Later-in-life awareness or diagnosis has been on my mind. My own lived experience with late-diagnosed AuDHD is part of this, alongside the newness of unmasking I witness in my work and community.

At the start, a sense of urgency can hit hard. Awareness arrives and suddenly feels like a demand — something that must be addressed immediately. But we don’t step out of an alien suit and instantly become who we are “meant” to be.

The self inside has been isolated and is likely burned out by chronic stress. Complex trauma is commonly part of the picture. The emerging newness needs time to adjust, to grow, and to orient.

If I could speak to the younger, masking version of me, I would say: I get it. I understand. I cry for you, and it hurts. And thank you, because you helped me survive. I’m here now, and I’m learning to be okay.

Slowly.

Alongside relief, grief tends to surface, along with a sudden recognition of just how much effort has been involved. The monitoring. The adjusting. The rehearsing. The hiding.

What is usually meant by “masking” is the largely unnoticed effort of adjusting oneself to fit a context. Monitoring tone or expression. Managing reactions. Anticipating expectations. Explaining or simplifying oneself. Suppressing responses that might disrupt a situation. It is a learned strategy for navigating social, professional, and relational environments. Over time, it can become a form of self-erasure.

Through sustained and compassionate awareness, however, something else begins to happen. A sense of self begins to breathe.

The self emerges.

This is what takes time. It takes pacing, and attention, and practice with the unfamiliar experience of being yourself in the world. That unfamiliarity can feel destabilizing.

But the question can shift from Who am I? to something quieter and more precise:

What in me needs time?

Notice how the first question carries pressure and the second invites listening.

Our attention is easily pulled toward immediacy, toward change that happens quickly and visibly. But movement that happens too fast can introduce its own form of threat to a system already in transition. Nervous systems need time to learn. They need space to build capacity without overextending themselves in order to appear “normal” by society’s narrow standards.

Unfamiliar territory often feels unsafe. Awareness may take us there, but slowness allows us to meet our capacity where it actually is, leaving room not only for safety, but for joy and connection.

“Safety is not the absence of threat; it is the presence of connection.”
— Gabor Maté

Safety is contextual, relational, and temporal. Some environments can hold more variance. Some cannot. Learning this distinction takes time. It often begins with noticing where effort increases and where self-monitoring accelerates. Allowing a reaction to exist internally without reorganizing it. Letting a thought pass without translating it into something more acceptable.

Over time, these moments of awareness accumulate, and a clearer sense of what feels costly and what feels sustainable begins to form.

Unmasking does not require explanation. It does not require making inner experience legible to others.

Sometimes unmasking looks like doing slightly less. Sometimes it looks like leaving earlier. Sometimes it looks like continuing to mask because the context calls for it. What matters is not whether a mask is present, but whether its use is reflexive or chosen, rigid or flexible, unconscious or aware.

Unlearning coexists with relearning, and with learning for the first time. Some transformations are visible. Others happen quietly, almost imperceptibly over time, with space, rest, and relief from demands.

Safety to emerge.