MamasBestAdvice: Words of Wisdom Digest

The Love-Life and Social Affairs of a Neurodivergent

by Wandra Chenault, Mama(cita)Sez Wisdom, July 10, 2024

When you’re extremely young, you don’t understand that you are neurodivergent, and this important factor creates the opportunity for you to have some confusion about who you are, how you feel about yourself, and how others see and treat you, and this isn’t fun.

Often, a neurodivergent young person will speak less often and openly in groups, with friends, family, or in class. The external responses they receive often do not provide positive affirmations. Essentially, especially because neurodivergents don’t understand what’s wrong with them, they begin to feel awkward and different early on.  

Certainly, their shallow self-assessment is perpetuated by the circumstance of being a child.  Often children are the observers and receivers of what’s happening around them. Even when it’s about them, they hear people describe and speak about their looks, attire, attitudes, and communication skills,and they rarely feel capable of pushing back on others narratives and if they do they will mostly likely walk away feeling inadequate.   

 So,  children’s first impressions of themselves, when they are just beginning to learn social cues, and less able to describe or translate the intent of social cues, can leave them to misunderstand or be misunderstood. They can simply be confused about what they’re feeling or what they’re supposed to be feeling, self-consciousness is another good description.

The process of becoming self-conscious is that you can begin to internalize these experiences as feeling awkward in some social settings. Most of the time, you can feel like you’re doing something wrong,  and you don’t know how to fix it.  

The messages you receive from the people around you, who are telling you what to feel or how to behave when you aren’t meeting their expectations, can further complicate the experiences that shape how you interact socially. If your peers seem to be off-putting by you, you try harder to fit in or you can begin to self-isolate, feeling like you don’t quite fit in. 

Finally, for some people, they stop you trying to fit in and just self-affirm that they’re weird but, for others, they continue to try to conform to social cues with responses that make them feel uncomfortable.  In the end, for some neurodivergent people, the solution is to make peace with themselves and learn to make friends with themselves,  enjoying being alone, and it just makes things simpler.

As you get older, you often learn or try to do what is expected, especially at school where the teacher says to be quiet or sit down or stand in a straight line. But outside these formal very stark black and white rules,  many a time we who are neurodivergent learn that we are not the puzzle piece everyone seems to expect us to be; we don’t fit in, and over time we learn to internalize that as the puzzle piece, we often won’t find the space where we’re being placed to be comfortable.  So, we sometimes shy away or avoid social settings where we’d be expected to easily talk to strangers or have casual conversations with groups. 

No, everyone doesn’t fit into every group or feel comfortable within every setting. But, for the neurodivergent this happens more often, always feeling like we are in the wrong shape, thinking oddly,  acting differently, and using language in a way that doesn’t always connect with others’ thought processes. 

 At some point, usually by adolescence, everyone can tell that we don’t exactly belong. Yet, we must continue to try to fit in as socialization is a part of adolescence and beyond.  We are amazed and intimidated by watching others who seem to master the ability to be a perfect puzzle piece, they can fit in.

These scenarios are familiar to some who are neurodivergent.  Neurotypical people may see those who are  Neurodivergent as those who have failed. But someone who is neurodivergent often doesn’t see themselves that way. They learn to express themselves in unique ways, often mastering some unique, creative, scientific, or mathematical thing or activity.  What can be weird for others can be comfortable, enjoyable, and nurturing for the person who is neurodivergent. 

 There is a duality, you know that there is something more to the process and that you’re not exactly wrong but people just don’t seem to understand your way of thinking or of being and you learn to accept that although there is something about you that doesn’t fit in, it isn’t all bad. But, you feel alone because there is no one like you that you can identify with and it can be confusing, a strength and a weakness. 

“Neurodivergent” the American Psychological Association defines as, “A concept that regards individuals with differences in brain function and behavioral traits as part of normal variation in the human population.” The main idea is that everyone’s brain is wired and some are more uniquely wired.  In this case, the thoughts, ideas, and behaviors can take a different route than most and seem in some peoples’ opinions to go off-road.  I think it’s more natural to decide to innovate and then comes adaptation, one neurodivergent response to the external forces.  In this analogy, it is not that we have it wrong or the neurotypical have it right.  Instead, we are just different. 

This trend of thought, the idea that there is neurodiversity is catching on and making its way to chats, books, and social media. The acceptance of Neurodiversity is kin to the population of the earth, we are diverse in race, color, preference, religion, size, intellect, and many other ways, and so the human population is neurodiverse.  Neurotypical refers to the greater of the population who seem to behave in a way that is expected. On the contrary, the person who is neurodivergent, and in this, I am referring to those who show up on the Autism Spectrum or those with Dyslexia But to others who you had never considered to be “neurodivergent,” like those with  Social Anxiety, ADHD, and OCD, even those with Prader-Willi Syndrome. Yes, a subset of the population, some of whom can have personalities and social behaviors that cause them to think, behave, or act in ways that some consider to be different, awkward, quirky, strange, or even weird, yes, some of the geniuses fit in the category outside neurotypical which we refer to as neurodivergent. 

Yes, some of the people you’ve come to call empaths, socially anxious, or others who you think of who are dealing with intellectual differences, i.e. distractible, anxious may be in that category of neurodivergent. Neurodivergence is not only about the way others see you but also about how you see yourself. It impacts self-perception, social interactions, socialization preferences, social behaviors, and interpersonal relationships. 

Most non-neurotypical or neurodivergent people have difficulty negotiating social and intimate relationships, particularly establishing relationships, finding,  connecting, and choosing a partner, mostly because of communication.  Since clear communication is key in a relationship, and they find it hard to read between the lines, the gray areas in a relationship in verbal communication or behaviors of someone they are interested in can be difficult to discern, and make building relationships feel, sometimes, confusing. Usually, they look for clarity and like communications to be clear,  “black, or white.”  They do better with potential partners and friends who give clear communications of their intentions, and are open, honest and transparent,

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THE LOVE-LIFE AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS  OF A NEURODIVERGENT 

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Wandra F Chenault, LCSW-R, CASAC, MSW, MS