I Spent 29 Years Trying to Be ‘Normal.’ Here’s What I Lost (and Found).

Neurodivergent People: Have you ever experienced burnout? How long did it take you to recover (assuming you were able to do so)?

Nine years ago, after being diagnosed as Autistic at 29, I unknowingly began a healing and shadow work journey that would change how I saw myself and my life.

Later, I was also diagnosed with ADHD, further shaping my worldview.

Discovering that I am and always have been both Autistic and ADHD (AuDHD), and learning about the realities of Autism, ADHD, and the Neurodiversity paradigm, changed my entire view of myself and the world. I realized I had wrongly assumed everyone shared one brain type, only to learn there is no such thing as “typical.”

With this new understanding, I realized I’d been heading down the wrong path…

For years, I modeled myself after non-autistic, non-ADHD people around me, starting with my teachers and peers shaping me into who they thought I should be.

Before I knew it, I continued striving to mirror the non-autistic, non-ADHDers around me, an unfair and unrealistic goal I couldn’t see was out of reach until I learned the truth about my brain and the human spectrum of brain differences.

Learning that I am Neurodivergent was bittersweet. At first, I felt many emotions.

Part of me was angry about all the missed opportunities, false assumptions, and totally avoidable blame, shame, and pain I’d experienced throughout my life. This anger led me, in the early days of my online work, to fuel my desire to make things better, because I didn’t want anyone else to experience what I’d experienced.

In those days, I was very raw, much more easily triggered, and very unhealed in many of my social traumas so every critique or piece of unsolicited feedback, especially if it didn’t come from people I trusted activated me, because it felt like an attack, or a trap (someone attempting to bait me into an argument as is fairly common on social media).

Part of me was also very sad, because, once finally diagnosed, the fact that pretty much all of the traits I’d been trying to extinguish (or pack away and hide out of deep shame and feelings of inadequacy) on my self-help journey were my Neurodivergent ones became glaringly obvious.

It was sad that I had so much shame about things that made me who I am, that I largely couldn’t help, and shouldn’t have ever been made to feel shame around.

That version of me was one who’d been led to believe, from a young age, that their intent mattered more than the impact of their actions, was very naive, and also very vulnerable.

That version of me, nine years ago, was still learning how to navigate situations where, despite having the best intentions and not wanting to cause harm, due to my own ignorance, I would sometimes, inevitably, cause harm.

That version of me was also very afraid and ashamed of making mistakes, and didn’t yet know how to see mistakes as opportunities for growth.

Not knowing how my own mind works for most of my life hindered and traumatized me in many ways.

First, because I didn’t understand myself, I didn’t learn about my own needs or how to speak up and advocate for them until adulthood, in my mid-30s, after learning about my Autism and ADHD.

Had I had the language to describe my needs or a reference point for why what works for others didn’t work for me, I could have learned self-advocacy earlier. Assuming my brain matched everyone else’s, I missed the chance to practice speaking up—a skill I now wish I’d gained as a child.

Additionally, because everyone in my life (myself included) believed my I had an “average” mind, growing up whenever I tried to speak up for one of my needs that weren’t “average”, I would have adults and peers telling me I didn’t really need what I was telling them point blank I needed (like to use sunglasses and or hats indoors when flourecent lights are making me feel physical pain and sickness).

Unintentional gaslighting

While unintentional, the result of having countless people throughout my life telling me I didn’t know my own needs or what I wanted, insisting they knew what was good for me more than I did, was similar to the kinds of results one might expect from years of gaslighting in an abusive relationship.

Being told countless times by many people over the years that I was “too sensitive” and “overreacting” (when sensory things were physically too much for me) made me feel like my feelings were wrong and that my emotions and needs didn’t matter.

Whenever I tried to bring things up with my teachers, they would often frame whatever request I had as a problem, making me feel bad, ashamed, or guilty for even asking for support saying things like “nobody else has a problem with _____” or “you’re the only one asking for _____” … so eventually, I learned to shut up, suck it up… and I stopped asking for help.

I didn’t understand lying.

When I was young, I didn’t understand lying, manipulation, or the need to look out for people with ulterior motives.

Because of this, I often took people’s words at face value, not realizing people might pretend to be nice to me if they wanted something from me.

Because I hadn’t yet mastered being friendly with someone I didn’t like, I assumed people just weren’t nice to people they didn’t like (until I learned the hard way that people who were nice to you because they didn’t like you are the most dangerous kind of people multiple times).

Had I understood there were unspoken cues and signals I’d been missing due to being Autistic and not knowing it, maybe things could have been different, but I had no idea.

Checking out… Lyric has left the building.

Because the world around me was constantly triggering my senses and causing me to experience sensory overload (that I was encouraged by the people around me to ignore), a hypervigilant state of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn became my default state of existence.

Being stuck in hostile environments, unable to get help or escape my discomfort day after day, shaped me into a kid who turned to solving my own problems to avoid speaking up when things went wrong, and who used dissociation as one of their main tools to tune out and cope with pain and discomfort (leaving mentally, since leaving physically wasn’t an option).

I was a master at spending time in uncomfortable places that I had no desire to be in, because that’s what was frequently expected of me (and because safe, comfortable spaces and people were nearly impossible to find when I was out of touch with myself, wants, hopes, dreams, and needs). . . but really, though I was physically present, my mind was often someplace far away.

Living in a daydream.

For those who don’t know, for many ADHDers, boredom, if left unchecked, can cause restlessness and be very distressing, so when stuck in class and stripped of all stim, sensory, and regulatons tools to help support grounding, I turned to dissociation as a way to escape the uncomfortable, trapped, and restless feelings that would bubble up in me (since moving and making noises would get me in trouble with my teacher and serve as an invitation for my peers to mock me).

My dreams and daydreams were so vivid that it was like I had an HD 360 VR headset long before such a thing was technologically possible.

The world inside my mind was everything I wanted it to be. It was fun, it was entertaining, and, despite being very lonely, misunderstood, and isolated in the physical world, I had friends inside my mind.

Before I knew it, having a physical body began to feel like an inconvenience, and I became increasingly out of touch with it, longing to spend more time in the world and with the friends in my mind.

But as I grew older, I found my childhood survival skills didn’t translate well to adult life.

Eventually, I became an adult who struggled to advocate for my needs, since ignoring them had been my survival strategy.

I didn’t know how to listen to my inner compass or recognize when I was becoming dysregulated and triggered.

I also did not yet know how to tell the difference between what I wanted and what I felt I needed to do out of compulsion, or when I was doing something because I felt it was expected of me.

Even when I knew I was right, I would question myself and my own memories, wants, hopes, and desires.

All it took was someone asking, “Are you sure?” and just like that, any certainty I had about anything would suddenly vanish. This left me very vulnerable, easy to manipulate and exploit, back when I struggled to trust my own judgment and didn’t yet know how to spot red flags.

Though I’d been born a “stubborn, difficult, rebellious child,” something in me got broken down, shattering my inner compass, and I lost my will to rebel.

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