Being neurodivergent is full of ups and downs, just like all human life journeys, and it can be especially fraught with painful experiences when the external world, caregivers or the people around us fail to reflect the essence of who we are and are unable to provide a sense of being heard, seen and understood.

It’s perfectly understandable - how can someone who has a neurotypical brain even begin to imagine life inside the mind of someone with ADHD or synaesthesia? Or inside the senses of someone with autism? Or inside the body of someone with Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD)?

However, when neurodivergent people do not receive these vital cues from their environment or are repeatedly ‘missed’ in some way, this creates a gap that continues to widen between the inner world and the outer world, unless re-connection takes place.

What I have come to realise is that there are many subtle shades of pain, each with their own sensation and emotion. People may experience one and not others, or all of these to some degree. One thing to note is that your pain is valid, just as it is, and not open to comparison.

Honouring our pain is the way to move through, forward and beyond - into a greater sense of self-acceptance in all of the neurodivergent colours.

The pain of not belonging

The desire to belong is the greatest deep-wired human longing and need. We survive through social connection, because we have always survived through social connection. Belonging drives our actions and interactions in a process that is millions of years old.

We are not meant to function purely as individuals. Our brains, bodies and nervous systems simply are not designed that way. Just look at the effect of the past year with various lockdowns and ‘social distancing’. How did you feel being so cut off from those around you?

For neurodivergent people, being different becomes a complicated task of managing the difference while still being allowed to belong to the group. This will vary from family group to workplace to culture. What is acceptable and what is not? Very often difference is not well tolerated and people must sacrifice essential parts of themselves to belong.

The trouble with not belonging is that the ‘safe’ option is to fit in, in whatever way is possible. This might mean splitting off parts of yourself, hiding your inner world or putting on a kind of mask.

To not belong is deeply painful, and to belong when difference is not accepted is also deeply painful - but safer than being cast out of the group.

In my own life I have felt the deep pain of not belonging as my full self within my family of origin. And so I have sought out people and groups that feel like my “tribe”. Where I can show up fully as myself, with the odd and awkward angles of self-discovery (ongoing), no questions asked, no explanations needed for my “weirdness” (said affectionately) because they see my weirdness as wonderful. We all need these spaces in order to open hidden parts of ourselves - neurodivergent or otherwise.

The pain of not being seen

Very often there is no-one to see neurodivergence, unless it is exceptionally obvious or causes some kind of difficulty (and then we see how negative stereotypes of neurodiversity become the dominant narrative). Many types of neurodivergence go hidden under the radar, particularly in girls and women who seem better able to blend in or imitate the actions of those around them.

We learn the social rules and we copy them, for the most part. Unless our difference is seen - and, most crucially, accepted and held without judgement - then we remain walking around in a cloak of invisibility. Often even - and maybe especially - to ourselves the neurodivergence, the sensitivity, become elephants living in the house with you, covered in dust sheets. They are loud, large, and completely unknown.

The invisibility, which many neurodivergent people walk around feeling every day, is damaging to the sense of self. Self-esteem and self-confidence suffer when a sense of invisibility is eating away at you every moment. When you do not understand your own self, body or mind it can feel like a kind of self-betrayal, despite it being no-one’s fault.

The body keeps us grounded and rooted when we are fully present, but not being seen creates a distortion of reality: am I really here? It’s almost a philosophical problem to ponder - if no-one sees them, does a person really exist?

The pain of shame

With many people who are neurodivergent, there is an underlying sense of not being ‘normal’ or not being quite right somehow. Seeing and interpreting the world in a different way to the majority of people around you can feel deeply shaming, as if there is something ‘wrong’ with you.

Moreover, feeling a sense of confusion or unknowing about your own selfhood, has a secondary shaming effect: “There really must be something wrong with you if you cannot even understand yourself.”

This direct arrow into the core of one’s self is a direct hit to the psyche. I would argue that most neurodivergent people are also sensitive souls, and therefore very aware of the attitudes and opinions of those around them, as well as the internal dialogues they carry.

The neurodivergent people I have met across the whole spectrum of difference have all been incredible human beings. They are usually extraordinary in their desire to better the human experience, to champion nature and the natural environment, to overcome suffering of all forms.

They have embodied compassion, empathy, kindness, resilience, peace and wisdom, and yet are likely to have experienced deep shame about themselves, rather than pride in their unusual and unique abilities. This gap is mind-boggling!

I hope that by opening up these conversations, as many others are also doing, will allow a letting go of the shame that permeates the neurodiversity community. I know I find it empowering to have conversations with other neurodivergent people and find a way through these ‘growing pains’ together.

The pain of not being understood

This might not sound quite so troubling - in life there will always be moments when we are not understood by others and we can be surprisingly resilient about these times. It’s often simply a case of mismatching communication styles or differences.

But as someone who has felt a deep lack of understanding around neurodivergence, I know firsthand the excruciating pain and soul wound that is caused through not being understood.

What does it mean exactly not to be understood? The subtlety of this pain is nuanced from that of being seen or belonging. How do we know when we are understood?

There is something about the quality of vibration between yourself and another. A feeling into the heart of the other person’s being, and a sense of flowing in rhythm with the processes of the other’s mind. It’s something that requires focus, mental clarity and an embodied sense of relating. To understand is to see life from within the other person, to see through their eyes and listen with their heart. It’s a surrender to something more than yourself, while also being able to hold yourself in mind. You try on someone else’s clothes and step into their shoes 100% for the full immersive 3D IMAX experience.

It’s a willingness to experience something more than you, something different and unknown. It’s a courageous step across the boundaries between us. Stepping into someone else’s skin and nervous system.

For sensitive and neurodivergent people, so much of our worlds are determined by our skin, ears, eyes and nervous system and body responding to the environment. Light, colour, heat, emotion, energy. For someone to take that step across and seek to understand is priceless: “They want to know what it’s really like to be me.”

The pain of not being yourself

When a gap exists between who we are / how we experience ourselves on the inside and how we communicate ourselves to the outer world, this is painful. When we have to cross borders, fight across a current or even stem the flow of our own self-expression, we give up something of ourselves.

Yes, life and relationships are a balance between people and between different thoughts, feelings and ideas. To bend and flex is a skill we all need to learn in the art of human life and relating. But when someone gives up something of themselves, of their core nature, this is a deep betrayal of their own essence and life force energy.

We must remain connected to our life force energy by being ourselves, and by being ourselves we activate our life force energy - to use in positive and creative ways. So where we cannot be ourselves, we lose our life force energy, and we lose the spark of creativity with which we are uniquely designed to decorate the planet.

I have certainly experienced a deep pain, often accompanied by frustration, at not being able to express myself and my neurodivergence in a way that can be easily communicated to others. In order for people to understand me, I have had to modify who I am, how much I show of myself and my own forms of self-expression.

Like the flow of water, I have had to divert my expression (or at least felt that I have had to do so) into various channels which are pleasing or acceptable to others. In fact, though I love writing and have discovered more of myself through this process, I feel that my natural form of self-expression has become unknown to me as a result of shutting it down repeatedly. So this is something I will need to re-learn.

The human desire to express one’s self is vital to us all in living healthy and fulfilling lives. In suffocating various elements of ourselves - in order to belong - you see how we have come full circle, returning to the pain of not belonging, our deepest entrenched, hard-wired biological necessity. We are human: we will sacrifice parts of ourselves and our identity in order to maintain belonging. And isn’t this the key for us all to feel belonging and connection?

The pain of being far from home

If the previous shades of pain I have described form a kind of circle, looping into each other, then perhaps this is the centre of that circle: the pain of being far from home.

Many sensitive souls feel a sense of longing for home, and I too have felt this throughout my life, more strongly at various times than others. A longing to go home, of being reunited in some way.

As I see it, this is a divine expression of the Soul’s desire for oneness with Source, and the experience of pain from being here on Earth, seemingly separated from the Divine space of oneness, beauty, peace and love.

In truth, I believe that our mission is to find ourselves at home here on Earth - even if it is for a temporary ‘holiday’ from the heavens of Creative Oneness. The connection we seek to Source is already within us, we simply need to uncover it by being completely ourselves. And we can find it here even on this strange blue planet, amidst chaos and beauty, and within our quirky and neurodivergent minds. Indeed, divinity is in realising, embodying and expressing the fullness of your neurodivergence.

All of these pains could be said to be true for anyone - anyone who is not accepted, seen or understood in their daily lives. In this way these experiences described above give neurodivergent people great compassion and insight into the world of human behaviour, sadness and suffering.

However the additional weight of this pain for neurodivergent folk is that they have to live with specific nervous systems, brain wiring and communication styles that do not reflect the wider world. And so they have to navigate these growing pains, even as they grow towards embodying their true and whole selves.

I believe these pains can guide us and awaken us to fully realise our own uniqueness and potential. The way is through, so be brave my neurodivergent friends…

Ready to grow beyond your pain and embrace your neurodivergence? Work with me at bryony@creativesoultherapies.com