Jane McFadden:

Hello and welcome to the ADHD Mums Podcast. I’m your host Jane and I’m here to make sure you know you are not alone. This is a safe place where we can talk openly about our struggles with having ADHD, being a mum and dealing with life a little outside the box.

We are real people with real stories who want to be able to laugh and be better than what we were yesterday. My name is Jane McFadden and I’m a 36-year-old mum of three who was diagnosed with ADHD a little over a year ago. I’m passionate about helping others take back their life and having a great time while doing so.

On this show, you can expect to laugh, hear vulnerable discussions and learn why things are the way they are for mums with ADHD. No two humans are the same, no two diagnoses are the same and no two stories are the same. It’s something that feels really personal and we as mums seem to find a way to put pressure on ourselves to be perfect, work in the perfect job, get paid well, be passionate about our work, have a clean tidy home and well-mannered obedient children.

To have it all. Can we just drop the expectations and acknowledge that that is completely unachievable? We have a whole lot to learn and a whole lot to look forward to on this podcast so let’s jump in.

You know what I’m so sick of hearing? You don’t seem like you have ADHD. What do people with ADHD look like? I’d like to know. Are they like crazy eight-year-old boys and no one else can have it? And this is where I think masking comes in.

Masking is super common, especially for women and girls and we listened to Dr Jacinta Thompson on her diagnosis episode where she actually specializes in highly masking and highly internalizing subtypes of autism and ADHD and what that basically means is that you’re pretty good at covering it up.

So some girls and women who are particularly intelligent, who are desperate to fit in, can cover it up and what I mean by intelligent is that they might be able to get the concepts a little bit quicker than others so they can make up for their deficits. Some people are so intelligent they only have to hear things once, let’s say.

So let’s say they’re inattentive but they’ve heard it once at some point even though it was repeated five times so they’ve kind of got the concept whereas other people need it repeated a few more times for processing reasons in their brain but they’re inattentive as well so if it’s only said a few times the chances of them processing it and listening at the same time is lower and so they might get picked up easier.

There’s some incredibly successful women with ADHD that I know just in my everyday life. Some of them work in psychology particularly. I don’t even know how they would have gotten through their master’s to be honest but yet they’ve done it.

That doesn’t make them have less ADHD than anyone else because they’ve gotten through a master’s degree. What that says to me is they’ve worked incredibly hard to get there or they’re phenomenally smart as well. So people that are successful and women who are successful, girls that are successful, still have the same symptoms.

They still struggle just as much but yet some people have got more capacity to cover it than others and that’s where masking comes in and masking is more of an autism term however it can very much be there for ADHD and it’s my firm belief that it is.

So if someone says, wow you don’t seem like you have ADHD, that is in fact what a mask does. It hides the visible signs. If we’re trying to look to see if someone’s masking what we’re actually doing is looking for gaps in a mask and the gaps cover what I’ve heard referenced a Swiss cheese brain and that was actually someone that I know quite well and he referenced that he had a brain like Swiss cheese which basically just means that he has some holes in it and his mask covers up the holes. She thought that was quite poetic.

So there is nothing worse and I’m talking from opinion here, I don’t claim to be an expert, but a lot of women claim that there’s nothing worse than disclosing something as vulnerable as I have ADHD and I’ve actually been masking for a lot of my life.

In that moment you can be completely invalidated by the person that you’re discussing that with or disclosing that to. You could get resistance from people that don’t believe you. You might be someone that’s completely on time, always have what they need and have the outward signs of success.

You may disclose to somebody that you believe you have ADHD and their response might be you just can’t because of all of this evidence that I’ve got. But they don’t see that ADHD is actually scaffolded by a lot of things behind the scenes. They don’t necessarily know that, especially in women.

They don’t see the amount of time it takes you to put something in a calendar, the fact that you have to put stuff that you need the next day in front of the exit to your house so you don’t leave. They don’t see the checking and the rechecking and the anxiety. They don’t see the staying up at night worrying, getting the bags ready.

They don’t see the impulsive, the hyperactivity. They see you as energetic. They see you as successful.

Maybe your risks have paid off. Maybe you’ve bought and sold real estate impulsively and given the idea that you’re very successful and clever. Maybe you bought it because you were bored in your brain that weekend and it just paid off.

So if someone does disclose to you that they might have ADHD and they’ve been masking, the first thing we want to do is validate their experience.

So let’s talk about what a mask might look like. A mask is a facade or an outward appearance. It’s like an optical illusion, but if you look at it in just the right angle you might see some flaws.

It can seem convincing and flawless even, but when you look at it in a different way or a different perspective the illusion breaks down in areas that you didn’t see.

The mask portrays that that person is an average person. They’re neurotypical, they’re fine, they can do things easily. But what actually is behind the mask is an inner experience that’s super different from that.

The mask gives you an impression of what you should think about somebody but it’s actually untrue.

Some women particularly are so good at masking that they can mask for decades without giving anyone the slightest clue that there might be something going on.

So imagine when they finally come out to reveal their true self, what their family and friends might say. It might be confronting for them.

What do you mean I’ve known you for 30 years? What do you mean you’ve been masking? What does that mean?

So if you’re wondering if you’ve been masking or one of your friends or you want to understand more about a mask you have to understand that it does slip, does crack from time to time, particularly under pressure and under a lot of stress.

There are times when you cannot put that mask on. And those are the kind of situations where you’re more likely to see a different side of a person than you normally would.

The distinction between a person and a mask is really what’s underneath it, not your first impression or your initial impression.

We’re looking for gaps so you’ll see this Swiss cheese brain, the gaps. What was the mask covering up? What’s it smoothing or painting over? If you’re giving the impression that there’s nothing here to see, whereas actually that’s not the case, let me give you an example of a masking that I do.

So I’ve referenced before that I am pretty terrible at driving, I’m woeful at directions. I get the feedback all the time that nobody is as silly, I don’t want to use the word stupid, as me with directions. My own five-year-old child corrects me on where we’re going.

So for example, I went to pick a friend up for netball and I was very aware that she was going to know where the netball ground was. I was very aware that everybody knows where the netball ground is. And I was also very aware that I had to GPS it to her house also, which I’ve been to 17 times.

So I’ve GPSed the 10-minute drive to her house and I’m actually sweating at this point because I know that she’ll probably be waiting at the front and when she gets in the car, I’m going to have to turn off the GPS that I’ve done to get to her house, which I don’t want her to know. But then I’m also going to have to GPS the netball ground, which is also weird and embarrassing.

And if I’m really honest, I’ve looked it up before and I’m not even convinced that the address that I’ve got is correct.

And I’m thinking it just feels like everybody else in the world is going to be able to drive there and I did, except for me. That’s an example in my mind of a mask. That’s my opinion, because there’s a large gap there of cognitive function that I am determined that I don’t want anyone to see….

Another example of gap could be a mask that you put on at the canteen. I have a very gappy brain with maths. I’m terrible at it.

And often we have to volunteer at the canteen and that sounds like a great thing to do. Okay, well, I don’t know why I said that. It doesn’t sound like a great thing to do, let’s be honest.

It sounds like a great thing for my child to see me do, helping out their team. But when we looked at the canteen duties, my husband and I, I said to him, I don’t know which one of these I could do. Now, I would consider myself a highly successful person.

I’ve got a couple of degrees. I own a company. I’ve worked with some successful people.

I pride myself on being quite intelligent. But as I said, I’ve got some gaps. So this is where the masking comes in.

I showed my husband, I was like, right, there’s food prep. And he’s like, oh God, no, don’t do that. You’re terrible at food prep.

And I was like, there’s cooking. He’s like, oh no, no, no, no, you can’t even cook chips. You’re terrible at that.

You can have a timer. Like, how will you know that it’s, no, you can’t do that. And I said, oh, and we went through, went through.

And then he goes, you’re going to have to do the serving. I said, but I can’t count. And I said, you have to take your phone and get the calculator out.

And I said, well, how can I possibly have a calculator and put eight plus eight into it? Like, as soon as it gets to seven and eight, six, seven, eight, once you go over and you have to carry the number, like I’m stuffed. If I go six plus seven, I always have to think about it. As soon as we go, you know, 27 plus, or any number, eight, nine, six, five, it just scrambles me.

So that’s the kind of mask I’m talking about, where I went in, I took some medication before, I put on my best smiley face, that it’s not really me. And I ended up masking by getting this little 11 year old girl who’s so sweet to do all the masks for me, and I just handed her the drinks. And I said, oh no, you’re really good at that.

And I made it about her and making her feel good, which was really kind of using her as part of my mask, that I was completely able to add numbers. I was completely able to serve customers, remember drinks and chips with no calculator and no idea what I was doing. And it was hilarious to me that they actually asked me to go back, which maybe showed how desperate they were for canteen helpers rather than anything else.

But that is an example of, for me, a mask. And sometimes with masking, I always have struggled to understand, well, what is a mask? Do I mask? Do other people mask? And this is why I wanted to, this episode was to give a few examples of what a mask might look like.

Whereas if I took that mask off, I would have said to people, wow, I have no idea what that adds up to, which I felt I would have been embarrassed.

I would have felt humiliated and people would have assumed probably that I had an intellectual disability. That’s what I was thinking. Whereas maybe the answer is to disclose you have ADHD, you’re not very good at maths.

Maybe that’s the answer. But regardless, I put a mask on because that’s what I wanted to do, if I’m honest, and I wanted to come off a successful, competent person. But for me, my brain is a little bit like Swiss cheese.

The other reality that I think a lot of people might identify with is school pickup drop-off. This is very taxing for us neurodivergent ladies. I am not the same person every day in the morning and in the afternoon.

I can’t actually mask for that long. You try to hide it, but you can’t because your pickup personality is different to your daytime personality. And to be honest, I dread it.

We recently changed schools and the school that we were at was one where you had to walk in with your preppy. So I had a prep child. I walked in and out every day for a year.

That was the year that I realized. I think I referenced it the first episode. We were running multiple businesses, Airbnbs, multiple kids.

It was insane. It was my year of burnout. That’s what that was.

And I actually think the pickup had a large amount of my difficult to cope. If I had bought out my daughter and put her in my car and I didn’t have to talk to anybody, I actually think I would have gotten through that year a bit better. Year one was still a little like that because for the first two terms of year one, I don’t know why they were still making us do the same pickup drop off.

And then I tried to get my daughter to walk out somewhere. I didn’t realize she had ADHD. She got distracted, got lost.

I was then scarred for life because I felt like a few people were looking at me like, what do you mean you get your daughter to walk out to the gate? She can’t do that. So after a little bit of, well, after she got lost, I’ll say she got lost one day, I wasn’t able to do that. And I was still walking in, walking out.

The next year, my son started prep and we’re doing it again, walking in, walking out. But when I’m saying walking in, I mean, you’ve literally got to stand there and wait for them to open the door both ways. So there’s always that awkward 10 minutes.

And that’s okay. Sometimes you can be in the mood, but the small talk, like I actually can’t, I can’t do that. I really can’t.

I don’t know if anyone else identifies with that, but I would feel dread, physical dread that I would actually have to do the pick up or the drop off. And then actually one strategy I had was to pick my daughter up five minutes early. So I’d pick her up early on purpose.

So I could be out by the time everyone walked in. And I want to be really clear that these are my friends. They’re not, these are not bitchy mums that I didn’t like.

These are actually my friends, but I can’t put my friend personality on all the time, especially with that amount of stress. And I couldn’t, you know, how was your weekend? Great. I couldn’t do it.

And I think there’s a real question around why do we need the mask? Why can’t we be real and authentic? But for me, sometimes I felt like I just wasn’t okay. And if I was to be real and authentic about how I really feel or felt at that time, probably people would have called my husband and said, shivers, is she okay? So, you know, you mask up your life and you mask up how you feel. And I’m actually really grateful.

I didn’t realize that the new school we’re at had like a drop off line and a pick up line, but it’s, it’s been a godsend because sometimes I go in and it’s my choice and I love that, but sometimes I don’t and that’s okay too.

So what are some of the common areas that we see where we find gaps? It might be social skills. It might be inconsistent capacity for executive function.

It might be sensory sensitivities, information processing. Let’s take being social. For example, it, you might be socially inconsistent.

I’ve often referenced that ADHD people are quite sensitive. So I would imagine if someone walked past me and saw me one day, spoke to me and was really nice and the next day didn’t, I might think that might be about me, but actually that might be about the other person. They might be really gappy in that area.

They might be high energy, extremely social sometimes, but other times they might completely crash and need to be alone. They can’t keep up that kind of energy. That for me, that isn’t someone who’s moody or angry or upset with you.

That’s somebody who’s masking in my mind. It might be a friend that you have a really close relationship who doesn’t respond to texts or calls for months, then later on will pick up where she left off. That might be someone that’s really happy to text, but doesn’t want to speak on the phone.

Happy to text in Facebook and send each other things, but don’t want to catch up. You might wonder what’s happened with that friend. That might be their mask.

We could assume a level of background knowledge and understanding that isn’t there. We might assume that people can find their way easily to the netball courts. Maybe they can’t….

You might see inconsistent capacity, sharp, organized, on the ball sometimes. Other times commitments drop left, right and center. It’s common for people to have highs and lows, but it’s not common for people to have the extremes.

ADHD people can go through periods which we can just call burnout, where everyday tasks become a challenge. It’s easy to assume that if someone is competent and capable right now, then they’re always the case. But in fact, we can go through periods of unexplained inability to function, but severely incapacitated a fair amount of time.

Sometimes I can talk easily on this podcast, and sometimes I have to edit for two hours afterwards because I can’t string two words together. Usually I give up, but sometimes I don’t.

You might see or hear me on this podcast and think that I’m really well spoken.

You might meet me in person and wonder why I’m struggling to put my words together. You might see me speak at a PNC conference and think I’m completely incompetent. It depends on the day.

I remember one day at work, there was a team and I was doing some mentoring with them in an area that I’m really good at. I’m not good at all areas. There was an area I was good at one time.

I drove down to Brisbane and I did some mentoring. And I’ll never forget it. I felt like I did really well that day.

I felt like I spoke well. I was on the ball. I had a lot of coffee and medication, by the way.

And I knew I could only do that for like three or four hours and I had to go. So I thought, I’ve got to get going. And there was a push-pull door on the office.

And I had my handbag, I had my computer and some stuff in my hands. I couldn’t get the door open. I couldn’t figure out it was a push-pull or whatever way it was.

And I remember the people just looking at me like, wow, what was going on with her? And then as I went to figure it out, I dropped everything. I had to pick everything up. And I walked out and thought, how did I run that session so well? But I couldn’t open the door.

I couldn’t figure out which way it was. Something’s really good at it and some things I find incredibly difficult. And I referenced in the first episode that my husband calls me the stupidest genius he’s met.

And that’s why I love that Swiss cheese analogy. And that mask almost puts that concrete, it fills in those gaps in that brain where you don’t know that person’s actually not getting that.

If you think about our kids and masking and girls at school, you don’t know that it’s not getting in.

You can’t see that she doesn’t understand what’s happening. You see the smile, the nod, but you don’t see the panic. And it’s that long-term panic that, in my opinion, can create psychological distress, which enough of that creates anxiety, depression.

It’s like planning organizational memory, making decisions, prioritizing that you assume that an adult can do. You would assume an adult woman particularly can keep a clean house. I don’t know why that is.

That’s a we were engaged or I don’t know what we were. And someone came over and I remember them looking around and I was thinking, why is my house so messy? And I’d actually cleaned it up that day, but I couldn’t figure out how to organize it better. That’s an assumption that people can do that.

I was just masking over the top of it. Sorry, haven’t had time to clean up. But later on, I remember thinking, I don’t think I know how to do that.

How do people make their house look better? I can’t figure it out. These days, people use technology to help with executive function. They have an online calendar.

They have a schedule, reminders, apps, tools, coping mechanisms. It’s like taking away someone’s glasses or turning off their hearing aid. If you were to take that away, they are relying on that to function.

Those apps and those coping strategies are like someone’s glasses or the hearing aids to see for executive function. If you took off someone’s glasses, you wouldn’t expect them to see. If you turn off someone’s hearing aid, you couldn’t expect them to hear.

But yet, we have to give off this attitude that we don’t have those things there. I don’t know why we do that. And this is what I’m hoping this podcast will reduce that stigma.

If I didn’t have my apps and my technology to help me schedule, everyone around me would see a completely different side of me. Because a person wearing glasses is not pretending to have perfect vision. They’re not hiding behind the fact they need glasses to be able to see properly.

And as a society, we accept that imperfection and allow them to wear glasses as their coping strategy. There’s no social stigma around that. And perhaps that’s why we mask in the first place.

Because society accepts that perfectionism in women, in mothers. So as a female, as an ADHD mum, I don’t want you to focus on my weaknesses and things I can’t do. I want to show you what I’m good at.

So I paint over the gaps. I fill them in. I smooth them over so you can’t see them.

And they’re not distracting. And they don’t make me seem different. But wouldn’t it be nice if I didn’t have to do that? Wouldn’t it be nice if that wasn’t the case? Wouldn’t it be nice if our daughters didn’t have to do that? And our sisters? And our friends?

So if someone says to you, you don’t seem like you have ADHD, that’s because they can’t see from your point of view. Your mask is clearly flawless. You’ve done a great job.

If you were the one hearing that, and then someone said, I think I have ADHD, and you couldn’t see it, there is nothing worse than disclosing something as vulnerable as I’ve been masking.

You can’t see how hard I’m working behind the scenes, only to have in that moment, the most invalidating experience by not being believed.

In fact, if you think about it, it’s completely ironic that when someone finally does decide to show their true self, the legitimacy of that is questioned. Because from the outside, all we can see is the perfect mask.

So in the end, there are a lot of signs to know to look for, but they all start with a mind frame that the person is not the mask. It’s what’s underneath the mask that’s important. And if you’re willing to be open and have a look, you can see something really special.

You might see a level of connection and understanding that you didn’t know was possible. You might then be able to release your mask and put your mask down. We could all take our masks off.

Wouldn’t that be confronting? And I know that, as I’ve said, everyone has a mask. It’s different for people with ADHD, and it’s hiding a lot more. And again, if you talk about, well, everyone gets stressed, everyone’s time poor, everyone gets burnout, why is that different for people with ADHD? Well, it affects them more.

It’s more severe. A mask is more, I physically cannot pick up my child from school without my mask being on. Because that mask is so different from what’s inside that I can’t have people see it.

And I’m not okay. I’m not okay. My inside is not okay.

I need that mask. And that’s where the difference is. Everyone can go, oh, I had a good weekend.

And it might be a slightly bit more cheaper version of yourself, but that’s, it’s a different experience. So when we unmask or attempt to unmask, we need people to validate the experience.

So I hope that clears up for you. What is masking in ADHD? I hope you got a lot out of this episode. Again, feel free to send me feedback, write in, go on my website, become a guest. I’d love to hear more from you guys.

A review would be great, a follow, share it with a friend. And if you have any more questions, let me know. I really hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much.