“Good Girls” Burn Out: How Your Childhood & Mask Taught Self-Neglect

Do you have the "self-neglect" triad--childhood conditioning, masking & workplace exploitation—from good girls to perfect employees to exhausted women.

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You weren’t born prioritizing everyone but yourself

You were trained to. If you experienced emotional neglect as a child & was diagnosed late in life, you’re probably the kind of employee corporations love to exploit—conditioned to over-give, self-neglect, and ask for little in return. I definitely was.

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Be a “Good Girl”

Feelings weren’t discussed in my family; they were avoided. My parents focused on survival—paying the bills and giving their kids the security and opportunities they never had. No one had made space for their emotions, so they didn’t know how to make space for their kids’ emotions.

In our house, disagreeing with adults was disrespectful. Blind obedience was expected. Self-advocacy was dismissed. If I cried or expressed distress, I heard: “What do you have to cry about? Your parents aren’t dead yet. Be a GOOD GIRL. Stop crying.”

I learned that being a “good girl” meant neglecting my needs, obeying authority, and never inconveniencing others by speaking up.

My parents worked constantly and came home exhausted, so I spent most of my time alone in my room reading. No one ever asked about my day, what I thought, how I felt, or what was happening in my life. So I learned to never ask myself those questions too.

Eventually I became an adult that treated my own feelings, thoughts, and needs as inconsequential—so much so that I struggled to identify them at all.

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Was your childhood similar?

Psychologists describe this as:

1. Childhood emotional neglect: Your emotional needs for comfort, connection, and understanding routinely went unmet.

2. Emotional invalidation: Your distress was dismissed instead of acknowledged.

3. Parental emotional unavailability: Your inner world received little attention or curiosity

4. Authoritarian parenting: Obedience was expected; disagreement and self-advocacy were discouraged.

5. Self-silencing: You learned to suppress your needs to maintain harmony.

6. Alexithymia: You developed difficulty identifying and describing your emotions—a trait associated with both emotional neglect and autism.

(Kick et al., 2024)

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Masking reinforced the lesson.

Masking (or “high-masking”) is when someone — consciously or automatically — covers up their autistic or ADHD traits to fit in. Many late-diagnosed women are high-masking: we study others, copy expected behavior, hide discomfort, are hyper-vigilant to other’s needs/responses, and constantly self-correct to fit in (Cage & Troxell-Whitman, 2019; Cook et al., 2022).

Masking taught me to focus on how I appeared instead of how I felt. I became skilled at meeting other people’s expectations while ignoring my own discomfort. Pretending everything was ok, even when things felt wrong. This made me especially vulnerable in workplaces where overwork and self-neglect was normalized.

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Corporate work culture exploits self-neglect

Combine my childhood with a late diagnosis, and I was the ideal employee for workplaces to exploit. My upbringing already taught me how to survive hierarchical systems built on self-neglect, so corporate America was familiar:

Authority mattered more than questions. Disagreement was treated as defiance. Executives’ opinions carried more weight than those of the people closest to the work. Being a “high performer” meant over-delivering at the expense of my health.

I knew how to survive in a system like that. Ignore my body. Keep going even when something felt deeply wrong. And because I was “high-performing”, I didn’t recognize how much it cost me. Until I burned out.

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Don’t be a “good girl”. Your health depends on it

Burnout was a blessing in disguise, even though at that time, there were mornings I wish I hadn’t woken up and couldn’t imagine things ever getting better. Burnout forced me to acknowledge that something needed to change.

For the first time in my life, I questioned 30+ years of conditioning and realized that being a “good girl”—a “high-performer”— silencing my needs & tolerating discomfort—had left me depressed, anxious, & barely functioning.

For neurodivergent nervous systems, self-neglect and masking can have severe mental and physical consequences. The constant self-monitoring, hyper-vigilance, and effort required to appear “fine” takes a mental, physical, and emotional toll (Hull et al., 2017). It’s been associated with higher rates of burnout, depression, anxiety, and poorer mental health (Benatov et al., 2025).

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But life doesn’t have to be this way.

Life improved drastically when I began prioritizing myself. I took medical leave, said “no” to managing other peoples’ emotions, made decisions based on what I wanted and how I felt. Life was a dumpster fire for a while—people left who weren’t worth holding onto, I switched jobs, moved to a different city, had a few “wtf am I doing with my life” moments. But it worked out.

Remember:

You’re allowed to disappoint people. You’re allowed to say no without writing a five-paragraph apology. Stop proving your worth through suffering. Unlearning the “good girl” role may feel selfish, or unsafe at first. That doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong. It means you’re finally choosing yourself.

Years later, I’m still unlearning my “good girl” habits. It’s a work in progress. Some days I forget, and other days I remember that my needs, my body and my wants matter. And I love that for me.

^{Note: This is my personal experience, not legal, HR or medical advice. If you’re struggling, consider talking to a qualified professional who can help you with your specific situation.}

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Burnt out or want actionable steps for prioritizing yourself and setting boundaries?

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PS - If you need time off because you’re burnt out, learn about your options with an article on Medical Leave HERE

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About the Author

Hey, I’m glad you’re here. Starting this newsletter was a way for me to share my special interests, connect with other tired ladies, & help folks who may be struggling like I was. Don’t be shy, say hi.

What am I doing when I’m not writing? I live in the PNW in the U.S, & still work in Corporate America. Outside of that, I’m a garden gremlin, trail troll, weightlifting couch potato, who reads way too many fantasy romance novels. Lately my special interest has been Dahlias & gardening.

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References

^{Benatov, J., Sarel-Mahlev, E., & Bar Yehuda, S. (2026). Camouflage, burnout-exhaustion, and depression in autistic adults. Autism in Adulthood, 8(4), 801–808. https://doi.org/10.1089/aut.2024.0147}

^{Cage, E., & Troxell-Whitman, Z. (2019). Understanding the reasons, contexts and costs of camouflaging for autistic adults. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 49(5), 1899–1911. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-018-03878-x}

^{Cook, J., Crane, L., Hull, L., Bourne, L., & Mandy, W. (2022). Self-reported camouflaging behaviours used by autistic adults during everyday social interactions. Autism, 26(2), 406–421. https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613211026754}

^{Hull, L., Petrides, K. V., Allison, C., Smith, P., Baron-Cohen, S., Lai, M.-C., & Mandy, W. (2017). “Putting on my best normal”: Social camouflaging in adults with autism spectrum conditions. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 47(8), 2519–2534. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-017-3166-5}

^{Kick, L., Schleicher, D., Ecker, A., Kandsperger, S., Brunner, R., & Jarvers, I. (2024). Alexithymia as a mediator between adverse childhood events and the development of psychopathology: A meta-analysis. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 15, Article 1412229. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1412229}

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