Neurodivergence is often misunderstood through narrow stereotypes. Many people grow up believing that autism only presents as social withdrawal, or that ADHD simply means being ‘hyperactive’ or unable to concentrate. In reality, neurodivergent experiences can be far more nuanced, particularly among adults, women, and those who have learned to mask aspects of themselves in order to navigate environments that may feel confusing, demanding or overwhelming.
Many neurodivergent people become highly skilled at navigating social situations long before they understand why certain aspects of life seem to require more effort for them than they appear to for others.
Some learn to mask their feelings, needs or natural responses. Others overperform in an attempt to meet expectations, develop people-pleasing patterns in response to experiences of rejection or criticism, or withdraw as a means of protecting themselves. Some may live with an almost constant sense of nervous system vigilance without necessarily recognising it as such.
Over time, these adaptations can become exhausting. They may contribute to burnout, anxiety, low self-worth, emotional overwhelm, difficulties within relationships, or a profound sense of disconnection from one's own needs, preferences and sense of self.
Understanding neurodivergence therefore means looking beyond diagnostic stereotypes and becoming curious about the individual person, how they experience the world, what they have learned to do in order to navigate it, and what their nervous system may have needed to adapt to along the way
Autistic experiences exist across a wide spectrum, and no two autistic people are the same. While some people may show visible external differences, others may appear socially confident and capable while privately managing significant sensory, emotional or cognitive demands. Some of these experiences can also occur in ADHD, although the underlying reasons and individual presentation may differ.
Autistic people may experience:
Importantly, these experiences are not universal. An autistic person may experience some, many or very few of them, and the intensity of individual experiences can also change according to environment, stress, demand, sensory load and available support.
Many autistic adults, particularly those identified or diagnosed later in life, describe spending years feeling “different” without understanding why. Repeated experiences of misunderstanding, criticism, exclusion or rejection can gradually shape how safe it feels to be oneself around other people. For some, masking becomes an adaptation that helps them navigate social environments and reduce the risk of standing out or being negatively judged, often at a significant cost in terms of energy and wellbeing.
Masking can sometimes include:
Masking is not simply pretending to be someone else. For some autistic people it develops gradually, sometimes without conscious awareness, as they learn which parts of themselves appear to be socially accepted and which attract correction, misunderstanding or rejection.
Over time, sustained masking and the effort required to continually adapt to environments that do not adequately accommodate autistic needs can contribute to exhaustion, anxiety, loss of connection with one's own needs and identity, and autistic burnout.
Autistic burnout is more than ordinary tiredness. It can involve profound physical and mental exhaustion, reduced capacity to manage everyday demands, increased sensory sensitivity, greater need for withdrawal and rest, and a temporary or prolonged reduction in skills or functioning that may previously have appeared manageable.
For people who discover their autism later in life, recognition can therefore bring more than an explanation of current difficulties. It can also lead to a process of looking back at childhood, relationships, education, work and previous experiences through a different lens, sometimes bringing relief and validation alongside grief, anger or a reconsideration of who they understood themselves to be.
ADHD is not simply an inability to pay attention. It is better understood as a difference in the regulation of attention, executive functioning, motivation, impulse control and levels of activation. Many people with ADHD describe an internal experience of their brain constantly moving, scanning, connecting, anticipating or seeking stimulation.
Attention itself may not necessarily be lacking. Instead, it can be difficult to consciously direct, sustain or shift attention according to what a situation requires. Someone may struggle considerably to begin or remain engaged with a routine task while being able to focus intensely for hours on something that captures their interest, curiosity or sense of urgency.
ADHD can encompass a wide range of experiences, including:
Not every person with ADHD will experience these difficulties in the same way. ADHD can present very differently according to the individual, their environment, developmental history, available support and the demands being placed upon them. Some people experience highly visible hyperactivity or impulsivity, while for others much of the activity is internal and may be largely unnoticed by those around them.
For many adults, ADHD is identified later in life after years of being described as lazy, disorganised, dramatic, inconsistent, unmotivated, too emotional or simply not applying themselves. Some may have performed well academically or professionally, but only through significant effort, anxiety, perfectionism, last-minute urgency or periods of intense overworking.
Over time, repeated experiences of forgetting, being late, struggling to begin tasks, becoming overwhelmed or failing to consistently reproduce previous achievements can affect a person's understanding of themselves. What begins as difficulty with executive functioning can gradually become interpreted as a character flaw: “I am lazy”, “I am unreliable”, “I never finish anything”, or “I should be able to do this.”
The underlying difficulty is often not a lack of care, intelligence or motivation. A person may care enormously about completing something while still finding themselves unable to initiate it. They may understand exactly what needs to happen while struggling to organise the individual steps required to begin.
Many people with ADHD also describe heightened sensitivity to criticism, rejection or perceived disapproval. While the term “rejection sensitive dysphoria” is sometimes used to describe particularly intense experiences of rejection, it is not itself a formal diagnostic criterion for ADHD. Experiences of rejection sensitivity may also be influenced by a lifetime of criticism, misunderstanding or repeated experiences of feeling that one's efforts have fallen short.
This is particularly important therapeutically. By adulthood, the person arriving in the therapy room may not simply be managing ADHD-related differences. They may also be carrying years of shame, self-criticism, masking, overcompensation and deeply held beliefs about who they are as a result of how those differences have been interpreted by themselves and by others.
Understanding ADHD therefore involves looking beyond concentration and behaviour. It means becoming curious about the interaction between attention, executive functioning, motivation, emotion, sensory processing, nervous system activation and the person's lived experience of trying to navigate a world that frequently expects consistency from a brain that may operate much more effectively through interest, meaning, novelty, challenge or urgency.
Some people are both autistic and have ADHD, a combination commonly referred to within neurodivergent communities as AuDHD. It is not a separate clinical diagnosis, but a term increasingly used to describe the lived experience of having both autism and ADHD.
At The Bloom Room, I sometimes affectionately refer to the “Au” as gold, because Au is, after all, its chemical symbol.
AuDHD is not necessarily experienced as simply having a collection of autistic characteristics alongside a collection of ADHD characteristics. The interaction between the two can create an internal experience that sometimes feels contradictory, with different needs competing for attention at the same time.
For example, an AuDHD person may experience:
These competing needs can create considerable internal confusion. Someone may carefully create a routine because predictability helps them feel regulated, only to find themselves unable to follow it consistently. They may desperately need rest while simultaneously finding inactivity uncomfortable or understimulating. They may want plans and certainty but struggle with the executive functioning required to organise them.
This can sometimes leave the person wondering why the strategies that help them on one day seem impossible on another.
Masking can add another layer. An AuDHD person may have spent many years consciously or unconsciously adapting their communication, behaviour, emotional expression or sensory needs in order to navigate social, educational or working environments. When ADHD characteristics, autistic needs and learned adaptations overlap, it can become difficult to recognise which responses feel natural and which have developed in order to cope.
Relationships can also feel complex. Some AuDHD people describe forming rapid or intense connections, noticing subtle patterns within relationships, experiencing emotions strongly, or becoming particularly affected by inconsistency, uncertainty or perceived rejection. Others may need additional processing time during conflict, withdraw when overwhelmed, or experience shutdown or difficulty communicating when their nervous system becomes overloaded.
Repeated experiences of misunderstanding, criticism or social rejection can also contribute to heightened sensitivity to perceived disapproval. As with ADHD more broadly, rejection sensitivity is not a diagnostic feature of AuDHD, but it can form part of an individual's lived experience and may be shaped by years of feeling misunderstood or getting things “wrong” without understanding why.
Burnout can become particularly significant. The effort involved in balancing competing needs, managing executive functioning, processing sensory information, navigating relationships and maintaining expectations can gradually exceed available capacity. Someone who previously appeared highly capable may find that tasks, environments or levels of social interaction they once managed become increasingly difficult to sustain
.
Many AuDHD people describe feeling as though they are somehow “too much” and “not enough” at the same time. Too emotional, too intense, too sensitive, too distracted or too particular, while simultaneously feeling not organised enough, not productive enough, not sociable enough or not consistent enough.
Over time, those messages can become incorporated into a person's sense of self.
Understanding AuDHD therefore requires more than identifying autistic and ADHD characteristics separately. It means becoming curious about how they interact within the individual, where needs complement one another, where they compete, what the person has learned to do in order to manage those tensions, and what the cumulative impact of that adaptation has been.
These experiences do not represent weakness, laziness, inconsistency or failure. They reflect an individual nervous system attempting to regulate, adapt and function within environments that may not always recognise, understand or accommodate what it needs.
When Words, Processing and Shame Become Intertwined
Dyslexia is often misunderstood as simply having difficulty reading or spelling. In reality, dyslexia can involve differences in the way written and spoken language is processed, particularly phonological processing, reading fluency, spelling, verbal working memory and the speed at which some forms of information can be processed or retrieved.
The experience is different for every person. Some dyslexic people may read accurately but require considerably more time or cognitive effort to do so. Others may experience difficulties with spelling, sequencing, remembering verbal instructions, retrieving particular words, organising written information or holding several pieces of information in mind at once.
Dyslexic people may experience:
None of these experiences indicate a lack of intelligence.
For many dyslexic people, however, the emotional impact begins long before dyslexia is recognised, understood or appropriately supported.
Repeated experiences of being corrected publicly, struggling under timed pressure, being described as careless, losing words when put on the spot, receiving lower marks despite understanding the subject, having work returned covered in corrections, or watching other people complete apparently simple tasks more quickly can gradually influence how somebody understands themselves.
A difficulty with processing can slowly become a belief about identity.
“I’m stupid.”
“I’m slow.”
“I always get things wrong.”
“Everyone else can do this.”
“I need to make sure nobody notices.”
Over time, repeated experiences of embarrassment, criticism, comparison or feeling intellectually underestimated can contribute to anxiety, shame, reduced confidence and heightened sensitivity to situations in which somebody believes they may be judged or exposed.
This distinction can be important therapeutically. Dyslexia itself is not shame. The shame may develop through what repeatedly happens around the dyslexic person when their way of processing information is misunderstood.
Many dyslexic people develop highly effective ways of adapting. They may become skilled at remembering information differently, explaining ideas verbally, recognising patterns, using technology, preparing extensively, avoiding particular tasks or relying on strengths that allow them to compensate for areas they find more demanding.
Some dyslexic people describe strengths in areas such as creative thinking, problem solving, visual or spatial reasoning, verbal communication or seeing broader connections between ideas. These strengths should not be assumed to apply to every dyslexic person, just as difficulties should not be assumed to present identically.
Stress can also have an important effect. When someone already requires additional cognitive effort to process, retrieve or organise information, anxiety and nervous system activation can place further demands on working memory and processing capacity. A person who knows exactly what they want to say may suddenly struggle to retrieve a familiar word, sequence their thoughts or demonstrate knowledge that was readily accessible in a calmer environment.
For some people, these experiences begin at school. The classroom can gradually become associated not simply with learning, but with comparison, correction, anticipation of failure or fear of being exposed. A child who repeatedly experiences this may begin avoiding tasks, becoming quiet, overpreparing, using humour, becoming perfectionistic or appearing not to care.
What appears behaviourally as disengagement may sometimes be protection.
By adulthood, the person arriving in therapy may therefore be carrying more than dyslexia. They may also carry the accumulated emotional experience of years spent believing that something about the way they think, communicate or learn makes them less capable than other people.
Understanding dyslexia through a therapeutic lens means becoming curious about both the person's individual processing differences and the story they have learned to tell themselves because of them. With understanding, appropriate adjustments and a different way of viewing those experiences, it can become possible to separate how somebody processes information from what they have come to believe that says about who they are.
When Rejection Feels Bigger Than the Moment
Some neurodivergent people describe experiencing very intense emotional responses to perceived rejection, criticism, exclusion, disappointment or relational disconnection.
This is often described as rejection sensitivity. The term Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, or RSD, is also commonly used, particularly within ADHD communities, to describe an experience of rejection or perceived failure that feels acutely emotionally painful.
RSD is not currently a formal clinical diagnosis or a diagnostic criterion for ADHD or autism. However, the experience described by the term can feel very real and significant for the person experiencing it.
Rejection sensitivity may include:
An interaction that appears relatively small from the outside can therefore feel disproportionately significant within the person's internal experience. A change in somebody's tone, a delayed response to a message, corrective feedback at work or a subtle change in facial expression may trigger a much larger emotional response than the immediate situation appears to explain.
For many people, these responses do not necessarily emerge in isolation.
A neurodivergent person may have experienced years of being corrected, misunderstood, excluded, bullied, criticised for behaviours they struggled to control, or repeatedly told that they were too loud, too sensitive, too emotional, too distracted, too intense or simply “too much”.
Over time, the nervous system can become increasingly alert to signs that another experience of rejection may be approaching.
From an attachment-informed perspective, this becomes particularly interesting. Current experiences of criticism or disconnection may interact with earlier relational experiences and established expectations about whether relationships remain safe when something goes wrong.
The nervous system may therefore be responding not only to this moment, but also to what similar moments have come to mean.
For some people this may lead to people pleasing, masking, perfectionism or overexplaining. For others it may result in withdrawal, defensiveness, anger, emotional shutdown or ending a relationship before they themselves can be rejected.
These responses can sometimes appear contradictory, but they may share a similar underlying function: attempting to protect the person from anticipated relational pain.
It is also important not to assume that every intense response to rejection experienced by a neurodivergent person is RSD. Rejection sensitivity can overlap with attachment experiences, trauma, anxiety, low self-worth, previous bullying or exclusion, and other aspects of an individual's history. Understanding the person therefore requires curiosity about both their neurodivergence and the relational experiences through which their expectations of others have developed.
Therapeutically, the aim is not necessarily to persuade somebody that their response is “too much”. Instead, it can be helpful to understand what the response is protecting, what the nervous system believes may be happening, and whether the current situation belongs entirely to the present or is carrying the emotional weight of previous experiences too.
Understanding rejection sensitivity through both a nervous system and attachment-informed lens can begin to separate the immediate event from the accumulated experiences surrounding it, reducing shame and creating greater space for self-understanding, regulation and choice.
Neurodivergent people, including many autistic people and people with ADHD, may experience differences in the way sensory information is noticed, filtered, interpreted and responded to by the nervous system.
Sensory processing differences can involve heightened sensitivity to certain forms of sensory input, reduced awareness of others, or actively seeking particular sensory experiences. The same person may be highly sensitive in one sensory area while seeking or barely noticing input in another.
Sensory processing can include:
For some people, everyday sensory information can become intensely uncomfortable or overwhelming. Background conversations, fluorescent lighting, strong smells, crowded environments, particular fabrics, unexpected touch or several sources of sensory information occurring simultaneously can place significant demands on the nervous system.
Sensory overwhelm is more than simply disliking a particular environment. It can occur when the amount or intensity of incoming sensory information exceeds the person's available processing capacity.
This may affect concentration, communication, emotional regulation and the ability to remain engaged with other people. It can sometimes appear as:
Sensory differences can also involve seeking additional input rather than avoiding it. Some people may regulate themselves through movement, music, pressure, repetitive movements, touching particular textures, chewing, fidgeting or seeking strong sensory experiences.
This means that regulation does not always look like reducing stimulation. Sometimes a nervous system may need moreof a particular kind of sensory input in order to feel regulated.
Sensory capacity can also change. An environment that feels manageable on one day may become overwhelming on another depending on tiredness, stress, emotional demands, physical health, social interaction and the amount of sensory information the person has already processed.
Many neurodivergent people learn to minimise, suppress or ignore their sensory needs in an attempt to fit in or avoid appearing “difficult”. Someone may remain in an overwhelming environment, suppress the urge to stim, tolerate uncomfortable clothing or physical contact, or continue interacting long after their nervous system is signalling a need to withdraw.
The consequences may only become visible later, when the person reaches a safer environment and experiences exhaustion, emotional overwhelm, shutdown or an increased need for recovery.
Understanding sensory needs is therefore not about somebody being “difficult” or needing the world arranged perfectly around them. It is about recognising how an individual nervous system processes sensory information and, where possible, creating environments and strategies that support regulation rather than repeatedly requiring the person to tolerate overwhelm.
Neurodiversity describes the natural variation that exists across human brains and nervous systems. It includes everyone, both neurotypical and neurodivergent, and recognises that there is no single way in which human beings think, process, communicate, regulate or experience the world.
Similarly, there is no single neurodivergent experience.
Not every neurodivergent person, including autistic people, people with ADHD, AuDHD, dyslexia or other forms of neurodivergence, will relate to every experience described here. Even people who share the same diagnosis may experience themselves and the world very differently.
Our experiences are shaped by far more than neurotype alone. Personality, attachment history, relationships, environment, trauma, sensory experiences, culture, identity, available support and the development of the nervous system can all influence how somebody experiences themselves and responds to the world around them.
Some people seek a formal diagnosis of autism, ADHD or another form of neurodivergence. Others may begin by finding language that helps them make sense of experiences they have struggled to understand. For some, recognition brings relief and validation. For others, it can begin a much longer process of reconsidering their history, relationships, needs and sense of self.
The aim of this space is not to categorise people or suggest that every difficulty can be explained by neurodivergence. It is to encourage understanding, curiosity and self-awareness, while reducing the shame that can develop when somebody has spent years believing that the way they experience or respond to the world represents a personal failing.
Understanding ourselves does not mean reducing ourselves to a diagnosis.
Sometimes, one of the most important shifts can be moving from:
“Why can’t I just cope like everyone else?”
to:
“What does my nervous system actually need?”
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