Professional Education & Consultation

Reframing Distress Through Context, Masking, and Neurodivergent Reality

It is common for neurodivergent people to be capable, driven, and outwardly successful through childhood and the school years, only to arrive at adulthood exhausted, burned out, or suddenly “not coping.” This often brings adults into care asking a deceptively simple question: Why now? What can feel like anxiety or sadness from an unspecified source may reflect the cumulative impact of long-term masking finally reaching its outer limit.

Signs of distress can signal the body’s coherent response to masking underlying traits. The most complete relief emerges when systems can encourage safe unmasking and increased awareness of the body and the feeling states beneath. Neuro-affirming education can shift the work from managing downstream effects to identifying upstream conditions that create exhaustion, shame, and collapse. Many adults may be unaware that neurodivergence is a relevant consideration and may be resistant to the idea.  Arriving at this possibility slowly, with encouragement and pacing in mind, is essential.  Grief almost always accompanies a later-in-life identity shift, along with delayed processing of past feeling states that may have been stored in the body for years. Current and emerging research that highlights the strengths of autism, adhd, and other neurodivergent traits can help normalize and contextualize these stages, and ideally invite new areas of pride and empowerment in the process. The work of unmasking is always multi-modal and necessitates ongoing environmental safety and relational support.