Or the folks celebrating it are just playing the game.

I don't mean this in a rude way, but inexperienced, or socially-immature, or spectrum-y people really fail the most with regard to this kind of advice.

There's a (correct) stereotype that spectrum-y people are overly-literal. However, from the perspective of a spectrum-y person this is totally perplexing. Why do people frequently state literal facts which have a secondary, contextual and metaphorical meaning? "Bring your whole self to work" has a really straightforward and literal meaning. It's not a metaphor which requires interpretation. However "bring your whole self to work" is quite obviously not meant to be taken strictly literally. So then why the hell say it like that? Why would people go around saying things which are definitely incorrect and rely wholly on subtext or cultural knowledge? It'd be like if I said, "hey by the way it's safe the change the lawnmower blade while the spark plug is still in" or "looking at the sun won't blind you quickly enough to be risky." And then people are just supposed to know I didn't mean my very literal statement literally.

And if everyone who's normal and socially well adjusted understands that you're not meant to take "take your whole self to work" then what work is this phrase even doing? Why does anyone even say it?

I've known people who were just deeply genuinely nice people. Yeah they can go totally authentic and are entirely welcome. Hell they can invite themselves over for dinner to my house and I'll be happy about it.

My authentic self is sharply sarcastic, critical and at times brutal. My coworkers don't want to deal with that - that's a very chaffing personality especially towards the end of a stressful week and it can very genuinely hurt morale. I very much tone myself down, avoid sarcasm as much as I can, carefully massage critical and direct messaging as best I can and generally try to be aware that the people around me have different communication needs.

And I think people do get a taste of the real person under the facade. I know I get that from my coworkers - I have coworkers who are great coworkers but whose friend I have no interest in being because same thing, their "out of work" authentic self I find off-putting even though they are amazing coworkers.

Not even the most conservative white collar place (super super well known big classic old school engineering company) has ever mentioned jack shit when shit was burning to the ground and we were trying to keep things working

Some workplaces:

- penalize black women for having natural hairstyles like locs

- make Sikhs remove turbans

- deny chosen names and pronouns

There are entire swaths of groups who can't be their authentic selves.

What I don't do is bring all of myself to the workplace. Professional relationships are different than intimate relationships and not every part of me is appropriate for both kinds of relationships simultaneously. But every side I show is authentic.