For most of my life — and it really was most of my life — I believed that joy and happiness were beyond my reach. Because by observing other people, I couldn’t understand it, couldn’t comprehend what it actually felt like from the inside - it looked like something other people had access to that I simply didn’t.

I was often told as a child, as a teenager,  to go out and have fun, to stop being so serious, to stop worrying. These instructions annoyed me. Yes, I was serious — but I was being me. And what I was experiencing — the wonder, the awe, the quiet contentment, the bliss — didn’t look like what other people called joy and fun, so I assumed I was missing something.

I was wrong. I wasn’t missing joy or fun. I was trying to follow the wrong instructions on life. My joy was on a completely different page.

​Wonder

My earliest memories of contemplating existence are from around age four. I would sit with the sheer fact of being — that I existed, that anything and everything existed — and it filled me with both excitement and fear. The scale of it was almost too big to hold.

But alongside the fear was something else entirely. A wonder so deep and persistent it never really left. Wonder at existence. Wonder at the sky and the trees and the ancient things. Wonder at the vast, mysterious question of why.

I carried, from a very young age, the sense that we all must exist for a reason. That we each had a purpose we needed to find and fulfil. For a long time, I thought that purpose was to find joy and happiness — the kind I saw in other people. But I was measuring myself against something that was never mine to measure against.

It took burnout, and collapse, and a very long slow return to myself to understand that my purpose is simply to be. To find my way back to me. To exist, unconditionally, as I am and to help others find their way back to themselves.

Awe

When I stand by an ancient tree, (or magnificent rocks, waterfalls) something happens inside me that I could probably call joy. An energy fills me and my thoughts reach towards all the things that tree has seen, felt, known across its lifetime. It makes me feel small — but not insignificant. We are all part of the same energy.

I feel the tree’s power. Its wisdom. Its beauty. I feel connected to something ancient and enduring, something that existed long before my particular worries and will exist long after. An ancient landscape does this to me. An artefact that holds energy from the past does this to me. These are moments of awe, and awe, I now understand, is one of my truest forms of joy.

Contentment

Contentment is something that I am starting to understand now as a significant part of my joy.
It happens on a physical plane — but it is also a state of mind. It arrives when there are no demands on me. No expectations. No performance required. Just existing. Just being me.

For most of my life, lying on the grass watching clouds would have felt like laziness. Like wasting time. I only ever allowed myself these moments in recovery — when I was so depleted that rest became unavoidable. And I have memories of each of those times, because they were so rare and so precious that they stood out. My nervous system filed them away.

My swing offers me another version of the same thing. I have always had one — a proper swing, solid wooden seat, rope or chain. Not for the thrill of going high, but for the rhythm. The gentle movement. The air. The energy of it moving through me as I watch the trees, the clouds, the birds and listen to the gentle sounds of nature around me. It is interactive and soothing at the same time, asking just enough of my body to keep me present, but nothing more. Lying on the grass is pure stillness. The swing is gentle movement. But both ask nothing of me except to be here. It means I was tending to my own joy long before I understood that that’s what I was doing.
I am learning now that these periods are essential. Not a luxury, not a reward, but a necessity.

Bliss

This for me, is probably the most important aspect of my "joy".   As a child, when things were tough, I would step outside and feel an instant connection to the universe. It was spontaneous and effortless. A knowing that everything would be okay. It felt like being filled with light — warm, safe, comforting and energising all at once.

When I collapsed at eighteen, that spontaneous connection disappeared, and what followed were decades of learning to call it in intentionally, to reconnect and re-energise and heal myself. The connection was still there — it never truly left — but it no longer arrived on its own. I had to reach for it.
Right now, in burnout, I am once again struggling to remember that it is there. That the light is still there, waiting. That I can call it back.

Nature works as an empath for me — it hears me, and it helps me heal. It always has. Even when I couldn’t name what was happening, even when I didn’t have the words, I knew that going outside and standing among living things would help. That light, that warmth, that knowing that I'm ok, was and is  bliss, and I’ve always recognised that. What I never saw, until now, was that that bliss was also part of my joy. My version of it, in my language, on my path — but joy nonetheless.

Yes — with my new understanding of myself, I can call it that. But maybe, deep down, I still prefer my own words. Awe. Wonder. Contentment. Bliss.  They fit me better. They are more precise. They are more mine. And I’m not sure they are lesser versions of joy. They might actually be richer ones.

The Joy of Witnessing Kindred Spirit
There is yet one more version of joy that I’ve realised — and it can arrive anywhere, anytime.  When something I said, something I taught, or simply being present with someone has helped them feel better, lighter, more themselves and they express it in a way I recognise.
When I witness that — when I see someone step into their own joy — something happens inside me that is very similar to bliss. I fill with light and warmth. It feels like love. And I think it has to resonate at a similar vibration to my own joy to land this way. It isn’t just witnessing happiness. It is recognising something kindred. Something that speaks the same language as my own inner experience, whether the other person is conscious of that or not.
It is, I think, almost spiritual. A moment of connection across the invisible. And it is one of the most reliable ways I know to fill back up.  But in the past, I assumed that it wasn't my own joy, that it was somehow separate from me.  Now I understand, I am just recognising my own joy in other kindred spirits.
Allowing instead of searching

My joy and happiness were never missing or out of reach. I was reading them wrong — searching for something that would never fit me anyway, instead of allowing my own versions to exist and be recognised.

I spent decades looking for the version of happiness I saw in other people — the louder, more social, more visible kind — and coming up empty. Not because I was broken, as I thought, but because that version was never mine anyway. My joy lives in wonder, and awe, and stillness, and connection, and pure and simple bliss. It lives in ancient trees and quiet skies and the feeling of being held by something larger than myself. In feeling safe and heard and loved.

Awe, wonder, contentment, and bliss are not lesser versions of joy. For me they are the truest versions. They are the ones that have been with me forever — like gazing at the sky and contemplating existence and seeing the magic in every day and being held in the loving hug of someone who truly sees you.

My late autism diagnosis gave me something I didn’t expect: a way to reframe my inner life. It gave me the ability to look back and finally see all the joy I had been living without realising that’s what it was. Not a new vocabulary — a different perspective. A different way of seeing the world and life. And with that came permission to simply be who I am.

A Message Across Time

If I could speak to the child I was — the four-year-old gazing at the sky, feeling the universe rush through her, filling up with light, yet carrying the weight of wonder and purpose in such a small body — I know what I would say.

Hold on to that connection. It is a gift. It is your birthright. It’s  very much part of your joy.
​
And she, I think, would say exactly the same thing back.

I have spent most of my life navigating a world that wasn’t built for a brain like mine. The confusion, the exhaustion, the years of masking and second-guessing and pushing through — those stories are real, and I’ve told them honestly here before. But today I want to focus on gratitude.
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The deep, hard-won, this-is-genuinely-mine kind of gratitude that only comes after you’ve done the work of truly understanding yourself.

Because here is what I know now that I didn’t always know: my neurocomplexity — the whole glorious, exhausting, extraordinary package of being AuDHD 2e Gifted — has not just shaped my life. In the most important ways, it has been my greatest gift.

Here are just ten of the different, contradictory and confusing reasons why.

1. The Download — Thoughts That Arrive Whole
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The best way I can describe it is this: it’s like having access to a library. Not just the library in my own mind — though that is vast and well-stocked — but a library somewhere out in the universe itself. Information, wisdom, knowing — just arrives.
​
My mind thinks in words first, then concepts. When I was younger, images were harder to summon deliberately, though they would arrive unbidden. These days I can think in pictures too. But always, before the words and before the images, there is feeling. The feeling comes first. Everything else follows.
I have experienced this my whole life. At five years old, in a playground in England, I watched children taunting a dark-skinned girl and walked over to tell them why her ancestors had dark skin — about protection from the sun, about where people came from. I stood there afterward thinking: where did that come from? I hadn’t yet been taught any of it.

​When I worked with clients, I learned to trust this completely. A particular flower would appear in my mind — sometimes one I didn’t even recognise. A pet. A person. I would describe what I was receiving, even when it made no sense to me, because a quiet inner voice would simply say: say it. And it always meant something to the person I was with. Always.

Sometimes the information arrives in metaphors, which I then need to sit with and unpack — a process I love. I am grateful for how much information is now available at your fingertips to research and explore, but I have learned that personal, intuitive investigation is absolutely necessary. The research confirms what the knowing already sensed.

As a young adult, when I first began to understand what was happening, it frightened me. I had lost my connection during an illness at eighteen, and had to find my way back slowly — through nature, through learning to relax, through self-healing. When the downloads returned, I had to learn to trust them again.
Now I understand that what I have been doing all along — with clients, with community, with people I love — is something I would perhaps call mediumship. Messages from ancestors, guides, beloved animals. A form of knowing that sits beyond intellect entirely.

I am grateful for every single download. Even the ones that scared me. Especially those.

2. Hyperempathy — Feeling the World Deeply
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Hyperempathy feels like no boundaries. That is the most honest way I can describe it. The feelings I receive are not mine — they belong to the person or creature or space in front of me — and yet I feel them as if they are.

For much of my life, before I understood what empathy really was, I experienced other people’s emotions as my own without realising it. I couldn’t understand why I felt things I had no context for. Now I understand something that is both clarifying and quietly humbling: I feel and understand other people’s emotions more quickly and more accurately than I feel and understand my own. The empathy points outward, almost by default.

This is what made me effective as a therapist and healer for decades. I didn’t just intellectually understand what someone was going through. I literally felt it. It triggered downloads of wisdom. It allowed me to help people move through trauma — past, present, sometimes what felt like future — and to sit with them in the places language couldn’t reach.

My relationship with nature operates differently. I am tuned to it, yes, but nature does not overwhelm me the way human emotion can. Instead, nature works as an empath for me. It hears me, and it helps me heal.

Hyperempathy is inextricably tied to intuition and knowing. I cannot separate them, and I no longer want to. They are part of the same gift.

3. Pattern Recognition & Big-Picture Thinking

Pattern recognition arrives differently depending on the situation. Sometimes it is instant — a click, a sudden clarity. Sometimes it builds, layer by layer, until the shape of something becomes undeniable.
With neurodivergent children, I didn’t just observe their patterns. I almost felt them. Which, as I now understand, ties directly into both the empathy and the alexithymia — the way I can read what is happening in someone else long before I can name what is happening in myself.

I recognised the patterns in the children I worked with because I related them to myself. And yet, for most of my life, I never noticed those same patterns in me. I was looking outward so fluently that I missed the mirror entirely. I am only now, late in life, learning my own patterns. And the extraordinary thing is this: getting the words — the diagnosis, the language, the framework — didn’t just describe what was already there. The words opened my vision. I am now noticing things that were always happening but had no hook to hang on. I can see what comes before the patterns I used to ignore.

It is both discovering something new and finally having words for something that was always there.
Puzzles, word games, dingbats, murder mysteries — the patterns usually appear quickly to me. But only, I have learned, when I am not overloaded. This is the reality of living with a finely tuned instrument. When it is clear, it is extraordinary. When it is overwhelmed, everything goes quiet.

4. Hyperfocus & Special Interests

When I am in autistic hyperfocus, time slows down or disappears entirely. For someone who has spent much of her life afraid of time — rushing, exhausting herself, convinced there is never enough — this is an extraordinary relief. The noise just stops.

My ADHD side can get frantic within it — reaching for more information, more connection, more — and I have learned to notice when that is happening and gently redirect. But the autistic hyperfocus itself? It is one of the most peaceful states I know.

People sometimes speak of special interests as though they are separate, scattered, unrelated obsessions. Mine have never felt that way. Dance, healing, art, writing, ancient history, archaeology, DNA, ancient customs and beliefs — there is a single thread running through all of it. I have always been trying to understand the same thing. The meaning of life. Where we come from. How to heal. Every interest I have ever had is an expression of that one vast inquiry, approached through a different door.

Even my collections follow the same thread. Always history or nature — things that speak to the growth of human knowledge and awareness, to the story of life on this earth. Each one a small piece of the same enormous question I have been sitting with my whole life.

I masked my hyperfocus quite well, I think. I am not very social, so there were not many opportunities to overshare. But if someone mentions something I am genuinely interested in, I can feel the floodgates. I have learned to notice that too.

When hyperfocus meets something I truly love, there is only one word for what that feels like: wonder. Or perhaps awe. Both, really. They are the same.

5. The Synergies — My Brain’s Dream Team

I don’t think I could have done any of the things I have done if I only had one.
The dance school, the fundraising concerts, the illustration work, the writing, the healing business, the advocacy, the behavioural programs, the support groups — all of it required both. The organisation and pattern recognition of autism. The dopamine-seeking, momentum-generating drive of ADHD. I have focus and I have drive. I have courage and determination, but I also have restraint. I am creative, but not flamboyant. I think big and I follow through.

Everything I have done in my life has been fulfilling. Even though none of it has been what could be termed successful in a traditional, material way — in fact, quite the opposite. And this too is partly because of my two brains: the impulsive, outgoing ADHD and the quiet, self-contained autism pulling in different directions, sometimes at the cost of the practical.

I have won business awards for my innovation and my community work. People in my town still thank me for programs I created decades ago. And yet I have never made real money from what I am good at. That remains unresolved. I say it honestly because it is honest. But I am also learning that the measure of a life’s work was never really the bank account.

The synergy of these two ways of being is the reason I existed at all in the spaces I occupied. Neither brain alone would have been enough. Together, they were extraordinary.

6. Nature Connection

My favourite photograph of myself is from when I was four years old. I am sitting by a river in Wales. Even looking at it now, I can feel the connection and the energy in that image. It was always there.

I have always loved trees and large rocks. There is something about ancient, rooted, solid things that speaks directly to the part of me that so often feels unmoored. When I am in nature, I feel my energy change. It lifts me. It slows me down. It relaxes me in a way that very little else can.

I am lucky to live on a farm. I only have to step outside to hear birds, to feel wind move through trees, to feel the energy shift. There are particular places on our land where something is stronger — near water especially, though the energy remains even when the waterway is dry. Places where the veil feels thinner. I spend intentional time in those places. Under particular trees. Near the water. I choose them deliberately.
The ocean is too much for me — that scale of sensory input overwhelms rather than soothes. But fresh water, moving gently, and the earth beneath me: those are where I come back to myself. When things are hectic or hard, I sometimes feel that I leave my body slightly. Sitting on the grass, or on a rock, helps me stay attached to the earth.

Nature works as an empath for me. It hears me, and it helps me heal. I have never found a better way to say it than that.

7. Authentic Voice & Truth-Telling

My need to be authentic has never felt entirely like a choice. It is simply what I am. And yet, for most of my life, very few people have truly seen the real me — not until a genuine connection is made. From that point on, I am exactly what I am. No performance, no filter. The right people seem to see through the mask, almost instinctively. Perhaps in the same way that I am drawn to people like me — recognising something in each other that doesn’t need explaining.

It has cost me at times. Being seen too clearly, telling a truth too plainly, refusing to perform a version of myself that made others more comfortable. My mother was particularly uncomfortable with my truth. She told me for years that she knew me better than I knew myself. Underneath, I always knew that wasn’t true — but it took me until my thirties to begin dismantling the version of myself I had built from her voice rather than my own. I had surrounded myself with her preferences, her perceptions, her map of who I was. Unpacking that and finding what was actually mine took a long time.

Speaking my truth now feels both vulnerable and cathartic. I have spent a long time hiding my authenticity. Writing from inside the experience — which is how I write all of this — is a choice to stop hiding. Every time I do it, something releases.

The line I use to close this blog — “Your voice doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to be yours” — is not just a nice sentiment. It is the distillation of a lifetime. No one else has the exact same truth as you. Just because someone holds a different belief doesn’t make it yours to carry. You cannot be happy if your voice isn’t your own.

I grew up believing things about myself that turned out to be someone else’s truth. Finding my own has been the work of a lifetime. I am grateful for the compulsion that kept pointing me back toward it, even when it was easier to look away.

8. Teaching, Sharing & Wisdom

I have been teaching, in a way, since I was old enough to notice that someone near me didn’t know something I could show them. In nursery school, I was teaching other children how to fall safely off the rocking horse. I have never stopped.

When something lands for someone else — when I can see the moment of recognition in their eyes, when something I have shared reaches the place it needed to reach — I light up. There is no other way to describe it. I feel blissful. Excited. It is one of the purest experiences I know.

I have worked with neurodivergent people across generations. My approach has shifted slightly over the decades, but not fundamentally, because I always worked intuitively anyway. I did not agree with much of the educational and clinical material about ADHD and autism. I followed my instincts instead. Much of what I believed, and taught, forty years ago is now being confirmed by research. The connection between autism and hyperempathy, the overlaps between ADHD and autism, the understanding that these are not disorders, but different ways of thinking and being. And now the links between neurodivergence and hypermobility, fibromyalgia and ME/CFS. I was noticing these patterns before most of the science caught up.

Lived wisdom and learned wisdom share equal space for me. Both matter. But lived wisdom — the kind that comes from having been inside the experience — has a texture and a certainty that no textbook can replicate.

If you ask me who I am writing my book for, I will tell you: anyone who needs it. Anyone who has felt alone and hasn’t quite understood why. People like me. I spent decades finding those people, helping those people, being seen as someone who understood them — while not yet fully claiming that I was one of them. I am claiming it now. And I am writing the map I wish I had been given.

9. Lateral & Non-Linear Thinking

This one is hard to explain. It is not always the same, and it is difficult to describe the air that you've always breathed.

My mind makes connections and jumps. Suddenly I am thinking about something completely different, and I have no idea how I got there — until I backtrack and find the trail. It is like following a map I didn’t know I had drawn.

This can lead to impulsiveness, but not very often. My autistic side analyses everything before an idea settles or a decision is made. The ADHD leaps; the autism checks the landing. Together they form something that is neither reckless nor rigid.

Non-linear thinking is also why I question everything. If I don’t agree with something, I analyse it, research it, sit with it until I understand it on my own terms. This is what led me to create a behavioural management program that people in my community are still thanking me for. It is what led me to understand the connections between environment, food, sensory input and behaviour decades before these links became mainstream. I refused to accept the standard answers. I followed the patterns instead.

And it is what allows me to see things in my children and grandchildren that others are not seeing. I notice. I stay quiet mostly, and I drop hints, and I remind myself that I am here if they need me. But the seeing — the non-linear, pattern-following, map-I-didn’t-know-I-drew seeing — is always happening.

It also shows up in how I teach art. I teach techniques, we have a subject, but everyone creates something completely their own. At the end of a workshop, when we look at each other’s work, we are always amazed at how different each piece is. That is not an accident. I built the space to work that way because I genuinely believe that anyone can create something given the right environment of support — and I do not believe that anyone has the right to judge another person’s art. It is one of the reasons I did not pursue art college. I could not accept a framework in which someone else’s criteria determined the value of what I made.

10. Late Diagnosis as a Homecoming
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When the diagnosis came, the first thing I felt was relief.

Not surprise. I had been noticing my autistic patterns for years before the DSM caught up. But for a long time, you couldn’t be both ADHD and autistic — the categories were considered mutually exclusive. I wanted to be right, but I second-guessed myself because I couldn’t see all the patterns. They contradict each other so much. Each one masks the other. So I held my knowing loosely, and waited.

When the confirmation came, it felt like being told: you were right about yourself all along. You don’t have to try to fix it anymore.

I could allow myself to continue to think differently. To struggle with the things that don’t work for me without shame. And — perhaps most importantly — to give myself credit for all of the absolutely amazing things I have done with the challenges I have carried. I have found my way around things that others wouldn’t have attempted. I have worked through pain and confusion and frustration that would have stopped most people in their tracks. Whether I should have pushed myself so hard is another matter entirely. I am living through the consequences of that now, in burnout. But I did it. I did all of it.

The diagnosis didn’t give me a new identity. It gave me permission to inhabit the one I always had.
If I could go back and tell my younger self one thing, it would be this: don’t hide who you are. Just ask for help. They are really the same instruction, because if you hadn’t hidden who you were, asking for help would have been possible.


Ten things. Ten gifts. A whole life’s worth of evidence that the brain I was given — the one I spent so long wishing was different, the one I exhausted myself trying to manage and hide and reshape — was never the problem.

It was always the answer.

If you are reading this and you recognise yourself somewhere in these pages — in the downloads, the empathy, the patterns you spotted in others before you spotted them in yourself, the deep connection to the earth, the truth you couldn’t stop telling even when it cost you — then this is for you.

Your voice doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to be yours.

It started with a simple question.

I was sitting in a room with a group of women at our local business network when a therapist asked us to think about what a best friend actually does. How they speak to you. How they show up for you. How they treat you when things are hard.

Then she asked us whether we were being that kind of friend to ourselves.

I could only honestly answer: no.

There was something almost desperate in that realisation. Not a gentle nudge of “I should be kinder to myself.” It was a knowing that landed in my body — a recognition that I had to do something about this. That I couldn’t keep going the way I had been.
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This was just before my autism diagnosis. I was about to receive the piece of information that would finally make my whole life make sense. But first, I had to reckon with what I’d been doing to myself in the meantime.

The Advocate Who Never Advocated for Herself

Here is the part I still find quietly astonishing: for decades, I had been a fierce advocate for children and adults with ADHD and autism. I ran support groups. I brought specialists to our regional community. I helped families find language for what their children were experiencing, and I fought for them in the way you only fight when something truly matters to you.
I fought for those children because somewhere inside me, I remembered what it felt like to be one of them. To grow up feeling different, without understanding why the world seemed so much harder than it did for everyone else.

What I didn’t fully understand then is that you don’t grow out of ADHD or autism. It is not a childhood phase. It is who you are. And while I was turning up so completely for others, I had never once turned that same advocacy inward. I had never been in my own corner the way I was in theirs.
If I could speak to that little girl now — the one who felt so different and couldn’t understand why — I know exactly what I would say to her.
“I’ve got you. You can rely on me.”

It took me most of a lifetime to be able to say that and mean it.

The Voice That Wasn’t a Friend

I berated myself. I judged myself constantly. I put myself down for the things that didn’t come naturally — for losing things, for needing more time, for being overwhelmed by situations others seemed to sail through.

I tried to change the need for structure and routine — to be more spontaneous, more flexible, more like someone who didn’t fall apart when plans shifted without warning. I tried to push through the social awkwardness, to perform ease in situations that cost me enormous energy. I tried to manage the hypersensitivity — the noise, the light, the overwhelm that could build without warning and tip into a meltdown I was ashamed of long after it had passed.

I spent enormous energy trying to fix the parts of me that felt broken, to smooth off my edges and become someone who functioned the way the world seemed to expect.

What I didn’t understand then is that there was nothing to fix. My brain and body genuinely work differently. I had known it deep down, always — I always felt a little like an alien, if I’m honest. But knowing something deep down and truly believing it are two very different things.
The research tells us that ADHD children receive around 20,000 more negative messages before adulthood than their neurotypical peers. Twenty thousand. Those messages don’t just sting and fade. They carve neural pathways. They become the voice in your head — the way you speak to yourself in quiet moments when no one else is listening.

For a long time, that voice was not my friend.

The Week Everything Shifted

It's almost one year since my autism diagnosis. Thirty-two years since my ADHD diagnosis. I still remember the week after that assessment — after all of the thorough questionnaires, the three-hour evaluation, my psychologist looking at me and saying there was absolutely no doubt.
I walked around on top of the world for seven days.

Not because I’d been given a label — labels aren’t something I wholeheartedly embrace. But because for the first time I could say to myself: I don’t have to fix myself anymore. I can stop. It’s just me. I think differently. I always knew I thought differently. Now I finally knew why.

Then grief came. As it does with late diagnosis. Grief for the years spent in battle with myself. Grief for the version of me who had worked so hard, so exhaustingly hard, trying to be someone she was never meant to be. But sitting with that grief was also the beginning of something else. The beginning of compassion. For myself.

Over the years I have been fortunate to work with some wonderful therapists who have helped me in more ways than I can name. The inner work they supported me through — finding language for things I’d long felt, releasing old roots, learning that I am allowed to have boundaries, and arriving at the understanding that it is safe to be me — has been part of this journey. But the realisation at the centre of it all was mine. And it started in that room with a question I couldn’t honestly answer.

The Gifts Were Always There

Here is what I know now that I didn’t know for most of my life: the very things that made me feel broken were also the things that made me extraordinary.

The intensity that felt like ‘too much’ is the same intensity that gives me deep empathy, fierce determination, and the drive to advocate for people who need a voice. The pattern recognition that made me feel like an outsider is the same gift that lets me hold complexity and see connections others miss. The creativity that couldn’t be contained in conventional formats found its way into art, into writing, into dance, into decades of healing work with others.

My neurodivergence is not something I need to overcome. It is what makes me who I am — the source of the strength, creativity, wisdom, empathy, and knowledge I carry. It always was. I just needed to stop fighting it long enough to see that.

One Year On

If you are reading this and you recognise yourself in the version of me who spent years trying to fix what was never broken — I want you to know that this shift is possible. It doesn’t happen all at once. It isn’t linear. Some days the old voice is louder than others. But slowly, with the right support and the grace to start telling yourself a different story, you can become the friend you have always needed.

When rejection sensitivity flares and that flood of pain comes, I’ve learned to pause and ask: was that fact, or am I just perceiving criticism? That small question is me stepping in as my own advocate. Offering myself the same second opinion I would offer anyone I cared about.

One year on from my autism diagnosis, thirty-two years on from learning about my ADHD, I am still learning. Still unmasking. Still sometimes sitting with grief for what might have been. Still recovering from years of constant burnout.  But I am also encouraging myself now. Being gentle with myself.

The need for structure and routine, the social awkwardness, the hypersensitivity, the meltdowns — these are never going to change. They are part of me. And I can accept that now. I can allow it. I don’t have to hide my special interests or my collections, my carefully tended routines or my schedules. They are all me, and it’s okay.

The most important people in my life could already see all of it. They saw me — truly saw me — and they stayed.

It was really only me who wasn’t there.
I’m here now.
—
* With heartfelt acknowledgement to the therapist whose simple question started everything.

I am writing this from inside chronic autistic burnout that began with a traumatic year in 2024. I want you to know that upfront — not as a disclaimer, but because it matters. Because the words are harder to find today. Because I nearly didn’t write at all. Because that, right there, is exactly what autistic burnout does.

This week I had a meltdown because of my mother - in front of my mother for the very first time. After a lifetime of holding it together until I was alone, I just couldn’t hold it back. I sobbed and sobbed. I am sixty-something years old. It has taken that long for the mask to slip in front of her.  To let her see that I'm not the "confident, in control, reliable and capable person" she has always believed me to be the one she has leaned on for decades.  Some masks go very, very deep.

What Autistic Burnout Actually Is

Autistic burnout is not depression. I want to be clear about that, because for decades, that’s what I was told it was. Doctors, well-meaning and wrong, would listen to my description and reach for their prescription pads. But I knew. Even in the 1990s.   I had my ADHD diagnosis — but I didn’t yet know I was autistic. What I did know was that the word ‘depressed’ was wrong. I sat in a doctor’s office and said: “I am not depressed. I am burnt out. I cannot do this.” Nobody really understood. The concept of autistic burnout as a specific, neurological experience did not yet exist in clinical awareness.
​
Autistic burnout is a complete and utter collapse due to overwhelm. It is exhaustion that goes beyond tired — and I know tired. I have fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue. I am very familiar with physical exhaustion. But autistic burnout is different. For me it is primarily mental, even as it pulls the body down with it. It is what happens when an autistic brain has been running at full capacity for too long, masking too hard, managing too much, absorbing too much of the world — and finally runs completely out of fuel.

​There is another distinction worth making — the difference between autistic burnout and the kind of burnout that has become part of everyday language. Ordinary stress burnout is situational. It is caused by a specific overload — work pressure, a difficult period in life, too much on the plate — and it responds to situational solutions. Remove the stressor. Take a holiday. Rest. The recovery is relatively predictable.Autistic burnout is different in its very nature. It is not caused by one situation or one particularly hard season. It is caused by the cumulative, lifelong effort of existing as an autistic person in a world that was not designed for you — years of masking, translating, processing, monitoring, and performing normality. The stressor is not a job or a relationship. The stressor is the constant background programme that has been running, largely invisible to everyone around you, since childhood.

This means that ordinary solutions often don’t work. A holiday doesn’t switch off the programme. A week of rest doesn’t replenish what has taken years to deplete. Recovery from autistic burnout requires something more fundamental — genuine reduction in masking demands, sensory rest, solitude, and time measured not in days but in weeks or months or even years. And even then, returning too quickly to full capacity can trigger another collapse.

And for autistic women — particularly those who spent decades undiagnosed — burnout rarely happens just once. It becomes a pattern woven through a lifetime. Collapse. Partial recovery. Functioning again, often at great cost. Then collapse once more. Each episode misread, mislabelled, dismissed. Depression. Weakness. Stress. A personality flaw. Without a diagnosis, without a framework, there is no way to recognise the pattern for what it is. Only the accumulating weight of not understanding why you keep falling apart when, from the outside, your life looks manageable.

I lived that pattern for decades. Looking back now, I can see it clearly — the collapse at eighteen, the daily hidden meltdowns through my years of young motherhood, the burnout that finally, years later, led to my diagnosis. Each one was autistic burnout. I just didn’t have the words.
What It Feels Like For Me - From the Inside
The sensory world turns up. Everything becomes louder, brighter, more abrasive. My brain, already depleted, is even less able to cope with the sensory input that is always there — and I receive all of it, all at once, with no buffer.

My mind goes blank. Or scattered. Often both at once, which makes no sense until you experience it — empty and cluttered simultaneously. Words become unreachable. I know what I want to say but I cannot find the path to it. Sometimes I simply cannot be bothered to explain myself, not out of rudeness but out of genuine depletion. The effort of translating inner experience into outer language is just gone.
Cognitive skills go offline. Phone calls become impossible. Decision-making collapses — especially anything involving numbers or planning. The executive function that I work so hard to maintain in daily life simply stops cooperating. Small things — things a neurotypical person might consider trivial — can bring on tears. If someone asks me to do one more thing when I am already overwhelmed, that single request can tip me into a meltdown.

I want to be alone. Not antisocially, not dramatically — just alone. The presence of other people, even people I love, requires energy I do not have. I want quiet. I want stillness. I want nobody to need anything from me.

And then there is eating. With AuDHD, I already forget to eat — object permanence means food I can’t see simply doesn’t exist in my mind. But during burnout it’s different: I don’t forget, I just can’t be bothered. The decisions involved — what, when, how, the sensory engagement of cooking — are simply beyond what I have left. If someone puts food in front of me, I will eat it. If I am home alone, I often won’t bother.

The Mask That Never Slips — and the Ones That Do

When I am in burnout, masking becomes difficult — almost impossible. The smile doesn’t come easily. My filter goes. I say exactly what I think. I sound short. I cannot pretend everything is fine.

And yet. Every single morning, even through the worst of it, I put on my makeup and I get dressed properly. Even when I was bedridden for six months at eighteen. Even this week. That particular mask has never slipped — but here’s what I’ve come to understand: it isn’t really a mask for other people. It is something I do for myself. When I look in the mirror and I don’t look as tired and drained as I feel, I automatically feel a little more positive. It is an act of self-compassion so deeply ingrained that burnout cannot reach it. That is different from performing for the world.

Other signs of burnout are less visible to outsiders. I stop exercising. I eat food I know isn’t good for me. I keep moving — the ADHD won’t let me fully stop — but the self-care structures I’ve built fall away one by one.

I Knew Long Before Anyone Believed Me

My first recognised burnout came at eighteen. Already exhausted from my final years in school, I threw myself into work instead of resting, contracted Ross River fever, refused to stop, and collapsed. Six months bedridden. Diagnosed with depression, anxiety, chronic fatigue syndrome. Looking back now, through the lens of my late autism diagnosis, the pattern is unmistakable: complete autistic burnout.

Then through the years of young motherhood, I was in constant overwhelm and burnout. I had meltdowns every day — but I hid them. Often they happened in the car, driving to or from school, from dance, the children right there with me. I would sob silently, trying to hide the fact that I was falling apart, because I wasn’t face to face with them and could keep my eyes on the road. It wasn’t a safe place — it was simply the only place where I wasn’t being looked at directly.

Coming Back On

For me, coming out of burnout feels like a light turning back on. Like being plugged back in. I can feel my spiritual connection returning — that sense of being held by something larger than myself, which burnout quietly disconnects me from without me even noticing until it’s gone. I can start completing things on my to-do list. I can feel enjoyment again. Life stops feeling like something I’m just surviving.

It’s important to understand that chronic autistic burnout doesn’t always mean struggling every single moment. There are periods of being back online — days or even stretches of time that feel genuinely good, where I feel capable and connected and like myself again. This is not recovery. This is the nature of chronic burnout: it ebbs and flows.

But one period of overwhelm — one demand too many, one sensory assault, one unexpected disruption — can cause a rapid spiral back down. A meltdown. A crash. And after a good period, that crash can feel even more devastating, because it can seem like failure. It isn’t. It is simply how chronic burnout works. The good periods are real. The crashes don’t cancel them out.

But the early days of recovery are fragile. One moment of overwhelm can knock me straight back. I have learned to treat that tender time carefully — to not rush back to full capacity, to guard against the impulse to make up for lost time.

What My Diagnosis Changed

Since my AuDHD diagnosis, I give myself more permission to stop. This is still new. It is still hard. But I am learning. For the first time, this week, I have said no to my mother. I have put up a boundary. I have said: I cannot do that right now. I need to look after myself first.

And if someone asks me “Are you okay?” I am learning to say: No. Not right now. I just need time. I need time to rest. I need time to recover.
I need a hug.

If you recognise yourself in any of this — the hidden meltdowns, the collapsing into bed while still dressed perfectly, the decades of being told you were depressed when you knew something else entirely was happening — please know: you were right about yourself. You knew. You just weren’t believed.
​
You were always right about yourself.

At sixty-one years old, I finally heard the words that reframed my entire life.
"You're autistic. There's absolutely no doubt."

For one week, I experienced the most profound euphoria I have ever known. I don't have to try anymore. I don't have to fix myself. It's just me. Then came the grief - wave after wave of it. "If only I'd known before."

I had already been diagnosed with ADHD at thirty-one, which had been a relief in itself. But the autism diagnosis thirty years later filled in the missing pieces in a way nothing else ever had. It explained everything. And it raised the question that so many late-diagnosed women ask themselves: why did it take so long?
​
The answer, I've come to understand, has everything to do with being a woman.

The Different Rules for Girls
From the very beginning, neurodivergent girls face a fundamentally different experience to neurodivergent boys. When I was labelled "hyperactive/gifted" at six years old in 1969, I wasn't sent for support or accommodation - I was sent to be fixed. To be quieter. To be less.

I was precocious, hyperactive, always on the go, never sleeping. A tomboy from the start. I was constantly told I was too loud, laughing too much, crying too much. I asked too many questions. I wasn't allowed jeans until age twelve, yet constantly getting into trouble for not being "ladylike" when I climbed, played soccer, or sat upside down on chairs.

The message wasn't clear, and it was impossibly contradictory: be less active, but also not lazy. Be feminine, but not too feminine. Fit in, but change everything about who you are.
I loved machinery, tractors, engineering. Those toys went to my brother who happily played with dolls and dress ups. I felt totally misunderstood.  

Learning to Disappear
At age seven, when my family moved from England to Australia, something shifted in me. I left behind everyone who knew me - and I made a conscious decision to start fitting in. I began practising conversations in my head. Practising smiling. Forcing myself to try to connect with girls when I naturally got on so much better with boys.
This was the beginning of masking - though I had no word for it then. It was simply survival.

By puberty, the masking had intensified enormously. Developing a very feminine figure early when I was fundamentally still a tomboy created a painful disconnect. Suddenly I couldn't join in the activities I loved. I had to be ladylike. I practiced making myself feel more girly, even though it felt completely foreign.

I'd been brought up being told it was dangerous to be a woman, that men were only after one thing. I took that literally. So when I was accused of flirting at fifteen and sixteen - when I genuinely didn't understand romantic interest and was just trying to be friends - it created a confusing and frightening landscape. Get on better with boys, but boys are dangerous. Be feminine, but femininity attracts danger.

At fifteen, I began colouring my light eyelashes and eyebrows because people said I looked "pale and unwell," which drew unwanted attention. That same year I started dyeing my blonde hair light brown - beginning thirty-five years of avoiding the "dumb blonde" stereotype and the "blonde bombshell" sexualisation I despised. Standing in front of mirrors, copying facial expressions. Changing my English accent. Taking up ballet - not for the femininity, but for the discipline it gave me.

There was a brief window of relief in grade ten, when I found a kindred spirit - a girl I could completely unmask with. We went hiking, made art, op-shopped, danced, talked about everything. My family said I became "a different person" when I was with her. I tried to explain that it was the only time I could be the real me. They preferred the masked version.
She left after less than a year. And I continued hiding and waiting to fit in.

The Body Keeps the Score
What nobody talks about enough is how hormones compound everything for neurodivergent women.

My menstrual cycle was traumatic. Painful periods lasting ten days, followed by two weeks of exhaustion and incapacitation. During those two weeks, touch would become physically painful - adding another layer of sensory difficulty to an already irregular cycle that refused to fit into my routines. I was constantly in tears, constantly exhausted. I was highly intelligent but couldn't pass exams. I knew something was wrong, but I had no framework to understand what.

My sensory needs also shifted dramatically with puberty. Before, I preferred loose clothing and avoided touch. Afterwards, I needed tight clothing and firm hugs - because my sensitivity to light touch never changed. A tight hug I can handle. Light touch is unbearable. The tight clothing provides constant deep pressure that prevents the kind of incidental contact that feels like pain.

These hormonal intersections with neurodivergence are still poorly understood by most medical professionals, which is one of the many reasons women go undiagnosed for so long.

The Cycle of Collapse
At eighteen, following an illness with Ross River fever, I collapsed. I was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Looking back now, I am certain that was autistic burnout - the pattern is unmistakeable. I was also diagnosed with depression. I didn't know much about it then, so I accepted it and took the medication. After six months, I realised: I wasn't depressed. I was anxious and stressed. So I weaned myself off.

Instead of recovering properly, I got out of bed and went back to work - eventually holding down three jobs simultaneously. An engineering firm. A clothing store. My family's business. Working from six in the morning until six at night, only charging for nine to five. Just trying to prove my worth.

At twenty-three, I lost my engineering job due to a restructuring and collapsed again. When they replaced me, it took three women to do what I had been doing alone. Depression was diagnosed again. This time I fought it and refused the medication.

The pattern repeated after having a baby at twenty-seven - diagnosed with postnatal depression, fighting it again: "I'm not depressed. I'm just not coping." Nobody listened.

They saw chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, depression, anxiety. They treated symptoms, never once connecting them to the underlying neurodivergence that was causing autistic burnout over and over again. This is the experience of so many neurodivergent women: decades of treating the symptoms whilst the cause remains invisible.

Why Women Wait So Long
The diagnostic criteria for both ADHD and autism were developed primarily by studying boys and men. The presentation in women is different - not less significant, just different. We are better at masking. We internalise rather than externalise. Our hyperactivity is often mental rather than physical. Our social difficulties are hidden beneath years of learned scripts and practised facial expressions.

If I'd been born a male, perhaps my intelligence and interests would have been nurtured more. The ADHD might have been caught sooner, maybe not. But I probably wouldn't have faced the impossible expectations: be naturally organised, socially fluent, emotionally regulated, manage everyone's needs whilst hiding your own struggles.

The weight of carrying the emotional burdens of the entire family is guaranteed to exhaust any woman, but add to that executive dysfunction, RSD, and neurodivergent-associated emotional dysregulation, and total burnout hits much harder. It creates a fatigue most people just can't understand.

So much of my energy went into managing other people's needs and emotions. When I couldn't do it anymore, I'd have a meltdown. I blamed myself because women are "supposed to be" naturally good at relationships and emotionally intelligent. I AM emotionally intelligent - but I'm also an empath.  I felt like I was failing at being a woman.

At forty, I took up belly dancing, still trying to learn femininity. Still trying to fix something that was never broken.

The Moment Everything Changed
My autism diagnosis at sixty-one changed everything. It makes me feel PROUD now of everything I've achieved - especially all the ADHD and autism advocacy work I've done over the decades. I look back and wonder how I managed it all.

I grieve the years lost through not recognising my own autism and not having the courage to ask for help earlier, but the diagnosis gave me the framework to see that I never needed fixing, that I am perfect the way I am, and that my brain really does work differently to most. It showed me that relationship issues were never all my fault - that there were systemic expectations affecting everyone around me.

Understanding my neurodivergence lifted the shame entirely, revealing it for what it always was: society's failure to accept me, not my failure to be acceptable.

Now It's My Time
Being myself now looks like doing things when I have the energy to do them. Learning to ask for help. Setting boundaries I never could before: "I don't have the capacity for that right now."
Learning to prioritise my own needs. For decades, I put everyone else first. Now I understand that I need my help too.

My relationship with productivity and worth is gradually changing. I'm learning that I don't have to be productive to be worthy. I can create art just because it brings me joy. I can rest without guilt. I can exist without constantly justifying that existence through output.

I'm rewriting my story - from one of failure and trying to fix myself to one of strength, resilience, and authentic self-acceptance. I wasn't broken. I was neurodivergent in a world that didn't accommodate me. That's a fundamentally different story.
Now I'm just me. And honestly? Who cares if I'm too much or not enough?

To Other Late-Diagnosed Women
If you're reading this and seeing yourself in these words - if you've spent decades trying to fix something, trying to be normal, trying to understand why everything feels so impossibly hard - please know this:
You are not broken. You never were.

Your exhaustion is real. Your struggles are valid. The years of masking and performing and pushing through took an enormous toll, and you are allowed to grieve that.

But you are also allowed to stop now. To unmask. To accommodate yourself. To work with your brain rather than against it. It's never too late - even at sixty-one, I'm still learning who I really am beneath the mask I wore for so long.

You deserve to know yourself. You deserve to be yourself. You deserve support, understanding, rest, and kindness - especially from yourself.

And you deserve to know: you are not alone. There are so many of us finding ourselves in later life, rewriting our stories, supporting each other through this journey.
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Welcome. You've found your people. And we understand.

This post represents my lived experience as a late-diagnosed neurodivergent woman - ADHD at thirty-one, autism at sixty-one. Your experience may be different, and that is valid too. What matters is that we are finally being seen, heard, and understood - and that the next generation of neurodivergent girls and women won't have to wait sixty-one years to know themselves.
If this resonates with you, please share it. Our stories matter, and sometimes seeing yourself in someone else's journey changes everything.

​This is just a small extract from  a chapter in my upcoming book.  Stay tuned.

Hello, I'm Jane Marin—and I exist at the intersection of art and advocacy, where creation and understanding are inseparable.

For decades, I've lived with what I call a neurocomplex mind—AuDHD (autism and ADHD combined) along with layers of intuition, empathic sensitivity, and pattern recognition that shape how I experience everything. My ADHD diagnosis came in the early 1990s; my autism diagnosis arrived in 2025. But the truth of who I am has been here all along, weaving through every part of my life.

Art has never been just a creative outlet for me—it's my sanctuary, my compass, and the way I make sense of a world that often feels overwhelming. As someone whose nervous system runs hot and who lives daily with fibromyalgia and ME/CFS, my creative practice is how I self-regulate, find calm, and reconnect with myself when everything feels like too much. You may know me for my Oracle card illustrations or my portrait paintings of strong, resilient women—figures who carry quiet messages of strength, love, and wisdom. Sometimes a gentle masculine energy steps forward too. These characters often feel like messengers from another time, whispering stories that want to be remembered.

Bookbinding has become just as vital to my creative rhythm. There's something profoundly grounding about stitching pages into form, about turning discarded materials into something meaningful and beautiful. Each journal I make becomes a vessel for someone else's story—a safe place for reflection, mess, and magic. This repetitive, tactile work quiets the constant motion in my mind.

But my work extends beyond my own creative practice. For years, I've been supporting ADHD and autistic people in my regional community of Bundaberg, Queensland. I've run support groups, brought specialists to our town, and walked alongside hundreds of neurodivergent individuals as they discover their own paths to understanding and self-acceptance. Currently, I'm writing a book about my neurodivergent journey—one that explores the complexity of living with a neurocomplex mind while teaching coping skills to others. I share regularly through my monthly newsletter and fortnightly blog, and create educational Instagram content about the lived reality of AuDHD experiences.

Here's what I've learnt: my art and my advocacy aren't separate. They both flow from the same source—a mind that sees patterns others miss, feels deeply, and knows things intuitively before words can catch up. I experience what I call "the download problem"—thoughts arrive fully formed but scatter like startled birds when I try to express them. My creative work gives those thoughts form. My advocacy work gives them purpose.
Through my Gather and Create workshops, these worlds meet beautifully. These gatherings aren't just about making art—they're about reconnecting with creativity, with community, and with the parts of ourselves that need care and expression. They're neurodivergent-friendly spaces where regulation happens through creation, where there's no "right way" to be or make.

In the months ahead, I'll continue to share more about what it looks like to live, create, and advocate from a neurocomplex mind. The behind-the-scenes reality of running a creative business when your brain works differently. The joy and challenge of supporting others while navigating your own journey. The ways art becomes medicine, and understanding becomes art.

If this resonates with you—whether you're neurodivergent yourself, love someone who is, or simply recognise that creativity and self-understanding are deeply intertwined—I hope you'll join me.

Here's to finding beauty, healing, and meaning in the everyday—and to honouring all the ways our minds make magic.
​

I hear every conversation at once. The couple arguing three tables over. The children at the next table. The waiter taking an order. The kitchen staff calling out dishes. And I'm not just passively hearing them - my brain is actively listening to all of them, whether I want to or not. I hear things I don't want to hear. I lose the thread of my own conversation constantly and have to keep asking people to repeat themselves because I literally cannot hear them over everything else my brain is forcing me to process.

It's worse when conversations overlap - when multiple people are talking to me at the same time. My brain tries to follow all of them, and I can feel myself fragmenting, unable to take hold of anything solid.
On top of the conversations, there's the sound of dishes and cutlery, background music, the scraping of chairs, air conditioning. All of it demanding equal attention from my brain. None of it fading to background the way it should.

The Voice Inside My Head
What makes it even more complex, is that I'm one of those people who think with an internal narrative. When I'm thinking, I "hear" my thoughts as complete sentences in my head. My brain is already very busy with its own internal processing. So when I'm in a situation with a lot of external sound, I'm not only managing all that incoming auditory information - I also have my own internal voice running simultaneously.

And I've noticed something peculiar: when it's quiet and I'm listening to a podcast or guided meditation, my brain actually follows along word for word, speaking the words in my head at the exact same moment the other person is saying them. I've often wondered how this is even possible - I can't know what they're going to say next, so it must be split-second processing and timing. I only really noticed it when I started using guided meditations to try to calm my mind, and realised my internal voice was speaking along with the meditation, which rather defeated the purpose.

One night our dog was barking, and I was lying in bed listening to each bark like a sharp drumbeat on my head. My internal dialogue was trying to decide out loud "Do I just lie here and wait for the barking to stop, or do I get up and try to settle the dog?" Then I realised my internal narrative was also barking with the dog. Three simultaneous experiences of one sound: the external bark, the physical percussion of it, and the internal echo.

Misophonia Rage
Some sounds trigger something beyond ordinary sensory overload. The sounds of people eating, chewing, breathing. Even the sound of my own heartbeat. These cause what I can only describe as rage - an almost primal need to escape immediately.

This is misophonia, and it's distinctly different from the overwhelm I feel from environmental noise. The overwhelm makes me teary and tense. Misophonia makes me feel something closer to fury. I've learned to put white noise on during dinner - the TV will be on so I can try to redirect my focus away from the sounds of eating. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes the white noise itself just adds another layer to the overwhelm.

When Everything Else Piles On
Sound doesn't happen in isolation. For instance, in a supermarket, I'm not just managing auditory chaos. I'm also dealing with:

• Bright fluorescent lights flickering overhead (I can see the flicker others don't notice)
• Constant movement in every direction
• Food smells mixing with cleaning product smells
• People brushing past me
• The emotions and energy of everyone around me (I'm an empath)
• The wet condensation on freezer handles
• Trying to focus on my shopping list
• The effort of holding myself together

That's at minimum ten different streams of sensation all demanding processing simultaneously. Sound is the worst, but when you layer on visual stimulation, smells, physical sensations, temperature, and other people's emotions, it becomes unbearable.

I can feel it building. My shoulders tense. My jaw clenches. The tears are right there, waiting. Sometimes I know "I have maybe ten more minutes before I can't hold this anymore."

I usually manage to hold myself together until I can get out of the situation. I'll make it to the car, and then the tears just start. Once that happens, it can continue for an hour to two days, depending on how bad the overload was. And here's something I didn't understand for a long time: the meltdown I delayed still has to happen, just privately. Holding it in until I'm alone actually makes the recovery longer.

The Gift Hidden in the Overwhelm

The thing about this inability to filter sensory input is that in the right environment, it becomes something entirely different.

In nature, the same wiring that makes restaurants unbearable allows me to hear and differentiate dozens of bird calls simultaneously - and it brings me peace instead of panic. I experience a richness and aliveness that most people never access.

I can pick out individual species in the dawn chorus that wakes me around 4 a.m. - and rather than being annoyed at the early wake-up, I love it. I listen and count how many different bird calls I can identify. I hear the wind moving differently through grass versus through trees. I hear the creaking of tree trunks, the rustling of leaves, the sounds of insects. The sounds of water - flowing, dripping, moving - are particularly calming.

Where restaurant noise makes my body tense and brings tears, nature sounds make my body relax. It's the complete opposite experience from the same neurological processing. My internal narrative actually quiets down in nature. I can focus entirely on the sounds around me without that competing internal voice. Maybe because I actually WANT to hear everything in nature.

I live on a farm in the country, surrounded by nature, and I am so grateful. I make time every day to be outside because it helps me heal and recover from the sensory assaults of human environments. This isn't coincidental. I need it.

Understanding Changes Everything
Before I understood this was autism and ADHD sensory processing, I thought I was just too sensitive. I forced myself to endure situations because I thought I should be able to handle them. School was one of the worst - I was overwhelmed most of the time and didn't understand what was going on. I just felt like something was wrong with me.

Now that I understand what's happening, I'm much less likely to berate myself for needing to escape or spend time alone. I can recognise "this is sensory overload, not personal failure" and give myself permission to leave or take the recovery time I need.

I've developed strategies: I shop first thing in the morning as soon as the supermarket opens, before it gets busy. I go through self-checkout so I can just get out without additional interaction. I give myself permission to leave gatherings when I need to. I don't force myself to endure what my nervous system cannot handle.

The same heightened hearing that makes supermarkets unbearable makes nature transcendent. The sounds of insects, the calls of different birds, the movement of wind through the landscape - I experience a richness and aliveness that many people never access. It's peace. It's connection.

It truly is a double-edged gift. The challenge isn't the sensitivity itself - it's navigating a world designed for people whose brains automatically filter out what doesn't matter. But understanding this has allowed me to structure my life around my actual needs rather than fighting against my own neurology.
​
The gift and the challenge coexist. I've learned to honour both.

This is an extract from my chapter on Sensory Overload  which will become part of my upcoming book on AuDHD
​

My brain processes information through many interconnected abilities: including spontaneous intuitive knowing, advanced pattern recognition, deep empathic sensing, and natural access to altered states of consciousness. Each of these is powerful on its own, but together, with AuDHD, they create a way of experiencing the world that is both gift and challenge.

When Words Come Through You
The first time I actually remember being surprised by my own downloaded wisdom, was when I was about five years old. I noticed some girls bullying an African English girl because of her really dark skin. I heard myself saying to them—as if the words were coming through me rather than from me—"The reason she's got dark skin is because her ancestors come from a very hot country and  their dark skin helps to protect them from the sun."

I stood there afterward thinking, "Where did that come from? How did I know that?"

The teacher almost accused me of lying. Somebody must have told me, she insisted. But no, they hadn't. The very fact that I had to question myself proved that, and I was as surprised  as she was.

This pattern repeated itself many times before I had even turned six. I learnt early that my knowing made adults uncomfortable, that it was safer to not say anything at all.

How It Still Works
This is how it still works for me. I hear myself say something and then think, "How did I know that?" The knowing arrives complete and articulated, often surprising me even more than it surprises the person I'm speaking to.

I am much more articulate when information comes through me. In real life, my speech is very disjointed and in typical ADHD fashion, I am constantly searching for words to put my thoughts into order and context. But when I'm channeling this knowing, the words flow perfectly formed.
It's not that I'm accessing a memory or reasoning through to a conclusion—the information simply comes through me, as if I'm a channel rather than the source.

Intuition in Daily Life
This spontaneous knowing continues throughout my life in both profound and mundane ways. Knowing  who's calling before I answer the phone. Recognising when there's something wrong with someone even when they seem fine to everyone else.

As my children were growing up, I regularly intuited the extent of injuries or the nature of illnesses before medical confirmation. I would use muscle testing and pendulum to confirm my knowing, and I was consistently accurate—even when initial medical assessments suggested otherwise. Sometimes when it's hard to trust the knowing, I will still use these tools just to check. I'm right 99% of the time.

My whole art career was based on trusting an intuition. I began creating mandala oracle cards from my photography, and the entire project unfolded through a series of knowings, dreams, and intuitive hits. When I chose a publisher, I just knew  which one was right. He phoned me the day my work arrived on his desk. We had signed the contract within a week. 

Pattern Recognition Enigmas
Although I had always been brilliant at jigsaw puzzles, maths and spelling in my early years, I first became consciously aware of my pattern recognition ability around age eleven or twelve. I could figure out word games Hangman extraordinarily quickly.  In games like Mastermind, I usually got all the colours correct on the first go, just by feeling what colours that person would use and by my second turn had intuited or recognised the pattern..

After a few times having played these games at school, the teacher  banned me from playing because I always won. I had to sit and watch while the rest of the class played games. This probably contributed to my growing sense of being fundamentally different in ways that made others uncomfortable.

Here's an interesting point to note: Although I'm good at pattern recognition, it's only when I command myself to register patterns. Normally, in typical ADHD style, I go through life not seeing the small details of things at all. Or in autistic style, being bombarded and overwhelmed because there is simply too much going on.  I would make the worst witness because I rarely  absorb or retain visual information into my short term memory.  I may remember it some years later however.

And I'm not good at facial recognition. I have a degree of prosopagnosia or face blindness which frequently gets me into trouble because I have no idea who I'm talking to. I recognise actors and speakers by their voice rather than what they look like.  Luckily, if I see people often enough - family, friends -  the recognition will eventually stick.

I am much more able to recognise or feel energy. I could tell you how a person or place felt. I could tell you the emotion that was in a room. But the visual details? They simply don't register unless I'm actively focusing on them, because there is simply too much going on and I become  overstimulated.

Non-Linear Thinking
With AuDHD my thoughts don't follow a linear path. They never have. While most people think in a relatively ordered sequence—one thought leading logically to the next—my mind operates more like a vast web of interconnected nodes, all firing simultaneously.

I think in pictures, words, sounds, smells, and feelings all at once. A single question can trigger a cascade of associations across multiple domains: visual memories, emotional impressions, physical sensations, abstract concepts, and intuitive knowing, all arriving together in a complete gestalt.
For years, I believed this was a problem. But maybe I was wrong.

Being an Empath
I didn't understand my empathic ability until quite late in life. When my husband's father passed away—someone I didn't know very well—I suffered from extreme grief. I couldn't understand why. It wasn't my grief, and I knew it wasn't my grief.

A healer friend explained that I was taking on my husband's grief and that of the whole family. She told me I was a strong empath, leading me to begin researching and realising that so much of the emotion that I felt wasn't even my own emotion.

In my teens and twenties, I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. But I always knew it was something else and I tried to explain. And I was right. The medications I was given were trying to treat symptoms that weren't actually mine—they were everyone else's emotions that I was absorbing. 

As a child, this manifested in what looked like martyr behaviour, often taking the blame for my younger brother's mistakes and transgressions. It was simple logic: If I was going to feel his emotional pain anyway when he was being punished, I might as well take the blame and spare him the additional suffering.  I had also been taking on my mother's emotional and physical pain for years.  

This is because I also have a strong physical empathy—otherwise known as mirror-touch synesthesia. I don't just empathise with others' pain—I physically feel it in my own body. These are some of my neurological realities. My brain processes sensory information differently, picking up signals others miss entirely.

This is helpful for working as a healer, but it has also been very overwhelming for most of my life. 

Interestingly, because I'm autistic, I don't always register my own emotions straight away. Sometimes it can take me days to realise, "Ah, that's what I was feeling." And yet I pick up other people's emotions almost immediately.

The Toll and the Protection
I have learned to turn this empathy off to a certain extent, although I find it very hard to do around family. I have to remember to cleanse my energy field after spending time with people. When I remember, I can draw in the light to fill myself up, and that helps protect me.

On days when I forget to cleanse after being with people, I can get very tired and even sick—I can feel as if I've had the flu, very achy with specific pains sometimes. And it can take me a week or more to cleanse if I let it get that bad. And it can also trigger overwhelm, and my ME/fibromyalgia.

The Bliss State: Bringing in the Light
As a child, I could often, in times of stress, enter what I would call a bliss state. I would be filled with light and would suddenly know that everything was going to be okay. Everything seems brighter. The world seems more beautiful.

This happened frequently through my childhood and especially in my early teens, when I had quite a lot of traumatic times. I would purposely go outside to feel it. I'd be terrified to go to school or afraid to go home, and I would just walk outside and close my eyes. Suddenly, I would be flooded with light. It would pour in through the top of my head. I'd just be filled with light and bliss, safety and calm. I think that is really what kept me going.  After being ill in my late teenage years, I lost this natural ability and I had to learn to access this light energy on my own.  It no longer happens spontaneously.

Alpha-Theta Consciousness and the Thin Veil
I have learned that there are four main types of brainwaves: Beta (alert, focused), Alpha (relaxed awareness), Theta (deep meditation, memory access), and Delta (deep sleep). Most people spend the majority of their time in Beta.

In my work with ADHD and Autistic people over the decades, I have noticed that many neurodivergent people are different. We naturally inhabit the Alpha-Theta realm much more frequently. This is why we appear "off with the fairies" or "daydreaming." But what looks like inattention from the outside is actually something profound happening on the inside—we're accessing layers of consciousness that others struggle to reach.

I've come to understand that many neurodivergent people have what I call a "thin veil"—the barrier between this life and previous lives, between individual consciousness and collective consciousness, is more permeable for us. We carry trauma from not only this life and our childhood, but from past lives and from generational patterns stored in our DNA.

This thin veil is both burden and gift. The burden is the weight of all that feeling and unprocessed trauma. The gift is the ability to access it, recognise it, and heal it—not just for ourselves, but for all who came before and all who will come after.

The Challenge: Learning to Trust
All of these abilities working together create a form of perception that's difficult to explain but extraordinarily accurate.

The challenge isn't having these abilities—it's learning to trust them in a world that doesn't understand or value them.

I'm in my sixties now, and I'm still learning to honour these gifts. Still learning when to speak my knowing and when to hold it. Still learning to not apologise for processing differently. Still learning to trust the daydreams, the visions, the sudden certainties that arrive without logical preamble.

The empathic abilities that can be overwhelming when I don't know how to protect myself. The alpha-theta states that were punished as daydreaming and not paying attention, that caused me to suppress my natural way of processing. The intuitive knowing that made adults uncomfortable making me stay silent. They are all part of me. And I'm learning to embrace them.

The journey of reconnecting to source, understanding my neurodivergence, healing trauma, and finally learning that I don't need to be fixed—that I just need to be me—it's all part of the same path.

I'm still learning. I'm still growing. And I'm finally understanding that this is exactly as it should be.
The knowing was never the problem. The problem was believing them when they said there was something wrong with me for knowing.

This is an excerpt from my forthcoming book about my neurodivergent journey. If this resonates with you, I'd love to hear your story. Do you experience any of these abilities? How have they shaped your life?

Mondays are catch-up cleaning, except every second Monday when I take my mother to appointments and it took nearly two years to adjust to this disruption. Tuesdays I do groceries as soon as the shops open, then work on illustration or bookbinding. Wednesdays are admin day—farm accounts, my own accounts. Thursdays alternate between journaling workshops and deep cleaning housework. Fridays are my stay-home-if-possible day.  But my daily structure continues with 9am morning tea and language study, Midday lunch with a movie if my husband is home (otherwise I eat quickly and keep working on whatever is on my to do list),  4pm feed Hector and take him for a walk  and 5pm check in with my husband so that I can organise evening meal and watch my favourite archaeology stuff on YouTube.  
Because we're on a farm, we don't usually have weekends off as such. Saturdays and Sundays follow their own patterns—workshops, market stalls, or productivity days. 

These things happen in this order. Every day because this is structure I need to function. If something disrupts this sequence, I feel lost. A little bit dazed. Not quite sure what to do next. And I can't reschedule whats changed.  If Wednesday admin is disrupted, I find it really hard to do admin on a different day.  Consequently, because of the ADHD it is forgotten altogether.

When we go out for Sunday breakfast, we go to the same place every week. They open at 6:30, so it doesn't eat into our day. We know the owners. We always tend to sit at the same table. I will more than likely order the same or similar thing—usually bacon and eggs, my favourite since childhood.

I always go to the same grocery stores. For a full shop, I go to the same supermarket because it opens at 8 and is big and open, so it doesn't feel crowded. I go first thing in the morning when there aren't many people.

This is what living with both autism and ADHD looks like for me. I need rigid structure AND the ability to flow between multiple interests. These two needs create a constant dance—sometimes graceful, sometimes chaotic, always exhausting.

When I'm flowing between my multiple projects on my own terms—art, bookbinding, illustration, farm work, housework—it feels amazing. I can switch between painting in my studio and digital illustration in my office, hang the washing out in between. That's fine. But when someone else demands I switch, when the interruption comes from outside rather than from within, everything collapses. If I'm hyper-focused and somebody interrupts me, it's very hard to get back into that mindset. Work might sit there for days, weeks or months. I've even forgotten to complete tax paperwork until my accountant pointed it out too late to avoid the fine.  

The need for structure extends beyond my morning routine. My driving routes are structured too. I've been traveling to town from here for 40 years, and I used to be terrified to go a different way if there were roadworks. I can handle it these days—I've developed two or three acceptable routes. I think that's the autism in me that needs that recognised route. But the ADHD will occasionally  have me try a different route, and if it feels comfortable, I might keep it on my list. A little bit of adventure there.

Here's something else I've noticed: if my husband and I are heading into town and I'm driving, any deviation from my original carefully timed plan causes panic. If he decides to go to a different shop or take a different route, I get really panicked. But if he's driving, I can let go and leave it in his hands. I think its about control—when I'm in control, I need everything to go according to my plan. When he's in control, I can release the rigid structure.

For a long time—up until I was nearly 50—I could not drive more than half an hour from home on my own. When I had to drive the children to another city, I could do it, but my muscles would seize up and my hands would grip the wheel so hard that there would be bruises on my fingers and wrists. After therapy just before I turned 50, I began to be able to drive a couple of hours on my own by breaking my journey into half-hour increments in my mind—which I still do now.

The irony is, I love driving. If I'm driving a known route and relatively short distances, this is a time for me. It's when I can relax and lots of inspiration comes to me. The other irony is that my ADHD brain promptly forgets all of those wonderful creative ideas before I can do anything with them.

When something disrupts any of my carefully built routines, it can be a crisis. When my aging mother began to need emergency hospital trips and ongoing appointments, it caused me to have  meltdowns before or after each appointment for almost two years. Because it isn't just the interruption to my carefully planned routines, it's that I can't re-order and reschedule the things that I would normally have done without change and disruption.  On top of that is the mental drain of dealing with people, exhaustion from executive function issues and the constant energy drain of a hyper empathic mind.    Luckily my meltdowns are usually just just tears and I can mostly manage not to meltdown in public. But as soon as I'm back in a safe place i.e my car or at home, the tears just come. They can last from half an hour—maybe an hour—but then I'm tired and dazed for the rest of the day.  I do think I have finally been able to integrate these changes into my life, but it took a long time.

Structure and predictability didn't really exist in my family life growing up. I was the type of child who desperately needed it, but my parents gave me freedom (which is what everyone else wanted).  When I was a teenager, they didn't want me to tell them what time I'd be home. They said it was because they trusted me. But I thought it was because they didn't care.  I worried that if they didn't have that information, how would they know if something had happened to me?   Consequently, I took matters into my own hands and always told them where I was going and precisely what time I'd be home. And I'm sure they didn't listen.   

So I've come to understand that many of  the structures I've built into my daily life now—the routines, the time frames, the predictability are also safety mechanisms I developed because I didn't have that much needed structure as a child. I created for myself what my family couldn't give me.

Even now, if my husband's not home when I leave the house, I will tell my dog where I'm going and what time I will be home. Even though I know he has no idea. And if I'm going to be a few minutes later getting home, I start to feel panicked and have to talk myself through the fact that it's okay.

But here's what's interesting: on occasion I can operate without a time frame, I can change my routine and it doesn't matter so much. My ADHD takes over. It's the combination of routine AND time frame that locks me in. Without the time restriction, there's more flexibility.  But this happens for short periods of time and I need to get back to the framework I've built to feel safe in a world that often feels chaotic and unpredictable.

I'm learning now that its fine to go with whichever side is to the fore. Sometimes my Autistic brain is dominant. Sometimes it's ADHD. Having all the diagnoses has made it easier to come to terms with the fact that this is who I am. Not something I've got to fix.

Sometimes I frustrate myself. But at least I know it's valid.

The Autism gives me and demands structure, routine, the need for things to be just so. The ADHD gives me the ability to juggle multiple interests, to move between projects, to hyperfocus when something captures me and requires the occasional dopamine hit of excitement. Together, they create this dance—sometimes graceful, sometimes chaotic, always exhausting, but also uniquely mine.

I'm not trying to fix the dance anymore. But I am still  learning the steps.

When Celebration Became Dangerous
I was twelve years old when I was awarded Dux - top student in my entire school. I was proud. I attended the ceremony. I treasured the book they gave me.
Then came the bullying. "You're only smart because your mother's a teacher."
The teasing was relentless and it was a pretty rough and scary cohort. And somewhere in that experience, I made a decision: It's not safe to be seen to be intelligent.
From that point on, I achieved in private and hid in public. I would enter art competitions and not attend the ceremonies. At eighteen, I won a national art award with a black-tie event in the states capital. I gave my tickets to a coworker to go in my place to receive the award.
When I did that - sent someone else to live the moment I'd earned - it was relief mixed with overwhelming sadness. Someone else heard my name called while I was somewhere else entirely. Safe, but alone. Protected, but punished.

But It's Not Just Trauma
If this were only about childhood bullying, maybe I could have healed it by now. But there's something else - something about how my ADHD and autistic brain actually experiences achievement.

When I complete something significant, there's a moment - brief but real - where I feel cosmic bliss, an expansion of energy.  Not ego or conventional pride, but a sense of alignment with the universe. Connection to all that is.
And then... it's gone.

My ADHD brain, which thrives on novelty, has already moved on. The achievement exists in the past, and my time-blind brain can't connect that past moment to my present self. The dopamine drops off a cliff. Those certificates? They might as well belong to someone else.

But there's another layer: I don't actually know what celebration is supposed to feel like.
This is the autism piece. When someone else celebrates me, I feel something clear: I feel loved. Their celebration provides an emotional container. But when I try to celebrate alone? There's no template. No script. No map for what I'm supposed to be feeling.

And then there's object permanence. What I can't see doesn't exist. Once an achievement is complete, it literally vanishes from my awareness.
Those certificates on my wall? They're not celebration - they're evidence that I exist. Without them, my entire history of achievement just disappears.

A therapist once gave me an exercise to write out all my achievements. I created that six-page CV and was honestly stunned. I had achieved enough for many lifetimes, but after each achievement, I forget. When I added up the millions of dollars worth of knowledge, experience, and education - I was blown away that I could be that valuable with nothing to show for it.
This was just after becoming one of 6 female "Thought Leaders 2019". A national recognition in a business magazine. And I still needed someone to make me write it all down to believe it was real.

Why Some Achievements Feel More Hollow Than Others
Looking back at that CV, I noticed patterns. Not all achievements feel equally empty.

The ones that had meaning were courses I studied for survival - child psychology to understand my children, alternative therapies when there was no other help for my chronic illness. These were tools I desperately needed.

The ones that feel hollow are creative achievements. Art awards, photography competitions. These measure "better than" rather than "meaningful to." I stopped entering years ago because I fundamentally disagree with comparing myself to others. I'm competitive only with myself - always trying to improve, which is exhausting in its own way.

Then there are business awards - the most complicated. I've won awards for how my businesses help people. But here's the painful irony: I'm being celebrated for a pattern that's harming me. My work helps others profoundly but doesn't sustain me financially. What's the point of a business award if my business doesn't function as a business?

The formula I've discovered: Achievement + Meaning + Reciprocity = Worthwhile
Not just achieving. Not just helping others while depleting myself. But work that has purpose beyond me AND sustains me in return.
I haven't found that yet.

What This Actually Costs
My artwork covers my walls - a form of private celebration. But I struggle to sell it. I can part with my work if someone will pay a good price, but I struggle to ask for that price or promote myself. Claiming value publicly, being visible as the creator, saying "this is worth money" - it triggers every alarm system my nervous system developed at twelve.
The cycle: Achieve → Don't celebrate → Don't promote → Don't get paid → Need to achieve more to survive → Repeat
Meanwhile, neurotypical people: Achieve → Celebrate loudly → Promote constantly → Get paid → Achieve more from security → Celebrate that too
The inability to celebrate myself isn't just emotional. It keeps me invisible. And invisibility keeps me poor.

The Pattern Continues
I spoke to my son about celebration. Despite everything I did differently - celebrating his achievements, acknowledging him, making sure he felt seen - he follows the same pattern.
He revealed something crucial: perfectionism. When I congratulated him as a child, it didn't mean much because he expected excellence of himself. Awards weren't achievements - they were the expected outcome. "Yes, I got a buzz when other people congratulated me," he said. "But it didn't last long."
He was a perfectionist from the moment he could talk at ten months old - the same age I started talking. I tried to help him not be so hard on himself. But it didn't change. This was wired in, either genetically or neurologically or both.
I'm the same. I'm disappointed if I achieve less than 95% - it feels like failure. When I got that 99% average, I met my standard. It was expected. Why celebrate doing what I'm supposed to do?
If excellence is your baseline, achieving it isn't special - it's just meeting your minimum. And if you're always meeting your own minimum, there's never a peak high enough to warrant celebration.  This is all post school by the way, where I created the pattern (mentioned above) of NEVER achieving my high standards.  This self made failure to perform is another story altogether.

What I Know Now
I don't have this figured out, and maybe that's okay.
We're not broken. That spiritual moment of cosmic connection and expansion when I achieve something real? That IS celebration, even if it doesn't look like what neurotypical culture expects. My son finds moments of celebration with his peers. I find mine in spiritual connection. There's no single "right" way.
We need witnesses. Our brains need external input to understand what celebration feels like. When someone celebrates us, they provide the emotional map we can't create alone - and they act as external memory when object permanence makes our achievements vanish.
Perfectionism compounds everything. When excellence is your baseline, achieving it doesn't register as worthy of celebration. You've just met your own minimum standard.
This costs us something real. Invisibility has economic consequences. The inability to promote ourselves keeps us from translating our gifts into sustainable livelihoods.
The formula exists: Achievement + Meaning + Reciprocity. The book I want to write might be that - something that helps others and finally helps me too.

Questions I'm Still Asking

• How do we celebrate when our brains move on immediately?
• How do we become visible when visibility once meant danger?
• How do we claim value when we're wired for authenticity over self-promotion?
• What does authentic celebration look like for neurodivergent minds?
• Can we honour spiritual moments of achievement even when they don't fit social expectations?

Maybe we figure it out together. Maybe you have insights I haven't found yet. Maybe just naming this pattern, understanding it, being less alone in it - maybe that's enough for now.
If this is you - if you have achievements that feel empty, if you hide your wins, if you look at proof of what you've done and feel nothing - I see you. I am you.
And maybe writing this, making my struggle visible to help others understand theirs, is itself a practice in celebration. Not the loud, performative kind. But the quiet, meaningful kind.
The kind that creates connection instead of comparison.
The kind that serves a purpose beyond myself.
The kind I might finally be able to feel.

What's your experience with celebrating achievements? Do you recognize any of these patterns in yourself? I'd love to hear your story in the comments.