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Autistic masking, also referred to as Camouflage, is the conscious or subconscious suppression of autistic behaviors with the goal of being perceived as neurotypical. Masking behavior is a learned coping strategy responding to minority stress, that may prevent someone being stigmatized and injure their mental health. (2026). 9781787755802, Jessica Kingsley Publishers. ISBN 9781787755802
Autistic people have cited social acceptance, the need to have a job, and the avoidance of ostracism or verbal or physical abuse as reasons for masking.
The process of consciously reducing masking tendencies or not masking in some contexts, which some autistic people see as a desirable goal, is referred to as unmasking. Motivations for unmasking include no longer hiding one's true identity and avoiding adverse mental health outcomes.
Autistic people with conversational difficulties may use complex strategies to converse more successfully, such as scripting a conversation outline, developing conscious "rules" for conversations, and carefully monitoring if these are being followed. Many autistic people learn conversational rules and social behaviors by watching television shows and other media and by observing and mimicking a character's behavior.
A 2024 study supports prior research linking masking/camouflaging to interpersonal trauma and stigma, underlining its association to mental health challenges. From reduced self-esteem and authenticity issues in autistic adults, these findings challenge the common promotion of masking strategies for parenting, therapy, and education. Thus advocating for neurodiversity-affirming approaches that respects the autistic traits and identity preventing trauma and eliminates any practices that shames autistic individuals.
Masking may conceal the person's need for support. It can complicate a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), for example, under-diagnosis for females, particularly past childhood, as relevant symptoms are suppressed or compensated for.American Psychiatric Association (2026). 9780890425756, American Psychiatric Association. ISBN 9780890425756 The diagnostic criteria for ASD in the DSM-5, published in 2013, explicitly state that while symptoms "must be present in the early developmental period", these "may be masked by learned strategies in later life", allowing for a diagnosis even if autistic behaviors and difficulties are successfully masked. (2026). 9789811384363 ISBN 9789811384363 Addition of such a formulation was proposed to the workgroup drafting the criteria by representatives of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, including Ari Ne'eman and Steven Kapp. The diagnostic criteria for ASD in the ICD-11 (2022) contain a similar provision.
It has been hypothesized that masking may play an important role in explaining why autistic women are significantly less often recognized and diagnosed as autistic compared to men. This hypothesis was put forward by Lorna Wing as early as 1981 and is recognized in the DSM-5-TR published in 2022. Based on behavioral history, autistic women are more likely to receive alternative diagnoses such as anxiety, mood, learning, or eating disorders rather than autism. Research suggests that many autistic women may hide or mimic neurotypical behavior automatically rather than consciously choosing to do so, which can make them appear less visibly autistic and therefore less likely to be diagnosed. As a result, many autistic women remain undiagnosed until adulthood. A 2025 study, however, found no link between reported camouflaging behaviors and age of autism diagnosis for autistic women. Researchers proposed that gender stereotypes and inadequate assessment tools are more significant barriers to diagnosis for autistic women than camouflaging behaviors.
A serious consequence of prolonged masking/camouflaging is burnout and suicidality, due to the need to conform to social expectations. Masking/camouflaging is both a Consciousness and Unconscious mind process to reduce dissonance and distress, but over time, the emotional and cognitive strain can lead to alexithymia. Alexithymia is a condition that affects about 50% of autistic people, making it difficult to distinguish emotions from their physical states. Alexithymia can impair their ability to self-regulate thus delaying their recognition of stress until it reaches a critical point, leading to burnout. Suppression of stimming compounds the stress further. In Hochschild's theory of emotional labor, masking/camouflaging involves cognitive, bodily, and expressive efforts to suppress emotions, which can lead to mental challenges. (2026). 9780520951853 ISBN 9780520951853 The unconscious aspects of masking are potentially linked to dissociation, which may serve to manage stress but increases the risk of long-term burnout and suicidality.
In light of rising awareness of the adverse mental health outcomes of masking and insight into the double empathy problem, therapies and interventions with implicit or explicit targets of instilling neurotypical social behavior and suppressing autistic traits that can be adaptive in autistic people are controversial and often criticized by some researchers, neurodiversity proponents, and autistic self-advocates from the autism rights movement. Qualitative and quantitative studies have shown that a substantial proportion of autistic people who experienced applied behavior analysis therapy as children report being forced to behave like neurotypical peers or being encouraged to mask autistic features or behave "normally", with detrimental effects on their mental and overall well-being. In response to these concerns and accounts regarding risks of harm, some forms of ABA interventions have been reforming to mitigate risks of encouraging masking. Additionally, some researchers and practitioners have called for reforms in some other forms of interventions, such as social skills training, speech-language therapy, and occupational therapy, to mitigate such risks, with some therapists implementing such reforms.
There are some research studies centered around the experiences of masking by comparing different groups of neurotypes. In 2021, researchers conducted an online survey comparing masking experiences between autistic, non-autistic neurodivergent, and neurotypical groups. They found that the behavior of masking is shared across all types of people, but some aspects of masking are more specific to autism, such as sensory suppression and suppression of stimming. Researchers also recreated this study in a workplace context and examined workplace masking experiences for autistic, non-autistic, and neurotypical adults in the UK. They reported a large overlap amongst the three groups. Both neurodivergent and neurotypical people adopted masking strategies to achieve social goals, indicating that masking is a common experience, rather than one exclusive to autistic individuals.
There has also been qualitative research focused on the autistic experiences of masking. A study in 2022 conducted semi-structured interviews with twenty autistic teenagers and observed that masking is associated with mental health (but not necessarily in a linear relationship) and how both of them are affected by social and environmental factors. Researchers stressed the need to approach masking, authenticity, and mental health through the context of people's identities and the environment, providing implications for diagnostic services and interventions. There have been comparisons between masking and passing.
In addition to masking, researchers investigated the "authenticity" autistic people feel while socializing and observed that supportive environments, such as being around people who accept and understand them, can lead to self-awareness, reduced stress, and more positive socializing experiences than camouflaging. However, this doesn't imply that autistic "masking" is equivalent to non-authenticity. Researchers proposed that the focus should not be encouraging masking but promoting autistic authenticity, creating a more positive self-image and better mental health.
The assumption that later development of an ability in early childhood necessarily entails lifelong lowering of the ability is argued to contradict the premise of different developmental trajectories, as brains that develop along different lines can and in some cases do display variations in which one variant develop an ability fast and early while another variant develops it slower but to a higher degree later on. The fact that many of the specific behaviours in neurotypical control samples differ between cultures is also cited as an argument against the claim that stress caused by the extent of use of these behaviors later in life can be linked to childhood delays of their acquisition associated with autism somehow making them "unnatural" to autistic people.
It is argued that the assumption that camouflaged autism in women must be the cause of lower rates of diagnosed autism in women than in men is circular reasoning, and that it skews research on camouflaged autism towards female samples which further confounds the applicability of research that appears to show harmful effects of learned social skills, as compared to research on male cases of autism. The construct of camouflaged autism is argued to follow a tradition of unfruitful constructs that made quantitative testing more difficult when similarly applied to depression and schizophrenia in the past, and that allegations of stress-related harmful effects of acquiring social skills may discourage both persons formally diagnosed with autism and formally undiagnosed persons who Self-diagnosis with autism from learning social skills or encouraging such people to exaggerate their symptoms, similar to allegations that learning social skills would destroy special abilities in past decades.
However, the studies on gender differences in masking/camouflaging are inconsistent. Some studies found no gender differences in camouflaging with non-autistic or autistic adults. Female and males may have fundamentally different reasons to mask/camouflage with no association between compensation score and sex or age of diagnosis.
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