Masking Can’t Stop Until Neurodivergence Is Dismantled
8 Ways the Neurodivergent/Typical Binary Forces Us to Mask—and Why It Has to End (Unpopular Therapist Opinion)
We are told that some brains are “normal” and others are not. This is the lie at the core of the neurodivergent/neurotypical binary—a myth dressed in clinical language, wrapped in DEI training slides, and institutionalized through diagnostic manuals. As a licensed therapist, I am trained to uphold this binary. I am expected to label people—to sort them into categories that decide their access to care, protection, and legitimacy.
And yet: I see the cost of this binary every day. I see it in the eyes of clients who’ve spent their lives masking just to survive, who come into the room afraid to be too much or not enough. I see it in the quiet calculation: What do I need to say to be believed? How do I edit myself to be seen as struggling—but not broken?
Masking is not a personal failing. It’s not a quirk or a habit or a “coping strategy.” It is the psychic cost and reality of trying to survive a world built around the neurodivergent/neurotypical binary.
We’re told to be grateful for labels. Grateful for the “neurodivergent” box that finally explains our suffering—if we can get diagnosed, if we can make our pain legible. But this binary doesn’t free us. It traps us. It reduces the rich, fluid, contextual experience of being human to either/or logic. It turns difference into diagnosis, and difference into danger.
And perhaps most damning of all: it isn’t even scientifically accurate.