The Legacy Code

AKA "How the F&#k Did I Not Know I Was Masking?"

I’m sitting at my laptop, in my forties, looking back on a lifetime of being labeled too intense, too moody, too sensitive - always, somehow, just too much. I wandered through workplaces, friendships, and social rituals, always feeling out of place, never realising my mind was tuned to a frequency all its own.

I was diagnosed with Autism and ADHD late in life, at 44. These diagnoses were both devastating and validating, finally giving a name to the feelings of otherness and the constant, bone-deep exhaustion I’d always known. The "mask" wasn't a surface-level social trick; it was a blueprint etched deep into my nervous system [2].

I know the title is blunt, but it echoes the words that ran through my brain on repeat after I first read about camouflaging. For me, this process was utterly unconscious, woven into my life for as long as I can remember. How could I, an intelligent woman, have run such a meticulous simulation of "normal" for decades without ever realising it?

I’m going to use a Tech analogy to explain this, which is apt for me since I worked in IT for 15 years, and also because I’ve had a lifelong love of analogies!

What I did, what so many late-diagnosed autistic women—especially those of us with the dual reality of AuDHD—have done is build a complex, invisible System, like software, inside my own head.

Essentially, my authentic self had a neurodivergent Core OS (Operating System), but to function in the world (the host environment), my brain created a bespoke, energy-intensive neurotypical emulation program—the mask. This program became the core of my identity.

This post explains how my brain built that intricate Legacy System—and why it took a lifetime to realise I was trapped inside it, like a terrifying, Matrix-esque nightmare.

To understand how this system operated, let’s look at the mechanics behind the mask itself.

The Social Survival Software: Writing the Code

My mask wasn't a “thing” that I could have removed, even if I had been aware that it existed. It was an imperceptible, multidimensional, ongoing performance, akin to a complex software program emulating neurotypical behaviour. It was a logical but ultimately exhausting way to adapt to a world that, whenever I tried to connect as myself, signaled my 'default settings' were not accepted—the equivalent of a continuous Error 404 [3].

The practice known as autistic masking or camouflaging goes beyond surface mimicry. It functions as an integrated system built from unconscious imitation and conscious effort, solidified through years of repetition and intense social pressure.

My AuDHD brain provided the essential components: the autistic capacity for systematic learning and the ADHD drive to avoid shame and rejection. This led to the development of what, in IT terms, could be likened to a "Social Initialisation Script," running perpetually in the background of my existence.

1. The Strategy: Compensation (The Script Library)

​Compensation, at its heart, was an unconscious act of social engineering. My brain became a relentless pattern-recognition engine, building a vast library of scripts: how to hold eye contact, which face to wear for bad news, the exact rhythm of small talk. I lacked an inner compass for feelings, but I had a flawless map for performance. I catalogued empathic noises, ready to deploy on cue. This became diagnostic mimicry. I watched neurotypical women like an anthropologist, adopting their mannerisms to blend in. Copying their clothes, catchphrases, even the rise and fall of their voices was not mere imitation—it was a desperate attempt to install the operating software for someone I could never truly be.

2. The Cost: Suppression (The Firewall)

This was where I paid the physical price. Suppression—the containment of my authentic autistic traits—meant my system was running a continuous, unconscious Firewall subroutine, which led to inner agony and debilitating fatigue.

Unconsciously, my brain would have stopped my natural self-stimulatory behaviour (stimming) in public, holding in the desperate need to move my body. It felt like a low-level electrical current constantly running through my limbs. I expect I substituted visible stimming (which I have no memory of ever doing) with subtle movements like toe-scrunching in my shoes, clenching my teeth, or twisting my fingers in my pockets (which I still do to this day).

This also meant I would have made eye contact at a fixed, painful cost, ignoring the deep sensory discomfort it caused. For me, maintaining eye contact is like simultaneously doing advanced calculus while being poked in the eye with a knitting needle; it demands virtually all my available cognitive resources.

Part of this suppression was also about dulling my own light; I would have avoided talking about my (super nerdy) special interests—deep dives into the history of the dictionary, or Italian Renaissance Painters—forcing myself into a low-level, generalised, more palatable version of myself.

3. The Exhaustion: Assimilation (The Debugging Loop)

Assimilation was a relentless mental workload that never powered down. Every social interaction was reprocessed and filtered, not just as rumination, but as data analysis.

I dissected every conversation, replaying what I said and what I should have said, while simultaneously rehearsing future encounters just to survive the week.

During every exchange, I monitored myself, striving to stick to the social script. It was like being both director and actor, always vigilant, always working, quietly evaluating every scene.

What’s so bewildering to me now is that I had no idea this wasn’t what everybody was doing! I thought it was just the way things were.

Gender and AuDHD: A Challenging Combination

The urge to camouflage was never innate; it was a calculated response to relentless social scrutiny. As an autistic woman, the pressure doubled under the weight of gender expectations. The female role demanded expert emotional labour and intricate relationship management. I absorbed the need to meet these high, neurotypical-centric standards, channeling my camouflaging into perfecting emotional displays that matched a feminine ideal I could never quite reach.

The AuDHD mix added yet another layer. ADHD fueled a frantic need to avoid rejection and a laser focus on learning social patterns, while Autism supplied the processing power to build intricate scripts. ADHD’s craving for novelty meant I was always updating my mask—adaptable, but utterly draining.

System Failure: The Allostatic Crash

The Legacy Code started as a survival tool, but it became my undoing. The stress I carried was not just psychological—it seeped into my body, becoming a chronic, physical burden.

Allostatic Load: The Wear and Tear

Masking is a chronic threat response that never turns off. The perpetual need to perform and suppress my authentic self triggers the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis—the body’s main stress system. This chronic social performance maintains a state of hypervigilance, leading to sustained, high-level cortisol output. Over decades, this persistence alters the set point of the stress response system.

What brain and body scans confirm is that this chronic dysregulation contributes to allostatic load—the "wear and tear" on the body and brain from continuous attempts to adapt to stress [8].

This is the measurable biological link to the high rates of co-occurring physical issues that haunt late-diagnosed women, like chronic pain, autoimmune disorders, and gastrointestinal problems [9].

The mask did not just drain my mind; it quietly eroded my body from within. It was a silent, unending tax on my very existence.

The Disconnection: Alexithymia

By strengthening my brain’s external performance circuits and neglecting the internal ones, I set the stage for alexithymia—the struggle to recognise and describe my own emotions. I became so attuned to the world’s demands that my interoceptive pathways—the channels for sensing my own body and feelings—grew dim. I lost touch with my emotions, often noticing distress only through headaches or stomach aches.

The gap between my constructed self and my true self became a chasm. I didn’t know I was sad; I just knew I felt sick.

The Misdiagnosis Merry-Go-Round

The relentless allostatic load and psychological stress led to a cascade of mental health struggles. Constant hypervigilance bred a steady hum of anxiety, and when my energy reserves ran dry, burnout and existential pain often showed up as depression. I was treated for these symptoms again and again, but the root cause—the unending stress of masking—remained hidden.

Autistic women face higher risks of trauma, social victimisation, and bullying, the very dangers masking tries to ward off. This history, mixed with sensory overload, fuels the high rates of eating disorders, especially anorexia. For me, eating disorders became a form of control and self-erasure, mirroring the mask itself. My own journey began with anorexia at 17, spiraling through compulsive overeating, exercise bulimia, and bulimia for more than two decades.

Autistic Burnout: The Collapse

Pouring all my brain’s resources into the "Neurotypical Simulation" left nothing for anything else. This led to acute autistic burnout—a total system crash that showed up as relentless exhaustion and a sudden loss of executive function, often mistaken for "sudden disability" in adulthood. My mind was starved of the energy needed for planning, organising, and adapting, because it was all spent on social performance. That’s why even the simplest tasks became impossible, and why it felt like I lost the ability to "adult" overnight.

Data Corruption: The Identity Crisis

The deepest wound was to my sense of self: a slow erosion of authenticity and coherence. My performed self—the mask—was always at odds with my hidden neurotype, trapping me in endless cognitive dissonance.

When the neurobiological habit of masking is finally interrupted—often by burnout or diagnosis—you are left with a "vacuum of identity". The person I presented to the world was not real, but because the masking process was automated so early, I struggled to identify which thoughts, preferences, and behaviours were genuinely my own. This struggle is directly tied to the neurological weakening of my self-referential and interoceptive pathways.

The performance was so effective that I experienced a persistent impostor phenomenon, even with a formal diagnosis [12]. Even after two years, I still, on occasion, find it difficult to accept that I "qualify" as autistic, worrying I have unwittingly deceived clinicians or, worse, fearing that I'm simply lazy or over-dramatic when I finally allow myself to struggle.

The internalised voice of the mask criticises the authentic self, threatening to prolong the cycle of suppression.

Debugging the Core OS: The Path to Rewiring

My diagnosis handed me the blueprint to the prison I had unknowingly constructed. The Legacy Code was never a moral failing; it was a complex, invisible system etched into the very core of my brain.

Unmasking is not just about awareness; it is the slow, demanding work of rewiring decades of automatic neural routines. I am learning to let my overactive inhibitory system finally rest, and to nurture the fragile pathways for interoception and genuine, spontaneous responses. Most importantly, I am coming to accept that my sense of not knowing myself is a direct, biological result—the mask was, quite literally, coded into my being.

I am learning to see my life not as a series of failures, but as proof of an extraordinary, resilient, and weary mind that did whatever it took to survive. Seeing camouflaging through a neuroscientific lens lets us move past surface explanations and grasp its deep biological roots.

Now, with new words and understanding, I can finally see how my survival strategies nearly undid me. At last, I am free to build a new system—one that is open, honest, and truly my own.

References

1. Lai, M. C., Lombardo, M. V., Cope, N. M., Eklund, K., & Happé, F. (2017). Comorbid problems in adult men and women with autism spectrum disorder. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 56(9), 808-817.

2. Hull, L., Mandy, W., Lai, M. C., Petrides, K. V., & Happé, F. (2017). Development and Validation of the Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire (CAT-Q). Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 49(3), 819-833.

3. Botha, M., & Frost, D. M. (2020). Extending the minority stress model to understand mental health problems experienced by the autistic population. Society and Mental Health, 10(4), 421–441.

4. Cook, J., Hull, L., Crane, L., & Mandy, W. (2021). Camouflaging in autism: a systematic review and research agenda. Molecular Autism, 12(1), 1-17.

5. Cage, E., & Troxell-Ruef, K. (2019). “Low support needs” does not mean “no support needs”: The experiences of autistic adults who have been denied support. Autism, 23(7), 1786–1798.

6. Schauder, K. B., & Bennetto, L. (2017). Motor and social processing are intrinsically linked in autism: a motor framework for social difficulties. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 17(1), 163-181.

7. Strang, J. F., et al. (2019). The "Masked" Autistic Self: An Exploratory Study of the Imposter Phenomenon in Autistic Adults. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 49(12), 4817-4828.

8. McEwen, B. S. (1998). Stress, adaptation, and disease. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 840(1), 33-44.

9. Mazurek, M. O., et al. (2017). Health conditions and health care of adults with autism spectrum disorder. JAMA Internal Medicine, 177(11), 1642–1649.

10. Raymaker, D. M., et al. (2020). Autistic burnout as a distinct phenomenon: An international qualitative study of autistic adults. Autism, 24(8), 2251-2264.

11. Bird, G., & Cook, R. (2013). The role of alexithymia in emotional processing. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36(5), 503-518.

12. Hull, L., Mandy, W., Eklund, K., & Happé, F. (2017). Autism, masking and mental health: The development of the Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire (CAT-Q). Psychological Medicine, 47(14), 2519-2527.