The Mask and the Masterpiece

What happens when the identity you’ve spent a lifetime carefully constructing begins to unravel, and the unravelling turns out to be the point? This presentation explores the experience of late-diagnosed autistic and ADHD women navigating midlife through a Jungian lens, where the unconscious begins to surface what has long been masked, suppressed, or performed for survival. Drawing on depth psychology, current neurodivergence research, and the particular clarity that only lived experience provides, Bron examines how AuDHD masking mirrors Jung’s concept of the persona. And how its collapse in midlife so rarely signals breakdown and instead offers something far more significant: the beginning of genuine individuation. Autistic burnout, hormonal transition, and identity disintegration are reframed here not as pathology or problems to be solved, but as the soul’s insistence on finally being known. Attendees will leave with new language for the midlife threshold, fresh frameworks for understanding neurodivergent identity formation, and a more nuanced, compassionate map of what it truly means to unmask and become.