Recently I read an article by Lindsay Mackereth called You’re Feeling It. And Also Watching Yourself Feel It. It explores metacognition and intimacy, and why neurocomplex people can feel genuinely connected to someone while simultaneously feeling separate.

I had one of those moments of immediate recognition.

Oh. Other people do this too. 



For most of my life, I have struggled to explain this thing that happens inside my head. I once tried to describe it to a therapist as feeling almost like dissociation, but not quite.

It was the closest I could get.

Because I'm not actually absent from the experience. I'm still there. I'm talking, laughing, listening, loving, enjoying someone's company.

But at the same time, another part of my mind is observing and analysing the experience while I'm having it.

The observer who has always been there

I think I have experienced myself as both participant and observer for most of my life.

Even as a very young child, probably from around four years old, I remember feeling somehow on the outside looking in. I wondered about human existence and why we were here. I couldn't understand why other people didn't seem as interested in those questions as I was.

That is probably another story for another day, but the sense of being both participant and observer has followed me throughout my life.

As an adult, I became particularly aware of it in my closest relationship.

For much of my marriage, I would listen to myself speaking to my husband while I was actually speaking.

It's difficult to describe.

It was almost as though I were standing outside myself, listening to my voice and monitoring every word as I spoke. I seemed to measure and analyse what I was saying, making sure I said the right thing and wouldn't be misunderstood. I knew I was doing it and it worried me. My own voice sounded like a performance.

After my autism diagnosis and subsequent therapy, I came to understand what was happening.

It was a form of masking.

In fact, I eventually realised that my husband — the person I have spent most of my life with — was also the person I had masked around the most. It seems strange that I would mask most with the person closest to me, but perhaps that closeness was part of the reason. This was the relationship in which I had the most to lose. Being understood mattered enormously, and perhaps all that careful monitoring of my words was, at least in part, an attempt to protect the connection that mattered most to me.

As I began understanding myself and unmasking, something important happened.

That particular observer largely disappeared.

I can talk to my husband now without standing outside myself listening to Jane talk to him.

But another observer remains.

Feeling something and watching myself feel it

This observer is different.

I'm not standing outside myself listening to my voice. I'm very much inside the experience.

I can feel connected to another person and genuinely enjoy being with them, while simultaneously having an entirely separate conversation inside my head.

Am I actually enjoying this?

Should I be enjoying this?

Why am I enjoying this?

Why am I not enjoying this?

Do they get me?

Am I forcing myself to socialise?

Is this real?

And the one that has probably been wandering around my head for most of my life:

Human beings are so strange. I don’t understand why humans are supposed to enjoy this. Am I even human?

I can be completely involved in a very human experience while simultaneously observing myself being a human having that experience.

There is a separation from the other person, even though I feel connected to them.

And there is also a slight separation within myself: the part of me having the experience and the part of me watching myself have it.

Feeling connected and separate at the same time is probably the part I find most frustrating.

Sometimes I just want to be in the moment.

It isn't only one kind of relationship

Although Lindsay's article talks about intimacy, I have realised that for me this experience is much broader.

It happens within family relationships. It happens within friendships. It happens with the person I've been married to for forty years.

Friendship is a particularly interesting example.

I have friends whose company I enjoy and with whom I occasionally spend time. Yet while I'm actually with them, my mind can begin:

Do I really enjoy their company?

Am I making this friendship into something it isn't?

Do they really understand me?

Do they even like me?

Am I forcing myself to do this because human beings are supposed to socialise?

Sometimes I can become so caught up in analysing whether I'm enjoying the conversation that I actually miss part of the conversation.  This analysing can then continue for hours or days afterwards.

Then there is that one friendship that feels completely different.

The friend with whom I can be entirely myself. We may not see one another for some time, or we might spend a lot of time together. It makes no difference. We are simply comfortable together. There is no work involved in maintaining a particular version of myself. We are like soul sisters — twins.

That contrast has taught me something.

The observer isn't equally loud in every relationship. It is loudest when I don't feel safe to be me.

Finally, I had some words for it

Lindsay's article introduced me to a much better way of understanding this experience: metacognition — essentially thinking about thinking — and what she describes as dual tracking.

I'm experiencing something while simultaneously observing and analysing myself experiencing it.

That description brought enormous relief and recognition.

It didn't introduce me to something new. I've known this experience intimately for decades.

What it gave me was language. Suddenly I had a framework for something I had never been able to adequately explain to another person.

And perhaps more importantly, I realised I wasn't the only person whose brain worked this way.

Interestingly, I can see this dual processing in other parts of my life too.

Guided meditation has always been difficult for me. As someone speaks, my brain seems to repeat their words internally at almost exactly the same time — even when I've never heard the meditation before. Then another part of my mind notices what I'm doing and starts analysing how I could possibly be anticipating the words so accurately.

So instead of relaxing, I'm listening, repeating, predicting and observing myself doing all of it. Songs can produce something similar.

Apparently my brain isn't particularly interested in simply listening.

Understanding it doesn't make it disappear

Having words for the observer hasn't given me an off-switch. I still find it annoying. Sometimes distressingly so.

I might tell myself:

Stop analysing. Relax. Just be here.

And occasionally it works. For a little while, my mind becomes quiet.

Until I think:

Oh I'm actually relaxed now.  Or:  Finally, I've stopped thinking.

The observer has noticed that the observer disappeared.  My brain has started thinking about not thinking.  And there she is again.

When the watcher gets louder

I've also begun recognising that this doesn't happen at the same intensity all the time.

When I feel emotionally safe, when I'm not anxious or overwhelmed, and when I have enough capacity, it is much easier for my mind to become quiet.

Burnout makes everything harder.

I've spent a great deal of my adult life experiencing periods of burnout without understanding what was happening to me. Looking back now, I can see how much harder I was asking my brain to work.

Connection could be something I genuinely wanted and enjoyed, yet afterwards I might feel completely depleted.

Flat. Sometimes even tearful.

Before I understood my neurocomplexity, I didn't have an explanation for the contradiction.

If I'd had such a great time, why did I feel like this afterwards?

So I made it mean something about me. I was weird. Strange. Ungrateful. Too sensitive.

I'm beginning to understand that two things can be true at once.

I really did enjoy myself BUT it cost me something.

Caring about someone doesn't mean being with them can't exhaust me.

Enjoying someone's company doesn't mean sustaining the friendship is easy.

Loving family doesn't mean I always have the capacity for connection or even to spend time with them.

The connection can be completely genuine while my brain is working incredibly hard in the background.

Finding the kind of connection that fits me

One suggestion for quieting an analytical mind is to return attention to sensory experience.

For me, that isn't necessarily straightforward.

Focusing too closely on sensory information — particularly sound and touch — can very quickly push me towards overwhelm.

Nature, however, is different. Outdoors, my mind quiets. I'm grounded, free.

And when I thought about the kinds of human connection that have always felt easiest and most natural to me, I realised something else. I love being alongside someone.

Doing something together. Walking. Being outdoors. Working on something. Laughing over something ridiculous. Sitting together without needing to fill the space with conversation.

My husband and I have always been like this. Even our dates as teenagers were often mostly silent. We were perfectly happy simply being in each other's company.

I understood even then that it was closeness and connection BUT I also thought it was weird because it didn't seem to be how other people experienced relationships. I struggled with that notion whilst simultaneously being grateful for what we had.

I don't feel that pressure so much anymore. It’s only taken me 40 years. I've come to understand that connection doesn't have to look the way I once thought it was supposed to look.  And I don’t really care anymore.

In fact, there is something wonderfully freeing about discovering that when my brain isn't concentrating on being connected, I can sometimes feel the most connected of all.

I don't have a magic off-switch

I'd love to finish this by telling you I've discovered how to silence the observer.

I haven't. Understanding my AuDHD and giftedness has helped enormously. Recognising masking has changed some things I thought would never change.

Emotional safety helps.

Having enough capacity helps.

Nature helps.

Not being overwhelmed or burnt out helps.

Being alongside rather than constantly face-to-face helps.

Being with people around whom I don't have to work at being myself helps.

But my observer is still there.

Perhaps what has changed most is that I finally have some language for her.

Reading Lindsay Mackereth's article gave me something I hadn't realised I needed - the relief of recognition.

Someone else had experienced something close enough to my own experience to put words around it.

For decades, when I couldn't explain why I could feel completely connected and strangely separate at exactly the same time, I thought there was something odd about me.

Now, if I could speak to that much younger version of myself — the one already standing slightly outside herself, wondering why her mind worked the way it did — I think I would tell her something very simple.

You aren't the only one whose brain works this way.

And perhaps somebody reading this needs to hear that too.

If you care about people but sometimes find maintaining connection exhausting; if you find yourself analysing whether you're enjoying someone's company while you're actually sitting there with them; if you're feeling a moment while simultaneously watching yourself feel it; if you're genuinely connected and yet somehow separate...

You aren't the only one either.