# 3 Masking

A key phenomenon to consider in coaching environments is one of ‘masking’. Masking is a term used to describe how someone tries to adopt more neurotypical traits to cope with different challenges thrown up by a social situation they may find themselves in (Quigley and Gallagher, 2025). This process takes a lot of effort and energy from that individual (Billington, 2023) and impacts not only how they will engage and behave within a coaching session, but also how they feel once they leave. The next activity introduces you to an example of masking and encourages you to consider the implications of this.

## Activity 3 Experiences of masking

Allow 10 minutes

This podcast episode is of two young people, Ginny and Andrew, discussing lived experiences of autism. Listen to the clip, where Andrew describes his experience of masking. While listening, consider the three questions that follow.

This browser does not support audio playback.

Being autistic and living a good life
Transcript

1. Why might an athlete feel the need to mask their neurodivergence?
2. As a coach why is it important not to encourage neurodiverse individuals to adopt neurotypical behaviours?
3. Why is it important to understand what has been happening in an individual’s day prior to coming to their sport or exercise sessions?

(A text entry box would appear here, but your browser does not support it.)

### Discussion

1. In line with Andrew’s description, an athlete may feel the need to mask their neurodivergence if their experiences, behaviours and needs are not accepted or understood by those around them resulting in poor mental health outcomes (Cassidy et al., 2020). This means that neurodivergence in sporting contexts can often go unnoticed or not be recognised or acknowledged (Hoare et al., 2023). These are behaviours adopted early in childhood through school environments, with these experiences being characterised as bullying by both peers and staff (Billington, 2023).
2. Often, this is further characterised by teachers encouraging individuals to adopt neurotypical or ‘normal’ behaviours with the result of individuals being ‘othered’, made to feel different, and marginalised (Billington, 2023). Experiences of stigma like this can exacerbate feelings of anxiety, stress and exhaustion which is associated with poor mental health.
3. Athletes may turn up to a coaching session already in a heightened state of anxiety or stress depending on how their day has gone up to that point. Neurotypical athletes may have similar experiences before any given session, but as a sport setting may be built around neurotypical needs, they are likely to be impacted very differently.

The content of Week 3 will help you explore strategies on how this can be managed for a neurodivergent athlete, but at this stage you might want to reflect on whether you have experience of an athlete attending a coaching session in this way, and how this may have manifested itself.

OpenLearn - Coaching neurodivergent athletes
Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.