Why some neurodivergent people slowly disappear at work.
I recently read an article called Why Competent People Disappear: Functional Stupidity and the Invisible Professional and honestly, it articulated something I’ve struggled to put into words for years.
Not just intellectually.
Emotionally.
As someone with ADHD, and now working as a neurodivergent coach and trainer after more than 20 years in corporate leadership, there were parts of the article that felt painfully familiar.
The feeling of being unseen.
The emotional friction between what was being said and what was actually happening.
The exhaustion of trying to reconcile organisational values with behaviour.
And the slow, internal shrinking that can happen when curiosity, questioning and pattern recognition start to feel emotionally unsafe.
ADHD, curiosity and emotional friction at work
For many ADHD and neurodivergent people, curiosity isn’t performative.
It’s instinctive.
We notice patterns.
We ask questions.
We pick up inconsistencies.
We feel tension between words and actions.
We often struggle to ignore things that don’t align.
That can be an incredible strength.
But in some workplace environments, it can also create friction.
Not necessarily because anyone explicitly tells you you’re “difficult” or “too much”.
Sometimes it’s subtler than that.
A change in tone.
Defensiveness.
Feeling dismissed.
Feeling tolerated rather than genuinely heard.
Over time, many neurodivergent people start second-guessing themselves.
The hidden cost of masking at work
Looking back now, I can see how much energy I spent monitoring myself.
Trying to communicate more clearly.
More calmly.
More concisely.
Less emotionally.
Less intensely.
The more emotionally dysregulated I became, the harder it felt to express myself confidently in a way that was respected, understood and acted on.
And that created even more self-doubt.
I ruminated constantly.
Replayed conversations.
Over-analysed feedback.
And struggled to switch my brain off at night.
What people often don’t see when they talk about burnout in neurodivergent people is that it isn’t always caused purely by workload.
Sometimes it’s the cumulative effect of:
- masking
- self-monitoring
- emotional suppression
- hypervigilance
- unresolved tension
- constantly translating yourself
- feeling psychologically unsafe
- trying to suppress your natural way of thinking and communicating
For me, that friction wasn’t abstract.
It was physical.
Sleepless nights.
Headaches.
Emotional exhaustion.
Overexplaining.
Rumination.
A nervous system that never fully relaxed.
“Maybe I’m the problem”
One of the hardest parts of these experiences is the story you can start telling yourself.
Maybe I’m too sensitive.
Maybe I overthink.
Maybe I need to communicate better.
Maybe I care too much.
Maybe I’m the problem.
I think many neurodivergent people internalise this long before they fully understand what’s happening.
Especially when you’re highly conscientious, emotionally attuned and trying very hard to do good work in environments where psychological safety feels inconsistent.
By the end of my corporate career, I was experiencing significant burnout and emotional dysregulation.
But what strikes me now is that the burnout didn’t happen overnight.
It was cumulative.
A slow erosion of confidence.
A gradual disconnection from myself.
An increasing sense of emotional unsafety.
The exhaustion of trying to fit environments that required me to suppress important parts of who I was.
And I know I’m not alone in that.
I now see similar patterns in many of the neurodivergent people I support through coaching and training, as well as in some of the organisations I work with.
Many neurodivergent people don’t suddenly disappear professionally.
They slowly disengage emotionally first.
Final thoughts
If this resonates with you, please know you’re not alone.
And if you’re in a season where you feel quieter, smaller or emotionally exhausted from trying to hold everything together, it doesn’t mean you’re failing.
It could mean your nervous system has been carrying too much for too long.
And sometimes the answer isn’t becoming less yourself.
Sometimes it’s finding safer ways – and safer places – to be more fully yourself instead.