Excessive-Masking Autism Led to My Best Energy
I didn’t know I was different from the other kids. I just knew I was trying very, very hard.
I had friends. I laughed. I did well in school. From the outside, I looked like a socially capable, high-functioning kid who blended in just fine. But inside, my brain was making constant calculations: Am I standing the right way? Did I talk too much? Was that joke actually funny or did I miss something? Why does everyone else seem to just… know?
I noticed something early: My friends could walk into a room and just join. I couldn’t. I walked in and scanned diligently. What’s the energy? Who’s leading the conversation? Is this loud-funny or quiet-funny? Serious or playful? I adjusted before I even spoke. I didn’t realize I was reading social environments like data. I just thought this was the price paid for belonging.
I didn’t have the language to describe what was happening in my brain. I didn’t know about high-masking autism. I didn’t understand masking. I just thought being “normal” required effort, and I was willing to put in the work.
So I studied people the way some kids study math. I watched facial expressions. I memorized social rules. I rehearsed conversations in my head before speaking. I learned how to make eye contact just long enough. I trained myself to laugh at the right moments. I became a professional-level observer of human behavior before I even knew that skill had a name.
[Read: “I Thought I Sucked at Life. But I Was High-Masking Autism All Along.”]
And for a long time, I thought this meant something was wrong with me.
College added another layer. If I drank a couple of beers, I discovered, the anxiety softened. Conversations flowed more easily. The constant internal monitoring quieted. Masking felt less effortful and more automatic. For a while, it seemed like I had found the solution. But I eventually learned that numbing my nervous system wasn’t the same as understanding it. What felt like confidence was temporary relief. I didn’t need to escape my wiring; I needed to understand it.
What Masking Has Given Me
In my late 20s, the story began to shift. I started learning about neurodivergence. Not from a deficit perspective, but from a brain-difference perspective. Suddenly, pieces of my life clicked into place: sensory sensitivity, deep focus, emotional intensity, pattern recognition, social exhaustion after being “on.”
The thing I had labeled as struggle had actually been me processing the world differently.
[Read: “5 Unique Features of AuDHD in Women”]
And here’s the twist: That difference is exactly what makes me a successful licensed professional counselor today.
While many people move through conversations at a surface level, my brain naturally scans for patterns, inconsistencies, emotional shifts, and underlying themes. I don’t just hear what someone says. I track tone, body language, pauses, contradictions, and emotional undercurrents all at once. Years of masking taught me how to read a room quickly. What once felt like survival became clinical intuition.
My neurodivergent mind doesn’t settle for one perspective. It automatically looks at situations from multiple angles. When a client tells a story, I can often see their viewpoint, the other person’s viewpoint, systemic factors, the trauma lens, and cognitive distortions — simultaneously. That flexibility isn’t something I learned in graduate school. It’s how my brain has always worked.
Chasing Normal Was Never the Goal
But masking exacts a high cost. Chronic exhaustion. Anxiety about “getting it right.” A lifelong sense of performing instead of simply being. For years, I mistook burnout for personal weakness. I didn’t realize how much energy I spent appearing socially fluid while internally running a complex operating system just to keep up.
Recognizing my neurodivergence didn’t just give me answers, it gave me permission. Permission to rest without guilt. Permission to structure my environment in ways that support my nervous system. Permission to stop chasing a version of “normal” that was never built for my brain in the first place.
The same brain that struggled with small talk can sit in deep emotional spaces with clients for hours. The same mind that overanalyzes social situations can notice therapeutic breakthroughs others might miss. The same sensitivity that once felt overwhelming now helps me attune to subtle emotional pain in others.
What I once saw as deficits were actually unrecognized strengths waiting for context.
Today, I don’t see my neurodivergence as something I overcame. I see it as something I learned to understand and, eventually, use. The child who studied people to fit in became the therapist who understands people from the inside out. The difference I once tried to hide became the very thing that allows me to help others feel seen.
Turns out, the “normal” I chased wasn’t the goal. Knowing my own mind was.
High-Masking Autism: Next Steps
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