Tag Archives: #ADHD

Being Human With RSD (Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria)

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RSD is knows as ‘Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria) is associated with ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder) and autism. It can be described as a hypersensitivity to real, and or perceived rejection. It’s not officially recognized as an actual mental health disorder in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) but there is an increasing awareness of it. Here is a link to a discussion thread explaining it in more detail (link will open in separate window).

For decades, I used to beat the ever-loving shit out of myself mentally and emotionally because of RSD. Any time I made a mistake, or didn’t fit in perfectly in a social situation, I beat the crap out of myself. I told myself I was the worst person in the world and that I would never learn how to act properly when I needed to. I tried to hold myself to a standard of perfection no human being can ever hope to achieve.

RSD comes from when a neurodivergent person is in a group or social situation and they laugh a little too loud, say something that doesn’t flow with the rest of the conversation, or they don’t do something all that well, and in the process someone in the group either says something negative to them, or gives them a side-eye or eye-roll, or someone tries to make a joke about the neurodivergent person’s verbal or physical goof-up. I didn’t take this well or shrug it off because my neurodivergent brain reacted in a huge storm of shame, guilt, and worst of all, fear that people actually hated me for not being ‘normal’, or just ablet o function in a social setting like everyone else.

What’s really awful about RSD is that for me, it made me beat the living shit out of myself mentally and emotionally any time I flubbed up in some way, even if it was just an honest mistake, or me just showing some enthusiasm, or  saying something that didn’t sound like what everyone else was saying. But what got me to stop hurting myself like this was one thought I had eleven years ago:

Everyone else is just as full of shit as I am, but I’m not a bad person.

For context, this thought came to me after a call-evaluation where I made a mistake during the call but caught myself and gave the correct information. Basically, I took responsibility for a simple mistake and fixed it. Now I wasn’t expecting a huge celebration for it, but I do believe I deserved recognition for catching my mistake and fixing it. Yet my manager at the time of this evaluation didn’t see it that way because the first thing she said to me after the call was over was, “You should have known better.”

Okay, maybe you can see it that way because I was a veteran rep who had been doing this for years and maybe shouldn’t have been going so fast I read the wrong piece of information. But IN EXPLANATION, NOT DEFENSE, information on the screens I was working on back then was not user-friendly or well-organized so mistakes happened much more than they should have. But I didn’t say anything because I’d heard this before when I made honest mistakes during calls. But I will also say this: just saying someone should know better instead of asking them why they made the mistake and maybe trying to make the workflow better would have been more productive. And dear readers, this is why after ten years away from that call-center hell as I like to call it, I still don’t miss it in any way, shape, or form.

Rejecting perfectionism is what really helps me with RSD. This rejection of perfectionism helps me accept that I am different from most people, but that doesn’t make me a bad person. Because to me, neurotypical people don’t have social cues but more like neurotypical people conform to the dominant person in the room and that person sets the tone and pace. To me, neurotypical thinking is very linear and not too complex. To me, a neurodivergent brain is chaos theory at times, but mostly it’s just high-speed processing of lots of information and input, or having a highly-tuned sensitivity to all kinds of things coming in at once: noise, temperature, words, emotions, etc..

Another thing that has helped me with RSD is hearing this: no one thinks about you more than you do yourself. The vast majority of people are not thinking about you at all. The vast majority of people are thinking about what’s in front of them that they have to deal with at this very moment.

And yet another thing that has helped me with RSD is this: if someone has a beef with me, they can put on their big-boy/big-girl pants and come talk to me about it. But I can also respond to that in my own way, such as if they’re trying to force me to be someone I’m not. I don’t need anyone’s good intentions, pearl-clutching, or hand-wringing because if that happens, I’ll just walk away.

Yes, I would love not to be such a fucking klutz. But my days of beating the shit out of myself are over because that accomplishes nothing. But it’s also something that each person has to reach on their own in their own way. So be good to yourself.

Fifty-Two and Fabulous

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Yesterday I began my fifty-second journey around the sun. I spent most of it on the road because I need money and that’s how I earn money right now. My riders were awesome as always and I dealt with the fact that Friday is ‘Drive Like a Real Idiot’ day on the road (because Friday afternoons are when I see the worst driving- it’s like people rip their brains out of their skulls and run over them when they get out of work on Friday).

But I didn’t start out feeling fifty-two and fabulous because when my alarm went off yesterday morning (and this morning, too), I said, “Motherfucker.”, then I got out of bed and did my usual morning routine (get dressed, take Darcy outside, put some treats in Tiger Lily’s bowl, put ice and water in my bottle, then hit the road and charge the car up because two a.m. is when it’s the cheapest for me).

Of course, birthdays get me in a reflective mood so here are some reflections on what I’d like for this fifty-second trip around the sun for me:

First, get into shape. Right now, I feel like a gelatinous blob and no, I’m doing this to win a spread in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. I just don’t want to feel like a blob of skin and bones. So I’m going to invest in a couple of hand weights and do a few exercises for a few minutes a day to get started.

Two, eat better. I keep a weird schedule so it is a bit difficult to eat in a way that’s ‘normal’. Also, because of my lovely neurodivergent brain, my hunger signals and metabolism are fucked up (yes, that’s a lovely side effect of a neurodivergent brain). Add in wonky female hormones and it’s like a roller coaster sometimes in that sometimes I don’t feel hungry at all until I ask myself when was the last time I ate something, or I feel like eating everything that is not nailed down. But my goal with this is just to get more protein, fruits and vegetables, and complex carbs into me on a daily basis. I don’t drink soda or consume a lot of sweets (been trying to snack healthier with crackers or Cheerios in the car) so I just need to add in healthier stuff.

Three, I’ve set a note to myself to do what I call ‘social media’ stuff, meaning I want to be consistent with posting online content. I have a ton of it between this blog, stories, poems, and works-in-progress. So I set an alarm on my phone, which commits me to it along with a sticky note on my laptop. If I set an alarm, then I’ll do shit, which is so ADHD but hey, it works.

Now, this is all well and good but why the discussion here, why should I lay this all out online? It’s for me, first. And it’s because I want to explain why creating routines and plans, and setting alarms is important to do.

Instead of the term CPTSD (complex post-traumatic stress disorder), I will call it ‘non-stop bullshit’. There was about a decade or so in my life, my twenties to be more exact, where I felt like I was living through a never-ending stream of constant bullshit. It was like every single day (give or take) was like hitting the ground running and not stopping for ten or twelve hours. It was like people treated every single thing like it was a five-alarm fire or they just felt like they could dictate my time and if I took time to myself they freaked the fuck out and made me feel like shit. This constant stream of never-ending bullshit took its’ toll on me and I responded by either freezing up, or fawning all over people to get them to back the fuck off. Now, years later, there is still a part of my brain that worries I’ll freeze or fawn if someone ever came at me and pulled that kind of shit. I know I won’t because I’ve gotten really good at saying, “Excuse me?” in a very loud and angry voice. I just want the opportunity to follow it up with, “And your fucking point is?”

But I honestly don’t think that’s going to happen. Instead, I want to reach people who feel like they don’t have control over their own minds or their lives. People who feel like they’re going nuts, or are broken. Trust me, anyone who feels like they’re nuts for thinking and feeling all fucked up is not going nuts or broken. You just need some help figuring things out and finding a way to heal, and that’s where I can help you in my colorful, profane, and sarcastic way.

Of course, there are my other goals: publishing my books along with getting my van and hitting the road. I’m working on that now. And if something comes along that throws off my routines or plans, I’m getting back on track. Because if someone thinks getting knocked off the track makes someone a failure, fuck them all to hell (and yes, there are assholes in this world who do feel this way). For neurodivergent people like me, routines and plans are worth making and sticking to, and for getting back on track with.

And this, dear readers, is how I’m going to make being fifty-two fabulous!

The Universe Has a Sense of Humor (especially when it comes to me)

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I have said for many years the Universe has a sense of humor, especially when it comes to me. Case in point:

Yesterday morning when I woke up at o’dark thirty, I said, “I have a feeling something shitty is going to happen to me today. As long as it’s not to with my car, I’ll be okay.”

Well, the Universe took this as a challenge and after a consult with the Goddess, decided I should start having periods again. Yes, after an almost three-month hiatus I started my period yesterday. And I’m enjoying the lovely shit-show of it with all the lovely cramps, bloating, joint pain, and fatigue I can handle. Oh well, at least I had a pad in my bag when I stopped to use the restroom yesterday morning (and I refilled it as soon as I got home).

But I had a feeling a period might be coming because my ADHD was fucking up big-time and I was having joint pain even though the weather was warm and icky. It seems at the grand old of age of almost fifty-two I’m still not done with the whole perimenopause thing. And yet I still see women online saying no one talks about this shit. Trust me, sister, they do which is why I’m writing about it here. I’m glad my generation is talking about it in the sarcastic and bitchy way we have of dealing with things. And as for the elder millennials coming into this, buck up, bitches because it’s going to be one hell of a bumpy ride.

A lot of people have been saying this past week that the Universe has a sense of humor because conservative idiot-fake ass Christians are saying Donald Trump is possessed by demons and or is the Antichrist himself. I said on a Facebook thread that if Trump is the Antichrist then that’s proof that the Universe has a sense of humor because I always thought the Antichrist was supposed to be a lot slicker, more pathologically evil, and devilishly good looking. Instead, the Universe says I’ll give you a bloated dumb-ass with a rotting brain who isn’t afraid to spout Antichrist shit. But since he’s led so many ‘Christians’ from the truth, I’m going to say the Universe had a really good laugh at this one.

Some might say, like Depeche Mode did in their song ‘Blasphemous Rumors’ that God has a sick sense of humor. Personally, I don’t believe God has anything to do with things near as much as a lot of idiots on this planet think. My father used to say he couldn’t see God sitting on his ginormous white marble throne hurling shit down at us humans on Earth simply because he could. I mean, if humans were created in God’s image, wouldn’t that mean God is imperfect, too? I’m lucky to live in the twenty-first century here because in the Middle Ages that line would have gotten me burned at the stake. The problem is too many insecure men now would love to bring something like that back.

To me, the Universe is just going along through the great black void of the galaxy, and we’re all hurling through it and trying to hold our shit together while we’re all on this crazy ride. But while we’re doing that, shit breaks, people do stupid shit, people are mean and cruel, and nowhere near enough bullies get knocked on their asses. And middle-aged women like me discover they may have a few eggs left in the old ovaries and because the way the female plumbing system is built, those eggs have to come down the hard way.

I like to say the Universe likes balance- light and dark, good and bad, fucked up and not-so-fucked up. Some days are great, and some aren’t. But the good times don’t last forever, yet neither do the bad times. I think if you try to bend the Universe to serve you like royalty, well, the Universe will show you otherwise. Or as my father used to say, what goes around comes around, and you reap what you sow, and as I like to say, Karma can be a real bitch when she wants to be.

So as my ADHD-addled brain tries to work through sinus headaches and perimenopausal bullshit, the Universe keeps on keeping on. My advice: try to have a sense of humor about things, even if it’s sarcastic as hell sometimes. If people don’t get sarcasm, or don’t like it, that’s on them.

In the meantime, I’ll just keep laughing right back at the Universe here.

The Second Chance at the Second Half of Life

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It’s been two months since I’ve had a period. Now I could always spontaneously ovulate at any time and start the countdown all over again but as of now, I’m in the countdown to the grand finale of peri-menopause to total menopause. I am not missing my periods at all, and I’m not missing the insane PMS (pre-menstrual syndrome) I was having either. Now my body is slowly beginning to heal and adjust to the new reality of the second half of my life.

It was forty years ago this year that I was diagnosed with scoliosis, which is curvature of the spine. Mine was diagnosed in the fall of 1986 when I was twelve years old, though people had noticed my spine was starting to twist and curve when I was about eight years old. But since I was fat and clumsy, I guess no one thought anything of it. To correct the curvature, it would take complete spinal fusion surgery, which is extremely expensive, just like it was back in 1986, which is why I didn’t get it (also, because I was fat and the doctors wanted me to lose weight first, too). So between forty-plus years of scoliosis, massive years of stress, then the huge hormonal shift of menopause, my body has taken a battering. But with the hormonal situation beginning to level off, I feel like I’m getting a second chance with the second half of my life.

In addition to peri-menopause/menopause, scoliosis, working through what is probably a diagnosis of complex post-traumatic stress disorder, or what I call ‘silence’, I’ve also had to learn and understand that I am neurodivergent with an unofficial diagnosis of autism and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. I would say in the last ten years my life imploded into a huge pile of broken pieces that I’ve been sorting through and slowly putting back together. But what I’ve gotten out of this is something that no one can take away: clarity, peace, and healing. Most of all, if someone ever tells me to my face that if I don’t shut the fuck up and go along with their bullshit or I’ll end up all alone and no one will ever love me or want to be around me at all, I can look that person directly in the eye and say, “Fuck you.”, and then walk away with my head held high. Because that motherfucker, and no one else including myself, knows what the future will bring. But I’m not going to stay silent and still. Instead, I’m going out into he world and finding what’s out there.

Healing is possible. It’s a long, hard road but well worth traveling in order to reach the light of day. Because it was ten years ago that I walked away from my last regular day job in call-center hell. As I drove away, I blasted the song ‘Light of Day’ by Joan Jett and that song is just as true for me now as it was on that day. It’s been hard because it’s been such a struggle, and I know I’ve probably burned a few bridges along the way and for that I am truly sorry. That’s regret, guilt, shame, and remorse I will carry for the rest of my life. But at the same time, I managed to keep myself off the streets and on the road instead, and for that I’m grateful that I didn’t give up or quit, and that I had a lot of help along the way, too.

Over the years, I’ve talked about ‘trauma brain’, or the part of your brain that was seriously warped and fucked up by repeated exposure to assholes as I’ll put it. This is the part of your brain that lies its’ ass off to you and tells you that you’re worthless and will never accomplish anything, and why do anything worthwhile in the first place. Learning how to stand up to that part of your brain is liberating and hard but in the end, well worth it. The human brain is amazingly resilient and also able to adapt and change if you regulate the input and output yourself.

The reason I’m writing this is to say that it does get better. Slowly but surely, in tiny increments and small moments in time, things do get better. So for those you barreling into forty or fifty, hang on and hang in there. For those of you coming into forty, hang on because it’s going to get really bumpy. For those of you coming into fifty, it will start to smooth out. Yes, you’ll take longer to heal up, longer to recover your energy, but hey, life isn’t a race to the finish. Take your time and enjoy things and as my father always used to say, don’t sweat the small stuff.

Conversations From the Road – On the Road Again

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This morning I was on the road a little after three a.m. (yes, I do up that early most days, and have now for the last couple of years or so) and by daybreak, I had been from one end of the city, and county. Best of all though, and best of every morning I’m on the road, is I got to see the sunrise. I love the way the sky changes color from jet-black, to dark blue, then the colors of light, red, orange, yellow, and sky-blue. Then if there’s not heavy cloud cover, I get to see the sun itself slowly rise up over the horizon and into the sky. And when I see that, I say a little prayer of thanks to God for giving me another day.

I’m not a church-goer or adherent to any one religious faith or creed as I believe the Universe is seen, heard, and felt by each person in their own way. But when I ‘pray’, I’m sending my thoughts and feelings out into the Universe. I say ‘thanks’ for my own life, and I say prayers for those who are hurting, sad, lonely, or in need. A few years ago, I had a young man in the car one night and he said he was a Divinity student and asked if he could pray for me. I told him I was okay and thankful for what I had, and that I pray for others in need.

I don’t do ‘resolutions’ because I don’t feel like I need to focus on ‘improving’ myself because I’ve done the work as the saying goes now, and I will always continue to do the work of treating and healing my wounds and doing my best to learn how to face things head-on. I’m not perfect, and I sure as hell won’t let anyone hold me to that perfection-shit either. This is why I think people should focus on learning about how and why they think and feel the way they do and to learn from that. That’s a lifelong process and not something that someone just needs to ‘get over’. Being on the road every day shows me this because I do a lot of my best thinking in the darkness before the dawn when everything is quiet and still and I’m all alone with my thoughts.

Instead, I have goals. My primary goal is to get my van up and running to where I can live and work on the road. Another goal is to work to generate income to live on from my creative work like my blog and website here and other things. Yet another goal is to try and improve my health one step at a time because I don’t do the ‘exercise-eat healthy-weight loss’ thing for some aesthetic bullshit and no one else should either.

Another big thing I want to work on this year is managing my neurodivergent-ADHD tendencies better. I don’t want sticky notes and phone numbers to be places where good intentions go to die, like they seem to do so now. I want stuff like this to be ways for me focus and concentrate and do things and not let ADHD-bullshit as I will now call it, make me immobile. Because most of all, I know it’s my ADHD-bullshit that says ‘someone’ will be pissed off at me if I do something and if that ever happens I’ll just freeze up and go silent like I did in the past. I won’t go silent ever again and in the last eight years, no one has ever come at me for this and if somehow that ever does happen, I’m more than ready.

I also want to find ways to reach out and help people, small ways because I need to take things in small steps. I want to learn how to give back because I think we need to do this now more than ever. And yet again, I have to learn how to overcome the thought that ‘someone’ will come at me for this (yes, my brain is that fucked up to where this thought comes up way too often).

I think if I didn’t have the road, I would have gone clear around the bend years ago. I think I would have ended up under a bridge somewhere lost and out of my mind if I hadn’t been able to get on the road every day and drive. I know when my Uber days I’ll end, I’ll miss it. But I know that I’ll be starting a new chapter in my life and the road of that chapter will be wide-open and ready for me.

I know the road can be hard sometimes, very hard indeed with monster traffic, gobs of idiots and assholes, and sometimes it’s like life itself. My father used to say sometimes life hands you a big bucket of steaming shit that you have to carry around for a while despite the stench that times will make you want to puke. But you have to carry it until you can find a place to put it down.

On the road, in the middle of the night, or on an early morning like today, it’s not bad at all.

So as I said this morning, from the old song ‘Signs’:

Thank you Lord, for thinking about me

I’m alive and doing fine

Songwriters: Les Emmerson

Signs lyrics © Sony/atv Acuff Rose Music, Unichappell Music Inc., Galeneye Music

Breaking Radio Silence – Organizing to Heal

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Over the weekend, I’ve been working on a new project but not a writing-related one. It’s one I’ve wanted to do for a very long time, one I thought I would do eight years ago when I began my journey to understand why I thought and felt the way I did in order to learn how to make better decisions. One thing I thought about back then was that maybe I would learn how to be more organized. Because my organizational skills haven’t been that great and it’s taken me the last eight years to figure out why.

A lot of my issues with organizing are due to unofficially diagnosed neurodivergent stuff like ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder). ADHD brain for me functions like this: if I like something and want to do it or learn everything I can about it, then I can hyper-focus on it, but if I don’t want to do something or worse, if I have a negative association with that, I’ll come up with a hundred excuses not to do that. I’ve learned how to push through a lot of that ‘I don’t want to do this’ kind of thing all my life but it’s still hard. So I asked myself what I could do about this and I’ve finally found some answers:

My mindset is how I approach something mentally and emotionally. Yes, I just said emotionally. All my life I’ve been told not to take things ‘personally’ whenever someone put me down or just flat-out hurt me when I didn’t do anything wrong. Yes, I took that kind of shit ‘personally’ because it hurt and I committed a sin in these people’s eyes by showing that in some way, mostly silent. So whenever I got distracted, or hyper-focused on something, or learned something faster than everyone else, or was just minding my own business and off in my own imaginary world, someone gave me shit for that at one time or another. In my weak-ass past.

So when I got this ‘organization idea’ as I call it, I thought it would leave me as fast as it came to me. Or that I would feel all that old pain, shame, and guilt over it. To my surprise, I didn’t feel any of that. I didn’t think ‘what if someone doesn’t like this’ and all that bullshit. And that is a true sign of healing when you don’t hear that asshole-voice in your head over something.

Over the last year or so, I’ve seen a lot of ads for organization journals and stuff that says they were specifically created for people with ADHD and such. I think it’s great people are sharing things that work for them and so I’m getting on the bandwagon here and sharing my version of it: “Hey, here’s a way to get your shit together when your brain’s wiring is somewhat fucked up.”

As I began to sink into this idea of finding a way to organize my life, the first thing that came to me was it had to be cheap because I wanted it to be accessible and also because I’m on a budget so tight Wal-Mart is fancy for me. Then I realized that if I’m doing it on an old-school/DIY/analog budget, that it’s going to be fun. It’s going to be like being back in the 80’s sitting on the floor with markers and stuff with the music on just making a 21st century version of an 80’s scrapbook and or book full of handwritten stuff.

Then when I got into this whole retro-vibe thing, I came up with a title for this project: Organize Your Right Stuff. I got ‘The Right Stuff’ from the old movie about the Mercury 7 astronauts because getting my act together when I’ve fallen down on the job so many times requires the right stuff: courage, determination, hard work, and most of all, maintaining an even strain (from the movie).

The most important part of this has been taking my time with this, not diving in all the way then struggling to get to the surface. I’m not setting a deadline for this because there is NO need to. Deadlines are only for when you agree to one and have valid reasons for that. For getting your life together, there is NO deadline and no need to set one. Not setting deadlines takes the pressure to dive deep until you struggle to surface then get discouraged and start the boom-bust cycle of making plans and stuff then abandoning them.

Here are the things I want you to take away from this:

– Take your time. Changing how you think and feel for the better takes time because it’s not something that can be learned quickly.

– Have fun with this. Go old-school, retro, and cheap. Make it your own and in your own way.

– Take it one step at a time, or as I say an Uber driver, one ride at a time. No deadlines unless you feel they’re absolutely necessary and feasible.

– Be good to yourself with this. Don’t say anything bad to yourself about this, even when you struggle. And if anyone gives you shit about this, tell them to ‘fuck off’ then walk away and don’t listen to one single word from them. This project is not about you pulling your head out of your ass, nor is it about pulling anyone else’s head out of their ass. It’s about taking care of yourself and the things in life you need to take care of, and want to take care of.

CLICK HERE to see the new page for more details and info about it (including cheap cellphone photos of my very cheap supply haul)

Breaking Radio Silence – The Neurodivergent Part

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Below is a circle-graph illustrating an overlap of traits from three types of neurodivergence.

I fit right into the traits that are clustered together in the middle like several people I know who have seen this circle-graph. This overlapping circle may be a type of neurodivergence that hasn’t been labeled yet but a label isn’t what I’m looking for. Studying neurodivergence is about finding answers in how and why your brain functions like it does, answers that have helped me understand how and why I think and feel the way I do. But I’m beginning to realize this neurodivergence may be a much bigger part of me and my story than I’ve ever realized.

All my life I’ve known I was ‘different’. I learned very early in life most kids didn’t learn things as quickly as I did, or think as fast as I did, have an emotional perception like I did, or had a brain that ran at two-hundred miles an hour on a good day. Most people don’t exhibit the traits in this circle-graph and those people are what are called ‘neurotypical’, or better put, ‘normal’. The thing is, because these ‘normal’ people are in the majority, they make the rules more often than not and a fair number of them are nowhere near as accepting and understanding of ‘different’ people as they should be. Now I’m not saying neurodivergent people can’t be assholes because they can if they just decide not to give a shit about anyone but themselves.

What I’m now starting to think about is how many of my neurodivergent traits figured into my journey here. I’m thinking of how being neurodivergent in a very turbulent and chaotic upbringing made me go silent as I’ve talked about before. It has also made me question how much of my silence was masking, which is when a neurodivergent person hides their neurodivergent traits and tries to fit in ‘normally’ in social situations and such. Also, women are not diagnosed nowhere near as much as boys and men because the medical establishment is still extremely sexist and sadly too many girls past and present learn how to mask their true selves because of bullshit societal expectations for girls to be ‘nice’ and most of all, quiet and pleasing.

Another thing that keeps neurodivergent people in silence and engaging in some serious masking are accusations that their neurodivergent traits aren’t ‘real’ (whatever the fuck that means), that if we slide off our masks that we’re attention-seeking whores (been called that a few times in my life), or that we’re playing the ‘victim’ and again, seeking attention when we shouldn’t be doing so at all. Yes, people are this fucking shitty to us ‘weirdos’ as us neurodivergent people lovingly call ourselves. Because we do live in a society that is still deeply-rooted in conformist bullshit, where certain standards and behaviors are more accepted than others. Because despite all the talk of tolerance and acceptance these days, those of us who aren’t considered ‘normal’ still take too much shit for it.

So as I begin work on my book here, there is the ‘neurodivergent part’ that I will have to work with. And I think I’ve been dancing around it for a long time but I also think that what I call ‘breaking my silence’ is also unmasking myself. And I also want to work through how many of my neurodivergent tendencies could have been developed as a response to trauma and emotional suppression. Those tendencies could be symptoms that need to be worked through by learning their origins and history. This is something the medical and mental-health establishment do oppose because the establishment has focused way too much on treating symptoms and not trying to figure out the underlying causes and treating those causes instead of just crisis-managing symptoms.

We’re not just a label or defined solely by a certain set of personality traits. And we sure as hell don’t need to force people into a box. Instead, we need to see that each person is unique and is not exactly the same as anyone else. We’re just beginning to understand how brains function and that it’s a combination of hardware, software, and input. We grow and learn every day of our lives. And yes, we also change over the course of our lives. Talking about that is still not easy despite the conversations we’re having. But remember, we’ve only just started to have these conversations within the last decade or so, give or take. And asshole-tendencies die hard in some people and within establishments, too.

This book project is not just for neurodivergent weirdos like me. Anyone who has survived trauma, chaotic upbringings, and periods of extreme stress and bullshit are going to be fucked up from it and have to learn how to repair the damage and find some measure of healing. Being neurodivergent is just another factor to work into this and a way of working through the symptoms to the root causes in order to make the changes needed for repair and healing. Because silence, or masking, or whatever you want to call it, is a way of coping with shit you’ve been through. Once you break your silence or stop masking your real self, that’s when not only the shit can hit the fan, but that wounds can be taken care of once and for all in order to heal.