Unmasking: The Collapse, the Reckoning, and the Rebuild

by David Wetherelt

For most of my life, I had no idea I was masking. I didn’t even know masking existed. I wasn’t performing. I thought I was just doing what everyone else did to survive the day. I assumed that everyone rehearsed conversations before they happened. I assumed no one slept because their brain was still replaying a moment from third period in eighth grade. I assumed everyone walked into every room scanning for threat like an undercover agent.

I thought this was life. I thought I was just bad at it.

Masking wasn’t a strategy I chose. It was the operating system I built as a kid, a full sensory firewall, social decoder, and emotional choke hold designed to keep me safe. Every bit of it was invented without language, without diagnosis, without guidance. Just raw, instinctive survival.

I had zero downtime in my brain. Zero. My mind was a hyperactive prediction engine, constantly flipping through a thousand possible futures just to get through a five-minute conversation. I lived in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, cycle on repeat like a glitching security alarm that never shuts off.

And I could never say no. Ever. Not because I was nice, though people sure loved telling me I was, but because my nervous system interpreted “no” as danger. Saying yes kept the peace. Saying yes kept me alive. Saying yes was the price of belonging, even though it slowly dismantled me from the inside.

The Relief of Naming It and the Reality of Undoing It

Learning I was neurodivergent brought relief, but not instant transformation. Masking isn’t a light switch. It’s a lifetime of muscle memory welded into your identity.

I read recently that it can take up to five years to truly get a handle on masking once you understand it. That number hit me like truth. Even now, years after diagnosis, I’m still unlearning. I’m still resetting my expectations and helping others reset their expectations of me.

My personal relationships have shifted. My work relationships have shifted. And yes, some people are confused by the new boundaries. They miss the old version of me, the one who said yes automatically, the one who absorbed chaos like a human shock absorber.

But that version of me was burning alive quietly. And the moment I started unmasking, people who had known me for decades suddenly had to meet me for the first time.

The Work Mask: The Most Expensive Costume I Ever Wore

Masking at work is its own beast. It is not a choice, not a preference, not a quirk. It is survival.

And when masking collapses at work, it does not look like authenticity. It looks like silence.

It is not a brave reveal. It is your nervous system mutinying.

Those of us who masked our way through entire careers know exactly what this looks like. Forcing eye contact. Copying tone, timing, posture. Suppressing movements. Filtering sensory overload like a broken motherboard. Rehearsing small talk. Modulating facial expressions. Monitoring every reaction in the room like a sonar technician scanning for mines.

If you looked socially skilled, you were masking harder. Full stop.

Most late diagnosed autistic and ADHD adults eventually realize that the behaviors praised as professionalism were actually performance art. And eventually, midlife, illness, grief, stress, or trauma, the cost becomes too high. The mask cracks.

And when it cracks, workplaces don’t interpret it as distress. They interpret it as a problem.

What Happens When the Mask Collapses at Work

When masking falls apart, people don’t think, “Oh, David’s been compensating his entire life and his nervous system is at capacity.”

They think:

Why is he quieter? Why is he more blunt? Why is he different? Why is he struggling with things he handled fine before?

They don’t realize I never handled them. I masked them.

The most brutal truth: unmasking at work is often unsafe.

People face disciplinary action, demotion, exclusion, weaponized concern, or outright termination. Even disclosure does not guarantee safety. In many cases it makes things worse. Suddenly every action is interpreted through a deficit lens, as if your diagnosis is a character flaw instead of a neurological reality.

This isn’t paranoia. It’s data. Research repeatedly shows that autistic masking is tied to anxiety, depression, identity loss, dissociation, and physical illness from chronic stress. Burnout isn’t a vibe. It is a full system shutdown after decades of running on emergency power.

Most people don’t choose to unmask at work. Their body stops cooperating with the performance.

The Professional Identity Crisis

Here’s the part no one prepares you for.

When your career was built on a neurotypical version of yourself, unmasking feels like losing credibility, competence, and even personality.

You wonder:

Which parts of me were real? Which were survival programming? Did people value my actual mind, or just my ability to mimic theirs? Will I ever be able to work again without betraying myself?

This reckoning is not gentle. It is not poetic. It is disorienting, painful, and clarifying all at once.

The Real Problem Isn’t Unmasking, It Is the Workplace

Most workplaces demand masking by design. Professionalism assumes emotional neutrality, consistent output, social fluency, sensory tolerance, and the ability to navigate ambiguity without distress.

These are neurotypical norms, not universal human traits.

So when neurodivergent people stop masking, the system reads it as failure. But the failure belongs to the system, not the person.

This is why so many late diagnosed adults leave traditional employment entirely. The cost of staying is too high. The cost of unmasking is too dangerous. Building something outside those norms becomes the only real chance at accessing your full potential without self-erasure.

Unmasking Is Not Liberation, It Is Exposure

The cultural narrative says authenticity leads to belonging. But for neurodivergent people, authenticity often leads to risk.

Unmasking at work exposes needs most workplaces are not prepared to meet. It exposes differences people interpret as flaws. It exposes the reality that your professionalism was never designed with you in mind.

When my own mask collapsed, it wasn’t empowerment. It was my body calling time of death on a performance I had been running since childhood.

What unmasking reveals is not your inadequacy. It reveals the inadequacy of environments that demand the erasure of disabled people to function.

And Yet, This Is Not a Story of Defeat

Unmasking is painful, yes. But it is also the first honest moment many of us have ever had with ourselves.

It forces clarity. It forces reevaluation. It forces the creation of a life that does not require performance as the price of entry.

My relationships have changed. My career has changed. My boundaries have changed. And some people still don’t know what to do with the real version of me.

But for the first time, I know what to do with me.

I know what safety feels like.I know what overwhelm feels like before it destroys me. I know what my nervous system needs. And I know what it means to build work and a life that does not rely on self-abandonment to keep others comfortable.

Unmasking isn’t a finish line. It is a long rebuild. It is potentially a five-year renovation of the self. It is daily practice, daily honesty, daily courage.

But it is real. It is mine. And it is the first time in my life that I am not living behind glass.

And that finally feels like freedom.

About the Author

David Wetherelt is the co-founder of Like Minds Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting neurodivergent adults through education, genetics informed coaching, and community. After a late in life diagnosis of Autism, ADHD C, and Irlen Syndrome, David shifted his work away from traditional corporate environments and toward helping others understand the brain based realities behind overwhelm, burnout, and masking.

His career spans technology, healthcare data, nonprofit leadership, and coaching, but his most important work is the work he does on himself. Living authentically is no longer an abstract ideal. It is a daily practice that influences how he coaches, how he builds community, how he forms relationships, and how he shows up in the world. He no longer performs versions of himself to fit expectations that harmed him for decades. Instead, he works from a place of clarity, curiosity, and honesty about his own nervous system.

Through Like Minds Alliance, David now supports others in navigating their neurodivergence with compassion and precision. His coaching integrates genetics, lived experience, trauma informed understanding, and a commitment to helping people build lives that do not require masking for survival. He lives and works intentionally, anchoring his life around connection, authenticity, and the belief that neurodivergent minds deserve environments that fit them, not the other way around.

If you would like to learn more about David’s work or the Like Minds mission, visit LikeMindsAlliance.org