Those of us in the neurodiversity community are very familiar with the term unmasking. It refers to the process of consciously peeling back the mask we have built up through years of needing to act and appear as though we were neurotypical. For many of us this mask was built not by a conscious choice but by years of learning the hard way that our more instinctive behaviors often got us in trouble. Being labelled as “aggressive” when we were simply being factual or direct, or “rude” because we didn’t feel the need to make eye contact.
