Masking: The invisible cost of being palatable

This piece was written by Leanne Knell, Senior Employment Advisor for Mental Health Matters Worcestershire, for Mental Health Matters as part of their partnership with ParaPride on International Day of Persons with Disabilities 2025.

One of the least understood parts of living with invisible disabilities and neurodivergence is masking.

Masking isn’t pretending to be someone else.

Masking is suppressing symptoms, pain, needs, reactions, confusion, overwhelm, sensory load, hearing gaps, trauma responses, all in order to make the world more comfortable, easier, smoother… for everyone else.

I mask every day.

I mask when I can’t quite hear something, and I laugh along. I’m profoundly deaf, and instead of asking again, I pretend I caught it because I don’t want to be “difficult”.

I mask when joints dislocate more easily because of EDS but I hold myself together like nothing is wrong, because people feel safer when you’re “managing”.

I mask when I’m parenting my neurodivergent children.

Buffering them from judgement and buffering the world from misunderstanding them.

And people often say to me: “You’re amazing… I don’t know how you cope… most people would have given up.” I know they’re trying to be kind.

But comments like that are also a reminder that the bar expected from disabled people is survival. And survival is rewarded. Not rest. Not needs. Not support.

Masking lets me get through the day, but it often costs me the day after.

Energy. Physical recovery. Emotional capacity. Pain. The exhaustion of being perceived as “fine”.

Mental health is part of this too, I live with PTSD and part of mental health masking is also self-protection.

When you’ve spent years being misunderstood, dismissed, or pushed to minimise your experience, your nervous system learns to pre edit yourself before the world can judge you first. 

Masking becomes a trauma adaptation. Even when you don’t want it to be.

Masking teaches a message silently, over time: “My real needs make other people uncomfortable.”

For International Disability Day, my hope is that we don’t just celebrate “resilience”.

Resilience is not evidence of wellness.Resilience is often evidence of how well we are suffering quietly.

If we want to make the world safer, if we want people to take the mask off, we don’t need more individual grit.

Masking is invisible.

But its consequences are not.

What it actually looks like to take the mask off

Taking the mask off is not a dramatic moment.

It’s usually small.

It’s saying “I didn’t hear that, please can you repeat?” without apologising five times.

It’s turning captions on without feeling rude.

It’s telling someone “that movement hurts today” instead of pushing through silently.

It’s saying “I need this to be slower / clearer / written / visual / direct” without fear of eye rolls.

It’s not having to justify why you need the accommodation, it’s just being able to state it.

It is being allowed to exist in the room as you actually are, not as the most digestible version of you.

And for that to actually be possible — the responsibility sits mostly with environments, not the disabled person.

Safer workplaces + safer communities look like:

• normalising checking understanding (not making repeating feel like a burden)

• listening to needs without interrogation or disbelief

• seeing support as access, not special treatment

• believing lived experience, the first time it is said

• designing for variety not standardisation (senses, pace, communication styles)

• being disability literate at a cultural level, not just policy level

• understanding trauma informed communication is accessibility

When those things are present, the mask isn’t needed.

Authenticity becomes safe by default, not a performance of bravery.

Because the goal should never be asking disabled and neurodivergent people to be more resilient.

The goal is to build systems where resilience isn’t constantly required.

International Disability Day is a powerful moment to shift the conversation from “how well disabled people cope” — to how well environments and systems reduce the need for coping in the first place.

We need safer spaces, emotionally literate workplaces, slower assumptions, and permission to communicate needs without penalty or shame.