The more I learn about how neurodiverse brains work the more puzzle pieces click into place.
Recently a particularly spikey bit I’ve been struggling with for years, has finally found a home. You know the type, a huge piece with so many weird protrusions that the place it fits should be obvious - but bloody isn’t. I think I’ve actually worked out where it goes, and why it needs to go there.
Why I love, and get knackered by, spending time with people
I love people. I love their stories, what makes them tick, their foibles and fabulous talents. Hell, I would never have become a journalist if I didn’t!
On the flip side, being around people can be incredibly draining. I can get home from a busy day of chatting with folk, enjoying my connections (or not, depending on the circumstances) and gaining a lot from my interactions, then collapse in a heap, barely able to string two sentences together. I am literally exhausted.
For years I have beaten myself up about this. ‘You’ve got friends, they’re good people. You have a stimulating job, you get to write and do interesting things. You should be grateful. What’s wrong with you?
You have friends, you should be grateful
I grew up as a weird kid in an era (the 80s) when being the weird kid wasn't that cool. Despite all the crappy things going on in the world at the moment, I am so pleased with how far we have come in embracing our differences. It’s not perfect, and sometimes I fear we are going backwards, but it’s so much better than it used to be, and we need to not lose sight of that.
As a weird kid, I didn’t get invited to a lot of things, so when I was I jumped at each social morsel because I didn’t know when it would happen again. Like a former stray cat who eats too much, too fast, when introduced to their forever home, I took this into adulthood, accepting every invitation I was offered because in the back of my mind I didn’t know where the next meal would come from.
This inability to say no unless I had a ‘genuine’ reason led to me taking on more things than my brain could handle.
It has only been fairly recently that I have managed to convince myself that my friends care about me, not how many dinner parties or events I attend. That “sorry, I’m not actually up for it now, I think I need a quiet weekend” isn’t as devastating a blow as I think it is, and definitely not relationship-ruining.
Enter depression naps
When I was at uni, I worked out I needed one weekend in every three to sleep. The whole weekend, in my room, not talking to anyone – unconscious.
I was at that glorious age where I could go out on Thursday, Friday, Saturday night, recover Sunday and be in class on Monday – rinse and repeat. Now it’s more like three glasses of wine equals a three day hangover (thanks 40s!) But at that age, I genuinely didn’t know why I was running out of gas.
I blamed it on depression – the whole not wanting to do the things you enjoy bit, but deep down I knew it wasn’t. I’ve had capital D depression before and it was nothing like that. For me depression wasn’t ‘not enjoying’, it was not feeling at all – good or bad. “I just won Lotto” and “my partner broke up with me” would elicit the same response – numbness, nothing.
This wasn’t depression because I definitely had feelings. They were mostly guilt and shame around wasting time – time I could be socialising or studying or doing the flat garden. I felt like everyone was judging me – though I’m pretty certain now that they had better things to do. I was the one doing all the judging – ‘you’re lazy, you’re not even trying. Just get up!’ But I couldn’t. Once I hit the wall, that was it. I would curl in on myself and shut down completely, only surfacing to feed the cat.
Years later this was still happening, but on a smaller scale – probably because of partying less. I still jokingly called them ‘depression naps’ though. I’d hit the wall, decide I needed to go for a lie down and bam – three hours were gone.
Burnout
From what I am learning about neurodiverse brains, I see this now as a form of burnout – which can happen to folk with autism and ADHD.
Burnout can happen to anyone actually – humans aren’t designed for all the stress the world throws at us, but if you’re neurodiverse and don’t know it, it can come as a real shock, because it’s not triggered by what you would expect. Many of us, myself included, thrive in fast moving, high pressure environments, where you have to think fast – it’s when the things we enjoy become draining that it doesn’t make sense.
Peopling can be hard for us
I am beginning to understand that part of what is tiring about social interactions is not what’s happening on a conscious level, but rather all the mental gymnastics I’m doing in the background to make sure I don’t miscommunicate or upset people.
Deep down I’ve always known my brain works differently. It turns out that, from quite young, I have been watching how people interact, learning what I should and shouldn’t do. Pretty cool subconscious strategy really!
So here's a few Peopling 101 lessons I have learned:
Interrupting is rude – no matter how excited you are about a new nugget of information that has sparked from what someone has said, or how concerned you are you won’t be able to hold onto that thought long enough to contribute it.
You need to let people finish what they are saying – even if you have already worked out where the sentence is going and want to move the conversation ahead. Even if they have the wrong end of the stick and you want to quickly put them right.
(I still struggle with those two to be fair.)
·You need to try not to zone out – not because something is boring, but because it has lured your thoughts in a different direction and your brain wants to go there. Avoid the rabbit hole!
You need to watch for changes in facial expressions and body language to read how people are responding to what you are saying – many of us prepare ‘scripts’ in our heads for how to fix things if conversations go wrong.
Add to that the ADHD, dopamine-seeking, notice-everything brain (which I feel can be both my biggest asset and my biggest curse) and that’s a whole lot of background computing.
Then there’s the self-policing.
‘When is it my turn to talk?’ ‘Am I taking too much? Too fast?’ ‘Am I oversharing?’ ‘Am I too excited? Too emotional?’
No wonder the squishy blob inside my skull gets worn out!
It’s not you, it’s me
All of this sounds like I spend my time hanging out with dreadfully judgmental people. I don’t. The folk in my life are lovely. They have done absolutely nothing to signal I am bad at humaning. I’m the one doing the hyper- analysing, not them.
And it’s not all people either. There are people I feel completely safe around. Safe enough to let down the guard. My family, my found family of folk who ‘get’ me, my writing crew, my Dungeons and Dragons party, the people in my life who I love.
Interestingly, the proportion of those people who are neurodiverse is quite high – some I already knew this about and some who, like me, are just beginning to realise.
I saw a post on Instagram of a tweet by game developer and neurodiversity advocate Alan Jack:
“I still don’t know why part of the autistic/adhd diagnosis isn’t putting you in a room with someone already diagnosed and seeing how quickly you bond.”
It’s so accurate it hurts. Just about everyone I have instantly connected with has turned out to be one flavour of neurospice or another.
Laundry liquid and vampires
Now that I recognise this, I’m noticing the difference in conversations. Neurodiverse people do leap from topic to topic, often pivoting mid-sentence, but it’s easy for our speedy brains to follow and see the connections.
We’re tangential thinkers and bounce off each other. A conversation that begins with politics, takes a trip into sustainable laundry liquid and ends with who would win in a fight between a vampire and a werewolf is business as usual.
Even in these situations we apologise for ourselves, when we absolutely don’t need to.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt!”
“Don’t apologise, I’ve moved right along with you” is a sequence I’m noticing more and more. The ‘am I humaning right?’ reflex is strong.
These sparky, satisfying, conversations can also be tiring though. We’re allowing our spicy brains to fire on all cylinders and, trust me, the world is not ready for that kind of power!
Sorry I took so long to reply
Social media is something I have a love – hate relationship with too. I love that it is so easy to connect with people in my life that I don’t get to see every day, even if they are living in another country. It’s one of the things that excited me when I first started negotiating the internet in the late 90s.
Back then there were only a couple of messaging apps though – I’m not going to name them, it’ll make me feel like an antique. Now there are about eleventy million different platforms and I seem to have people on each. Most of the time its fine, but every now and then I have a bunch of conversations going in a bunch of different places, get overwhelmed with keeping up with my messages, give up for a while and don’t know where to start again.
Often I’ll open a message, decide to reply later when I’ve got time, completely forget and then realise it’s been weeks, the person has seen that I’ve read what they’ve said and probably thinks I’m ghosting them. I convince myself I’m a terrible friend and they are mad at me, but nine times out of 10 that’s all in my head.
I also really suck at the etiquette around ending text conversations, especially when I’m tired. What do I do? Say ‘I’m tired, I’m going now’? Won’t that come across as rude? Do I just stop replying? Isn’t that rude too? Honestly, it’s a minefield.
I’ve started telling people I’m rubbish at messaging, and not to be afraid of nagging me if I don’t reply. Admitting that to myself, and letting myself tell other people, has been a real load off, and it’s definitely starting to help. I don’t want to stop peopling, it fills my cup – but I definitely need to learn to pace it.
The power of alone time
I have noticed in the past, and it makes total sense now, that if I have a weekend where I don’t really interact with people – it could be spent gardening, or writing, or op-shopping by myself – it completely energises me for the week ahead.
I can be at the end of my tether, the world can feel completely on fire and like I will never catch up on everything I need to, or have said I would, do – and one day alone can completely calm the farm.
I can let myself zone out with impunity - and that's often when my story ideas come. I can sing and hum and talk to myself, or the cat, or the worm I just overturned, without having to rein it in.
I have worked out that it’s not just something that’s nice, it’s something I need – and I am learning to accept that need without shame.
There’s no such thing as normal
One thing that has helped me address that shame is a podcast I’m sure many of my neurodiverse New Zealand readers (or listeners now!) are familiar with. It’s called No Such Thing as Normal – with Sonia Gray, and I suspect I will be referencing it a lot.
It explores the world of neurodiversity from many different angles, and I often find myself scribbling down notes from it because it is so relatable. Two quotes from early episodes explain better than I can how our busy brains can mess us up.
First Sonia herself:
“ADHD minds are never at rest. They are here, there and everywhere – noticing things that other people don’t pick up on.”
Never at rest. That’s exactly it. Noticing everything can be a real asset in a lot of cases - we’re often the people who spot the metaphorical fire in time to put it out before it takes out the whole building. The trick is to learn how to switch it off in situations where you don’t necessarily need to be hypervigilant – which is much easier said than done.
The second is from clinical psychologist Dr Sarah Watson:
“People struggle with ‘I’m not good enough, there’s something wrong with me’ – there’s an innate sense of just being wrong. People who do best are those who harness the strengths that come with it (ADHD) and see that’s part of who they are.”
The latter is something I’m certainly working on.
Rejection sensitivity
This is something I want to do a deeper dive into when I understand more about it – but my (absolutely not professional) summary would be something along the lines of feeling like the world is against you, and that people are mad at you, without solid evidence that this is actually true.
Part of it is the ‘notice everything’ aspect of ADHD. You notice gestures and facial expressions of the people around you and read things into them that aren’t there.
TV presenter and ADHDer Hayley Holt describes it well when she says:
“I notice you because I notice everything. I see rejection when it isn’t there.”
Getting shit done
Back in No Such Thing as Normal land is a young person called Alex who talks about being unapologetically who you are.
“We are the people who get shit done, but some of it comes at an enormous cost.”
For me, mitigating that cost of getting shit done looks like taking time for me, without people and their glorious, but exhausting, input. Like stepping away from a computer game you’ve gotten yourself a bit too addicted to (*cough cough* Stardew Valley.)
I love you
I love you. You exhaust me, but that’s okay – it’s because I’m taking in so much about you. That’s not a bad thing, but I need to recognise it, and accept I need time to recharge.
I’ll leave you with a final quote from Alex. I’m not quite there yet, but it is something I definitely aspire to.
“When a neurodivergent person accepts who they are, they are unstoppable. It’s not about becoming neurotypical, it’s about being the person you always were and are.”
If you want to check out No Such Thing as Normal yourself, you can find it on most podcast platforms - and you can read about it here:
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