Neurodiversity Celebration Week

 Neurodiversity week

Neurodiversity Week is from 13th-19th March, in true me nature I am late to the game… in fact in true neurodiversity (ND) nature I’m always late.

I’ve never wrote about Neurodiversity Week before and never really knew about it. But over the last year or two I’ve been delving deep into my own ND presentation and trying to understand myself more. Covid lockdowns were hell for a lot of people, but for me this huge extended period of time working from home made me acutely aware of how my own ND affects my functioning in terms of my vocation. 

I was ‘diagnosed’ with dyslexia midway through my degree, so I was about 22 when I gratefully received this identifying label that explained why education and life had been so much extra effort for me. But it never fully explained everything ‘weird’ about me. I still struggled to ‘justify’ and explain why I had such awful time keeping, why it took me ten minutes to tie my shoes because I was freaking out over how my socks felt in my shoes, why I spent an inappropriate amount of time daydreaming and living in my own head, why I would sometimes find my internal monologue whirling away but felt physically unable to use my own mouth and speak, why I would feel boredom physically in my skin and bones, why I would not being able to listen to people talking to me if I could hear too much background noise, why I could work my arse off in front of people but would literally stare into space when left to my own devices despite actually wanting to work/study, why the sound of buzzing lights or tvs only seemed to bother me and no one else, why I would literally happy dance or shake my leg (like a drug addict in withdrawal as my mum used to say when I was a kid 😂) when I was studying or when I was eating a food I really enjoyed, why I would never sit still when just being talked at, why I would constantly be asked “what’s wrong?” when I relaxed my face too much, so would get headaches from always tensing my face so I looked “approachable”…

Back in August/Sept I rang my doctors and asked for an ADHD assessment. I haven’t got a clinical diagnosis yet - in fact I’m not even sure I’m on a waiting list as my telephone consultation isn’t even showing on my online records - but here I am impatiently waiting for this formal label to help explain my ‘weirdness’.

These traits in me I’ve always chalked down to ‘weirdness’ - I embraced being weird after getting bullied a lot at school. I was always the odd one, I found niche groups I wanted to be part of (I wanted to be an emo and a goth haha), as any kid does, because belonging is vital for human beings. 

But even then as a teen I fell out with that niche group of friends and felt picked on by my so called friends, as they ignored me, and my socially awkward weirdness was amplified to the extreme. Making amends was extra hard for me… I was antisocial and I become very insular when I feel overwhelmed. I tried though. My parents gave me huge encouragement to be the one to present the olive branch and encouraged me to push my boundaries and embody emotions I wanted to achieve (the whole fake it til you make it thing). Alas, my so called friends literally turned their backs when I walked up to them and tried, and then told me I was in the wrong for always listening to my headphones and insulted me on my Bebo (wow, what a throwback). Other peers name called me, cyber bullied me and I even got hit a couple times (though honestly that didn’t hurt much - the audacity of it it hurt more). 

In the grand scheme of bullying, maybe the treatment I was given by peers and within my friendship circle was minimal compared to how other people have been profoundly bullied. But trauma isn’t measured by the degree of the actions that happened to you, but by the degree of how much it hurt and impacted you. 

I’m sensitive. 

I’m sensory sensitive and emotional sensitive. 

I see dead animals on the road and am flooded with sadness and anger at reckless drivers (even though I know logically it can’t be helped sometimes and braking hard for an animal could cause more danger and accidents than carrying on)

I hear a few harsh words of criticism and I’ll feel the flood of heat rush through my skin as I fight the childish urge to cry in shame.

I’ll hear of injustice and misjudgement of others and I’ll feel anger so strong I imagine myself a knight in armour storming off to protect someone’s honour and independence.

This bullying massively impacted me. I’ve tried to be the wise old woman I am internally and completely forgive and accept but I’m gonna admit - I’m still bitter. Being segregated from peers for being weird only further encouraged me to ‘mask’. I’m 30 and I am still fighting against myself trying to remove that mask and be my true authentic self. 

If you’ve known me in the past and then have seen me now or heard me talk about my experience with undiagnosed-ADHD (uADHD), I wouldn’t judge you or be surprised if you thought I was bullshitting and making it up. 

From such a young age I learnt being myself was too much and didn’t get me friends. 

After being bullied I learnt being funny was a great way to make friends and I quickly learned to turn my self deprecating bitterness into deadpan humour - to jump in there with the insults before the bullies, making them laugh, making me own the pain, making them think “she’s just funny” rather than weird... While also getting that validation and attention, I shamefully admit, I desperately want. 

Now, at 30, I recognise that the mask I’ve worn most of my life is actually suffocating.

I’m tired.

I go through cycles of burnout.

I get the urge to quit my job every year, often once I’ve gotten settled in and then the workload and responsibility increases and it becomes too familiar. 

I get physically ill from exhaustion and revenge bedtime procrastination.

I get muscle tension and injuries from over-tensing and over-stressing and over-working at the desk trying to “catch up”, or even from forcing myself to sit still so as to not be that person that distracts everyone in a meeting or open plan office. 

I am tired.

I am weird.

I am different. 

I am learning.

I am embracing that. 

I am growing.

I am proud.

I am neurodivergent. I am clinically dyslexic and potentially ADHD and I may never have a formal diagnosis of the latter. But I also strongly believe the word diagnosis implies it’s a problem - my brain, my neurodivergence - isn’t the problem. The way society expects and often forces me to fit in is the problem. I’m not asking society to change for me, because then there’ll be someone else who who doesn’t fit in - but I am asking that an understanding of divergence is better known. I’m seeking a ‘diagnosis’ to help me explain to society my difference, but in my eyes this is simply something I already identify with. My lived experience over my 30 years on this earth overtrumps a two hour sit down session with a clinical psychologist. Sorry psychologists, I truly respect you guys and actually find psychology fascinating, but I still find it baffling that my identity can be assessed and condensed down into an assessment of a couple hours with a complete stranger (especially as I know my brain will fart during that time and I’ll forget everything about my past and forget what words are when they ask me questions). So while I seek this diagnosis for clarity and understanding for myself and to others… I also self identify with a variety of ND traits and that should be and is enough. 

I wish to clarify and point out that seeking labels is more about helping me strip back the mask and the falsities of my personality more so than it is about shoving a shiny sign into to everyone’s face, like it’s an excuse for my less desirable personality traits. But alas a lack of understanding of the sheer complexity of neurodiversity has often lead me to having to smack my labels into peoples’ faces (along with a patronising amount of detail about my ND to past supervisors and figures of authority who didn’t understand why I couldn't “just get over it and do it correctly by now”).

If you’ve read this far through my ramblings, thank you. You are either ND yourself or a loving family member (hi mum), oooor if I’ve struck lucky and managed to retain the attention of some neurotypical people, then let me request only one thing of you… be open to learning about ND. Next time you see someone being “weird” just think maybe it’s very normal for them, maybe their odd behaviour serves a purpose for them, maybe they’re just a little different, maybe it doesn’t matter how they got from A to B even if their logic doesn’t match yours, maybe - just maybe - their divergence is a strength you’ll need to pull on one day too… so learn to keep your eyes and heart open to it, because while we stand out for our “weaknesses” and difficulties, you’ll be in awe of us once you see our strengths.