High Functioning or High Masking?

"High masking" describes the exertion of sustained effort to manifest the expected version of the self around others

High Functioning or High Masking?

The Problem With “High Functioning”

“High functioning” is one of those deceptively tidy labels that appears helpful, until you examine what it is actually measuring. It does not describe an internal experience; it describes a set of observable behaviours that look palatable to others. It is, by design, a third-person judgement: you seem fine to me. And because it is anchored in external appraisal, it frequently erases the very thing that matters most in any conversation about neurodivergence; capacity, cost, and consequence.

To be called “high functioning” is often to be misread. What is being praised is not wellbeing; it is performance. The individual is assessed as “coping” because they can approximate neurotypical norms at work, in education, or in public social contexts. Yet this assessment rarely includes the hidden ledger: the hours of cognitive labour required to keep the performance intact, the physiological strain involved in tolerating sensory overwhelm, the constant self-monitoring, the rehearsed scripts, and the suppression of instinctive responses. “High functioning” is not a mirror held up to lived reality; it is a rating given for successful camouflage.

Why “High Masking” Fits Better

“High masking,” by contrast, is a more accurate phrase because it points to what is actually occurring: an individual is exerting sustained effort to manifest the expected version of themselves. I use the word manifest deliberately. For many neurodivergent people, the task is not merely “adapting” to a situation. It is repeatedly creating a socially sanctioned self, often in direct contradiction to one’s nervous system, cognition, and embodied needs in order to secure acceptance, opportunity, and even basic compassion.

Masking Isn’t Always a Conscious Choice

Masking is sometimes framed as a deliberate strategy: as though a person sits down, calculates the social advantage, and chooses it freely. For many, that is not how it operates. Masking is frequently conditioned from birth through a neurotypical cultural environment that rewards conformity and penalises difference. The lessons are taught, often without explicit words: be less intense, be quieter, be easier, be normal, be unfussy. If authentic expression reliably elicits misunderstanding, reprimand, exclusion, or ridicule, the psyche learns quickly.

Over time, masking can become reflexive; an automatic compliance response that precedes deliberation. It may not feel like “a choice” at all. It may feel like survival.

The Hidden Ledger of “Success”

This is why the “high functioning” misnomer is not merely inaccurate. It is hazardous. It implies that the person requires less support because they appear to need less support. It insinuates that they are “less disabled,” “less impacted,” and therefore less entitled to accommodation, flexibility, and care. Yet masking is camouflage, not evidence of low need. In fact, high masking often indicates high effort and high risk.

The lived pattern is painfully familiar: the individual “holds it together” in the role, then crashes outside of it. What others see as competence may be purchased with private collapse. The facade eventually has to come down, not because the person lacks discipline or dedication, but because the human organism cannot indefinitely sustain a self that is incompatible with its biology.

Burnout as a Predictable Outcome

Many high-masking neurodivergent people do not burn out because they have been virtuously “functioning” and deserve a holiday; they burn out because they are running a system beyond its limits while simultaneously denying the signals that would normally mandate rest.

Neurodivergent biology often requires different parameters for stability. Many people need vastly more recuperation time...genuinely more...because their nervous systems process the world differently and their cognitive load can be structurally higher. Sensory processing, social interpretation, emotional regulation, executive functioning, and constant adaptation can consume extraordinary energy. The result is not simply tiredness; it can be depletion that is somatic, cognitive, and existential, an erosion of resilience that shows up as shutdown, irritability, anxiety, dissociation, reduced tolerance, physical illness, or the flattening that accompanies sustained overload.

And this doesn't even include the comorbidities that accompany neurodivergent systems...complex health conditions, physical disability, and the realities that neurodivergent people are more likely to experience significant trauma. Additionally many speak of their experiences in masking these things from others to avoid un-safe experiences, and may have experienced iatrogenic harm from not being believed by the very medical professionals they do reach out to for help.

When the World Confuses Performance With Thriving

In a world calibrated to productivity metrics (KPIs, hustle culture, relentless pace, and performative “success”), high masking is routinely mistaken for thriving. Yet “success” for a high-masking person may merely mean they have poured almost all available capacity into appearing acceptable. When the world applauds the performance, the individual is left alone with the aftermath.

The Internalised Voice: “I’m Not Enough”

A further cruelty is that high masking can obscure needs even from the person themselves. If you have spent decades overriding your body’s signals, you may lose confidence in your own data. You may interpret your limits as moral failure. An internal monologue develops: You’re weak. You’re not enough. Other people can do this, why can’t you? This is not a character flaw. It is often internalised neurotypical standardisation, an inherited belief system that mistakes mismatch for inadequacy.

Self-Compassion as a Capacity Intervention

This is where self-compassion becomes not a sentimental accessory, but an essential clinical and existential task. High masking frequently requires a deliberate re-education: learning to treat capacity as information rather than a verdict, learning to recognise rest as a biological requirement rather than an indulgence, and learning that “being yourself” is not simple when you have been trained (explicitly and implicitly) not to be.

Support That Helps You Find the Real Need

Support from a neurodivergent-affirming therapist or practitioner can be pivotal, precisely because it helps a person peer past inherited messaging and locate their actual needs. It can assist with unmasking in a paced, safe manner, without romanticising disclosure or treating authenticity as a sudden switch one flips. Unmasking is often a gradual renegotiation of identity, safety, relationships, and self-trust. It is the process of allowing the nervous system to be consulted rather than coerced.

And un-masking doesn't mean going into the world without your armour. For some it can mean having a choice when to mask or not, or creating an environment where one can un-mask alone and on our own terms. Un-masking might also be an acknowledgement and recognition of one's cultural conditioning, and considering caring of the self that exists beyond that paradigm.

A More Honest Question

So the question may not be, “Are you high functioning?” Perhaps a more earnest question could be “What is the cost of your functioning, and who is paying it?” If the answer involves chronic depletion, hidden collapse, and relentless self-erasure, then “high functioning” is not a compliment...it is a misunderstanding.

“High masking” names what has been happening all along: effortful adaptation in a world that too often demands performance instead of providing accommodation. When we replace external judgements with language that honours lived experience, we make space for what high-masking people have needed from the beginning; accurate recognition, legitimate support, and the deep permission to recover their capacity without having to earn it through collapse.