# 39 - How Do I Know If Someone Is Being Authentic?

In this episode of Quietly Autistic at Last, Dr. Allison Sucamele explores one of the most emotionally complex questions many late-diagnosed AuDHD women ask: How do I know if someone is being authentic?

Together, we unpack the psychology of masking, social performance, intuition, pattern recognition, and relational trust. This episode explores why many autistic and AuDHD women become highly perceptive of incongruence in others, why inauthenticity can feel physically uncomfortable, and how years of masking can complicate the ability to trust both other people and yourself.

Drawing from psychological research on autistic camouflaging, masking, burnout, and authenticity, this episode examines the difference between charisma and congruence, performance and genuine connection, while offering insight into what authentic relationships may actually feel like over time.

If you’ve ever questioned your instincts, overanalyzed social interactions, or wondered why certain people feel emotionally “off” despite appearing kind on the surface, this conversation is for you.

Disclaimer: This podcast is intended for educational and reflective purposes only and is not a substitute for therapy, medical advice, diagnosis, or individualized mental health care. Autism and AuDHD experiences are diverse and deeply personal.

If you are struggling emotionally or experiencing a mental health crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in the United States, available 24/7, or visit 988lifeline.org for support.

Transcript

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Welcome back to Quietly Autistic at Last, the podcast where we explore the psychology, neuroscience, identity, grief, healing, and hidden realities of late diagnosed autistic and AwDHD women. I'm your host, Dr. Allison Sukamelli. And today's episode is deeply personal, deeply psychological, and honestly one of the hardest questions many AwDHD women ask. How do I know when someone is actually being authentic? Not polite, not socially smooth, not charismatic, not performatively vulnerable, but authentic. Because many late-diagnosed ADHD women grow up learning how to study people instead of simply trusting them. We become observers, pattern trackers, emotional detectives. Sometimes because we had to. And many of us learned early that what people say and what people mean are often two very different things. And when you spend years masking yourself, adapting yourself, scripting yourself, analyzing social behavior constantly, authenticity becomes both incredibly important and incredibly confusing. This is especially because many AudhD women are simultaneously highly perceptive, deeply empathetic, trauma-informed, hyper-vigilant, socially analytical, and chronically unsure whether they can trust their own perception. So today we're exploring why authenticity matters so much to autistic and Aud women, why inauthenticity can feel physically painful, the psychology behind masking and social performance, what research says about camouflaging, why some people feel off even when they seem nice, and how to recognize authenticity without spiraling into paranoia or self-doubt. And as always, this podcast is for educational and reflective purposes only and is not a substitute for therapy or individualized mental health care. Autistic and ADHD experiences are diverse and deeply individual. Okay, let's get into this week's episode. So for many neurotypical people, social interaction is heavily governed by unspoken social rules, politeness rituals, status management, social smoothing, strategic self-presentation, but many autistic people, especially autistic women, often approach communication differently. There is frequently a stronger drive toward congruence, meaning, do your words match your behavior? Does your energy match your intentions? Does your face match your tone? Does your kindness remain when there's nothing to gain? And that last one is a big one to me, and probably the one incongruence I've seen personally over and over. When people are kind only because they are trying to use you for something, a ride somewhere, money, or access to something or someone. Many autistic women describe feeling disturbed by social performances that others barely notice. And this couldn't be more true, and it does make you begin to doubt your own perception sometimes and wonder how the rest of the world isn't seeing what you are seeing, the disrespect, the blatant lying, and so on. And research increasingly supports the idea that autistic women often engage in exhausting levels of social analysis and masking. And this is for survival purposes and social settings. Many late diagnosed ADHD women spent years learning social interaction cognitively rather than intuitively. We studied facial expressions, conversational timing, body language, eye contact, humor, emotional reciprocity, and approval patterns. Some women describe growing up feeling like anthropologists trying to decode human behavior in real time. And here's the painful irony. The more masking you do yourself, the more sensitive you often become to performance in others. Because you know what performance feels like from the inside. You know what rehearsed empathy sounds like. You know what socially correct responses sound like. You know what emotionally edited behaviors look like. And that can create both profound insight and profound confusion. So let's talk about masking for a minute. I know we do this often on this pod, but it's an important part of the equation that people need to understand whether they're neurodiverse or not. Masking, sometimes called camouflaging, refers to suppressing or altering natural autistic traits in order to appear more socially acceptable or neurotypical. And research shows that autistic women often camouflage at particularly high levels, contributing to delayed diagnosis and chronic exhaustion. And I want to emphasize that last part, chronic exhaustion, because it is absolutely draining. And this can include scripting conversations, copying facial expressions, mimicking humor, forcing eye contact, suppressing stimming, overexplaining, people pleasing, monitoring tone constantly, or performing socially expected emotions. And many AudhD women become extraordinarily good at this, not because they are fake, but because they learned adaptation as survival. And of course, every autistic and ADHD experience is different. And just because you may do one of these things, it doesn't mean you are autistic or Aud. And research has linked chronic masking with anxiety, depression, identity confusion, burnout exhaustion, and reduced feelings of authenticity. And this is true. I was just at a get together last night that ended up starting early and being five hours long. And I really like the people who were in attendance, but my social meter is shot. Someone mentioned doing a progressive dinner around Christmas, in which you go from house to house, and I'm trying to temper the red alert and alarm bells going off in my head as the group would be larger, and I do not want a large group of people, some of who I barely know, in my house in my sanctuary. It's May, and now I'm going to carry this anxiety for the next seven months when for years I've already been chronically burned out. And one 2024 study found that higher masking behaviors were associated with lower self-esteem, lower authentic living, and greater self-alienation in autistic adults. And that phrase, self-alienation, matters. Because many late-diagnosed women eventually reach a terrifying realization. I became so skilled at adapting that I no longer know which parts are actually me. And once you've experienced that internally, authenticity in others becomes emotionally loaded. Because you're no longer asking, are they nice? You're asking, are they real? And I think I've gotten old enough now to know who I am. And don't get me wrong, I'm still learning about myself and the world around me every day. But now people tend to find that I am too direct. But as a recovering people pleaser, I feel like I'm being my honest and authentic self, and I've embraced who that is. And not everyone is going to like you, and that's okay because if everyone is your friend, no one is truly your friend because one or both of you are performing or pretending everything is great or fine when in fact it may not be for at least one of you. And again, we're talking about when you're friends with everyone, and I have friends in quotation marks. And many Aud women describe certain people as feeling off, manufactured, emotionally slippery, or performative. And often they cannot immediately explain why. And this can happen because autistic cognition frequently notices inconsistencies other people overlook, tiny mismatches between tone and facial expression, words and behavior, kindness and follow-through, and that's a big one, vulnerability and accountability, and charm and emotional depth. And your nervous system may detect incongruence before your conscious mind fully processes it. However, this is important, hypervigilance and trauma can also distort perception. So not every uncomfortable feeling means someone is malicious. Sometimes they are anxious, socially awkward, masking themselves, traumatized, people pleasing, or conflict avoidant. And authenticity does not mean flawless emotional transparency. Authenticity means congruence over time. And that's the key, over time. Not perfection, not brutal honesty, not emotional oversharing, congruence. And one of the biggest mistakes many Aud women make is assuming authenticity can be detected instantly. Sometimes it can't, because charisma is not authenticity. Charm is not authenticity. Trauma dumping is not authenticity. Performative vulnerability is not authenticity. Actual authenticity is usually quieter. Again, it appears in consistency. For example, do their actions repeatedly match their words? Do they apologize without defensiveness? Do they behave similarly across social settings? This is one that I usually pick up on, and it drives me crazy when I notice someone acting or performing differently, depending on who is in the room. For example, leadership or a friend with access or money. Are they kind to people they cannot benefit from? That's a big one. Kind to people they cannot benefit from. Do they change personalities dramatically depending on status dynamics? And this ties into the question about social settings. And can they tolerate disagreement without emotional punishment? Do they admit uncertainty? Are they capable of self-reflection? And that one is huge too. Some people just aren't self-aware. And authentic people are usually integrated people, not perfect people, but integrated people, meaning there is less fragmentation between public self, private self, emotional self, and relational self, meaning the self shaped by relationships with others. And many Aud women notice fragmentation instinctively, especially after years of studying social behavior for survival. And there's another important concept here called the double empathy problem. Again, I know we've talked about this before, but this theory suggests that communication difficulties between autistic and non-autistic people are not simply deficits within autistic people, but mutual misunderstandings between different neurotypes. In other words, autistic people and neurotypical people may interpret authenticity differently. An autistic woman may perceive directness as sincerity. A neurotypical person may perceive directness as harshness. And I've been accused of this, but I see it as honesty. I'm not being brutal or defiant, I'm just being clear and concise. And a neurotypical person may use socially smoothing language to maintain harmony. An autistic woman may interpret that as dishonesty. Fake sincerity just rubs me the wrong way and I don't understand it. Neither person is automatically wrong. They may simply be operating under different communication systems. And this is important because many late diagnosed women start swinging toward extremes after diagnosis. They begin thinking everyone is fake, everyone is manipulative, everyone is masking. But the reality is more nuanced. Social behavior exists on a spectrum between adaptation, politeness, social survival, self-protection, performance, and manipulation. And not all masking is malicious. And sometimes people are simply trying to belong, just like many of us were. Okay, now let's discuss something many ADHD women experience intensely: pattern recognition. And many autistic and ADHD individuals report rapidly detecting behavioral inconsistencies. Sometimes this is a strength, sometimes it becomes overanalysis. The ADHD side may notice novelty, contradiction, emotional shifts, and social energy changes rapidly, while the autistic side may track consistency, logic, and behavioral reliability deeply. Combined together, Aud women often become extremely perceptive socially, but not always confident in their conclusions. Why? Well, because many of us grew up being told you're overreacting, you're misunderstood, you're too sensitive, you take things too literally, or you're imagining things. So adulthood becomes this exhausting balancing act between I notice things and what if I'm wrong? And this is why many ADHD women struggle with relational trust. Not because they lack empathy, but because they often perceive relational nuance intensely while simultaneously doubting their right to trust their perception. So let's make this practical. What are the green flags of authenticity? What are actual signs someone may be authentic? First, their behavior is consistent across contexts. They do not radically transform based on status, popularity, or audience. Next, they tolerate complexity. Authentic people can usually handle nuance without collapsing into black and white thinking. They admit mistakes, not performatively, but genuinely. Another green flag, their empathy has boundaries. People who appear endlessly empathetic to everyone often burn out or perform empathy socially. Real empathy includes honesty and limits. Next green flag, they are emotionally regulated enough to self-reflect. They can ask, could I be wrong? And here's an important one: they do not pressure you to abandon yourself. Authentic people do not require self-betrayal as the price of connection. Let me repeat this one. Authentic people do not require self-betrayal as the price of connection. And our last green flag, someone may be authentic, you feel calmer around them over time. Not addicted, not hyper-vigilant, not emotionally confused, calmer, and that matters. Because your nervous system often recognizes congruence before your conscious mind explains it. And here's something fascinating psychologically. Many people are uncomfortable around highly authentic individuals, especially women, especially autistic women. Why? Well, because authenticity disrupts social performance systems. Someone who asks direct questions, resists groupthink, refuses fake intimacy, notices contradictions, or values depth over hierarchy can unintentionally destabilize socially performative environments. And many late diagnosed Aud women have spent years being punished for exactly that. Not because they were cruel, but because they were perceptive. There's a difference. And one of the hardest parts of late diagnosis is realizing you spent years trying to become acceptable before learning how to become authentic. And authenticity after lifelong masking can feel terrifying because once you stop performing constantly, you begin discovering what actually drains you, what genuinely matters to you, which relationships relied on your self-erasure, and which people only liked the edited version of you. And research increasingly shows that chronic masking is associated with burnout, anxiety, identity confusion, and emotional exhaustion. And currently I don't think I have identity confusion, that's causing a little bit of friction, but I am experiencing high levels of burnout, anxiety, and exhaustion. So healing is not simply being yourself. That sounds simple. And when I say healing, healing does not mean healing from autism. It means healing from the exhaustion of masking, the chronic self-doubt, and the years spent overriding your own internal experience in order to survive socially. Healing is slowly rebuilding trust in your own mind, body, needs, perceptions, and nervous system after years of being taught not to. And that takes time, especially when the people around you may not be on board with you being authentic. We already talked about why that may be. So how do you know if someone is being authentic? You probably cannot know instantly. And honestly, that's okay. Authenticity is not usually revealed in grand speeches. It is revealed in repeated moments of congruence. Repeated moments where actions match values, words match behavior, empathy survives and convenience, and connection does not require performance. And maybe the deeper question is not only are they authentic, maybe the deeper question is, am I allowed to become authentic too? Because many late diagnosed Aud women were never taught authenticity was safe. Only adaptation, only achievement, only usefulness, only emotional management, only survival. But authenticity is not irresponsibility. It is alignment. And slowly, gently, painfully, beautifully, many of us are learning the difference. Okay, so there you have it. Thank you for spending this time with me today on Quietly Autistic at Last. And if this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who has spent their life studying people while quietly losing themselves in the process. You are not alone in this, and you are allowed to stop performing long enough to hear your own mind again. Until next time, this is Dr. Allison Sukamelli. Take care of your nervous system, protect your peace, and remember sometimes the deepest form of healing is no longer abandoning yourself to stay socially acceptable. Take care, and I will see you next week.