is happening around you can become slower to recognise what is happening within you.
One of the reasons masking can remain difficult to recognise is that it gradually becomes familiar. What once felt like a deliberate adjustment may eventually stop feeling like an adjustment altogether. The response arrives automatically. It works. It helps you navigate the situation.
Yet this can make it increasingly difficult to notice how much adaptation is taking place, because it no longer feels separate from you. Responses that developed for a reason become woven into everyday functioning. Over time, it may become less clear which responses feel most like you and which developed because they were repeatedly needed.
What becomes visible in practice is rarely a single difficulty. At first, these experiences may not appear connected. One day it feels harder to concentrate. Another day recovery takes longer than expected. A situation that would once have felt manageable suddenly feels more demanding than it used to.
Over time, however, a pattern begins to emerge. The distance between what life requires and what is available to meet those demands gradually becomes smaller. The margin that once allowed for flexibility, recovery, and the unexpected begins to narrow.
The same life starts requiring more of you.
For some people, this eventually moves towards burnout or shutdown. Burnout often becomes visible after a long period of adaptation rather than as a sudden collapse. What becomes harder is sustaining the level of adjustment that has been required for so long. The demands themselves may not have changed very much, yet the capacity available to meet them has.
For many people, this is the point at which the cost of masking becomes impossible to ignore.
If difficulty starting has become part of the pattern, you may also find Difficulty Starting Tasks: Why Motivation Follows Small Beginnings useful.
Gentle Reflection: Am I Masking?
A short psychologist-guided reflection for noticing patterns of masking, recovery, and self-blame.
Download the reflection guide
From Self-Blame to Understanding
When the same life starts requiring more of you, most people do not immediately question the demands they have been carrying.
More often, they begin by questioning themselves.
Sometimes the conclusion is not spoken aloud.
It remains quietly present in the background: If things are becoming harder, there must be something wrong with the way I am managing them.
One of the difficulties with masking is that much of the effort remains out of view. What becomes visible are the consequences: the tiredness, the reduced capacity, the growing sense that keeping things going requires more than it once did.
Without another way of understanding the experience, it is easy to conclude that the problem lies in your ability to cope.
When the effort itself comes into view, then a different part of the picture begins to emerge..
What once felt like evidence of personal inadequacy starts to look different. The question is no longer whether you should be coping better. Attention begins to turn towards everything that has been required to keep things going.
Capacity is often understood as a matter of motivation, discipline, or resilience. Yet capacity is also shaped by how much a person is already carrying.
The exhaustion may still be there. The demands may still be there. But the experience is no longer being read as evidence of failure.
How to Reduce the Impact of Masking in Daily Life
One of the frustrations many people describe is that life does not necessarily feel easier simply because they have begun to recognise masking. The effort can still be there. The tiredness can still be there. Situations that require adjustment may continue to require adjustment.
This is partly because many of these responses have developed over long periods of time. They often become woven into everyday life, shaping how a person navigates conversations, environments, relationships, and expectations. Recognising these patterns can be important, but recognition alone does not automatically change them.
What often begins to change first is not the masking itself, but the amount of flexibility around it. Some people begin to notice that certain environments consistently require more adjustment than others. Others realise that what feels manageable in the moment can leave them unexpectedly depleted afterwards.
These observations can gradually change the way recovery is approached. Instead of expecting the same level of energy across every situation, it becomes easier to recognise that different environments place different demands on the system. Recovery stops being treated as something extra and becomes part of how capacity is maintained.
For some people, reducing the load may also involve reconnecting with forms of self-regulation that have gradually been pushed aside. This might include movement, sensory adjustments, familiar routines, or other ways of helping the nervous system settle.
These experiences can look different across neurodivergent presentations, and I explore some of these processes in more depth in When Starting Is Hard: Procrastination, the Nervous System, and Neurodivergent Reality.
Across time, people often begin making small adjustments. Choosing environments that require less monitoring. Allowing more space after demanding interactions. Reintroducing forms of regulation that support recovery.
Adaptation may still be needed. The difference is that it no longer has to happen all the time.
For readers interested in how threat, drive, and soothing systems influence stress, recovery, and self-regulation, Struggling to Relax? A Compassionate Guide Using Compassion Focused Therapy may also be relevant.
How Therapy Can Help With Neurodivergent Masking
Many people arrive at therapy already having spent years trying to understand themselves. They may have read extensively, reflected deeply, or developed detailed explanations for why certain situations feel difficult. Insight is often not the thing that is missing.
What is often harder to find is a place where something different can actually happen.
One of the things that sometimes becomes visible in therapy is how much effort has been going into everyday interaction. Not because somebody is deliberately hiding who they are, but because monitoring, adjusting, anticipating, and managing responses have become so familiar that they are rarely noticed while they are happening.
In practice, this often appears in small moments.
A person may move quickly past an emotional reaction without realising it. They may explain an experience before noticing how it felt. They may adapt to what they think is expected of them, even within the therapy room itself.
Rather than rushing past these moments, therapy creates space to slow down and stay with them a little longer.
Together, therapist and client can begin noticing what is happening underneath the automatic response. This might involve paying attention to bodily sensations, emotional reactions, relational patterns, or the subtle ways adaptation begins to take over. Over time, these moments can help make visible processes that have previously operated outside awareness.
Many people are surprised by how much of this effort only becomes apparent when they find themselves in a relationship where less of it is required.
There is space to pause before responding. Space to notice internal reactions before adapting to them. Space to reflect on experiences that are often moved past automatically. Space to gradually reorient towards what you are experiencing, rather than immediately responding to what is expected.
These moments are often small. Yet they can begin to create a different experience of relating to yourself and to other people.
For many people, masking is not where the work ends.
As patterns of adaptation become easier to recognise, attention often begins to shift towards the wider experiences that sit around them. Questions about emotions, relationships, identity, and belonging can gradually move into focus.
This is where masking often becomes an opening into deeper self-understanding and growth.
In my clinical work, different therapeutic approaches can help illuminate different aspects of masking. Some approaches help make patterns of monitoring and adaptation more visible. Others support a more compassionate relationship with parts of yourself that have learnt to stay vigilant, get things right, or avoid mistakes. Where masking overlaps with experiences of threat, exclusion, or the need to stay safe, trauma-informed work can help explore how these responses developed and what purpose they once served.
Many of these themes extend beyond masking itself.
I explore chronic adaptation in When Coping Becomes a Way of Living, relational patterns in People Pleasing: When Adaptation Becomes a Way of Relating, identity and belonging in Living Across Two Worlds, and family relationships in When Your Family Does Not Understand Your Mental Health.
The aim is not to remove the ability to adapt. It is to ensure that adaptation is no longer the only option available.
For readers interested in how psychologists use formulation to understand experiences beyond diagnosis or symptoms, Psychological Formulation in Therapy may also be relevant.
Moving Towards a More Sustainable Way of Being
One of the most significant shifts is not that masking disappears.
It is that the effort involved becomes easier to recognise.
Over time, this can change what receives your attention.
When so much energy is directed towards monitoring, adjusting, anticipating, and managing, there is often less space available for other things. Not because they are absent, but because so much effort is already being used elsewhere.
As that effort becomes more visible, other experiences can begin to come into view as well. You may start noticing preferences that were previously overlooked. Emotional reactions that were moved past quickly. Interests, needs, limits, or ways of relating that had less room to emerge while adaptation remained the priority.
These changes are often subtle. They rarely arrive all at once.
Gradually, it can feel as though less energy is being used to hold everything in place.
The world may not have changed. But there can be more room to meet it as yourself.
FAQ
What is neurodivergent masking?
Neurodivergent masking refers to the process of adapting, modifying, or managing aspects of yourself in order to fit more comfortably within social environments and expectations.
For many ADHD, autistic, and other neurodivergent adults, these adjustments are not simply deliberate attempts to hide who they are. They often develop gradually over time as ways of navigating relationships, reducing misunderstanding, maintaining connection, or responding to environments that do not always feel accommodating.
Because these adaptations can become highly familiar, many people do not immediately recognise them as masking.
Why is masking so exhausting?
Masking often involves much more than changing outward behaviour.
It can require ongoing monitoring of social situations, managing emotional responses, adapting communication styles, filtering sensory experiences, and continually adjusting to the expectations of different environments.
Even when these processes become automatic, they still require psychological and neurological resources. Over time, the cumulative effect can contribute to fatigue, exhaustion, burnout, and a reduced sense of capacity.
Does masking only affect autistic people?
Masking is often discussed in relation to autism, but it can also be experienced by many ADHD and other neurodivergent adults.
The specific ways masking appears may differ from person to person. Some individuals work hard to reduce behaviours that might attract attention or misunderstanding. Others rely on extensive planning, monitoring, compensating, or self-correction in order to maintain day-to-day functioning.
Although the forms may vary, the underlying process is often similar: adapting in response to the demands of the environment.
What are signs of masking burnout?
Common signs of masking burnout include mental fatigue after social interaction, difficulty concentrating, increased anxiety, withdrawal from others, sensory overwhelm, and feeling disconnected from oneself despite appearing functional externally.
Can masking be reduced?
Masking does not need to be completely removed. Many people benefit from developing awareness of when masking occurs, creating recovery time, and gradually reducing the need for constant adaptation in safe environments.
Can therapy help with neurodivergent masking and burnout?
Therapy can help by creating space to understand how masking developed, what it has protected, and what it may now be costing.
Rather than focusing solely on reducing masking, therapy often explores the wider experiences around it, including emotional wellbeing, relationships, identity, self-understanding, and long-term patterns of adaptation.
About the Author: Dr Tiffany Leung
Dr Tiffany Leung is an HCPC-registered Counselling Psychologist and Chartered Psychologist based in the United Kingdom. Her clinical work focuses on trauma, neurodivergence, identity, culture and belonging, high-functioning burnout, and the long-term effects of chronic adaptation and stress.
A central part of her approach is helping people understand how their experiences have developed, rather than focusing only on symptoms in isolation. Many of the difficulties people bring to therapy are closely connected to their life experiences, relationships, environments, cultural contexts, and the ways they have learnt to adapt over time.
Dr Leung's work is trauma-informed, neurodiversity-affirming, and culturally responsive. She supports clients in developing deeper self-understanding while building more sustainable ways of relating to themselves, others, and the demands of everyday life. She provides psychological therapy in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin for clients across the UK and internationally.
Therapy with Dr Tiffany Leung
If this article resonates with your experience, therapy can offer a space to explore these patterns in greater depth. Masking is not simply a collection of behaviours. It is a long-standing adaptation that may have helped maintain relationships, reduce misunderstanding, fulfil responsibilities, or navigate environments that felt difficult to manage in other ways.
Because of this, therapy is rarely about removing these adaptations as quickly as possible.
Instead, the work often begins by understanding how they developed, what purpose they once served, and how they may be affecting your life now.
In therapy, there is space to pause and notice experiences that are easily overlooked in everyday life. This may include paying attention to bodily signals, emotional responses, patterns within relationships, or the situations that consistently require more effort and adaptation than others.
For some people, understanding masking becomes the beginning of a deeper process of self-exploration. Questions about identity, belonging, emotional wellbeing, relationships, and self-understanding often emerge alongside a growing awareness of how adaptation has shaped daily life.
These conversations do not need to rush towards change. Often, they begin with understanding. And understanding itself can reduce a great deal of unnecessary self-blame.
References for Neurodivergent Masking and Exhaustion in Adults
Hull, L., Petrides, K. V. and Mandy, W. (2017) ‘Putting on My Best Normal’: Social Camouflaging in Adults with Autism Spectrum Conditions. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-017-3166-5
Hull, L. et al. (2020) Social Camouflaging in Autism: A Systematic Review. Autism Research. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.2270
Livingston, L. A., Colvert, E., Bolton, P. and Happé, F. (2019) Good Social Skills Despite Poor Theory of Mind: Exploring Compensation in Autism. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12991
Raymaker, D. M. et al. (2020) Having All of Your Internal Resources Exhausted Beyond Measure and Being Left with No Clean-Up Crew: Defining Autistic Burnout. Autism in Adulthood. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1089/aut.2019.0079
Cassidy, S. A., Bradley, L., Shaw, R. and Baron-Cohen, S. (2018) Risk markers for suicidality in autistic adults. Molecular Autism. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13229-018-0226-4
Mandy, W. (2019) Social camouflaging in autism: Is it time to lose the mask? Autism. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361319878559
National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) (2012, updated 2025) Autism spectrum disorder in adults: diagnosis and management. Available at: https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg142
National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) (2018, updated 2025) Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: diagnosis and management. Available at: https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng87
NHS Practitioner Health (2023) Stress and burnout. Available at: https://www.practitionerhealth.nhs.uk/stress-and-burnout
American Psychiatric Association (2013) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.). Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing.
Read next:
Late ADHD or Autism Diagnosis as an Adult
The Brain and Burnout: Why Willpower Stops Working Under Chronic Stress
Formulation in Therapy: How a Psychologist Understands You Beyond a Diagnosis
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