Does Current Culture Around ADHD and ASD Encourage Unmasking or Exacerbate Features?
In recent years, there has been a growing awareness of neurodiversity, including conditions like Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Social media platforms, online communities, and popular media have brought these neurotypes into the spotlight, offering spaces for individuals to share their experiences. However, this cultural shift raises a significant question: does this newfound attention encourage unmasking and acceptance, or does it inadvertently amplify neurodivergent traits in ways that might not always be beneficial?
What is Masking?
Masking refers to the conscious or unconscious suppression of behaviours and traits associated with neurodivergence to conform to societal expectations. For individuals with ADHD or ASD, masking can involve hiding stims, mimicking neurotypical social behaviours, or suppressing impulsivity. While masking often allows people to navigate social and professional settings more easily, it can come at a significant cost, including anxiety, burnout, and a diminished sense of self (Hull et al., 2017).
Current Culture and Unmasking
The current cultural landscape offers opportunities for many neurodivergent individuals to explore and express their authentic selves. Key aspects of this shift include:
1. Increased Representation
Popular media has started to feature characters with ADHD and ASD traits, promoting visibility and normalisation. This representation can encourage individuals to embrace their neurodivergence rather than hiding it (Lai et al., 2014).
2. Online Communities
Platforms like TikTok, Twitter, and Reddit have become havens for sharing unfiltered experiences of neurodivergence. These spaces often advocate for acceptance and validate behaviours once viewed as “inappropriate.”
3. Advocacy for Workplace and Academic Accommodations
Cultural conversations around ADHD and ASD have pushed institutions to consider accommodations like flexible schedules, sensory-friendly environments, and tailored education plans, potentially reducing the need for masking.
Exacerbating Features of ADHD and ASD
While the current cultural climate provides validation, it may also inadvertently amplify certain traits.
1. Over-Identification
The surge of ADHD and ASD content can lead to over-identification, where individuals may perceive traits as being solely related to their neurotype, overlooking other contributing factors like stress, sleep, or mental health (Nicolaidis et al., 2011).
2. Pressure to Perform Neurodivergence
Some individuals report feeling pressured to “perform” their neurodivergence in ways that align with popular narratives, leading to heightened expressions of certain traits inappropriately or uncomfortably.
3. Echo Chambers
Online communities, while supportive, can sometimes reinforce negative coping mechanisms or exacerbate traits without promoting strategies for managing them effectively.
Balancing Acceptance and Support
To ensure the cultural narrative around ADHD and ASD is truly supportive, the following considerations are critical:
1. Education and Nuance
Promoting a nuanced understanding of neurodivergence that balances acceptance with self-awareness is vital. This includes recognising the spectrum of experiences and encouraging tailored strategies for managing challenges.
2. Encouraging Individuality
Celebrating neurodivergent traits without boxing individuals into specific behaviours or traits allows for a more inclusive understanding of ADHD and ASD.
3. Access to Resources
Advocating for accessible mental health care, workplace accommodations, and educational resources ensures that individuals have tools to thrive without over-relying on cultural narratives.
Conclusion
The current culture around ADHD and ASD has undoubtedly contributed to greater acceptance and the encouragement of unmasking. However, it is essential to approach this culture with caution. While it offers spaces for validation and self-expression, it can also inadvertently exacerbate neurodivergent traits or lead to over-identification. Striking a balance between embracing authenticity and fostering practical support will help ensure that this cultural shift benefits individuals rather than complicates their experiences. Building on this, I work with people as they are. I help them untangle what they bring, so that they can step forward into the life that they can live authentically.
Addendum
Subsequent to writing this article, I found the following on Facebook. It seems to sum up much of the therapeutic journey for many people. I would be interested if it resonates with you. X has recently changed how it allows content producers to post. Instead, you will find this on Bluesky @jd-psychotherapy if you want to comment.
The burning question when one enters
analysis is “Who am I?” The immediate
problem, however, as soon as powerful
emotions begin to surface, is often a
psyche soma split.
While women tend to talk about their
bodies more than men, both sexes in our
culture are grievously unrelated to their
own body experience.
Women say, “I don’t like this body”; men
say, “It hurts.” Their use of the third person
neuter pronoun in referring to their body
makes quite clear their sense of alienation.
They may talk about “my heart,‘’
“my kidneys,” “my feet,” but their body as a
whole is depersonalized. Repeatedly they
say, “I don’t feel anything below the neck.
I experience feelings in my head, but
nothingin my heart.”
Their lack of emotional response to a
powerful dream image reflects the split.
And yet, when they engage in active
imagination with that dream image located
in their body, their muscles release
undulations of repressed grief. The body
has become the whipping post.
If the person is anxious, the body is
starved, gorged, drugged, intoxicated,
forced to vomit, driven into exhaustion or
driven to frenzied reaction against
selfdestruction. When this magnificent
animal attempts to send up warning
signals, it is silenced with pills.
It is possible that the scream that comes
from the forsaken body, the scream that
manifests in a symptom, is the cry of the
soul that can find no other way to be heard.
If we have lived behind a mask all our lives, sooner or later if we are lucky that mask will be smashed. Then we will have to look
in our own mirror at our own reality.
Perhaps we will be appalled. Perhaps we
will look into the terrified eyes of our own
tiny child, that child who has never known
love and who now beseeches us to
respond. This child is alone, forsaken
before we left the womb, or at birth, or
when we began to please our parents and
learned to put on our best performance
in order to be accepted.
As life progresses, we may continue to
abandon our child by pleasing others—teachers, professors, bosses, friends and
partners, even analysts. That child who is
our very soul cries out from underneath
the rubble of our lives, often from the core of
our worst complex, begging us to say, “You are not alone. I love you.”
- MARION WOODMAN
From her book, Conscious Femininity
References
- Hull, L., Petrides, K. V., Allison, C., Smith, P., Baron-Cohen, S., Lai, M. C., & Mandy, W. (2017). “Putting on My Best Normal”: Social Camouflaging in Adults with Autism Spectrum Conditions. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 47(8), 2519–2534. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803–017–3166–5
- Lai, M.-C., Lombardo, M. V., & Baron-Cohen, S. (2014). Autism. The Lancet, 383(9920), 896–910. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140–6736(13)61539–1
- Nicolaidis, C., Raymaker, D., McDonald, K., Dern, S., Ashkenazy, E., Boisclair, C., Robertson, S., & Baggs, A. (2011). Collaboration strategies in nontraditional community-based participatory research partnerships: Lessons from an academic–community partnership with autistic self-advocates. Progress in Community Health Partnerships: Research, Education, and Action, 5(2), 143–150. https://doi.org/10.1353/cpr.2011.0022