When therapy feels like another place to mask

For many autistic and ADHD people, therapy can end up being just another space to perform and to mask. One more situation in which where we have to pretend. Pretend to be okay. Pretend to make eye contact. Pretend not to be tired or overwhelmed or burnt out. But it doesn’t have to be. The right kind of therapy can become the one place where you don’t have to pretend anymore.

As an autistic psychotherapist, I know how much energy masking takes. It’s exhausting and it can drain you. Giving so much effort to manage other people’s expectations, to read the room, to look okay. When you’re doing that in therapy too, it gets in the way of what really matters, and stops you from being your authentic self with your psychotherapist.

Masking in therapy doesn’t always look obvious. It can be the small things — smiling when you don’t feel like it, saying “I’m fine” because that feels easier than explaining, holding yourself a certain way because you think that’s what’s expected. Some people apologise for stimming. Some try to make small talk first because silence feels awkward. Some worry they’re “doing therapy wrong”. The truth is, you can’t do therapy wrong. But if your therapist doesn’t understand neurodivergence, it’s easy to start shaping yourself around what you think they want, trying to be a “good client”.

For me, being person-centred means I hope to provide the conditions in which you feel able to be your true self. I don’t want to place further expectations on you. I want to create a therapeutic space where you feel safe enough to be real. You don’t need to apologise for silence, or for stimming, or that your thoughts ping out in tangents. You don’t need to make it easier for me to understand you. It’s my job to work hard enough to try and understand you.

Unmasking doesn’t happen in one single dramatic moment. It’s something that unfolds slowly, in its own time. In my experience, it always starts with noticing. Just having the self-awareness to notice when you are transgressing your true self and doing things to fly under the radar or to fit in. Noticing small, quiet things, like when you apologise for being yourself, or agree to something you don’t want to do.

And once you notice, non-judgementally, these small masking moments, that can be enough to create a tiny sliver of space between you and the thing you’re doing. And in that sliver you can start to experiment with being a bit different. Maybe you test the water by saying what you actually think. Maybe you don’t edit your words this time, or force yourself to make eye contact. Little by little, the space between who you truly are and who the world expects you to be starts to soften.

If you’ve spent years masking, it can feel impossible to imagine not doing it. “Who am I if I don’t act in these ways? Who am I underneath?” That’s okay. We don’t rip it off like a plaster. It’s more like unpicking a knot — gently, patiently, one thread at a time. And you don’t have to lower your mask alone, when you find the right counsellor to support you through the process.

I often think of masking your neurodivergence as retreating into a dark room deep inside yourself. A small, private space built for safety, which over time becomes a kind of quiet prison. You learn the rhythm of your own solitude. Person-centred psychotherapy, when it’s authentic and patient, is not a hand dragging you into the light, but a voice that reaches through the dark to remind you there is a world beyond your walls. And gradually, if your counsellor is safe enough and trustworthy enough, you might find yourself pressing your palm to the door, wondering if you’re ready to turn the handle. No pressure. Just the quiet possibility that, one day, you might not need to hide away anymore.

That’s the kind of space I try to create for clients. A place where you don’t have to perform or fix yourself or make sense. You can stim, ramble, sit in silence, cry, or laugh. You can be too much or not enough or somewhere in between. You can be you, exactly as you are.