The Heartache of “Passing”
Passing as white, straight, or able may look like a privilege, but it often feels like exile. Here’s an honest look at the science, strain, and healing of masking race, sexuality, and whatever your identity is.
What Erasure is Like
People assume “passing” is a good thing — passing as white, straight, or anything else that reads as privileged.
It’s not.
It’s a quiet kind of exile.
When people tell me I could “pass for Italian” or “something Middle Eastern,” they mean it as a compliment — a way of saying you fit in better than we expected.
When men tell me I “don’t seem bi,” it’s not curiosity — it’s reassurance that I won’t make them uncomfortable.
But what they don’t see is the weight of it — the decades of calibrating tone, expression, and vocabulary to keep people at ease. Passing doesn’t make you safer inside your own skin. It makes you fluent in erasure.
I’m Indian. I have olive-toned skin, curly hair, and a face people constantly need to place. Everywhere I go, I’m a projection screen — “You could be Hispanic,” “Maybe Persian?” “I thought you were Italian.”
People want a story they can categorize — a story that makes them feel better about themselves.
Something close enough to feel familiar, but not so unfamiliar that it asks them to see difference as depth.
That’s what passing does: it rewards proximity to comfort.
For those of us with layered identities — women of color, queer, neurodivergent — comfort often comes at the expense of coherence.
The Data Behind the Discomfort
Research backs what so many of us live.
In a 2022 Pew survey, 45% of multiracial adults said their treatment changes depending on how people perceive their background.
The Williams Institute at UCLA found that over half (52%) of bisexual adults hide or downplay their identity in professional and family spaces.
Studies on racial and sexual identity incongruence link chronic masking to higher rates of anxiety, burnout, and even cardiovascular stress.
In other words, the body keeps score on all kinds of harm.
Passing isn’t just psychological. It’s physiological.
Your nervous system learns to perform belonging the same way it learns to brace for impact.
The Biology of Belonging
For years, I didn’t realize how much energy I invested in reading rooms.
I wasn’t trying to deceive anyone — I was trying to stay employed, respected, unscathed.
When you’ve lived through cultural or relational trauma, hypervigilance becomes second nature.
That’s what passing really is: sustained vigilance disguised as adaptability.
It’s your amygdala on overdrive.
It’s cortisol levels that never fully reset because part of you is always managing perception
It’s the price of being “palatable.”
The Weight of Being Misunderstood
There’s a particular loneliness in being “almost seen.”
When people tell you you’re “not like other Indian women” — or that your bisexuality “doesn’t count” because you’ve dated men — they think they’re giving you a compliment.
They’re not.
They’re naming their limits and asking you to live inside them.
The waiting is what hurts — waiting for a space that doesn’t need translation, waiting to exhale, waiting to stop being grateful for partial acceptance.
Even love can feel conditional when it depends on what version of you someone can handle. Just look at shows like “Love is Blind”. It is not blind to anything at all.
The Coaching Lens: Relearning Wholeness
Coaching isn’t about teaching people to “be authentic.”
It’s where we unlearn the reflex of fragmentation.
We work at the level of the nervous system — building tolerance for being seen again.
Not performatively, but physiologically.
Not in rebellion, but in regulation.
Because after years of passing, authenticity can feel like exposure.
And healing is learning that safety doesn’t have to mean invisibility.
That looks like:
Letting your full tone return after years of politeness.
Correcting assumptions calmly, without cushioning.
Naming attraction without needing to explain it.
Sitting in silence when someone misreads you — and not fixing it.
These are not small acts. They are self-reunions.
The Invitation
Passing helped me survive.
But I’m no longer building a life that depends on camouflage.
I don’t need to be digestible to be real.
I don’t need to pick a single box to make people comfortable.
And I don’t need to disappear into someone else’s projection to stay safe.
The system may still love its faces — but I’m not a face.
I’m the bridge, the frequency, the signal beneath the static.
And every time I tell the truth — about my skin, my heritage, my queerness, my sensitivity — I recalibrate the story of belonging.
Not as something to earn, but as something I was born with.
About the Author
Minal Kamlani is a trauma-informed ADHD recovery coach based in NYC. She works with neurodivergent adults in recovery from trauma, burnout, and survival-based coping. Her coaching blends structure and nervous system awareness to help clients reclaim function—without shame or perfectionism. Learn more at Higher Vibes Coaching.