Growing up Neurospicy

Jen again. I am neurodivergent. I haven't been diagnosed yet with autism or ADHD, but I am on the waiting list. The past few years I've become more and more convinced that I am autistic to some degree, which makes me reflect on growing up different from other people. It's like how you realize how messed up your family is once you go out on your own in the world. Your normal gets adjusted as you meet more people with different ways of life.

I'm starting to realize how much of my life I've spent mildly confused but playing along with conversations and how much I've missed due to my auditory processing disorder. There's only so many times you can ask someone to repeat themselves before they look at you like you're crazy. So I smile and nod. I pretend, and hope I don't mess things up too badly. Lately, I've started telling people what I actually hear (which is usually some kind of sound like the adults in a Peanuts cartoon or a different word entirely), and it seems to result in less annoyance.

Combine constant mild confusion with anxiety, and it's no wonder why I pick at my skin and pluck my eyelashes and eyebrows. I am diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, trichotillomania and dermatillomania. Trich and Derma are hair pulling and skin picking respectively. Both are anxiety based conditions that are very close to OCD.

Growing up with these conditions without understanding that I have those disorders was not fun to say the least. While I'm grateful that I wasn't raised with shame as my biggest motivation, I was raised in an environment where my mom loudly exploded in anger seemingly at random. A large part of my trauma is from growing up with a mom who didn't understand her own mental health and didn't even try to manage it. I even started blowing up with anger on my own family, before I finally sought help.

That help has done so much. I'm rarely angry nowadays, and I'm usually able to calmly talk through my feelings. I can see the irrational anger in my parents and it's exhausting. The ability to self reflect and recognize my emotions and thoughts is essential to my healing. It wasn't easy to get to this point, by any means. It required support from my husband and child and a doctor who actually listened to my needs. But those are just supports, the actual self work is all mine.

Right now, I need to find a therapist and give it an actual shot. I've tried therapy before, but didn't click with the therapist. I need to find a therapist who can work with my neurospicy brain. I need to give it an actual shot and begin my next chapter of self healing. It's scary, even as someone whose education was all about psychology and anxiety. That education helped me understand my anxiety, but I kind of wish I had focused more on autism. But back then, I didn't realize how closely my behaviors and thought processes align with autism. We didn't know that Pete has ADHD with his depression. Labels matter. It's the difference between thinking you're a fucked up horse and knowing that you're a zebra. Credit to the miscellaneous post on Pinterest with that analogy. That's why I'm happy to be on the waitlist for a formal diagnosis while I learn about autism and ADHD on my own. It's part of the process of finding my truth and living it.