It’s ADHD Awareness Month, and my feelings about this have not changed since last year. So this is not an explainer essay for the unaware. I’m writing this for myself, to document another turn and spiral in the process, and I’m writing it to/with you in your own turns, spirals, and trials-and-errors.
The masking-unmasking concept is still a weird one for me. Maybe I'm wary of the longing I sense in some conversations about it (including in myself). Maybe I’m unsure that longing can ever really be answered. There’s something about it that implies: there's an original layer, some ideal true face, that I might reach someday and that I shouldn't give up on.
It makes me think of Jo March1 telling Friedrich about her Transcendentalist family: “It's just that with all of this transcendence comes much emphasis on perfecting oneself.”
Four years into my masking-unmasking experiments, I have not transcended. No original or untempered layer has broken through. Especially not one that’s wholly formed or wholly recovered. This is mostly a project of glimpses.
At first that sounds sad. But with practice, it’s getting to be more freeing. I can’t insist that I contain multitudes but then also persist in seeking a singular, ideal origin or version of myself.
I’ve had to loosen my grip on the possibilities of identity altogether, to be honest.2
If I could go back and tell myself anything on the day I heard the words severe attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, combined type, severe auditory processing impairment, severe, severe, I would say:
Hold yourself loosely. There are no sacred identities. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
Even the talents you’ve always claimed might not be yours to keep.
Nowhere has this been trickier than in my relationship to one particular mask, one persistent identity. Because it’s a mask that morphed into a talent.
And a talent that people love and know you for is not an easy thing to parse or an easy thing to let go.
I call it The Facilitator. It's my super-mask: the one that outpaces my others and the role that many people throughout my life have recognized me for playing.
The Facilitator will probably be familiar to anyone else who got the fusion of neurodivergence and trauma: I was chronically perceptive. I could spot a pattern unfolding in our family and turn it into a question. I could trip out of my body to detach and observe. Tense silence didn’t exactly frighten me; it was readable, it was information. I could sense someone beginning to misunderstand and invent a “what if…?” or a redirection. I had a radar for tone, I was obsessed with what made people tick, and then my instincts and sense of timing were further sharpened by some unpredictable family members and my hyperactive imagination.
A coping mechanism got too shiny and shape-shifted into what others called skill, called strength, called talent.
This talent-mask went to work for me, and I for it. It paid my bills. It built my resume. The Facilitator has been loyal. She’s been the reason people think of me for the job, sign up for the workshop, ask for ideas and advice. This mask won some awards. It gave me the fleeting relief of feeling special—and it’s a seductive thing, to feel special, when for the most part you’re convinced you’re an alien.
Masks that hide out as talents are costly and painful to remove. As soon as you start to laser them off, people look at you like: But you were so beautiful. Why would you go and do that to yourself? I don’t recognize you anymore.
And inside, you’re wondering, shit, should I tell them this is what I look like naked?
Temperament > Talent
My working curiosity right now, the space I'm experimenting from these days: temperament before talent.
It’s one possible way to subvert the super-mask predicament. I don’t think this is an earth-shattering kind of observation—it’s just that temperament feels underrated to me, or at least I’d been taking it for granted in my process.
We trade in our skills and talents to get jobs, connect with friends, etc. So it’s a given that unmasking often involves taking stock of talents and skills, asking which ones are really true to us or which ones we want to develop. We wonder what roles we are really meant to hold. That subtle longing vibe shows up again: someday this is all going to fit, I’m going to land in that just-right spot, I’m going to feel that just-right way, I’m going to be doing my perfect-for-me work.
But I wonder if the talent show isn’t a bit of a distraction sometimes. Especially when it comes to late-identified neurodivergence and long-held masks.
Weeks ago I stumbled onto old personality testing reports from some of my earliest jobs. Think StrengthsFinder, DiSC, etc. I remember how excited future employers were when “Strategic” was one of my top five strengths. They treated it like something coveted—having no idea why I had become so strategic in the first place. Reading the reports now is like reading a script for The Facilitator. It’s not that I answered their questions dishonestly. It’s just that by the time I took those tests, the mask and the coping skills were that ingrained. Bad data in, bad data out.
That’s how talent can muddy the process:
People can love and affirm you for your talents, having no awareness of your true temperament.
People can use you for your talents, having no regard for your true temperament.
We need a way to reset the gaze, turn it inward. To not continue to name ourselves by what people experience us as or affirm in us from the outside.
I’ve needed ways to listen longer and more steadily inside, and this re-centering with temperament helps. There are other kinds of re-centering, but this particular language is making sense to me right now.
I don’t think unmasking is necessarily a journey of: what are my true strengths? what skills do I need? what new role do I want to play?
It might just be: what’s my true temperament? what’s my natural habitat? and what do I need to start from that space more easily, more often?
Clues for Sorting Out Temperament
Fair warning: I’m no expert. On anything. These are field notes, not prescriptions.
Tension is a clue.
The Facilitator (the super-mask) borrows an aspect of my temperament: the observant, endlessly curious listener. My hunch is our masks always borrow something from our temperament, just like an invasive species borrows nutrients that really belonged to native plants, until it out-competes them. To be very successful, it contorts and overextends what’s natural inside. The observant, listening part of me is often drained and sometimes harmed when it’s forced to lead the conversation, push the dialogue, negotiate tense interactions on the fly.
When the talent you’re loved for (hired for, remembered for) doesn’t fit (or warps) the temperament you hold inside, there’s tension:
Psychic tension (who am I? why am I so weird?). Physical tension (migraines, inflammation, insomnia). Social tension (inability to make friends, intolerance for office chatter). Emotional tension (anxiety, overexplaining yourself, feeling misunderstood).
But when when there’s harmony, it’s generative. I’ve been hyperfocused on this essay for hours (apparently) but I do not feel drained or used up. I don’t feel like you’re taking something from me that I can’t get back. I feel a reciprocity of outward sharing and inward meaning. In general, I’ve noticed that wherever I get a sense of reciprocity, I’m engaging in a way that’s true to my temperament.
Dreams are a clue.
I keep having dreams about going back to college. I dream about being back on campus more than anything else. In most of the dreams, I’m trying to figure out how to become a student again. I’m wondering if I can join the yearbook staff again. I’m trying to figure out if I can get a graduate degree but still live in my old dorm room. And I’m happy. Eagerly happy. And then so sad when I wake up.
I could take this literally: it’s time to go back to school. (I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve researched graduate programs.) But symbolically, I think it points to a space where I feel at home, learning and observing. In these dreams, there’s the relief of being back where I belong. I feel safe.
So I’m trying to recreate some of that environment for myself.
offered an interesting approach using a syllabus, which I’m digging into now to plan for winter. It’s a way to bring the orientation of a student into my everyday rhythms, even if I’m far from a campus.Past projects are a clue (but imagine “project” loosely).
I have a habit of making lists of what I have loved doing or what I wish I could be doing, as if listing it out would make it so. They’re basically lists of I WISH I COULD FOCUS ONLY ON THIS. Or: I WANT TO RIGHT-SIZE MY LIFE TO JUST THESE FIVE THINGS! (There’s usually an undercurrent of fantasizing in them.)
I did this more than usual this year, as I felt a bit lost at sea, especially with my dad’s cancer process. I thought the lists were going to help me plan out what work to focus on—I thought they were going to be my rudder. But instead, I was surprised by how much they revealed about my temperament. Instead of giving me a rudder, they were describing the sea itself.
If you want to try this, be loose with it. Let the scale be all over the place. I didn’t judge how small or significant an item was or even how successful it appeared to others—anything specific I remembered that felt like a “yes, I loved doing that” or “thank god that’s over!” or “wish life could be like that every day” went on the list.
The idea is not to organize yourself but to expand the information you have about yourself. It’s a good thing if you create a messy catalog of reference points, experiences, or memories with these lists.
Questions I tried as starting points: What projects do I most remember? What work have I been most proud of? What ideas, philosophies, and curiosities do I still talk about, think about, or obsess over? What do I not regret trying or learning, even if “nothing” came of it? What am I relieved I don’t have to do ever again, now that I can (luckily, gratefully) afford to work independently and more creatively?
A few patterns that showed up for me, once I realized I could use these lists to listen for temperament. Yours will be different, but maybe these will give you ideas for playing with the information on your lists:
Forms of Expression: Concrete! Tactile! The lists were full of real, tangible things. They almost always pointed toward something I could hold in my hands at the end of some work or project. Gardening. Publishing. Research that turned into published books, like the yearbook at Michigan State or a report on housing and transportation for my community. The Facilitator deals in the abstract so much, but my true temperament wants to make things. If I’m connecting with people, I prefer to have an object in our hands. This is probably the biggest aha and biggest change I’ve made through this exploration. I’m thinking about the form or object of my expression so much more often, now that I realize how much that lights me up… even in terms of relationships, as in: should I share this idea or concern in a letter—something tangible I can make and share? Will a verbal conversation only bring out The Facilitator in me?
Modes of Discovery: Solitude! Hyperfocus! Detachment! People and people-related work did not appear on these lists, which took me awhile to notice and is a funny omission. Even though there were some collaborative projects, it was clear the main drivers for me were the ideas and research, and then the packaging-up of those ideas. It’s all about the meaning-making and dot-connecting.3 Plus there’s an element of detachment that I kind of love but didn’t see coming… e.g., with my first book, I was surprised at how freely I detached from it, like: cool, that was great, go do your thing, Book—I’m off to work on the next idea. I wonder if I could experiment with this more directly. I’d love to find some artists or writers who heavily/happily detached from their work once it was released or played with detachment as a part of their process. (Please drop a comment if you know of any!)
Rhythm: Clear exits! Long cycles! I’m curious about the relationship to time as it connects to temperament. I’m a very nonlinear thinker/doer, but I noticed that my favorite things on my lists actually involved clear end times. I had a natural exit I could pace against, an easy out before I got bored. (I’m still trying to get more honest about boredom.) These things also occupied an extended period of time or season, usually six months to a year. I sometimes feel like I need to work fast to avoid getting bored, but maybe I’m wrong. What else could this tell me about my natural cadence?
It’s all information. It’s all feedback. Which means it can all be adjusted, experimented with, and turned into more feedback. Like I said, these are field notes… I’m still tinkering with these things.
One last weird observation: The super-mask loves moderation. Take notes on moderation. (I would love to read them, if you’re sharing.) You’re not crazy or alone if you find moderation makes things worse.
Some people will say: But what can you learn from this mask? What can you save from it? Surely it can’t all be wrong for you!
Not all masks have to be reformatted into generous silver linings and gracious blue skies. Some of them are actually just masks that you can’t afford to wear in any shade of blue, and it’s ok to get honest about that.
It’s taken me over 10 years to transition out of The Facilitator. More than half those years, I didn’t know I had ADHD. I was missing the language that names the mask and names the overcompensation.4 So the true arc of this change is a decade’s worth of iterative (un)learning… adapting and shaking off and evolving through a series of jobs, projects, interactions, agreements, relationships.
But the challenge is the super-mask actually thrives in those conditions—after all, it was formed out of discomfort, uncertainty, even harm. It has seen me through far worse than a change in project direction. Of course it knows how to hold on. Of course it knows how to fly under the radar.
In other words, I tried the unmasking that sounds like: Ok, I can still be a facilitator, but of a different kind, with better boundaries. This is not a problem of the role I’m playing. This is a problem of parameters and how I show up in the role. This is about adaptation and moderation, about knowing how much to give and when to quit. I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water.
But moderation simply wasn't enough. Or I just couldn’t do it consistently enough to make it work in a healthy way. As long as The Facilitator gets to the center of my work and way of being, there are consequences. (I am hopelessly flawed, laughs Jo.)
The old writing advice applies here: Kill your darlings.5 The Facilitator is Queen Darling, keeping me from the rest of the story. There are remnants of that mask in me still trying to reach for a former ideal, but at last, I don’t give her work.6
I don’t feel diminished by that lost identity or worried about the repercussions anymore—but I also don’t feel any closer to some perfect transcendence. Which is probably a good place to be.
Winona Ryder will always be my Jo March.
I’ve been reading Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, and the timing has been right in that way that feels like synchronicity. Last night I opened to a page at random and landed on the lines: “I am growing up… I am losing my illusions, perhaps to acquire new ones.”
How did a kid who loved solitude and absolutely loathed group projects—to the point of calling a classmate stupid in fourth grade—end up being a go-to facilitator? Only a stealthy mask can pull that off.
For more thinking on this, check out
’s recent essay on skill regression, masking, and “pushing through—so many good examples and observations that make this thread on masking-unmasking more specific and more malleable.I mean “work” on multiple levels here, but it’s important to recognize that everyone has different power, access, and limitations here. When I had fewer resources and less stability (e.g., me and my guy losing our jobs at the same time), I couldn’t just say no to opportunities I needed, which is one way The Facilitator hung on so damn long. Now I work for myself, in the unwelcome company of chronic migraines, but with the privileges of good health insurance and support. I know it’s a tough and unsupported process for way too many of us, which affects how free you are to unmask and experiment.
Thank you for sharing! I have a hard time keeping up with digital publications, but I put reading this article on my to-do list for today, as I am trying to figure out what types of activities actually do suit me best.
I always feel torn between acting/working in film and solo-writing. I think collaborative projects keep me "on-track," but the level of degree to which I enjoy them depends on WHO I am working with (maybe pretty typical, but if I can't feel connected to who I'm working with, then I'm going to prefer the solo-side of collaboration).
Temperament-wise though, there is no question that solitude and quiet reflection are immensely grounding for me. Necessary, even. Which is why I can't get my hands into EVERY creative activity I enjoy. Which is painful, because I honestly want to do it all.
I'm definitely going to have to reread this article several times more so I can more completely digest all you've shared -- maybe I'll have some additional insights then...