Masking: the cost of running a translation layer all day
If you get through the day by constantly translating yourself for other people, the tiredness at the end of it is the bill.
You are good at it. That is part of the problem. You read the face, you time the reply, you keep your volume where it should be, you work out what was meant rather than what was said, and you produce the expression the moment seems to call for. From the outside it looks like ordinary social competence. From the inside it is a second job running underneath the first, all day, and by the evening there is nothing left.
Masking is the word for this, and I want to write about it carefully, because people who mask well are often the last to be believed about how much it costs.
What the mask is doing
The mask is a translation layer. Autistic ways of communicating, processing and responding get converted, in real time, into something the people around you will recognise as normal. Eye contact you would not naturally make. Small talk that has no purpose you can see. A reaction to a joke that you did not find funny, delivered at the right moment. A stillness held over the urge to move.
Each translation is small. What makes it expensive is that it never stops, and that most of it happens below the level of conscious decision. You are not choosing to mask, most of the time. You learned, probably very young, that the unmasked version got you into trouble, and the mask went up before you knew you had one.
The bill arrives later
People who see you at work see the mask working. They do not see you in the car afterwards, unable to speak. They do not see the evening lost to recovering from the day, or the weekend spent recovering from the week. So when you say you are exhausted, they look at the competent person they saw at three o'clock and do not understand.
The bill also arrives as anxiety, which builds through a day of monitoring, and as shutdown when the capacity runs out, and eventually, if the load is sustained for long enough, as burnout, where even the mask stops working and skills you have had for years go missing.
Masking in therapy
Masking does not stop at the therapy room door. It is very likely, at least at first, that you will mask with me without meaning to. You will produce the emotion the moment seems to call for, look interested, fill the silence, and I will get a translated version of you rather than the real one.
A therapy you have to mask through cannot do much for the exhaustion masking causes. So we name it early, and we make it safe not to. No requirement to look interested, to smile, to fill a silence, or to produce a feeling on demand. Camera off if that helps. Direct questions rather than open ones if those are easier. Written summaries afterwards so nothing depends on you performing understanding in the moment. If you notice you have been performing for several sessions, say so and we change how we are working.
Where masking is optional
I am not going to try to make you stop masking. Sometimes the mask is a reasonable choice; there are rooms where the unmasked version would cost you something you are not willing to pay, and you are the only one who can judge that. What we work on is the difference between the places where masking is required and the places where it is habit.
Most people who mask heavily do it everywhere, including with partners, close friends and family who would not mind the real version, and often would prefer it. Finding those places, and slowly letting the mask down in them, is one of the more direct ways to reduce the daily load. It is also where language comes in: the words for asking for what you need, which many people have never had a chance to practise.
What the work involves
The therapy is CBT, adapted for how you think rather than trying to change it. It is concrete and explicit, with written agendas and summaries, and more thinking time than you may be used to. The goals belong to you, and I am not going to work on making you seem more neurotypical. Usually what people want is less anxiety, workable boundaries, less masking where it is optional, and a way to explain to the people around them what the day actually costs.
You do not need a formal diagnosis to do this. Self-identified, on a waiting list, or diagnosed are all welcome. I do not carry out autism assessments, and I will point you towards where those happen if you want one.
If you have been quietly paying this bill for years, there is more on how I work with autistic adults, and on the adaptations, from written summaries to camera-off sessions, that make the work possible.