This reflection explores the psychological and emotional toll of high-performing autistic masking, the survival skill that demands total authenticity in artifice. Drawing parallels to method acting and philosophy, it considers how masking can blur identity itself, offering insight into the lived experience of neurodivergent authenticity and exhaustion.

The problem with high-performing autistic masking is that it must be indistinguishable from real. Ergo sum: it has to be real.

That’s what it’s taught me.

To be an actor on a stage, you must, at heart, be the thing you portray. It’s what method actors must learn, to live so completely within a role that the boundary between self and character dissolves. To fit in, you must become what you portray. The performance can’t just be convincing; it must be complete. The audience, the world, must never see the seam between you and the mask.

That’s why high-performing masking is so painful and draining. It isn’t a simple act of pretending. It’s a full, lived embodiment of something that isn’t quite you, but must feel like you to everyone else. And in time, the boundary blurs. The act becomes identity. The mask becomes muscle memory.

There’s an existential cruelty in that. To survive socially, professionally, and relationally, you learn to inhabit a version of reality that costs you your own. It’s the paradox of authenticity through artifice, a performance so well-rehearsed it becomes indistinguishable from truth.

It’s what acting teaches: to play a part perfectly, you must, in some way, be the part.
It’s what life teaches, too: to belong, you must sometimes become what you are not.

I grew up in the inner city, it’s a tough ol’ place. Being odd, clever, like me, it’s a hard environment. I learned to mask young, and I learned to mask well (OK, so I did spend most of post Star Wars ’77 being R2-D2, but skip that). Now I mask almost automatically, the moment someone’s around, even friends, even family. The person I de-mask around the most is my son, Andy, because he doesn’t judge me; he understands what I’m going through (years of having to cope with me going up and down every aisle at the shops and worse, poor sod). But even then, not always. If I mask too hard for too long, something in me starts to fracture; I’ll start singing rebel songs or keening just to let the pressure out.

Then there’s the corporate world, especially in big cities like London, and their moneyed corners. Where difference is the one truly unacceptable thing. Everyone looks the same: sharp suits, unbuttoned shirts, good shoes, that studied air of confidence. It’s a uniform, not just of clothes but of behaviour. You can’t be odd, or intense, or visibly wired differently. You have to be smooth, measured, and at all times professional, and it’s the most suffocating performance of all. For someone neurodiverse, it’s a constant act of compression. Every meeting, every coffee, every “quick chat” is another small rehearsal of normal. It’s like straddling your own private circles of hell, the smiling kind.

The hardest part for me, in the moment, is holding back, repressing the vocal stims, which is surprisingly hard, trying not to be too strange about my pattern-based compulsions. The worst part of masking isn’t just the effort; it’s the erosion. Do it too much, and it kills something inside; the small, spontaneous self that makes you you. The brilliance in me is the spontaneous chaos, repressing that dulls me beyond the pale. It’s wearing in a way that lingers long after the act is over. And when the mask finally slips, what’s left is the quiet ache of having survived another day by not being yourself.

The real hardest part is the self-doubt: when the world applauds, and you no longer know who the applause is for.