They told you they’d ring. You’ve been on high alert for months. “Don’t miss the call, don’t miss the call.” You are quite rightly, exhausted. There’s been all the admin in filing your claim, all the while dealing with pre-call anxiety and the quiet trap of Access to Work masking, with an internal voice looping: ‘Maybe I’m not struggling enough for support. What if I accidentally fix myself and they think I’m a time waster?’”
Briing briing!! Bring Bring!!
You’re in. It’s happening.
“Hello…”
They ask you a polite, everyday question. Something like “How are you getting on with your daily workload?”
Before your rational brain can step in, your voice brightens, your shoulders tense all the way up to your ears, you face contorts into a smile and you hear yourself saying something like:
“Oh, it’s not too bad really! It does get a bit busy sometimes, but I’m kind of managing to work it out .”
When you hang up the phone, a heavy wave of dread flushes through you. It happened again. You have just spent twenty minutes convincing a government assessor that you are coping, even though you spent yesterday evening staring at a wall in complete shutdown, fighting off tears of exhaustion, and wondering how much longer you can keep up the facade
If you have done this, please afford yourself a long, slow breath. Put down the self-blame for a moment. First off, you have not broken anything beyond repair, and you are not an imposter.
You simply slipped into an automatic survival reflex known as neurodivergent masking.
Why We Fall Into Access to Work Masking When We Most Need Help
Masking is not a deliberate choice to deceive anyone. For an ADHD or AuDHD adult, masking is a deeply ingrained nervous system response.
From childhood through school and into corporate or professional life, most of us received a steady stream of subtle (and not-so-subtle) messages: try harder, stop being so sensitive, don’t interrupt, keep still, blend in, you’re too much. Etc etc.
Over decades, our nervous system learns that exposing our authentic struggles carries a high risk of rejection, criticism, or professional fallout. So when an unfamiliar authority figure asks us how we are doing, our fight-or-flight system reads that as a social performance.
Your brain treats the assessment call like a job interview. It unconsciously decides that looking competent keeps you safe, completely ignoring the fact that the entire purpose of this specific phone call is to reveal where things fall apart.
There is also the exhaustion of being misunderstood. Maybe you’ve spent years working with generic managers or coaches who told you to ‘just buy a planner’ or ‘time-block your calendar’, you learn that sharing your real difficulties only invites condescending advice. You mask to protect yourself from another round of feeling unseen.
The Core Rule: Describe Your Worst Days, Not Your Best Moments
Access to Work assessors are trained to approve support based on the functional impact of your condition, not on how charming, articulate, or resilient you appear over the phone.
When an adviser asks how a task goes, neurotypical people tend to describe their average day. But for ADHDers and autistic adults, there is rarely an average day. We swing between hyperfocused sprints where we produce brilliant work in two hours, and paralytic freezes where sending a three-line email feels like dragging a concrete block uphill.
When you answer their questions, you must speak from the reality of your unsupported, low-energy, high-friction days.
Because that is the baseline where burnout happens. That is where the despair creeps in. And that is the exact person Access to Work funding is designed to support.
4 Practical Ways to Anchor Yourself Before the Call
You do not need to turn this into a stressful revision session – we want to reduce friction, not add to it. Have a read through the following 4 practices and maybe just start with the one that seems most accessible.
Write an ‘Unmasked Reality Cheat Sheet’
When adrenaline kicks in during a call, working memory evaporates. You will forget your struggles because your nervous system is desperately scanning the room for safety cues.
A few days before the call, write down three bullet points for your common workplace sticking points:
- What it looks like on the outside: “She missed a project deadline.”
- What it actually felt like on the inside: “I spent four hours trapped in task paralysis, terrified of doing it wrong, watching the clock tick down while my chest tightened with shame.”
- What it costs you after hours: “I had to work until 10 PM to catch up, didn’t eat dinner, and spent the entire weekend recovering in bed.”
Keep this piece of paper right in front of you. When they ask a question, read directly from your notes.
Name the Internal Compensatory Cost
One reason we convince assessors we are fine is that the work does eventually get done. What the assessor cannot see is the unsustainable toll it took to get there.
Tell them about the invisible scaffolding you build just to survive the week:
- Do you rely on intense, self-inflicted panic to produce dopamine just to start writing?
- Do you spend half your evening ruminating on awkward workplace conversations or feeling stuck in repetitive loops?
- Are you masking sensory overload from fluorescent lighting or constant Teams notifications until your nervous system snaps into shutdown?
State clearly: “Yes, the report gets delivered, but only through extreme hyper-stress that is currently pushing me towards chronic burnout.”
Have an Advocate or Body Double Beside You
You are legally permitted to have a supporter, colleague, union representative, partner, or coach on the assessment call with you.
Give them permission before the call to gently interrupt if they hear your ‘customer service voice’ taking over. Perhaps agreeing on a signal: a gentle tap on your arm or a visual signal that reminds you to: Stop minimising. Tell them how hard it actually is.
Ask for Specialised Neurodiversity Coaching by Name
You do not have to leave the solutions up to the assessor’s imagination. Access to Work regularly funds specialist ADHD and AuDHD strategy coaching, but you need to connect the dots for them.
Tell the adviser: “I need one-to-one strategy coaching with an ADHD specialist who understands nervous system regulation and executive dysfunction, to help me build sustainable, shame-free systems for prioritising, task initiation, and unmasking at work.”
You Deserve Support That Actually Understands Your Brain
Navigating statutory systems with an AuDHD brain is one of the hardest things you can ask of yourself. The very executive functions required to complete the application (reading forms, tracking emails, attending phone calls) are the precise things you are seeking support to manage.
If the process feels like too much right now, that is not evidence that you are incapable. It is simply proof that your nervous system is tired of running on empty.
Take it one small breath at a time. Settle your shoulders down from your ears. Notice the solid floor beneath your feet right now. You do not have to earn the right to exist without constant exhaustion.
Ready to Talk About What Support Really Looks Like?
Whether you are waiting for an Access to Work award, preparing for your assessment call, or exploring private coaching, you don’t have to navigate the loops and burnout alone.
I offer a gentle, zero-pressure 30-minute discovery call. We will sit down over video, look at where you are currently feeling stuck or misunderstood, and see whether working together feels right for you. No tests, no masking, and no judgment.
Book your free 30-minute discovery call here
(If you are stuck in an immediate freeze today and not ready to talk, grab our Free Guided Audio for Overwhelm on the homepage to help settle your nervous system in just a few minutes.)