Claney (2025) describes autistic masking as “a complex phenomenon in which autistic individuals consciously or unconsciously hide or modify their behaviors and traits to fit within societal expectations.” Masking, Claney argues, takes a massive emotional toll on autistic adults and can be devastating to mental health. A substantial body of research supports these findings, with the entire neuroaffirmative movement as evidence of the psychological and physical costs of long‑term masking.

In The Unmasking Workbook for Autistic Adults, I wrote about the transformative power of unmasking, and I created a roadmap to help autistic adults unmask and live authentically. I cited research such as the Beyond Zebrafish study (South and colleagues, 2021), which found that autistic adults who unmask and live authentically are less likely to experience chronic suicidal ideation or die by suicide. According to this research, autistic adults have three times the suicide rate of the neurotypical population, and autistic women have four times the rate. Those with co‑occurring mental health conditions face a 92 percent higher suicide rate than autistic adults without such conditions, and more than half of autistic adults have at least one co‑occurring diagnosis. These statistics tell of a harsh reality that surviving as an autistic adult in a neurotypical society is a Herculean task.

In my workbook, I also quoted autism advocates such as Devon Price, who captures the lived experience of masking by writing, “Most of us are haunted by the sense there's something ‘wrong’ or ‘missing’ in our lives—that we're sacrificing far more of ourselves........

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