Camouflage and Autism (2): The Masks We All Wear

“Camouflage” is defined as a combination of masking — hiding behaviours that mark one as different — and compensating — using conscious or unconscious strategies to adapt to a specific environment (Hull et al. 2017).

The previous post on Camouflage and Autism (1) established that camouflage and masking are not exclusively autistic. They may be useful social tools for strengthening relationships and navigating different contexts, rather than merely harmful attempts to “pass” (Funawatari et al. 2024). To say simply “masking = harm” is, therefore, too simplistic.

All people adapt. All people perform. All people modify their behaviour according to context.

Camouflage is not a new phenomenon. Human beings have always adapted to the cultures into which they were born, and we routinely “try on different masks” in different situations.

We behave — and talk — differently with different people. We may speak formally to a manager but casually to a close friend; adjust our tone when talking to a child, an elderly neighbour, a doctor, a police officer or a customer; avoid jokes or slang in a job interview but use them freely with family; present ourselves confidently on a stage while behaving quite differently at the coffee machine. We dress and sit differently at a funeral, a wedding, a workplace meeting, a classroom or a visit to the bank.

We generally don't describe these shifts as dishonesty or psychological damage. They are ordinary forms of social adaptation: evaluating the setting, selecting the appropriate “part” to play and choosing behaviours that help communication go more smoothly.

Thought experiment: What if everyone stopped hiding their “authentic self” and behaved exactly as they felt like behaving in every situation — at work, in shops, on public transport, in schools, at universities? – Anarchy? Chaos?

Social life is, to some extent, performance, and adaptation is not necessarily oppression. It is one of the mechanisms by which collective life functions. Whether we like it or not, we have to adapt to the rules established in the culture in which we live – although those rules can, of course, be questioned, negotiated and changed.

There is no universal social rulebook. What counts as appropriate behaviour is culturally constructed.

Children learn, often without anyone explicitly teaching them, when to speak, how close to stand to another person, how to greet people, when to joke, how to apologise, how to disagree and what kinds of emotion are acceptable in public. These rules help us avoid unnecessary conflict, show respect, build trust and participate in work, education, friendship and family life.

And the rules vary considerably: Personal space, eye contact, silence, touching, emotional expression, humour, hierarchy and punctuality can all have different meanings in different cultures. In one culture, direct eye contact may be expected as a sign of confidence; in another, it may feel intrusive or disrespectful.

Speaking loudly and interrupting may signal enthusiasm in one setting, while waiting quietly before speaking may be considered respectful in another. Silence can mean embarrassment, thoughtfulness, disagreement, reverence, grief – or simply comfort. Even behaviour that appears strange or inappropriate to an outsider may make perfect sense within a particular cultural framework.

This matters for autism because camouflage is not necessarily about hiding autistic traits. It can also involve learning an unfamiliar social or cultural code and modifying one's behaviour accordingly.

Interestingly, some autistic people report finding life easier in foreign countries. One autistic person described living abroad for twenty years and finding that local people attributed his eccentricities to cultural differences rather than simply to being “weird”. Another described being “weird” in a foreign country as having an “excuse” for it. The behaviour has not changed. The interpretation has.

Why can camouflage be harder for autistic people?

The difference may lie less in the existence of adaptation than in the mechanism and effort involved. Social rules that many people seem to pick up automatically may need to be consciously studied, memorised and practised. The problem is not necessarily that autistic people cannot learn social rules. It may be that they have to work much harder to understand rules that others treat as obvious.

As Guan et al. (2025) note: “Subtle discrimination against autistic people cause autistic adults to hide their true selves.” They report that hiding autistic traits may help autistic people gain acceptance but can also lead to exhaustion and mental-health difficulties. Their study also points to the importance of inclusive, understanding and accommodating employers, particularly when autistic people are deciding whether they feel safe disclosing their diagnosis.

This is an important qualification to the argument that masking is simply an ordinary part of social life. The fact that everyone adapts does not mean that every form of adaptation costs everyone the same amount. Nor does camouflage necessarily begin with discrimination, even if it is subtle.

People may adapt because they want a relationship, a job, social acceptance, privacy or simply because they recognise that a particular behaviour is appropriate in a particular setting. The rules may nevertheless seem inconsistent, unspoken or irrational, especially when the “right” response changes according to tone, status, setting, relationship or hidden expectation.

As Thomas McKean put it: "Masking is not exclusive to autism. Masking isn't easy for anybody." His point is worth taking seriously. Masking is part of ordinary human social behaviour; the fact that autistic people may experience it differently does not make the phenomenon itself uniquely autistic.

“There's nothing inherent in "autistic masking" that makes it any more or less intense or constant than any other masking. The police officer that can't tell off a suspect no matter how much they want to. The doctor who is trying to deal with the spouse of an angry patient and has to maintain civility. Pretty much anyone in customer service. The caregiver dealing with a loved one's medical issues and suppressing their own needs and issues in order to do so. They all have to go through some pretty intense things, and those are only a few examples.” (A.E)

At the same time, the experiences described by people diagnosed much later in life can look very different. For example, one woman diagnosed after decades of apparently successful functioning describes being told, “But you don't look autistic”, and responds: “Being high-functioning isn't a compliment. It means I've spent 43 years perfecting how to hide.” [i.e. apparently masking successfully, without consciously thinking about autism or the need to mask.]

Another person puts the experience even more starkly: “Been masking so hard my whole life I even had myself fooled.” [i.e. discovering that he had been camouflaging without knowing it.][1]

 “Stop your complaining. Everyone else masks, too. Instead, be thankful you are fitting in and try to place a higher value on those who do accept you as you are without the masking. The fact that you need to mask is not your fault, but the people who tell you that you "can't be autistic," it isn't their fault, either. Stop blaming them. You are being accepted. Not everyone can say that. You're doing okay. Take it as a compliment and your mental health will thank you.” (Thomas McKean)

 “This isn't about "acceptance" or "society". It's about a fringe minority of people who may or may not be autistic creating a victim narrative and demanding that everyone else adapts to them without any willingness to reciprocate.” (A.E)

But not every autistic person can camouflage

This point is often overlooked. Individuals with severe/profound autism, who have profound communication, intellectual, sensory, motor or behavioural difficulties that cannot simply be concealed through conscious social adaptation, may have no realistic possibility of making themselves appear “less autistic” through the kinds of strategies discussed in the camouflage literature.

And this raises a genuinely interesting question: If camouflage is a strategy available primarily to people who possess sufficient communicative and cognitive resources to deploy it, can the experience of the “camouflaging autistic person” really be treated as representative of autism as a whole?

This is not an argument against studying camouflage. It is an argument against assuming that the people who can describe camouflage most articulately necessarily represent everyone who has an autism diagnosis.[2]

Camouflage at work

The workplace provides a particularly obvious example. All people conceal aspects of themselves at work. An employee may speak more formally to a manager than to a friend, avoid disagreeing openly in a meeting, smile politely while serving customers or conceal tiredness, irritation, anxiety or grief in order to appear “professional”.

Autistic employees may do this too – but may also feel pressure to conceal characteristics that might reveal that they are autistic. Finn et al. (2023), for example, found that autistic people interviewed about their experiences of job interviews reported pressure to camouflage autistic traits and behaviour.

Participants described concerns about being treated differently and, in some cases, not feeling comfortable or safe disclosing their “autistic identity” to an organisation. The study was small – ten autistic adults in Australia – but it illustrates an important distinction: ordinary professional self-presentation is not necessarily the same thing as concealing autism.

However, autistic employees do not necessarily have to conceal their autism in order to demonstrate that they can do their jobs. The relevant question for an employer should be whether an employee can perform the work required of them, with reasonable adjustments where necessary — not whether they can convincingly perform non-autistic behaviour.

In the past, it was arguably easier for some people to demonstrate what they could do without having to explain themselves in terms of a diagnosis.

And there are more recent examples: Temple Grandin describes how she approached employment rather differently. Rather than relying on a conventional job application and interview, she took a portfolio of her work with her and showed it to potential employers or contacts. As she puts it:

“I sold my skills by showing a portfolio of photos, drawings and articles… Today with social networking, it may be even easier to get samples of your work out where people can see it.”

She adds that she has worked with many colleagues who were autistic but not officially diagnosed – including welders, machinery designers and drafting professionals.

The point is not that a portfolio will solve the employment problems faced by autistic people. It is that there is another possible way of thinking about the relationship between autism and work: show what you can do, rather than spending all your energy showing that you can behave like someone who is not autistic.

Reverse masking?

There is another phenomenon that has become increasingly visible, particularly online, that might be called “reverse masking”: making an invisible difference explicitly visible rather than keeping it hidden.

Social media provides numerous examples of people deliberately demonstrating behaviours they associate with autism – for example, videos in which someone performs for the camera: “This is how I flap my hands; this is how I…” and so on. It could be funny. I find it rather sad.

The paradox is difficult to ignore. If masking means performing normality, and “unmasking” means supposedly revealing the “authentic autistic self”, what happens when the supposedly “authentic self” also becomes a performance?

The performance has simply changed direction: Instead of performing “not autistic”, the person performs “autistic”.

This does not mean that every such video is insincere. People may genuinely be explaining their behaviour, educating others or trying to make an invisible disability visible. Nor does public disclosure of disability automatically imply a demand for special treatment. In airports, hospitals, schools, workplaces and public transport, reasonable adjustments may be necessary. But visibility can become socially complicated when it is used to claim priority over other people without regard for their needs.

One airport video I saw in 2025 illustrated the problem particularly vividly. A woman attempted to move to the front of a boarding queue, ahead of parents with small children, and told staff that if she were not allowed to board first, they would “see her autistic meltdown”. (Yet, she could easily have boarded last, couldn’t she?)

Whatever the precise circumstances of that particular incident, the situation raises a broader question about accommodation and reciprocity. A disability may justify an adjustment. It does not automatically mean that every other person in a shared environment loses their legitimate place in the queue.

Perhaps this is another version of the same paradox.

Masking asks: “How can I hide my difference so that other people will accept me?”

Reverse masking asks: “How can I make my difference visible enough that other people must respond to it?”

Neither question is necessarily simple. And perhaps that is where the discussion of camouflage should end – not with the assumption that masks are always harmful, nor with the opposite assumption that they are always harmless.

People have always adapted themselves to other people and to the societies in which they live. That is part of being human. For autistic people, however, the effort required, the reasons for doing it and the consequences of doing it may be very different.

And perhaps the real problem is not that people wear masks. Perhaps it is the modern insistence that there must be a single, discoverable “authentic self” underneath them.

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[1] Similar phenomena have been observed outside autism as well: once a new label or classification becomes available, people may begin to apply it to themselves and reinterpret behaviours through it.

[2] Autism/ASD is a heterogeneous clinical category, comprising a group of autism subtypes which have little in common with each other, e.g., some autistic individuals are high-functioning and accomplished, others self-harm and non-verbal (Choi et al. 2022; Némorin et al. 2025; Whiteley et al. 2025).