26. Why You Can't Accept Kindness: Masking, Surface Acting and the Wall That Blocks Love In

Your best friend leaves a box of tampons on your doorstep on the worst day of your fortnight — no fuss, no waiting around, just quietly handling the piece of the nightmare nobody else saw. And you well up. Real tears. And then you wait ten minutes to make sure she's gone before you'll even open the door, delete the thank-you you started typing, and walk off. Because you could not have said it to her face if someone paid you.

If you're the woman who leaves a gift on a doorstep and runs, who dodges goodbyes with people she loves, who can't stand inside a thank you — you've probably filed that away as proof you're cold. Broken in the part where you're meant to feel things. This episode is Jane pulling that file back out and finding the opposite: it's not that the love is missing. It might be flooding. Masking, surface acting, and the wall that goes up right where other people let love in — and why every piece of advice you've been given points you the wrong way.

CHAPTERS

00:00 — Twenty-one, on an Emirates training flight, and my face is the problem

01:34 — Learning the Barbie-princess smile in the mirror

02:32 — The box of tampons, and the door I couldn't open

04:45 — Ten minutes, a deleted text, and walking off in tears

05:31 — The filing cabinet: 'there's something wrong with me,' opened at 2am

06:22 — The goodbyes I swerve, the thank-yous I can't stand in

07:43 — 'I'm not cold. I cried over a box of tampons.'

08:33 — The real problem: a feeling with no volume control

08:56 — What was actually happening on those flights

13:46 — Surface acting: the sociologist who studied this in 1983

16:05 — Two settings — perform the okay face, or leave

18:49 — Why every piece of 'just be present' advice fails someone like me

20:55 — The therapy this is secretly built on — ACT, and acting on what you value

23:00 — The moment was never the love. The tampons mattering that much was.

25:04 — What I'd do differently: feel it, then send something real by text

26:50 — You get to love people in your own way

WHAT WE COVER

The Emirates training flight where Jane was told, over and over, that her technically-perfect service didn't matter — her face did

Learning to perform the 'Barbie princess' smile in the mirror, and what years of that installs in a nervous system

The box of tampons on the doorstep — one of the kindest things anyone's ever done for her — and why she waited for her friend to leave before she'd open the door

The 2am filing cabinet labelled 'there's something wrong with me,' and the subtheme she found inside it

The goodbyes she actively swerves, the gifts she leaves 'like a robber,' and the years of reading all of it as proof she's cold

The reframe: it was never a missing feeling — it's a feeling that arrives with no volume control, like a flood, with nowhere safe to show it

What was really happening on those flights — the workers, the conditions, the smiling over something that was not fine — and how surface acting burns you out

Why every piece of standard advice — slow down, be present, make eye contact, receive it properly — aims you straight at the exact thing your body evacuates for a reason

The evidence-based therapy this is secretly built on, and the one shift inside it that changes everything

What Jane would do differently now — and the real, texted, kitchen-bench version of 'thank you' that works for a nervous system like hers

FREE RESOURCES

ADHD Physical Health & Emotional Wellbeing Kit — for the emotional-regulation and burnout side of years of masking — https://adhdmums.com.au/product/adhd-physical-health-emotional-wellbeing-kit/

Energy Accounting Guide — for the cost of surface acting, day after day — https://adhdmums.com.au/product/adhd-mums-energy-accounting-guide/

PAID RESOURCES

ADHD Mums Shop — https://adhdmums.com.au/shop/

RELATED EPISODES

Too Much? Or Just Misunderstood: ADHD, RSD & the Power of Emotional Intensity — S2 EP83, Jane solo — https://adhdmums.com.au/podcast_episode/episode-83-too-much-or-just-misunderstood-adhd-rsd-the-power-of-emotional-intensity/

An RSD Story. Taking My Own Advice — S1 EP9, Jane solo — https://adhdmums.com.au/podcast_episode/an-rsd-story-taking-my-own-advice-s1-ep9/

You Were the Good Girl. That's Why You're Falling Apart Now. — S3 EP35, Jane solo — https://adhdmums.com.au/podcast_episode/episode-35-you-were-the-good-girl-thats-why-youre-falling-apart-now/

Masking & ADHD — S1 EP11, Jane solo — https://adhdmums.com.au/podcast_episode/masking-adhd-s1-ep11/

REFERENCES & FURTHER READING

On 'surface acting' — the 1983 flight-attendant research: Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. University of California Press.

On Acce