You may have spent years carefully monitoring your words, expressions, emotions, movements, interests, sensory needs, and reactions without realizing how much energy it required.
You may rehearse conversations before they happen, replay them afterward, force yourself through overwhelming environments, hide when you are struggling, suppress behaviors that help you regulate, or change who you are depending on the people around you.
Over time, masking can become so automatic that it no longer feels like something you are doing. It simply feels like who you are.
Understanding Masking: Recognizing the Hidden Cost of Hiding Who You Are is a comprehensive 163-page guided workbook created for neurodivergent adults who want to understand why they mask, how masking has shaped their lives, and how to begin building a life that requires less hiding.
Written by Licensed Professional Counselor Taneshia Carey, this workbook combines compassionate psychoeducation, real-life examples, self-assessments, reflection questions, practical activities, burnout support, identity exploration, personal planning, and applications of the GRACE® Model.
This is not a workbook that tells you to immediately remove every mask.
Some masking behaviors developed to protect you from criticism, rejection, bullying, conflict, punishment, or misunderstanding. The goal is not to judge the ways you learned to survive. The goal is to understand them, recognize their current cost, and begin making safer and more intentional choices about how you want to live.
Throughout seven in-depth chapters, you will learn how to:
• Understand what masking is and why it develops
• Recognize social, emotional, sensory, workplace, school, and relationship masking
• Identify childhood messages and experiences that shaped your coping patterns
• Explore masking as a survival strategy rather than a personal failure
• Recognize the connection between masking, exhaustion, anxiety, burnout, and identity confusion
• Identify your personal burnout warning signs and recovery needs
• Reconnect with your preferences, strengths, needs, values, and authentic identity
• Explore unmasking in ways that honor your emotional and physical safety
• Practice asking for accommodations and communicating your needs
• Create boundaries that protect your energy and capacity
• Build routines, relationships, and environments that require less masking
• Develop a personalized 30-day and 90-day action plan
The workbook includes:
• A masking self-assessment
• A workbook progress tracker
• Seven structured educational chapters
• Real-life examples showing how masking appears in everyday situations
• Signature Take a Moment with Taneshia reflections
• Guided journaling and self-discovery exercises
• Masking inventories and energy trackers
• Burnout warning-sign assessments
• Identity and values exploration
• Accommodation and support planning
• Boundary and communication exercises
• Chapter takeaways
• Branded GRACE® Reflection pages
• A personal support and accommodation plan
• 30-day and 90-day goals
• A personal GRACE® commitment
• Additional resources and recommended reading
This workbook was created for neurodivergent adults, including those who identify as autistic, ADHD, AuDHD, dyslexic, or another form of neurodivergence.
It may be especially helpful if you:
• Feel exhausted after social interactions
• Feel like you are performing rather than being yourself
• Constantly monitor what you say or how you appear
• Hide your emotions, sensory needs, or natural behaviors
• Were diagnosed later in life and are trying to understand your experiences
• Struggle to identify your own preferences or needs
• Feel like different people know different versions of you
• Frequently push beyond your capacity and then need significant recovery time
• Want to live with greater self-awareness, authenticity, and self-compassion
You do not have to uncover your entire authentic self at once.
You do not have to unmask in environments that are unsafe.
You do not have to criticize yourself for the coping strategies that once helped you survive.
This workbook invites you to slow down, understand your story, honor your nervous system, and begin creating a life that supports who you are instead of constantly demanding that you become someone else.
Digital workbook: 163 pages
Introductory price: $29.99
Regular price: $34.99
You may have spent years carefully monitoring your words, expressions, emotions, movements, interests, sensory needs, and reactions without realizing how much energy it required.
You may rehearse conversations before they happen, replay them afterward, force yourself through overwhelming environments, hide when you are struggling, suppress behaviors that help you regulate, or change who you are depending on the people around you.
Over time, masking can become so automatic that it no longer feels like something you are doing. It simply feels like who you are.
Understanding Masking: Recognizing the Hidden Cost of Hiding Who You Are is a comprehensive 163-page guided workbook created for neurodivergent adults who want to understand why they mask, how masking has shaped their lives, and how to begin building a life that requires less hiding.
Written by Licensed Professional Counselor Taneshia Carey, this workbook combines compassionate psychoeducation, real-life examples, self-assessments, reflection questions, practical activities, burnout support, identity exploration, personal planning, and applications of the GRACE® Model.
This is not a workbook that tells you to immediately remove every mask.
Some masking behaviors developed to protect you from criticism, rejection, bullying, conflict, punishment, or misunderstanding. The goal is not to judge the ways you learned to survive. The goal is to understand them, recognize their current cost, and begin making safer and more intentional choices about how you want to live.
Throughout seven in-depth chapters, you will learn how to:
• Understand what masking is and why it develops
• Recognize social, emotional, sensory, workplace, school, and relationship masking
• Identify childhood messages and experiences that shaped your coping patterns
• Explore masking as a survival strategy rather than a personal failure
• Recognize the connection between masking, exhaustion, anxiety, burnout, and identity confusion
• Identify your personal burnout warning signs and recovery needs
• Reconnect with your preferences, strengths, needs, values, and authentic identity
• Explore unmasking in ways that honor your emotional and physical safety
• Practice asking for accommodations and communicating your needs
• Create boundaries that protect your energy and capacity
• Build routines, relationships, and environments that require less masking
• Develop a personalized 30-day and 90-day action plan
The workbook includes:
• A masking self-assessment
• A workbook progress tracker
• Seven structured educational chapters
• Real-life examples showing how masking appears in everyday situations
• Signature Take a Moment with Taneshia reflections
• Guided journaling and self-discovery exercises
• Masking inventories and energy trackers
• Burnout warning-sign assessments
• Identity and values exploration
• Accommodation and support planning
• Boundary and communication exercises
• Chapter takeaways
• Branded GRACE® Reflection pages
• A personal support and accommodation plan
• 30-day and 90-day goals
• A personal GRACE® commitment
• Additional resources and recommended reading
This workbook was created for neurodivergent adults, including those who identify as autistic, ADHD, AuDHD, dyslexic, or another form of neurodivergence.
It may be especially helpful if you:
• Feel exhausted after social interactions
• Feel like you are performing rather than being yourself
• Constantly monitor what you say or how you appear
• Hide your emotions, sensory needs, or natural behaviors
• Were diagnosed later in life and are trying to understand your experiences
• Struggle to identify your own preferences or needs
• Feel like different people know different versions of you
• Frequently push beyond your capacity and then need significant recovery time
• Want to live with greater self-awareness, authenticity, and self-compassion
You do not have to uncover your entire authentic self at once.
You do not have to unmask in environments that are unsafe.
You do not have to criticize yourself for the coping strategies that once helped you survive.
This workbook invites you to slow down, understand your story, honor your nervous system, and begin creating a life that supports who you are instead of constantly demanding that you become someone else.
Digital workbook: 163 pages
Introductory price: $29.99
Regular price: $34.99
