Dr. Alok 'Dr. K' Kanodia

It creates all kinds of things with like the way that you act, right?

So you like try to force yourself into doing things.

You should be able to do it.

Other people are able to do it.

What's wrong with me?

How do I figure this out?

Like, you know, what do I do?

So we just end up pushing ourselves way harder.

So even something as simple as if you get into a fight with someone, the amount of exhaustion that your brain experiences is way higher.

And let me show you all another paper, actually, that touches on this.

So here's another paper.

So participants communicated that...

Masking around neurotypical people was difficult and often required tremendous energy to maintain.

When participants were no longer able to maintain this energy, they reported that their mask dropped, leading to extreme emotional instability.

My emotions can go from like all like nothing at all to all of a sudden I'm not able to maintain that mask anymore.

And it's like a thousand miles an hour or all hitting me all at one time, which in turn, which turns me into a blubbering wreck.

I had to learn the hard way that masking is not the benefit that I think it is.

Participants felt different from neurotypical people and responded to this by masking their ADHD symptoms, sometimes to the point of apparently changing their symptoms.

And masking was seen as emotionally difficult to maintain.

And this is what the neuroscience supports as well.