I'm neurodivergent

Like many other people in the world, I fall under the neurodivergent umbrella. I know there are various ways of looking at what falls under it and what doesn’t, and that, too, goes for the label with which I come. I don’t enjoy using the label itself but I’ll use it once because avoiding it completely would seem just as weird: I am gifted.

I haven’t had many effective on the topic when using this word, except for when meeting people who also don’t like using when referring to themselves. I’ve experienced that it carries perceived feelings of grandeur, an expected inability to not know. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Getting to where I’m comfortable enough publishing this page has been a long journey. I’ve been misdiagnosed a dozen times, and have spent my childhood surrounded by people so dumbfounded by my comments and choices that I heard “you’re insane” at many a family gathering. Now, in my mid-thirties, I’m well aware of how unspecial that is for people like myself.

In recent years, I’ve come to use the term “neurodivergent” to describe, when it’s helpful, why I behave in a way that may seem unexpected or unusual. It has a direct impact on how I live and work, how I engage with others, and how I go about solving problems. Here’s what it means for my life:

  • I like a puzzle: I come with enduring and sometimes complex curiosity, an appetite for learning, a deep love of problem solving, and an everlasting supply of questions
  • I’m a skip-thinker, an analogical thinker, and a meta-thinker, which means some of the things I say don’t appear to make sense. (It sometimes makes me feel ashamed.) I’m a top-down thinker, which is to say things don’t make much sense to me unless I see the full picture.
  • I learn fast, I get bored fast. I love skill acquisition in music, linguistics, creative fine-motor activities, and logic, and I love reading and research. I get bored easily if I can’t learn or contribute.
  • I live with intensity, which affects the speed at which I do things, which in turns impacts how I navigate relationships, how I handle tasks, and how I connect with the world around me. “You talk too fast”, “Well, the world is too slow” is a monotonous exchange in which I engage at least twice a week.
  • I’m intrinsically motivated. It’s great when I want to get something done, but not great when I don’t.

Resources I’ve found helpful