Autistic Masking and the Fawn Response (My Story)

For most of my life, I thought I was just good with people.

I got along with every group in high school. The artsy kids, the athletes, the overachievers, the ones who barely showed up. I fit in everywhere, and I took that as proof of who I was: easygoing, adaptable, a person who likes everybody.

And in a way, that’s true. I do like a lot of people.

But that’s not the whole story.

I Thought It Was a Personality Trait

Here’s what I didn’t see until much later: I wasn’t just fitting in. I was becoming whatever each group needed me to be.

A slightly different laugh. A slightly different set of reactions. A quiet adjustment, made before I could even think about it, to match the room.

I didn’t call that masking. I didn’t call it anything. I called it being me.

That’s the thing about masking when it starts early. It doesn’t feel like a mask. It feels like your personality. There’s no moment where you put it on, so there’s no moment where you notice it’s there.

It Took Seeing My Kids

It was a couple of years ago that I started unpacking all of this for myself. I’d watched my kids get their ADHD and autism diagnoses, and I’d assumed they got it from their dads.

Then the patterns started showing up in me. And I thought: oh. Oh, crap.

Listen, I’m someone who was always capable, gifted, high-achieving. For women of my generation, that was practically a cover story. Nobody looked at the straight-A, can-do-anything girl and thought autism or ADHD. Not her teachers. Not her family. Not even her.

I’m 48, and a late-diagnosed neurospicy baddie. I managed to get the AuDHD thing. It’s validating, truly. It’s also a little like finding out the floor plan of your house was never what you thought it was, and now you get to walk through every room again.

Where the Fawn Response Started

I can trace my people-pleasing back to when I was very small.

My brother Scott was seriously sick, and our whole family reorganized around it. My dad was working constantly to keep us covered, and my mom was home carrying so much of it alone. I could see how stretched everyone was. Even as a little kid, I could feel it in the house.

So I decided, without ever deciding, to be the daughter who wasn’t one more problem.

The good one. The easy one. The exceptional one, because being seen for being exceptional was one of the few ways a kid in that house could get seen at all.

And I got very, very good at reading the room. At sensing a mood shift before anyone said a word. At smoothing things over, anticipating needs, regulating everyone else’s nervous system so that mine could finally settle.

That’s what the fawn response is. It’s one of the four survival responses, alongside fight, flight, and freeze, and it’s the one that looks the most like kindness. Moving toward people, agreeing, appeasing, keeping the peace, not because you’re being generous, but because your body learned that was how to stay safe.

And Yes, I Still Do It

I wish I could tell you I figured this out and it stopped.

It didn’t. I still do it with my friends and my family. I still catch myself regulating someone else’s nervous system first, as if mine can wait. As if keeping them steady is the price of my own safety.

What’s different now is awareness. That’s it, really. That’s the whole shift, at least so far.

I can notice it happening. I can feel the moment my body leans toward managing someone else’s mood. And occasionally, I can pause and ask the question I never learned to ask: what does my nervous system need first?

That’s the work I’m still doing. I’m not on the other side of it, looking back. I’m in it.

Why This Matters for How You Heal

I’ve written before about how neurodivergent nervous systems run hotter, and why the body has to feel safe before anything else can land. Masking is a big piece of why.

When you’ve spent years scanning every room, adjusting every reaction, and keeping everyone else regulated, your system never gets to stand down. You’re always on duty. And if you’ve also spent your life being told you’re “so easy to get along with,” you might not even know you’re working.

If any of this sounds familiar, here’s the longer story of how I found out I was AuDHD, and the crumbling that led to it.

Where to Start

If you recognize yourself in this, start with the fawn response. I made a Reiki activation for it, and it’s free on YouTube. For the bigger picture of how your body responds under stress, the nervous system regulation guide walks through fight, flight, freeze, and fawn in plain language.

And if the question underneath all of this is who you are when you’re not performing for the room, the gate reading is a good place to find out where you’re standing. Shedding a self that was built to be approved of is exactly what the third gate is about, and it’s the work we walk together inside Temple of Mysteries.

You weren’t fake. You were protecting yourself, and you were good at it.

Now we get to find out who’s underneath.