Emotional Masking

Masking (sometimes referred to as camouflaging) involves suppressing or hiding one’s behaviors or traits to appear a certain way.

Emotional masking specifically refers to hiding or holding back on how one truly feels and presenting a different emotional state to the outside world.

People can hide their emotions by altering their facial expressions, body language, or words. Often, this is a way to adapt to the situation. Showing how they really feel may not seem appropriate.

What Is Masking?

For most people, most of the time, masking is ordinary social skill rather than a problem.

Researchers become concerned when it is sustained, effortful, and cut off from any safe place to put the mask down.

Masking can be a conscious choice for many. At times, it becomes an automatic reaction that the person is unaware of.

Sometimes, people may mask more because they receive negative feedback when they show their authentic selves.

Masking is often associated with neurodivergence, where individuals who are autistic or have ADHD may mask their traits as a way to ‘fit in’ and appear more neurotypical. However, anyone can mask to some degree. There are many reasons for this, which will be discussed.

Masking and Related Terms

Several overlapping terms describe hiding feelings, and each comes from a different research field. Here are the main ones:

• Expressive suppression: consciously inhibiting the outward signs of an emotion while still feeling it, such as keeping a straight face (Gross & Levenson, 1993).
• Surface acting: displaying an emotion you do not feel because a job requires it, whereas deep acting means trying to feel it (Hülsheger & Schewe, 2011).
• Concealment: keeping a devalued identity or condition, such as a mental health condition, hidden from others (Pachankis, 2007).
• Camouflaging: the autism research term, often used interchangeably with masking. One study described it as masking plus compensation, or working around difficulties with learned strategies (Hull et al., 2017).
• Self-presentation: everyday impression management is normal and often positive. It becomes masking when it is effortful, hides something you would otherwise show, and carries costs.
• Alexithymia: difficulty identifying or describing your own feelings. In masking, the person usually knows what they feel and hides it.

Studies of suppression usually ask people to hold back a response for a short time. Studies of neurodivergent masking ask about a whole way of presenting oneself across time. That difference matters when findings are compared.

What can masking look like?

Emotional masking can take several forms.

• Suppressing a feeling: holding back sadness, anger, or frustration, perhaps to avoid burdening others or to protect an image.
• Faking a feeling: smiling or appearing cheerful when you feel otherwise, as in customer-facing roles or where positivity is expected.
• Keeping a neutral face: hiding any emotional response, such as keeping a straight face during a challenging meeting.
• Masking behavior: sitting still on purpose when you usually fidget, or hiding other behaviors that do not come naturally.

Usually, these behaviors are considered masking if they do not come naturally to a person. If someone has to pretend or suppress their feelings and behaviors, this can be a form of masking.

Consider a call center worker who has just been shouted at by a customer. She feels angry and humiliated. Her voice stays level and warm, her face shows nothing, and she keeps her hands still under the desk.

None of this changes what she feels. It only changes what others can read from her.

Whether this is a sensible skill or a corrosive habit depends on how often it happens. It also depends on whether she can release the feeling afterwards, and whether anyone sees how she really feels.

Reasons for masking

There are various reasons why individuals may engage in masking. Here are some of the main factors that contribute to this behavior:

• Societal Norms: unwritten rules about which emotions are acceptable, gender stereotypes, and how people at home respond to real feelings.
• Workplace Requirements: jobs that expect a friendly, calm, or confident front whatever you feel.
• Mental Health Conditions: fear of being seen as “different,” “weak,” or “unstable.”
• Neurodivergence: pressure on autistic people and people with ADHD to appear more neurotypical.

Societal expectations and norms

Societal expectations and norms play a significant role in shaping individuals’ emotional expressions and behaviors. In many cultures, there are unwritten rules about which emotions are acceptable to display in public settings.

For example, someone may bump into you on the street. You may feel angry at them for not watching where they are going. Yet it is usually more socially acceptable to brush it off, smile, and carry on walking.

Display Rules Across Cultures

Because display rules are learned, they vary between cultures. Two large comparisons show how:

• Three countries: among 835 university students, Japanese participants’ display rules allowed anger, contempt, and disgust significantly less than in the two North American samples (Safdar et al., 2009).
• Twenty-three countries: cultures that emphasized keeping social order tended to report higher suppression scores, while cultures valuing autonomy and egalitarianism reported lower ones (Matsumoto et al., 2008).

Display rules are also personal and local. People who grew up in a household, or who live with a partner, that responds poorly to real feelings may mask more with those people. Over time, this can become the default, whatever the current audience.

Gender Norms

Gender stereotypes can also contribute to emotional masking. Society often expects men to be stoic, strong, and emotionally reserved, while women are expected to be nurturing, empathetic, and emotionally expressive.

These stereotypes can lead individuals to mask emotions that do not align with their perceived gender roles, such as men hiding their vulnerability or women suppressing their anger.

These norms have real consequences, which gives people a rational motive to mask:

• Anger at Work: evaluators gave angry women lower status than angry men, even when the woman was a CEO (Brescoll & Uhlmann, 2008).
• Masculine Norms: a meta-analysis of 78 samples and 19,453 participants linked conforming to masculine norms with modestly worse mental health and less help-seeking (Wong et al., 2017).

These findings have limits. The first shows a penalty for women’s anger, not that women mask more than men. The second concerns specific norms, such as self-reliance, rather than suppression of feeling as such.

Workplace requirements

In many professional settings, emotional masking is not only common but often expected as part of the job.

Certain occupations, such as customer service roles, require employees to maintain a friendly, positive, and approachable demeanor, regardless of their true feelings or the challenges they face.

For example, a call center representative may need to mask frustration or annoyance when dealing with an irate customer. They must keep a calm, professional tone throughout. This emotional labor can be exhausting. It may lead to burnout over time.

Similarly, in high-pressure work environments, such as finance, law, or healthcare, individuals may feel compelled to mask their stress, anxiety, or uncertainty. They want to appear competent, reliable, and in control.

Showing vulnerability or admitting to struggles in these contexts may be perceived as a weakness, potentially jeopardizing one’s reputation or career prospects.

As a result, employees may go to great lengths to hide their true emotions. They may put on a facade of confidence and resilience, even when privately grappling with significant challenges or doubts.

What Research Shows About Masking at Work

Researchers call this managed display emotional labor. A meta-analysis of 95 independent studies and 494 correlations compared two approaches (Hülsheger & Schewe, 2011):

• Surface Acting: displaying an emotion you do not feel. Along with the gap between required and felt emotions, it correlated substantially with impaired wellbeing (correlations between .39 and .48).
• Deep Acting: trying to feel the required emotion. It showed only weak links with impaired wellbeing and was positively linked to customer satisfaction.

Faking a feeling and trying to feel it, then, are not the same thing.

Workplace masking is also a neurodiversity issue. A UK study compared 285 autistic, 88 non-autistic neurodivergent, and 99 neurotypical adults (Pryke-Hobbes et al., 2023).

All three groups saw masking as an adaptive response, used mainly to guard against negative social and employment outcomes. Autistic and non-autistic neurodivergent participants also reported unique pressure to mask because of limited understanding of neurodiversity in workplaces.

Mental health conditions

Mental health conditions, such as anxiety and mood disorders (e.g., depression), can significantly influence an individual’s tendency to engage in emotional masking.

People living with these conditions may feel compelled to hide their symptoms and present a facade of normalcy to avoid stigma, judgment, or rejection from others.

Fear is a powerful motivator for masking. Individuals may worry about being perceived as “different,” “weak,” or “unstable.” They may fear that revealing their struggles will bring negative consequences in their personal and professional lives.

For example, someone with social anxiety may mask their discomfort. They might pretend to be confident, outgoing, and engaged while experiencing intense internal distress.

Similarly, individuals with depression may mask their low mood, lack of energy, and feelings of hopelessness. They may put on a cheerful, enthusiastic front to avoid worrying others or being seen as a burden.

Hiding a condition is not an escape from stigma. Pachankis (2007) argued that people with a hidden stigma face stressors of their own. Social situations become ambiguous, and the threat of discovery is constant.

One participant in a UK study of workplace masking explained why they hid a mental health condition (Pryke-Hobbes et al., 2023).

“I mask that I have anxiety issues.”

They said colleagues could see it as a weakness. This is one person’s account, not a finding about everyone.

Neurodivergence

Neurodivergent individuals such as autistic people or those with ADHD may mask as a way to hide their traits and appear more neurotypical.

In a society that is largely geared towards neurotypical norms and expectations, neurodivergent individuals may feel pressured to mask their traits and behaviors to fit in and avoid social difficulties.

Masking can involve a wide range of strategies. These include mimicking neurotypical social cues, suppressing stimming or other self-regulating behaviors, and hiding focused interests that others may see as unusual.

For example, an autistic person may devote significant time and energy to studying and practicing neurotypical social scripts, facial expressions, and body language. The aim is to navigate social situations more smoothly.

They may force themselves to make eye contact, even if it feels uncomfortable or unnatural. They may also resist the urge to engage in repetitive behaviors that help them regulate their emotions.

How Researchers Explain Autistic Masking

Researchers increasingly see masking as a response to the social environment, not a personal failing.

Pearson and Rose (2021) argued that masking is an unsurprising response to the deficit narrative and stigma that surround autism. They also drew on social identity theory. Talk of “choice” can be an illusion, they argued, when the alternative is exclusion.

An early qualitative study of 92 autistic adults identified three stages (Hull et al., 2017):

1. Motivation: fitting in and connecting with others.
2. Camouflaging: a mix of masking and compensation.
3. Consequences: short- and long-term effects, including exhaustion.

Masking Beyond Autism

Autistic masking is well studied, but it is not unique to autistic people. A survey of 144 autistic, 49 neurodivergent non-autistic, and 45 neurotypical adults found shared experiences (Miller et al., 2021). All three groups reported:

• mimicking others as a social strategy
• exhaustion from masking
• feeling disconnected from their true sense of identity

Other aspects, such as sensory suppression, were reported only by autistic participants.

It was a qualitative survey recruited through social media, so it is rich in detail but not representative.

For ADHD, the evidence is newer.

A preregistered Dutch study compared 105 adults with ADHD, 105 autistic adults, and 105 comparison adults on an autism-derived camouflaging questionnaire (van der Putten et al., 2024). Adults with ADHD scored higher than the comparison group but lower than autistic adults.

The authors urged caution. A questionnaire built for autistic traits is not ideal for ADHD.

One editorial argues that compensatory behaviors should not be relabeled camouflaging without dedicated theory and validated measures (Adamou, 2026). That is an expert argument, not a study. The question is still open.

Benefits of masking

While emotional masking can serve as a coping mechanism, it is essential to recognize that it also has benefits in certain situations.

Masking can help individuals navigate social interactions more smoothly, particularly in professional or formal settings.

It can also protect one’s privacy. It can prevent unwanted attention or intrusive questions about personal matters.

In some cases, masking can be a form of emotional regulation, allowing individuals to manage their feelings and maintain composure in challenging situations.

Take the earlier example of someone bumping into you on the street. You may feel like responding angrily. Regulating that emotion, however, may be in your best interests for your own safety.

Likewise, a customer service worker who yells at a difficult customer may lose their job.

Sometimes masking your true emotions, or finding a way to calm down, is the better approach. Reacting can damage you or someone else.

Flexibility Matters More Than Suppression

Flexibility may matter more than any single strategy.

Bonanno et al. (2004) tested New York City college students after the attacks of 11 September 2001. Those better able to both enhance and suppress emotional expression showed less distress by the end of their second year.

In other words, the ability to do either predicted better adjustment than a habit of suppressing. The study measured an ability, not how often people mask.

The harms in the research tend to attach to chronic, effortful masking with no safe place to drop it. A practical takeaway follows:

• Keep some places where you can drop the mask.
• Match the amount of masking to the stakes of the situation.

Consequences of masking

Despite its potential benefits, emotional masking can have significant consequences, particularly for individuals who are neurodivergent or struggling with mental health issues.

The constant effort to suppress or fake emotions can lead to a range of negative outcomes, affecting personal well-being, relationships, and overall quality of life.

The main costs covered below are:

• Authentic Self: a sense of disconnection, loneliness, and identity difficulties.
• Exhaustion: constant monitoring of behavior drains energy and can lead to burnout.
• Relationships: other people do not get to know the person behind the mask.
• Body and Memory: hiding a feeling does not remove it and can use up attention.
• Health: links with anxiety, depression, and possibly physical health.

Disconnection from authentic self and identity issues

Masking can create a sense of disconnection from one’s authentic self, leading to feelings of loneliness, isolation, and identity issues.

For neurodivergent individuals and those with mental health issues, pressure to conform to societal norms can mean constantly suppressing their true identity. They may feel like they are living a double life. They switch between their authentic self and the persona they present to the world.

This identity suppression can lead to self-doubt, low self-esteem, and a lack of self-acceptance. Autistic individuals may struggle to develop a strong sense of self, as they are constantly adapting to the demands of their environment, rather than embracing their unique qualities and characteristics.

Participants describe this cost in their own words.

One participant in a survey of masking across neurotypes put it this way (Miller et al., 2021).

“I feel foreign to myself.”

This 23-year-old neurotypical non-binary participant explained that behaviors adopted to stay safe had also left them stifled.

A 20-year-old woman in a study of autistic adults described the same cost (Hull et al., 2017).

“constantly having to be something else.”

She said she stopped herself from certain tics even when alone. Each is one person’s account, not a finding about everyone.

Emotional exhaustion and burnout

For neurodivergent individuals, masking can be an incredibly draining and exhausting process. The constant monitoring and adjustment of behavior to fit in with neurotypical expectations can lead to burnout and fatigue.

Neurodivergent individuals may feel the need to be “on” all the time, which can take a significant toll on their mental and physical well-being.

A survey (Bradley et al., 2021) found that autistic adults who engaged in high levels of masking reported feeling exhausted and isolated. Their mental and physical health also suffered as a result.

Likewise, someone who struggles with a mental health condition may find that the process of constantly masking drains them even more on top of their symptoms.

What Studies of Autistic Adults Show

In a qualitative survey of 92 autistic adults, exhaustion was by far the most consistent consequence of camouflaging (Hull et al., 2017). Participants described it as mentally, physically, and emotionally draining.

It also got harder to maintain the longer it continued, and many needed recovery time alone.

More recent surveys of autistic adults link masking to burnout and stress:

• Burnout: burnout-exhaustion partially mediated the link between camouflaging and depression (Benatov et al., 2026).
• Stress: perceived stress and emotion-regulation challenges mediated the links with anxiety and depression (McQuaid et al., 2024).

Both studies were cross-sectional. “Mediated” therefore describes a pattern of correlations, not a proven causal chain.

Hindered development of genuine relationships

Emotional masking can significantly impact the development of genuine relationships, as others may not have the opportunity to know the real person behind the mask.

For neurodivergent individuals and those with mental health challenges, the fear of rejection or stigma may lead them to prioritize pleasing others over expressing their authentic thoughts and feelings.

A study found that autistic adults reported engaging in people-pleasing behaviors as part of their camouflaging strategies.

This people-pleasing behavior can result in superficial connections. The individual may agree with others even when they disagree, avoid expressing their own opinions, and prioritize others’ needs over their own.

They may struggle to form deep, meaningful relationships based on mutual understanding and acceptance. The pressure to maintain a neurotypical persona can be overwhelming, leading to a state of chronic stress and emotional depletion.

What Research Shows About Suppression and Closeness

Experiments and long-term studies suggest that suppression is not a private act:

• Experiment: unacquainted pairs of women discussed an upsetting topic. When one partner was randomly assigned to suppress, communication suffered and her partner’s blood pressure rose (Butler et al., 2003).
• Real Life: 278 students followed through the transition to college reported less support, less closeness, and lower social satisfaction the more they suppressed (Srivastava et al., 2009).
• Culture: for Americans holding Western-European values, suppression reduced responsiveness in conversation. The effects were smaller among people holding more Asian values (Butler et al., 2007).

Suppressors were not disliked, though. They simply had less support and less satisfying social lives.

What Hiding Emotions Does to the Body and Memory

Laboratory experiments show what suppression does in the moment. In each, people watched emotional films or slides while either hiding their reactions or watching normally.

• Body: in 85 adults (43 men and 42 women) watching a disgust-eliciting film, suppression reduced expression, movement, and heart rate, but not reported feeling (Gross & Levenson, 1993). Other measures showed more sympathetic nervous system activity.
• Memory: suppressing expression while viewing films and slides led to poorer memory for details, whereas cognitive reappraisal did not (Richards & Gross, 2000).
• Positive Feelings: in 180 women watching sad, neutral, and amusing films, suppression increased cardiovascular activation and lowered reported amusement in the sad and amusing films (Gross & Levenson, 1997).

In practice, a person masking through a meeting is partly spending attention that would otherwise go to the meeting.

These studies used short films and instructed suppression. They cannot show what years of masking do in daily life.

Negative impacts on mental and physical health

The prolonged suppression of emotions associated with masking can have detrimental effects on both mental and physical health.

Bottling up emotions can contribute to increased stress, anxiety, and depression, as individuals are unable to process and express their feelings in a healthy manner.

For those already struggling with mental health issues, masking can exacerbate symptoms and hinder recovery. Research has found that autistic adults who reported higher levels of masking also reported higher levels of anxiety and depression (Cage & Troxell-Whitman, 2019). 

What the Evidence Shows

• Mental Health: a meta-analysis of 114 studies (241 effect sizes) found a medium-to-large association between suppression and psychopathology (Aldao et al., 2010).
• Physical Health: following 729 US adults for 12 years, the hazard ratio for all-cause mortality was 1.35 (95% CI 1.00 to 1.82) at the 75th versus the 25th percentile of suppression (Chapman et al., 2013).
• Autistic Adults: a survey of 342 autistic adults linked higher masking to more anxiety and depression, lower self-esteem, and lower authentic living (Evans et al., 2024).

The first study measured how people habitually regulate emotions, so it cannot show that suppression caused the symptoms. The second interval touches 1.00, so it is a hypothesis worth testing, not an established effect.

The autism survey was cross-sectional and self-selected. It cannot show whether masking leads to these outcomes, whether past trauma leads to masking, or whether something else drives both.

The authors questioned teaching masking strategies in therapies and education programs.

Evidence Check: Does Masking Harm Wellbeing?

Verdict: Supported with qualifications.

The best evidence, systematic reviews and a meta-analysis, shows reliable associations between hiding feelings and poorer social and mental health outcomes. Almost all of it is correlational and self-reported. So the claim that masking itself causes harm is established only for short-term interpersonal effects shown in laboratory experiments.

Three claims stand out:

• Social Connection: a meta-analysis of 43 papers (105 effect sizes) linked greater suppression to poorer social wellbeing (Chervonsky & Hunt, 2017). Experiments show suppression can disrupt a conversation (Butler et al., 2003).
• Concealing a Condition: a systematic review of 42 quantitative studies found secrecy consistently linked to depression and poorer wellbeing (Gnainsky et al., 2025). Nearly all were cross-sectional, so cause is unproven.
• Autistic Adults: systematic reviews of 29 and 58 studies link more masking to worse mental health (Cook et al., 2021; Zhuang et al., 2023). The evidence is cross-sectional and drawn from a narrow sample.

None of this shows that all masking is harmful. The cost varies with culture, context, and whether you can ever drop the mask.

Should I unmask?

Unmasking involves allowing oneself to express genuine emotions and being true to one’s feelings. By embracing vulnerability and open communication, individuals can foster deeper connections with others and create a more supportive environment.

Unmasking also helps challenge the stigma surrounding mental health. It encourages people to share their experiences and seek help when needed.

Dropping the mask is not as simple as flicking a switch to turn it off. Remember, masking is a behavior that has been learned and reinforced for many years for some people. Unmasking is gradual. It may take time and patience.

As previously said, it may not be suitable to unmask in every situation. It may be safer to mask, or unmasking may risk your employment.

However, if you are neurodivergent or find yourself hiding your true emotions around friends and family, it may be worth slowly dropping the mask. That way, you can live your most authentic life.

Here is a step-by-step guide to help start your unmasking journey:

1. Reflect on your masking behaviors: Take time to identify the specific ways in which you mask, such as suppressing sad emotions, forcing eye contact, or scripting social interactions.
2. Identify safe spaces and people: Start by finding supportive environments and relationships where you feel comfortable being your authentic self. It may be best to start with a trusted friend or family member.
3. Set small goals: Begin by setting small, achievable goals for unmasking, such as telling a trusted friend about a bad day you are having or using your natural facial expression in a safe space.
4. Reflect on what happened: After the situation, consider how it went. Did the other person respond well? Did they even pick up on your unmasking?
5. Gradually increase unmasking: As you become more comfortable, gradually increase your unmasking behaviors in different settings and with more people. Remember to go at your own pace.
6. Practice self-compassion: Unmasking can be emotionally challenging, so it’s important to practice self-compassion and be kind to yourself throughout the process. Celebrate your progress and recognize that setbacks are a normal part of the journey.
7. Seek support: Don’t hesitate to seek support from friends, family, therapists, or support groups as you navigate the unmasking process. Remember that you are not alone.

It is crucial to remember that unmasking is a personal journey and may look different for everyone.

Some individuals may choose to unmask in certain settings or with specific people, while others may feel comfortable unmasking more broadly. The key is to find a balance that feels safe and authentic to the individual.

What Does the Research Say About Unmasking?

The evidence for unmasking is thin. The steps above are practical guidance, not a tested protocol, and no trial has compared them with anything.

The strongest findings are indirect. In a survey of 180 autistic adults, a stronger autistic identity went with more disclosure, and more disclosure with less camouflaging (Cage & Troxell-Whitman, 2020). The authors concluded that safe, non-discriminatory environments, where people can be open about who they are, may reduce camouflaging.

A systematic review of mental illness disclosure likewise recommended nuanced approaches that consider personal and environmental factors (Gnainsky et al., 2025). Safety is the common thread.

Masking tends to fall when the social cost of being visible falls. That depends on the environment as much as on the person.

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