What Unmasking Really Looks Like for ADHD and AuDHD Adults

Late diagnosis and learning what masking even was

Danielle: This is Danielle and Vee, and we’re here talking about the craziness that was learning to just be ourselves, to unmask, and all that means when you’re ADHD and AuDHD. I was late diagnosed for most of it, and late unmasking, because I didn’t realize what I had been doing for so long was masking. I was a very traumatized child and didn’t really understand. I learned in my preteen years that I was ADHD, but I didn’t understand what that meant, and nobody back then had the tools to teach a girl how to ADHD, because girls didn’t ADHD. So obviously I was the weird, broken one. And then I didn’t learn until I was in my 20s, when my son got diagnosed, that I was on the spectrum.

But even then, I was so traumatized, and so professional, and had to do things the way everybody expected me to do them, that it took me until the last three or four years to start unmasking, and even now not 100 percent. There are still times, not as much now, but still times in certain social interactions where the mask just falls back into place, because it was conditioned for so long.

Growing up in a house where emotion was not allowed

Danielle: Looking at my parents, knowing what we know about the brain, looking back at our family history: my dad was autistic. I can’t tell you that 100 percent, but I’d stake my career on it. My dad was extremely uncomfortable with crying. Kids were not supposed to be noisy, and certain pitches hurt his ears. So I learned to suppress emotions, but I really learned to suppress sound. When I cried, you cried silently, if you cried at all. And I say this, and it’s kind of traumatic, but I say it because now, when I’m around people who cry, which is a totally valid experience, and they make noise, it’s jarring to me. Emotion was not allowed. If I cried, “I’ll give you something to cry about.” If I got angry, “I’ll give you something to get angry about.” If I was too quiet, “Why are you so quiet, what’s wrong with you?” There was always a criticism. So many of us as kids heard that, especially Gen X and older, but mine was at a breaking-of-bone level.

And then I married someone who is ASD, and emotions are not a thing for my husband. Not because of his childhood. It’s just not part of him, with his brand of ASD. He doesn’t understand emotion at all. And that was safe for me, because I knew not to show emotion. It was an easy transition for me. But now that I’m unmasked, and he’s starting to be as well, well, he’s Irish and Scottish and I’m German, Italian, and Russian. You can imagine tempers run pretty hot around here.

Being weird on purpose and finding joy again

Vee: Well, something interesting that I found: I have learned to unmask myself in lots of fun ways, and I just love myself more. People talked so much about me growing up, in different aspects or whatever. It didn’t matter how small I made myself, people still talked. So I just learned to lean into it and be weird on purpose. And the more I was, the more fun I was. But when you unmask the fun parts, it unmasks all the parts. My fight-or-flight button is broken, like so many of us. There’s childhood trauma there too. But if I unmask my emotions, with our autistic take on emotions anyway, it’s like, oh, are we fighting? Let’s fight, let’s go. It’s not, “oh, you’re angry and I’m going to be quiet.” No. I can do these things now. It’s safe. I’m good. Let’s go.

Danielle: The more I’ve unmasked, and learned that I don’t have to dress like everybody else expects me to, or have my hair like everybody expects, or wear the jewelry everybody expects, I have so much more joy in life now. Because I was always so worried about everybody else’s expectations, how I should act, what I should say, how I should look. And that made me hate the way I look, because I didn’t look the way everybody expected me to look. I wasn’t skinny. I wasn’t six feet tall. I wasn’t coordinated in heels. I’m round and have bumps, and my skin sucks, and I have issues with my teeth. All of that made me think I was so much less than.

Unmasking has made me so freaking confident in myself and what I know. And don’t argue with me about what I know, because I will tell you, and I’m not afraid to tell you. I saw this meme yesterday from Lord of the Rings that said, “when someone tries to argue with an autistic person about their hyperfocus,” and it’s the wizard who goes bad, saying, “So you choose death.” That’s pretty accurate. Don’t argue with me on something I have hyperfocused into expertise. And the list is long, plentiful, and continuing to grow. If I’ve spent the time to learn about it, I can out-think you. If I haven’t, then it’s not worth the argument, and I’m going to walk away, because it doesn’t bring me joy.

Safety, bravery, and the rule for daily weirdness

Vee: That brings up a really good point. Being unmasked can be scary. There’s a level of bravery you have to embrace to do it. However, it is so much easier to do if you’re with friends, if you’re in a safe place. In your marriage, it was safe to show emotions, so you start leaning into that safety. I tell people this a lot with kids: if a kid throws a fit and misbehaves in front of you, most of the time it’s because they feel safe enough with you to have that emotion. That’s why kids will behave at school and then melt down when they get home, because now they’re in their safe place and it’s okay.

So as an adult trying to unmask and live your most authentic life: I always veer away from the ick, because there’s so much ick in life. Like I said, I try to be weird on purpose every day, but not weird in a way that’s like a middle finger to people just because I can. I have a rule: the weirdness I do every day has to be something that makes me smile, that I enjoy, and that I’m giving myself permission to do.

Unmask slowly: the diet analogy

Danielle: I like that, because often when we’re trying to figure out how to unmask, we go from the closed-off extreme, mask held on tight, duct-taped twenty different ways and superglued, to “oh, I can go all the way over here now.” And there’s collateral damage that comes with that.

Vee: That’s why I would never tell anybody to reel it back in. I wouldn’t. I just try to tell people: when you’re unmasking, be a little more conscious of it. Basically, you’ve been on a diet your entire life, and when you unmask, you’re going off the diet. If you binge on all these things, you’re going to get sick. You’re going to get a tummy ache. So when you unmask, take it slow. Do some small things. See how it feels. Then build up. And also, don’t do things just because it pisses other people off. You have to enjoy it. That’s the biggest thing. If it pisses them off and it’s also something you enjoy, that can just be a bonus.

Danielle: I may or may not be at fault for that. Even still, I am 48 years old. My parents hate colored hair. That was never allowed. My parents don’t like short hair. Never allowed. Multiple earring holes, never allowed. Purple. I was banned from wearing purple. If you know me, 90 percent of what I own is purple. I have multiple holes in my ears. My hair is usually dyed purple, and it’s short. And I bought a car that wasn’t a GM, how dare I. All of these rules and things. Am I doing some of them to piss people off? Yes. It brings me an immense amount of joy, and I probably shouldn’t care at this point, but it’s funny. That being said, it took me a long time to realize that I wasn’t just doing it to pick at anyone. I was doing it because I genuinely love wearing purple. I genuinely love having the purple hair. But you have to find that out, and it takes some time.

The dating-questions technique: getting to know yourself

Vee: Know that when I started unmasking, I legitimately did not know who I was. What do I like? I don’t know. It’s like that scene in Runaway Bride where he keeps asking her how she likes her eggs, and she’s like, “I don’t know,” because she just went along with whatever whoever she was dating at the time did. I related to that so hard. So I printed off a list of questions you would ask someone you were dating, to get to know them, because my autistic brain was like, yes, this seems valid. A list of questions you would ask someone you were going to be in a relationship with, and I started asking myself, and I would try to fill out a couple every day, for me.

Danielle: I decided I had zero idea. I didn’t know what my hobbies were. I wasn’t allowed to have things like that as a kid. I didn’t know what I liked to wear or what I wanted my style to be. So I just started trying. I would go, “she looks interesting, let’s try what she’s wearing,” or “he looks interesting.” And honestly, the first place I started was everything my parents told me I couldn’t have or do as a kid, because it had stuck in my head as the thing I wanted to try. So why not try it and see if it worked? And there are many things I wasn’t allowed to have or do as a kid that just don’t fit me. But over the years I’ve tried many different styles, many different things.

Vee: When I was filling out those questions, some of them I couldn’t answer, so I had to do like you did. I went and tried stuff on, or said, “yeah, I’m going to try that food.” I love to shop at thrift stores, because I am not confined to a certain style because of cost. At a thrift store you can literally try on any style, purchase it, wear it around, and see if it’s you. That was a very easy way to work on my style. But for food, what were we talking about the other day at the house? My husband really likes to go to this taco place that has all different kinds of tacos, and when you read through some of the descriptions, it’s like, this is super scary, why are all these things in a taco? So I turned it into a game: every time we go, I order one taco I already know I like, and I order one different one. I take a bite, and if I don’t like it, I make my husband eat it. My husband is a human garbage disposal, so I’ll just try things and make him eat the rest.

Danielle: That’s fantastic. Sometimes if we go to a new place, I’ll order something and my husband will order something, so we can try both. We did that especially with moving, because we moved from New York to the Deep South, Birmingham, Alabama. Different world. You need a passport after being a New Yorker for forty-something years. There were so many things on menus where we went, “do you know what this is? You try that one, I’ll try this one, and we’ll see if we like either.” We’ve been here almost four years now, and we now have our favorite places, safe places to eat. But it was culture shock.

Vee: And that’s exactly what learning to unmask is. It’s culture shock, except the culture is you, and you’re learning what your new culture is going to be.

Your comfort first: advocacy, confidence, and what happens to RSD

Danielle: A very terrifying experience, but also, like I said, confidence. My confidence now is: don’t mess with me. Ask anybody. If I decide on doing something, I’m just doing it, and I’m doing it my way, and get out of my way. If you have an issue with how I do something, go away. You have a choice to go away.

Vee: Okay, so unmasking, to a degree, is learning to care more about what you think than what others think. Learning to care more about your comfort than others’ comfort. Because that’s what we have been doing for so long: sacrificing ourselves at the altar of other people’s comfort. We have been suppressing our stims, suppressing our voice, suppressing our discomfort. And I don’t mean you stand on a soapbox and beat people over the head with it. But a very polite “no, I don’t want to do that” is you starting to unmask. You don’t have to try a bunch of things on if that’s super scary. You’ll get there. Just start to gently advocate for yourself, and the unmasking will come.

Danielle: And something else that still hits roadblocks with us here and there, and we hit a major one a few months ago, is RSD. Rejection sensitive dysphoria is now something I rarely experience at a deep level for more than a couple of minutes. People who aren’t ADHD experience rejection, but for those of us with ADHD, RSD can be crippling. It causes so much depression and anxiety and so many other things. With unmasking, and with the attitude I have built by being able to unmask, and I’m not entirely sure my husband likes who he built, because he encouraged me to unmask and be me, and there are days I’m pretty sure he looks at me like, “what did I do?”, for the most part my confidence means the rejection sensitivity is very minimal for me. Which means my overwhelm is less overall. Do I have days? We all have days. But understanding and learning to unmask, finding out who I want to be for me, what brings me joy, what calms me, means I am more aware and purposeful with my actions and my emotions, for myself, which spills out to others.

Bikinis, fur coats, and modeling unmasking for your kids

Vee: One specific example of me unmasking in a way that scares the daylights out of me, and I don’t really feel like doing it, but I do it in spite of myself, specifically because children see everything I do: when we go to the beach, I wear the bathing suit that I really want to wear but am not confident enough to wear. People will say, “oh, that’s a body image thing.” It is. But who gave that to you? Why are you uncomfortable wearing that? So I wear a bikini every time we go to the beach, and it doesn’t matter if I’m a chunky monkey at that point of the season or a little more slender. I still wear it, because in my head I am modeling to my kids that I can be fearless in that aspect. I grew up being told to act like a lady, that you need to be slim, all these things. I’m awesome no matter what I weigh, so I’m going to dress like the awesome person that I am. Sometimes I have to take a couple of deep breaths before I walk out the door. But then you’re out there, and you forget, and you’re at the beach having fun, and it’s no big deal.

And my 17-year-old daughter doesn’t have a body issue, and that’s amazing. She’ll wear a shirt that’s kind of weird and cool and think, “I’m going to wear it today,” with zero issue about anybody talking about what she wears. My 13-year-old son, same way. At Christmas time he saw this coat, and it was a woman’s coat, in the women’s section, with fur all over it, and he wanted that coat. I said, “okay, but it’s in the women’s section,” and he goes, “I don’t care, cool coat.” And he misunderstood me. My concern as the mom was that it’s cut differently and he wasn’t going to fit in it very long. His concern was, “I don’t care if people say it’s a girl’s coat or not, it’s cool.”

Danielle: And I love that. My son is very much the same. My son is 26 and married now, and he really does not care what anybody thinks, at all. To the point where he’s really rude about it sometimes. Apparently I need to teach him to not be rude about it. But he doesn’t care. He wears what he wants to wear, does what he wants to do, does things in very non-traditional ways. Everything he does is way different from everybody else, and he’s fine with it. It doesn’t even occur to him. And even now, for myself, there are things people will point out to me, like “that’s not how everybody else does it,” and I didn’t even think about it.

When I’m working with clients who say, “I don’t even know where to start,” if they have kids, sometimes it’s a little easier. I’m like, you have a 5-year-old, or you know a 5-year-old? Generally those kids are unmasked. They live life out loud. They do whatever makes them happy. What made you happy as a kid? I use a lot of regression techniques when people are trying to learn to unmask. Did you like the swings? Did you like to blow bubbles? Do you like to hula hoop? What do you like to do? Just find one and have fun.

Tutu girls at a professional conference

Danielle: Vee and I went to a national ADHD conference in November, and it was so much fun. We showed up to a professional conference, and this is not the first time I’ve done this. This was my idea.

Vee: And if Danielle says tutus, I’m like, heck yeah, let me get it out of my closet right now, because of course I have a tutu and a crown. I brought multiple tutus and multiple crowns.

Danielle: We attended this conference, and we got known and tagged as “the tutu girls,” because we were willing to unmask and just be ourselves and have fun. We sat on the floor and colored in coloring books, and there was hula hooping, teaching people. I do not hula hoop, I’m too uncoordinated. Learning to have that freedom in yourself is such a big deal, and it’s one of the things we work on with all of our clients.

I actually had a conversation with a potential client yesterday, and I said, if you could do just one thing that you think is weird, but you secretly look at it and go, “oh man, I would love to do that,” what would it be? He said, “I like the jumping trampoline place, going with my kids.” I said, take it. He goes, “I can’t do that, I’m an adult.” I said, do you know anybody there while you’re there, other than your kids? He goes, “no, we just moved here.” So go. He took the day off work today, and they went. And he said, “that was so much fun, my kids said this was the best day ever.”

Vee: A lot of times kids just want you to play with them. And it’s hard to play, it’s hard to get in that mindset, if you’re masked.

Come learn with us: free summit and community

Danielle: These are all concepts we work on with every single client. If you want to know more, come join us for our summit. We are teaching you to thrive. Vee is actually going to be talking about this at the summit, so you’ll hear more about unmasking. I’m talking about how to overcome overwhelm and RSD and executive dysfunction, and how not to live in the overwhelm of the overwhelm, which ties into this conversation about unmasking quite a bit. Come learn, come join us. We have so many free options. The summit is 100 percent free, our Facebook group is free. We are here to help you learn how to unmask and gain that confidence in yourself and in the world around you.

Vee: Because this whole process of unmasking is so much easier when you find your group, when you can find your community to unmask with you. You sort of egg each other on sometimes, and it gets a little crazy, which is awesome and amazing and exactly what you need to feed your soul sometimes.

Danielle: One hundred percent. Have a good day, everyone.