The Neurodivergent Professor

Have you ever thought about your boundaries? Maybe a therapist told you your boundaries were weak. Or maybe you read something about relationships and how some people might not respect your boundaries. 

I learned early on that my boundaries are weak. 

I tend to pay attention to other people’s needs more than my own. Some people in the world will take advantage of this. Many of us struggle to simultaneously love other people while protecting our own needs.

As I learn about neurodiversity, I have been thinking a lot about how boundaries relate to masking. Masking describes how we alter our behavior to reduce conflict. Masking often requires us to soften our boundaries to appease other people. The problem is, when we loosen our boundaries we open ourselves to more suffering.

Boundaries ensure that we know when we are approaching discomfort. They are warning systems that tell us we are wandering into situations where we have felt unsafe in the past. Sometimes it is important to push our boundaries for personal growth, but mostly they are important to maintain our mental and emotional balance.

I, like many neurodivergent people, struggle with hypersensitivity. 

My awareness is super responsive to environmental stimuli, and I am often overloaded with information. In some ways, this is a superpower that protects us but in others, it is paralyzing. Too much information isn’t always a good thing, and it is easy to become paralyzed and overwhelmed.

Boundaries help hypersensitive people from becoming overwhelmed. It can reduce analysis paralysis and help maintain awareness of our needs. If we don’t have awareness of boundaries, we can’t possibly expect to process all the information coming in. Lack of boundaries is simply overwhelming.

Boundaries allow us to discriminate among competing information and match up our needs with possibility. This is critical for interacting with other people, but also in understanding what is going on with us inside.

A lack of boundary awareness almost ensures that our sensory systems will be hijacked rendering us nearly helpless in our environments. I honestly think this is the cause of MANY of our problems. 

You gotta stand for something or you’ll fall for anything.

Boundaries protect our needs but require awareness of them. The first step to identifying and forming healthy boundaries is awareness. Hell, what is awareness NOT the first step toward? Whether you need boundaries or not, awareness is the key to any type of personal growth. 

I think the most important point in all of this is that having poor boundaries can lead to a loss of awareness and self. Loss of, or lack of, self-awareness is a problem. Without self-awareness, we are victims of our reactions. As victims of our reactions, we become passive participants in our lives.

But what do we do, Chris? What’s the point of all this boundary and awareness mumbo-jumbo?

Look I get it. We all want solutions. Unfortunately, the solution to these problems is the same as all problems. Or at least a core part of the solution to any problem. 

The shortest pathway to self-awareness is meditation and mindfulness.

In this episode, many of my past episodes, and certainly in future episodes I campaign for mindfulness. If you like this kind of thing please let me know in whatever way suits your style. You can find me here on Medium, at www.chrisburcher.com, on most of the podcast platforms, and YouTube.

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Have you ever felt like you didn’t belong anywhere? Do you have a ‘sacred space’ where you do feel like you have membership?

For many of us, we have our family. Whether or not we truly feel comfortable in that space, there is a membership based on genetics or time spent together.

It is a difficult thing to simultaneously exist as separate and together. 

We are individuals. Our skin is a boundary separating us from each other.

Yet we are also connected to each other in a very obligate way.

Here I want to point out that neurodivergence provides an excellent model or example to understand this seeming dichotomy.

One of my central tenets is that we are biological organisms defined by natural selection. Our genetic composition combines with interactions with our world and each other to help us change through time. We evolve. Our success through evolution, or our fitness, defines our value. We made it!

However, layered on top of that fundamental scenario is the very human insistence on conformity and normalcy. In the face of continuous natural change we resist. I call this the Evolution Paradox.

Similarly, our success along this evolutionary path is in expressing our diversity. Our uniqueness is ‘meant to be’ and flying our freak flags is critical to this phenomenon. I call this the Uniqueness Imperative. 

Together, these ideas summarize my platform. That human problems arise from the dissonance between our nature and our arrogance. For some reason, we think we are better than evolution. We resist the very forces that create and perpetuate us. We don’t want to change, yet change is the very foundation of our humanity.

That neurodivergence — or any type of diversity — exists is brilliant. Diversity is the key to our success. In a universe that is always changing, multi-generational, mortal beings must change with it. Or go extinct.

Pretending that neurodivergent people are somehow unimportant, ‘less-than’, or have no value is insolent. For whatever reason, humans have shifted from recognizing and embracing diversity, to trying to minimize it at all costs.

Just look around. Choose any conflict. 

Anxiety? A result of trying to be someone you are not. Fitting in is stressful.

War? I want you to be like me. You aren’t. Let’s fight. 

Inequality? You are different from me. I must abolish you.

It may be oversimplifying, but I believe most of our problems come down to the dissonance that arises from resisting our nature. Of trying to conform in a world that values non-conformity.

And I get it. Conformity is protective. Showing others your ‘true self’ is scary. Masking, or blending in to social groups, is self preservation. And we’ve done this for so long, maybe thousands of years, that we have forgotten how to be ourselves. To just be. 

The lack of safety and fear of being cast out of the village has led us to try and be alike. And this is damaging our fitness, in the Darwinian sense.

I argue here, and throughout my writing and podcasting, that we have to stop this. Somehow we have to find the strength to be ourselves. And to embrace each other. And to be ourselves in a world that seems to want us to be each other.

It’s time to shift the power from being normal, average, or conforming to being authentic. The time for human arrogance is over. The stakes are too high. The persistence of our species is literally at risk. 

Diversity is the way. 

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How do you feel about terms like people pleaser, codependent, inauthentic, or chameleon?

We use these terms to describe when we are not ‘being ourselves’ in the presence of other people.

I think this probably has some evolutionary significance in ensuring we remain members of a group. We are being polite and trying not to hurt feelings or cause conflict. We want to be liked.
The neurodivergent community uses terms like ‘masking’ or ‘camouflaging’ to describe this behavior. Autistic people mask to hide behaviors that may identify them as autistic. Similarly, allistic or neurotypical people mask when they try to avoid conflict or blend in. 

My experience with masking began in therapy where I was identified as codependent. According to psychoanalysis, I mask all the time so that people will like me and to avoid conflict. I was given tools to help change my mind and beliefs, but I couldn’t let go of my desire to keep the peace.

Later I would experience Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy where I learned I had ‘parts’ who protected me. One, or more, of these parts were related to my need to avoid conflict and blend in. I learned at a young age that ‘being myself’ often invited ridicule from my peers and made me feel unsafe. I learned to mask to feel safe in the world.

Unfortunately, we humans tend to repeat what works and I became a master masker. I learned that my brain works like this. If I feel unsafe I will perform a behavior or role that worked in the past to make me feel safe. Reducing my personality, or masking, and blending in more with the person with whom I was interacting or was afraid, accomplished this need for safety. 

I think the IFS model makes a lot of sense and I have met many of the parts that help protect me. The problem is, that these masking behaviors also reduce our growth. Especially when we become adults and can protect ourselves in other ways or when the bullies of our youth are gone. 

It is easy to overdevelop masking tendencies. Like a muscle, the more we use them the stronger and more pervasive they become. The more we mask the less comfortable we are being ourselves. We start to become the masks we wear. Eventually, it is easy to lose track of who is you and who is a mask. 

I believe a lot of us suffer from this identity crisis. We forget who we are because we spend so much time being someone else. Where do we draw the line?

Masking is protective, of that, there is no doubt. Personally masking probably saved me from getting beat up more than once. It also enabled me to learn critical life skills like public speaking, interviewing for jobs, and maintaining relationships.

But somewhere along the line, I lost myself. I realized I had done so when therapists would ask me what I wanted or what I needed. I honestly didn’t know. I didn’t know what I wanted or needed because I didn’t know who I was. 

As sad or weird as that may sound I think it is incredibly common. I think we learn to rely on our masks to get through our days. In doing so, we strengthen them and rely on them. It becomes subconscious. We are not aware of what we are doing. 

In the background of our lives, beneath the level of our awareness, our masks become stronger. As they do, our ‘selves’ become weaker. We become more afraid of revealing who we are and more convinced that doing so would cause trouble. 

The key, then, is to moderate our use of masks. To do this we must first be aware that we are masking. I have learned to do this through a meditation practice. There are probably other ways, but I will focus future articles and episodes on how a practice is essential; especially for neurodivergent people.

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Do you have an opinion about climate change? How about abortion? Or universal basic income?

We all have our concerns and our hills that we’ll die on. This week I will use climate change as an example of a polarizing issue and make an argument about how neurodiversity may provide a model for solutions.

Human beings argue about many polarizing issues, but we often agree about solutions. Most of the solutions involve top-down strategies like voting. We have to change the ‘machinery’ at the top, regardless of the change we seek. 

 Want to make groceries more affordable? We have to change the major food companies. Want to reduce discrimination? Vote in better politicians. Want to ban sensitive books? Elect new state government officials.

Voting, you will find, is a common solution to many human problems. How’s that working out for you? Remember Ronald Reagan’s ‘trickle-down economics’? Yeah, that didn’t work.

Even science has lost the ability to solve our problems. Truly, science has sort of joined the club in trying to regulate our beliefs in a top-down direction. We don’t need to understand our problems any better. We need solutions.

Top-down approaches don’t work. I think it is time for a bottom-up approach.

My work often suggests that we need new solutions to our problems. Currently, humans are plagued by intrinsic problems like anxiety, depression, and suicide. We also suffer from extrinsic problems like health care, equality, and racism. 

Most solutions follow a top-down approach where we believe in following the rules to change the system within the constraints provided. Increasingly we are losing faith in these systems and more people believe the systems were designed to keep us stuck.

Education, government, and economics rely on students, citizens, and consumers who behave predictably. Predictability works best when people are similar. Thus, systems favor sameness and conformity as a means to an end. 

The argument I continue to make, however, is that this approach disagrees with the basis of biological life on Earth.

The problem, then, stems from a dissonance between how we live our lives and the machinery that provides us with life.

Briefly, our DNA has evolved to create diversity, yet we increasingly depend on conformity. Species persistence depends on expressing this DNA as diversity. Our problems stem from our refusal to do this. Rather than embrace diversity, we reject it. 

Why humans would ever design systems that blatantly disagree with basic biological principles is beyond me. Life is diverse. Diversity ensures persistence. End of story. 

I fundamentally believe that most, if not all, of our problems stem from this mismatch.

Unfortunately, top-level systems like science, democracy, and capitalism are too difficult to change. Or, if we did implement changes, they would be too radical and uncomfortable and cause new, unforeseen problems. This is why we can’t just stop using fossil fuels tomorrow and switch to electric vehicles.

All solutions to human problems start with individuals. 

It’s time to try a bottom-up approach. I think we are converging on this realization. To change the world we have to change ourselves. Many of us are doing this work now, and I believe my work contributes to this larger effort. 

Neurodiversity provides an exc

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What is your experience with therapy? Have you tried it? Wanted to try it? Hesitant to try it? Overwhelmed? Did you have a bad experience?

 I have noticed some neurodivergent people have had negative experiences with therapy. Here I want to clarify my own story about how both therapy and neurodivergence are helping me heal and become the person I want to be.

Briefly, I have been in therapy, counseling, or coaching (I use the general term therapy to describe all of these forms of help) for thirteen years. I began my healing journey after a divorce and retiring from my career to be a stay-at-home dad. I have seen over a dozen specialists over those years and continue to see a therapist today. 

Recently, my current therapist suggested I complete several autism and general neurodivergence self-assessments. I was surprised to discover I scored quite high as autistic. This began a new type of healing for me where I considered for the first time that, perhaps, there was nothing wrong with me that required fixing. 

But I also realized that my psychoanalytic journey is also extremely helpful. Just not in the way I thought it would be.

Therapy helped me build a practice

My practice grew out of therapy, although I didn’t realize I was building it. Over the years, I tried all of the things that were supposed to help. Journalling, meditating, exercising, and a healthy diet were all components supposed to make me feel better. More generally and ambiguously, having a good mindset and being mindful were also supposed to help. 

I realize now that my problems stemmed from expecting immediate and specific results. Despite having convinced myself I was being patient, I wasn’t. But I practiced enough of these techniques regularly enough (ish) that I started to see changes.

I didn’t associate changes in my moods and beliefs with anything I was practicing 

Getting out of my head and into my body changed everything

Somewhere along the line, I realized I understood everything intellectually but that I wasn’t seeing any real change in myself. I eventually stopped trying to intellectualize the lessons and started experiencing them somatically and emotionally in my body. This is when things started to shift. When I started learning about neurodivergence things took off.

Less intellectual, more somatic

My practice now consists of several elements. Here’s a list of things I do daily-ish (I included links to older episodes on some topics):

• Meditation 
• Awareness
• Mindfulness
• Exercise
• Mindful eating
• Journalling.  I developed this habit before meditation and it is probably one of the most critical elements in understanding my emotions and values.

These are things that work for me, and they can work for you, but you must develop your own, personal practice. A good therapist, counselor, or coach can introduce you to the tools and help you design a practice that works. I’m sure there are other ways, but these tools are readily available and have worked for lots of people. 

Therapy taught me how to build my practice to build a new life for myself. Therapy might be able to do the same for you. I’m sure there are other ways. I think the most important things I have learned are that:

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Do you love yourself?

I know, it’s an extremely personal question. When a counselor first asked me this question I was taken aback. It’s offensive and puts one in a defensive position. And who likes feeling defensive?
But therapy is about healing and I answered as best I could. Again, and again. I’m fairly certain every counselor, therapist, and coach I have worked with has asked me some form of this question.
When my new therapist heard my answer to this question she heard something the others did not. When I described my inner and outer worlds and my troubles blending the two, she suggested I might explore some autism self-diagnostic quizzes. Long story short, I tested very likely to be autistic. So here we are.
What fascinates me is what I have learned from the neurodiversity community in just a few months. Whereas therapy made me feel like something was wrong with me, neurodiversity suggests that there is not. 
Being different isn’t wrong.

In therapy, I was taught that many of my beliefs were incorrect and could be changed. The problem was me, the solution was easy, and it was simply a matter of me implementing the solution. 

Therapy suggests my feelings are irrational and that I need to change. Therapy made me feel broken and prescribed various quick fixes. Most of these solutions came in the form of simply changing the way I think — the way my brain works. However, after over a decade in various therapies with nearly a dozen different practitioners, I was unable.
My beliefs . . . my brain . . . my neurology proved impossible to alter.
My inability to fix myself led me down a shame spiral.
I don’t blame therapy or the therapists. I learned a lot intellectually. I came to understand the popular psychotherapeutic approaches and concepts. I also learned a lot about my childhood and my trauma. I did a lot of healing over the years. Yet, the same problems plagued me.
When I considered that there was nothing wrong with me things started to loosen up. Therapy reinforced my feelings of being different but left me feeling wrong. Thinking I might be neurodivergent made me feel okay about being different. And this lines up with my understanding of evolution and ecology. Of course, we are different. That’s the point.

Being autistic suggests that these feelings are rational and there is no need to change. My shame is unfounded. There is nothing wrong with my brain. The solution is to recognize how and why the world seeks conformity and that this is irrational — not me.
Autism is teaching me that I don’t need to change myself, but that there are things I can do to help integrate my inner and outer worlds. 
Though prejudice and stigma try to hide neurodiversity in the shadows, it is time we figure out how to be present. Expressing our diversity is imperative to solve our problems. We are not all alike. Trying to alter this natural law is killing us. My writing, podcasts, and videos are a small part of making this change.
Together we can find the courage to change the world.
Help us stay connected by subscribing to my Medium page, podcast, YouTube channel, or webpage.
I’m currently reading “The Healthy Deviant. A Rule-Breakers Guide to Being Healthy in an Unhealthy World” by Pilar Gerasimo. You can find her work and the book here.

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Have you ever felt like everyone understands the rules except for you? Me, too. And I’ve spent over a decade in therapy trying to figure it out.

The main reason I sought help from therapists, counselors, and coaches is because I have always felt different. Like everyone else got the ‘Manual to Human Life’ except for me. As a result, I have always felt like an outsider. I think feeling different also motivates rebellion. Growing up in the 80s, we called this non-conformity. If you’re younger than me, this means your interests fall outside the ‘normal crowd’. 

As I discover more about my neurodivergence and Autism, I realize that neurodivergence is the antithesis of conformity. This fits well with the ideas I outline in my podcast episodes 99 and 100. In short, the world is supposed to be diverse. 

Make room for people different from you. Don’t be an asshole. 

This episode and the future direction of my podcast (which I have rebranded from Knowledge + Experience = Wisdom to The Neurodivergent Professor) is to be the person I needed when I was 15. I’m here for 1 me and the other people who need to hear what I have to say. I’m thankful to discover where I fit.

My mission is to be additive to the body of the work that helps normalize diversity. I think this is self-actualization, as described here. I’m old enough to have figured some stuff out (see all 157+ episodes of my podcast and Medium articles for more) and need to share it in case folks are looking for it — like I have been. 

My growth now depends on giving back. 

Growth perpetuates life but requires resources. All living things get a fair share of communal resources to grow, reproduce, and die. Other forms of growth that consume too many of the limited communal resources are bad. Bad growth is limitless; the only biological example I can think of is cancer. Limitless growth is also one of the central tenets of capitalism, which has never made sense to me. Limitless growth disagrees with Darwin as I discuss in episode 156. It isn’t considered fitness in an evolutionary sense. 

I think part of our duty is to grow, to address our issues, so we can give more back. Commensurate with our privilege, or course. Of course, it’s your right NOT to, but . . . . then you’re an asshole.

I want humans to FLOURISH, and to assist others in flourishing. I seek to make humans better as obnoxious as that sounds. Personal growth. Self-improvement. I believe in these things.

Suffering exists and is going to exist. It is part of being human. But we can learn to minimize suffering and maximize flourishing. We can learn to thrive rather than merely survive. 

I want to honor our ancestors who got us here. Here is where we are. My ‘here’ is giving back to the future for me. Suffer less. Flourish more. We all have different paths. Different traumas. But we all have trauma. Healing is part of flourishing. Not healing maximizes suffering. I think that the purpose of growth is to minimize suffering, maximize flourishing, and help everyone else do those things. HOW to do this effectively is the direction of my podcast and writing. Whether you identify as neurodivergent or not, please subscribe to The Neurodivergent Professor on YouTube, podcast, my website, or Medium.

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Are you a religious person? An atheist? Agnostic?

I consider myself to be agnostic. Mostly because I Don’t Know. 

If I had to choose any belief system to attach to, I would be a Darwinist. By this, I mean that I believe that Natural Selection is a meaningful explanation of life. When I think about ‘why we are here’, I can’t help but recognize how life persists through time.

In short, I believe Darwin best explained what I think the purpose of life is. Life begets immortal individuals that can reproduce and perpetuate. Life dies, but life persists. The chief mechanisms in this dance are DNA, sexual reproduction, and Natural Selection. I capture this argument in episodes about Sexual Selection and Love, Let’s Talk About Sex 1 and 2, the Uniqueness Imperative, and the Evolution Paradox. 

In short, the purpose of life is to perpetuate diversity to ensure we persist through environmental changes. The creation of diversity maximizes the probability for survival where ‘fitness’ results when biological characteristics work out when things change.

The purpose of this episode, and the future direction for my work, is how this applies to neurodiversity.

 Sexual reproduction creates new individuals that are different from their parents. These individuals express those differences during their lives. Individuals deemed ‘fit’ for their environments will reproduce and continue the process.

Of course, this applies to our nervous systems. I define neurodiversity as genotypic (in an individual’s DNA) and phenotypic (the physical expression of DNA) variation. To me, the nervous system is the interacting parts that facilitate our sensory interpretation of the environment. 

When we talk about neurodivergence in the form of autism, ADHD, OCD, and many other conditions we are referring to the different ways our nervous systems work. Briefly, our brain, spinal cord, and other nervous cells and tissues coordinate with our sense organs to interpret our external environments

It should come as no surprise that a diversity of neurotypes is beneficial to survival. We’re supposed to be different in every way. To represent a continuum — a spectrum, if you will. It is true for height as well as sight. Diversity is key to survival. Not for individuals, but for species.

The bothersome thing is that as critical as diversity is, modern humans try very hard to be the same. 

Being forced into conformity is what’s wrong, not neurodivergence

Why would we all ‘work’ the same way? We are unique individuals. We are products of sexual reproduction, which ensures that we are similar, yet differ, from our parents.

We used to be cool with this variation. We understood the value of diversity. We might not have known why, but we supported instead of rejected our differences. At least I like to believe that to be true.

The more we seek conformity, the more we notice neurodivergence. This matters. This needs to stop. My goal is to help change this BACK to how I think it used to be.

Accept that different is good. Stop trying to reduce it.

Neurotypes have different capacities for interacting with the world. Phenotypes. External stimuli are differentially intercepted and interpreted. Each one of us has a unique way of navigating the world. We can all benefit from these shared differences. But only if

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Have you ever felt like the only person who didn’t receive a ‘How to Live Life’ handbook? Did you think everyone else understood what was going on except you? I’ve felt like that my whole life. 

And it isn’t that I don’t like myself. I love myself. Everything breaks down when I move from my ‘inner world’ to the ‘outer world’. I struggle to understand human interactions. I always feel like I’m different.

And don’t get me wrong, I’m not looking to be ‘happy’, whatever that means. I’m just trying to reduce my suffering. I believe in human flourishing and I’m trying to learn how to address the aspects of my life that reduce that. And to help others learn how to do it, too.

My first foray into healing was seeking the help of counselors, therapists, and coaches. Near uniformly, they told me that everyone feels different. I internalized that to mean, if everyone feels different then we are all the same. More importantly, we are all wrong. I am wrong. 

But I already knew I was wrong. Feeling wrong or different was the whole point of me seeking therapy. Being told that I was wrong for feeling different not only didn’t help, it made me feel ashamed. A lot of therapy was like the shift from guilt (something is wrong and I can change it) to shame (something is wrong because I am wrong).

Does that make sense?

I was a weird kid. An odd teenager. And an awkward adult.

The first time I vomited I thought I was dying and I developed emetophobia — the fear of vomiting. It has been crippling.

I had a lot of weird friends growing up. This made me feel superior until I realized that parents lumped weird kids with other weird kids, so what did this say about me?

The first time a girl expressed interest in me I built up a wall so tall no physical interaction could ever happen. Despite my curiosity, I was just too overwhelmed to do anything about it.

My interest in breakdancing and skateboarding got me beat up. My weird clothes induced ridicule.

Eventually, I learned how to mask or act like I knew what I was doing. I had various degrees of success holding jobs, passing tests, driving a car, and even making physical contact with the opposite sex. 

I also learned that smoking weed helped. But there was a lot of collateral damage there. Eventually, I discovered alcohol and had similarly polarized results.

Now, more sober and with highly developed coping mechanisms or masks (see Episode 148), no one would ever suspect I was autistic.

And maybe I’m not. Except in the neurodivergent community, I have found clarity. The shift from therapy (there’s something wrong with you, and you need to fix it) to autism (you’re just different, and that’s ok) has been overwhelmingly relieving. 

A few months ago, I allowed the idea that I might be autistic — or neurodivergent to some degree — to penetrate my psyche. After taking tons of online tests and always scoring in the ‘likely autistic’ category, I accepted that this might be an explanation for things I had learned about in therapy. 

What a difference perspective can make.

To me, autism posits a theory that suggests humans may be neurologically variable. I don’t really care for the DSM definitions, this one makes sense to me. Sure, I may lack psychological training but I have a curious mind and a shit ton of degrees. It makes sense to me that, like most anything related to biology, our ‘neurology’ will vary around a mean to some degree.

What I have learned about biological organisms is that we receive information through our nervous systems. This includes nerve cells, brains, spinal cords, and all the connections within this system. Humans have five subsystems that allow us to receive information from our environments. These include the senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell.

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If you are in therapy or considering psychoanalysis this episode is for you. This episode is also for you if you have been wondering about neurodivergence, autism, or ADHD. This is the beginning of what I think will be a long quest and potentially a new direction for this podcast and blog.

In this episode, I lay out my experience with psychoanalysis and my recent foray into learning about ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) and neurodivergence. Several episodes will follow with increasing levels of detail and both specificity about me and generality that may apply more broadly.

There is a companion blog post linked here that inspired this episode and is worth reading if you’re into this sort of thing.

I don’t know why humans ponder our existence. I don’t know what motivates one person to pursue personal growth and another to dismiss it entirely. My work is directed at those of us who want to live a ‘fulfilled life’, who are ‘pursuing happiness’, ‘seek healing’, or want to flourish. We want to live our best lives while here on Earth.

This is not to say any of us are miserable. Some of us are, of course. Sometimes growth is motivated by severe trauma. Others are simply curious. I think curiosity is very human and is enough of an excuse to gaze at our navel should we choose to do so.

For me, my pursuit of these things came about because I have always felt DIFFERENT. I didn’t have a better word to describe this feeling, and I’m not sure there is a better word. I have just always felt a little awkward, or atypical, or unusual. I never really felt like I ‘fit in’. If you have read this far, I’m sure you can relate.

This feeling led me to several experiences with counseling, therapy, and coaching in my youth, teenage years, and adulthood. After I had kids, and again after my divorce, I sort of ratcheted down on trying to understand myself and to heal. 

I have lots of experience with therapies of all types. And I can’t say that any of it healed me. Certainly, much of it was HEALING, but I never felt a Eureka or ‘a-ha’ moment that made me feel better.

Mostly, therapy made me feel like something was wrong with me that I could learn to ‘fix’. 

But I never felt ‘fixed’. 

Not feeling ‘fixed’ made me feel even worse. I felt shame at not being good enough to heal. 

I went into therapy feeling ‘not good enough’ because I was different, and implementing the therapy training led me to feel even more ‘not good enough’ because I couldn’t make the techniques work. 

It wasn’t until recently, when a therapist suggested I do some neurodivergence tests, that I was able to open up to Autism. Nearly all of the tests suggest that I have a high propensity for being Autistic. While I didn’t score ‘off the charts’ in the ‘super obvious’ range, I was way above neurotypical or allistic (non-ASD). 

What surprised me about ASD is how well it seemed to explain the entirety of my experience. I found videos, podcasts, and interviews of people saying the same things I had said all my life. Things like:

• I always felt different
• I feel like other people had a handbook of life that I didn’t get
• The world doesn’t make sense
• I love myself, but I fall apart when I interact with the rest of the world
• I have mysophonia, or sensitivity to some sounds
• I am an empathic, introverted, highly sensitive, INFJ

That last one pretty much screams Autistic as far as I am concerned.

I have also found a lot of support within the neurodivergent community. My few posts and episodes about self-diagnosing have been well-received and supported. I find myself identifying strongly with other neurodivergents.

More than anything, if ASD does accurately describe me — and I am only self-diagnosed so, who knows

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