Rosie - Neurodivergences

Hola!*
*Disclaimer – it was very sunny when I wrote this so I went with Spanish!

Side note – this whole post was actually going to be about weather originally, or rather my love/hate relationship with weather-themed small talk.

Weather-talk is a pretty good weathervane of how I’m doing.

If I talk about the weather to strangers, I’m trying to be normal.

If I’m talking about it to acquaintances, it means I’m exhausted or too anxious to say anything real.

If I’m talking about it with my mum it normally means there are too many raw feelings in the air and if we tried to talk about anything else I might collapse into tears or, more likely, rage.

My weather chit chat is like my weatherproof mascara – it lets me cry a bit but not enough to leave me with branding streaks down my face.

Anyway, back to my actual topic for this week – social toll.

I always think I write about the moments I realise I’m neurodivergent but I guess that’s not really accurate. I’m always neurodivergent. What I’m actually noticing in these moments is the toll of being neurodivergent in a neurotypical world.

Some of these ‘neurodivergences’ are more accurately sensory processing issues. For example, today I automatically wore my Saturday clothes and only noticed that I was too hot when I was soaked in sweat and struggling to breath or earlier this week, I didn’t notice I was too tired before I fell asleep standing up and hit my head against the wall.

Some are attention issues – like working two hours after I was told I could go because the unfinished task was burning a hole in my brain or being so focused on absorbing news of a problem and doing crazed mental arithmetic to replan that I was unable to even hear the proposed solution my mum was offering.

I only notice the intensity of an overworked neurodivergent brain and body when it has gone too far and starts to spill over to how I approach normal activities like my walks.

I normally set a timer, send a couple of texts and listen to a podcast but on Friday, I frantically paced through my texts, accidentally locked my phone trying to start the timer, spent 10 minutes fretting over which podcast to listen to before ultimately listening to none of it anyway as I proceeded to dissect the week in a novel-length text to my mum alongside trying to remember my route and vigilantly monitor that people weren’t getting to close to me and I was hitting all my time-checks. After pressing send and finally finishing the to do list, I looked up and could already see my house. Only then did I feel the tension in my shoulders and the tears in my eyes.

I often get told that these things happen because I am constantly thinking of too many things or too far ahead. I am told to focus on what is right in front of me. I’m not sure it is that. I am just as liable to hyperfocus on the here and now and miss a key deadline.

This isn’t what creates the toll.

Is it a problem that I don’t notice I’m too hot or too tired or too overstimulated to function? Yes. But the toll comes from my response to these signals. I don’t notice them and go ‘Wow I’m stressed. How can I regulate myself?’ I notice and I go ‘Oh no, I’m being neurodivergent again. How can I mask this?’.

My determination to socially regulate myself makes physical and emotional regulation harder and harder. It also means that even when I know a situation will overwhelm me, I often still run towards it in the hope that I have ‘overcome’ my ‘symptoms’.

I’ve had enough break-less workdays, constant meeting days and bouts of hyperfocus to know that I need to take regular breaks and have comms off time to recover. I know I need to balance the red of trying to navigate systems and social conventions that don’t make sense to me with the green of activities where I can let the mask down and recover.

However, because I know that neurotypicals can do the red, I don’t let myself have the green – I don’t deserve it. Sometimes because I know what I need and what will make me overwhelmed, I use this knowledge against myself. I deny myself regulation as punishment for ‘letting’ the ‘neurodivergences’ spill out of their box.

I don’t ask for task clarification but instead do three versions of the work. I don’t comms off but try to ‘network’. I push all the extra time it takes for me to do the communications, planning, anxiety management and catch-up work into the ‘green’ time neurotypicals have when the working day is done.

My ‘wins’ such as recognising that I can’t work effectively at dinner or setting alarms so I don’t make myself late for lunch by getting overfocused in something, I brand as ‘caving’ and I resent the stubborn persistence of yet to be masked ‘neurodivergences’.

The social and emotional toll this takes is something I also often recognise too late.

I only notice the sensory overwhelm and frustration of having my attention constantly diverted by pinging work messages or correcting ‘mistakes’ that I was previously told were the way to do things, when I almost smash my computer to pieces over a cookie message. I only notice the decoding and encoding and self-censoring of professional communication when I am speaking to another neurodivergent person and suddenly I don’t have to explain myself quite as much. I only notice I am lonely when I am staring blankly at my phone wishing I had someone to text. I only notice the energy it takes to understand other people’s emotions when I am screaming at my mum to tell me what is wrong – too exhausted at guessing. I only noticed how much pressure managing myself is creating when I can no longer even make a basic decision or communicate.

I realise the toll when I can take no more. When I abandon the texts and podcasts and just walk in silence. When I shut down the work and take a nap.

I notice the long-term toll when I take protective action as a reflex. This week, I was offered ‘as much support as I need’ and I immediately wrote back to clarify the hours this meant. It meant four hours. In some ways this was a win. I had thought to check before getting my hopes up, but it was bittersweet as it comes from a lot of historical emotional toll of taking things too literally, getting hurt and feeling like a fool (or feeling neurodivergent). My wins are coping mechanisms not empowerments.

I only notice that I am feeling really bad when I am kind to myself - after I’ve burnout and I remember that I am not only neurodivergent in these moments when I clash with the neurotypical world. I’m neurodivergent all the time and the more I attack the ‘neurodivergences’, the ‘more neurodivergent’ I become. The more I accept and regulate, the more I can bear the toll.

Much love,
Rosie
xxx