Reaching self acceptance after a Neurodivergent discovery

And why it can be hard for others to understand. ‘Look at what I have discovered about myself! See how this all makes sense?’ Only they don’t see. What now?

When you first discover your neurodivergence it can feel like your brain is unravelling at hyper speed. Like one end of your jumper being dragged off by an ostrich on red bull, lighting speed connections that are being made, years of your life flashing before you as though you’ve died and come back, small moments that suddenly come into clarity.

I remember clearly the first time I said out loud to my husband, “I think I might have ADHD”. The sense of sheer rediculousness and shame that went with it. I was afraid of his reaction, of what he might think. Would he assume I am on another (eye roll) research journey, would he dismiss it?

My internalised abelism and lack of previous understanding attached ADHD to children, mainly fidgety boys and that some how it meant that I was child like, I wasn’t a responsible adult.

How could the two co-exist?

When I got my official diagnosis of ADHD and subseqent Autism dicovery that too was an unravelling and a clarity like never before.

It was a though, my whole life to date had been a murkey jigsaw puzzle, I had tried to join pieces up but the edges were blurry, it was hard to see, hard for them to fit, some that I knew weren’t quite the right piece, it wasn’t helping to make up the whole picture.

But now.

It was like putting on a brand new pair of recently adjusted spectacles just for my eyes and seeing the very fine details of that jigsaw puzzle, the parts that had been wrongly fitted together suddenly visible and obvious, taking them out and replacing one by one with the correct pieces.

Photo by Edge2Edge Media on Unsplash

For anyone that loves a jigsaw puzzle will know, finding the right piece, is oh so satisfying we can finally move on to the next piece and the next piece, to build the big picture.

But for this to be our life? Our whole life. With a renewed understanding of who we are and also Who the hell am I? All at once, I’m not sure it gets bigger than that. It is huge. Cataclysmic. Techtonic plate shifts in the foundation of who we are.

We start to learn about, time blindness (we now understand our struggles with time) we aren’t just bad, object permanence (why its so hard to stay in touch with people) we aren’t just bad, rejection sensitivity (why we can react so strongly when we feel hurt) we aren’t just bad, why we like to share similar experinces when someone is telling a story (it is how we connect and show empathy) we aren’t bad.

All of these things start to reframe the to date negative internal dialogue that we have had with ourselves. Our sense of self that has been so devalued, suddenly needs reassessing.

That right there, is only a smidgen of it. It is not the whole story, so I think we can see why we might want and need to talk about it with our nearest and dearest.

‘Look at what I have discovered about myself! See how this all makes sense?’

Only they don’t see.

What they can see perhaps, is their most loved, disappering down a rabbit hole and reappearing with a whole new vocabularly and suddenly on a whole new self discovery journey. They have just waved goodbye to you, only for you to reappear ‘stars in their eyes’ style as Robert Smith, from the Cure.

They can’t make sense of it. They really aren’t sure about it. They feel overwhelmed. They might feel that they are losing the feeling of safety that familiar you brought for them.

What does this mean for them?

And let’s be honest if you are anything like me, you like detail. You love to see how ALL of everything is connected. Your mind basically contains the whole ND universe at this point.

Photo by Bhautik Patel on Unsplash

And its emotional isn’t it? It’s painful. It’s hard.

What do they do with that?

In an ideal world, they’d say ‘Let me make you a cuppa and tell me all about it. They’d ask you ‘When did you first make the connection? What does this mean for you? How do you feel about it?’

You’d spill it all out, A-Z and finish in a puddle of tears whilst they stroked your head. ‘I’m afraid’ you’d whisper, ‘I’m afraid that you won’t love the me underneath all of this’ and they’d reply ‘That it’s ok, it will all be ok.’ They will tell you that they have always known there was something different about you but how they have loved you for it and they always will.

And then you’d cry some more.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

But for many of us, it doesn’t quite work like that does it.

The silence, the do you think you are overanalyising it, why does there always have to be something? Do you have to keep banging on about your brain?

Well that feels like the biggest rejection because that internal voice that has always told us if people really knew you they wouldn’t like you, is right. It has come true.

If they don’t want to really know who we are, then what future is there?

We are truly seeing ourselves for the first time and we so desperately want to be seen by them. But they appear to want to stay blindfolded to the real us.

A profound moment in my discovery journey was realising that firstly, I had to accept me as I am now. I had to get to a place of acceptance about being AUDHD, I had to see where my strengths lay and not my deficits.

But because this is a process it doesn’t happen straight away, we can’t rush it.

In the beginning, all we can see is how this REALLY impacts our life. We realise how uncomfortable we are in social situations, that thing we do with our hands, is stimming, that overstaring and looking intensely into peoples eyeballs? The dislike of change and last minutes, hating surprises, shopping malls, cinema’s, nights out. Eating the same foods on repeat, all of that, yeah.

For the first time we realise what a lot we have been dealing with and not even crediting ourselves for, infact we’ve been doing the exact opposite. We’d been playing a football match, one legged and we didn’t even know.

Ouch.

But this carves out the path to appreciate: the way we view the world, our capacity to see all of the unecessary beauty that exists within it, our immense strength in moments of others panic, our love of the deep and the meaningful, our creativity.

And we arrive at acceptance and love.

I love my brain, I love what it means about me and I love me too.

And when we get there, we start to comport ourselves differently. We aren’t an exuse to be made, we are a whole person who has a right to take up space, the same as everyone else.

We don’t need to stay small invisable and apologetic, we can just be with all of our imperfect selves. And when we get here, what we put out starts to come back.

Our energy around our neurodivergence changes, our love for ourself grows and in turn others too.

And when we get here, we can look back and see why others might not be able to carry this journey (I mean let’s be honest it is heavy with a capital H). And that is not about our too muchness,it is not because we are a burden, it is about them and how they deal with their own pain and challenges.

If they are someone that pushes it all away and finds it hard to sit with their own discomfort how can we expect they can hold ours?

So what now?

Something that really helped me, was to start to pay attention to how those around me voiced their preference. Those who would perhaps not consider themselves to be neurodivergent.

What I heard were things like:

• My inlaws that prefer to visit the garden centre in the week because there are less people and it’s quiet.

• My husband that likes to always be early for events and dislikes the neighbours dog barking non-stop.

• People I used to work with that couldn’t bare people crunching at their desk.

• Family members that like to stick to certain roads because they get anxious about motorways.

Do you see that? Do you SEE that?

They had specific preferences and needs. And that is A OK. These things are considered ‘normal’ and accepted.

No further explanation required.

And so I took this on board.

I stopped explaining in full detail and highlighting it was because I am AUDHD.

• No, I don’t want to go there it’s too noisy, can we try this place instead?

• I' can’t concentrate when youre all talking at once, could we take turns please?

• If we want to have these plans at the weekend, I can’t do that in the week too.

With no further explanations.

And that seemed to be better received. The other person did not feel overwhelmed by my explanation and I did not feel rejected because they hadn’t validated and understood it.

And what’s more, I wasn’t excusing myself, I wasn’t thinking what a pain I must be, I stopped feeling that person needs to understand all of the real reason for it to be valid.

I came more from a place of equal,rather than less than.

But you might be thinking well that sounds good but where do all those thoughts, connections and words that build up and swim round in my head go?

Well some of them are here, thank you substack.

But a lot of them, well they are shared with others like me that get it. That do have the capacity to hold it, to question, to analyse without any hint of too much / burden.

Some of those I have met online and some of those were here already and some have walked a new into my life right when I needed them.

So, I don’t hold it all in. But I don’t overexplain, or expect a compassionate response from those that can’t give it to themselves.

Instead I focus on continuing to work on my self worth and spend time in the company of those that just get it.

Thank you to them and thank you to you x