Masking rarely starts as a decision. It starts as a fix.
A girl learns that being "too much" gets her into trouble, so she gets quieter. She learns that forgetting things gets her called careless, so she writes everything down twice. She learns that looking like she's coping is the quickest way to be left alone, so she gets very, very good at looking like she's coping.
By her forties, she's been doing it so long she doesn't know she's doing it. It's just how she works.
Then, often somewhere in perimenopause, it stops working.
If that's where you are, diagnosed or wondering, this post is about what's happening and why it isn't the failure it feels like.
What masking is, and what it isn't
Masking, sometimes called camouflaging, means hiding, suppressing or compensating for ADHD traits so other people don't see them. Pretending to follow a conversation you lost three sentences ago. Sitting on the urge to interrupt. Rehearsing a phone call five times. Over-preparing for every meeting.
It's far more common than most people realise. In a 2026 study from Simon Fraser University, 91.6% of 202 adults with ADHD reported camouflaging their traits at work, in public or in their relationships (Mylett et al., Research in Neurodiversity). An international expert consensus on females with ADHD describes how girls and women in particular compensate in ways that delay recognition (Young et al., BMC Psychiatry, 2020).
Here's the part that matters most. Masking isn't lying, and it isn't weakness. It's a strategy built by a young person, with no diagnosis and no map, to meet expectations that weren't designed for her brain. It takes observation, adaptability and sustained effort. Those are real skills.
Why the mask costs so much
The trouble with masking is that it runs on the same resources it's covering for.
In the same study, participants described camouflaging as taking so much mental effort that it worsened their attention, memory and focus, the very things ADHD already makes harder. They also described exhaustion, anxiety and low self-esteem, and some needed days to recover after periods of intense masking.
Think of it as a running cost. Every hour of looking fine is paid for with attention, working memory and emotional energy. For years, most women can cover that cost. They pay for it with late nights, weekend recovery, and the quiet assumption that everyone else must find this just as hard.
I wrote about this in 'High-functioning' isn't a compliment, and the point stands. The output was never the full story. The input was.
The year it stopped working
So why does the mask so often slip in midlife, after decades of holding?
Because the budget changes on both sides at once.
On one side, the cost goes up. Midlife tends to bring the heaviest load of a woman's life: senior work, children of any age, ageing parents, and often all three together. More to keep track of means more to mask.
On the other side, the resources go down. Perimenopause brings fluctuating oestrogen, which supports the same brain systems ADHD already strains, and it often brings broken sleep with it. I've covered the science in Is it ADHD or perimenopause?
When the cost of masking rises and the capacity to fund it falls, something has to give. A 2026 qualitative study of women with ADHD in perimenopause and menopause described exactly this: the menopause transition triggered a marked "unmasking" of long-standing ADHD traits (Vigus et al., Advances in Mental Health, 2026).
That's what I mean when I say perimenopause doesn't cause ADHD. For many women, it removes what was hiding it. The scaffolding stopped holding.
Unmasking isn't falling apart
When the mask slips, it can feel like you're losing competence you used to have. Forgetting things you never used to forget. Snapping in meetings where you once stayed calm. Running out of steam by mid-afternoon.
It helps to name what's actually happening. You haven't lost your capability. You've lost the surplus energy that used to pay for hiding the effort. What people are seeing now is the effort itself.
That's uncomfortable. It can also be a turning point. For a lot of women, the year the mask stopped working is the year they finally asked the question that led to a diagnosis.
“You haven’t lost your capability. You’ve lost the surplus energy that used to pay for hiding the effort.”
What to keep as you set it down
Unmasking doesn't mean dropping every strategy you've built. Some of them serve you well. The aim is to choose them on purpose rather than run them on fear.
Audit your strategies. Write down what you do to look fine. For each one, ask: does this help me, or does it only help me hide? Preparing before a big presentation might be a strength worth keeping. Nodding along to instructions you didn't catch, then spending the evening working out what was asked probably isn't.
Keep the skill, drop the secrecy. Many masking habits work better out in the open. A checklist you're not embarrassed about. A reminder you set in front of colleagues. Asking someone to repeat a point instead of pretending you caught it.
Find places where you don't have to mask. One friend, a partner, a coach, or a community of women going through the same thing. Even an hour a week without performing gives your system room to recover.
Count the recovery time. If a day of back-to-back meetings leaves you flattened, that's useful data. Build the recovery into the plan instead of borrowing it from your evenings and weekends.
Decide what you share, and with whom. Unmasking isn't the same as disclosing. You get to choose who knows about your ADHD and how much you tell them. Work is its own decision, and I'll cover it later in this series.
If you take ADHD medication or HRT, or you're wondering about either, talk to your GP or prescriber. Coaching works alongside clinical care. It doesn't replace it.
What's underneath
After forty years, it's natural to wonder who you are without the mask. Looking back can stir up grief too, and that's normal. I wrote about the grief nobody mentions after a late diagnosis.
Many women find the answer is better than they feared. Underneath the performance is someone curious, quick and far more resourceful than she's ever given herself credit for. She held everything together without a map for decades. That capability doesn't disappear when the mask comes off.
You don't have to stop being capable. You get to stop paying so much to prove it.
If you'd like support through this stage, you'll find more on my Women in Midlife coaching page. If the diagnosis question is still open for you, start with why so many women are being diagnosed with ADHD in perimenopause.
Ready to set down what's too heavy and keep what works? Book a free 50-minute discovery session. We'll look at what your strategies are costing you, which ones are worth keeping, and whether coaching is the right next step.
Angella Newell is an ADDCA-trained ADHD coach, founder of Winning with ADHD, and a late-diagnosed adult. She works virtually with late-diagnosed adults across the UK, Australia, Portugal, and globally. ADDCA is accredited by both the ICF and PAAC.