26. Why You Can't Accept Kindness: Masking, Surface Acting and the Wall That Blocks Love In
Notas do episódio
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 Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): an evidence-based therapy built on acting in line with your values rather than waiting to feel the 'right' feeling first. The most widely used plain-language ACT resource in Australia is Dr Russ Harris's The Happiness Trap.
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