Unmasking Isn’t a Return to Self—It’s an Emergence of Self
Why "Unmasking" is Misleading. Including Reflection Questions to Encourage Self-Emergence
As a therapist specializing in work with neurocomplex adults—those navigating the intersections of autism, ADHD, giftedness, trauma, and sensory difference—I hear the word “unmasking” often. For many of my clients, it marks a threshold: the possibility of living less from performance and more from truth.
But in practice—both clinically and personally—unmasking is rarely as tidy as the metaphor implies.
The term suggests a singular moment of revelation: a costume dropped, a self restored. But for those who began masking in early childhood, there often is no intact self waiting beneath. There is no return. Instead, there is the slow, sometimes disorienting process of building a self that never had space to fully form.
Unmasking is not a one-time act. It is dynamic, iterative, and deeply relational. It unfolds more like a spiral than a straight line.