Finding Your Voice in Therapy When You’ve Spent Years Masking

Finding Your Voice in Therapy When You’ve Spent Years Masking

Supporting queer and neurodivergent clients to express their true selves.

For many neurodivergent and queer people, therapy can feel both hopeful and terrifying. The idea of being truly seen and understood is deeply appealing — yet it can also stir up fear, especially if you’ve spent much of your life hiding parts of yourself just to stay safe.

Masking — the act of concealing your true emotions, behaviours, or identity to fit in — is something many neurodivergent and LGBTQIA+ people know all too well. It’s a form of self-protection that helps us navigate a world that isn’t always kind to difference. But over time, masking can take a real toll on mental health, leaving us disconnected from our own needs, voices, and authentic selves.

What masking can look like

• Masking can show up in all sorts of ways — some subtle, some exhausting:

• Rehearsing conversations before they happen

• Over-monitoring tone, facial expressions, or gestures

• Suppressing stimming, movement, or emotional responses

• Hiding aspects of identity (gender, sexuality, neurodivergence) to avoid judgement

• People-pleasing or mirroring others to keep the peace

For many, masking starts early — as a survival strategy in school, family life, or social settings. But when it becomes ingrained, it can make it difficult to know what’s authentically you and what’s a learned performance.

The cost of long-term masking

Masking often keeps people safe, but it also comes at a price. Research shows that long-term masking can lead to:

• Chronic stress and fatigue

• Anxiety and burnout

• Difficulties with identity and self-trust

• A sense of invisibility or emptiness

• Difficulty expressing needs or boundaries

When someone spends years editing themselves to fit in, therapy can initially feel like another space where they have to “get it right”. That’s why safety, acceptance, and curiosity are so important in the therapeutic relationship.

Therapy as a space to unmask gently

In affirming, neurodivergent- and queer-informed therapy, the aim isn’t to rush unmasking — it’s to create safety first.

A good therapist won’t ask you to strip away your defences before you’re ready. Instead, therapy can become a place where you:

• Experiment with authenticity — noticing what feels comfortable, and what still feels protective.

• Reclaim your voice — speaking freely without fear of judgement or correction.

• Explore your identity — not to define yourself neatly, but to understand how you’ve learned to survive.

• Build self-trust — learning that your feelings and perceptions are valid, even if others once dismissed them.

Unmasking isn’t about “fixing” anything. It’s about reconnecting with the parts of yourself that got hidden away, and learning to exist in the world as your whole, messy, beautiful self.

How therapy supports this process

For queer and neurodivergent clients, the right therapist can make all the difference. Someone who understands the impact of stigma, microaggressions, and sensory overload. Someone who doesn’t pathologise difference, but sees it as an essential part of who you are.

Therapy can help you:

• Recognise when you’re masking and why

• Develop self-compassion for your protective strategies

• Learn to express needs and boundaries without shame

• Reconnect with joy, creativity, and playfulness

• Build relationships where you can show up as your authentic self

A gentle reminder

Unmasking is not a destination — it’s an ongoing, fluid process. You don’t have to be “fully authentic” all the time to be valid. The goal isn’t to throw away every mask, but to choose when and where to wear them — on your own terms.

You’ve already survived so much by adapting. Therapy can help you move from surviving to belonging — to yourself, and to the world around you.

If this resonates with you…

If you’ve spent years masking and are ready to start reconnecting with your authentic voice, therapy can offer a compassionate, affirming space to begin.

You deserve support that celebrates who you are, not who you’ve been told to be.