The things you don’t see: My neurodivergent life behind the mask

Laetitia: Welcome to The Neurodivergent Pulse where we explore the often misunderstood world of neurodivergence with experts, parents, teachers, and therapists. Grounded in lived experience, each bite-sized episode gives you something practical to try. I am your host Laetitia Andrac, AI expert, neurodivergent mum and founder of Understanding Zoe. This podcast is recorded on Dharawal country. I acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded. It always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

Laetitia: Hello, welcome to The Neurodivergent Pulse podcast. I am going to share a bit more vulnerably about my own experience. This episode is going to be a bit different. You have no guest today. It's just me and I'm going to share out loud with a few words my own experience as a neurodivergent adult. And as I do that, I just want to start by acknowledging that this is my own lived experience as a white woman who is Autistic, ADHD, PDA and also gifted to exceptional and some traits of dyslexia.

Laetitia: So, if you've been following on Instagram, you'll know I have shared a bit about the part of myself, the part of my experience that happened behind the scene because you never really know everything that's happening in a neurodivergent life. It's an invisible disability that many of us experience. And the part of the invisible means you don't see what's we don't show, what we don't share. And so I really wanted to share a bit more about this.

Laetitia: I am really not comfortable doing this episode but through the series, the series sorry, that we've done on Instagram when I shared a bit more about my own experience we received some messages, I read some comments and I received some messages of people saying thank you so much for sharing this. It helps me feel seen and understood. So this is my goal and I hope that will help some of you to know that you're not broken. It's the neuronorms that makes us feel broken. And it's okay sometime to struggle with brushing your teeth, washing your hair, eating certain food, doing the day to day things that we are supposed to be able to do and feeling is a shame that can go with the fact that we just can't do it.

Laetitia: So why now? Why am I sharing this now is, it's really anchored into the fact that the journey of creating Understanding Zoe was starting from Zoe's experience and my own experience raising Zoe until I realised that yes I created Understanding Zoe because I was drowning with conflicting and different recommendation. I was drowning because I was the one repeating a thousand times the story of Zoe too. Everyone was caring for her and I just wanted to find a solution to make it easier for everyone to digest, for her to have this continuity of care that I was dreaming about and for her to really feel seen and understood.

Laetitia: But the more the company grew in terms of impact and the people it was serving, the more I realised that one piece was missing and this missing piece was the neurodivergent adult themself. No one had built anything for us as adults and that's when I started using Understanding Zoe for myself and that's when I started hearing from other adult who found out about Understanding Zoe being like is there a version for myself and so we got back to work and we made it properly suitable for adults who identify as neurodivergent to use it and right now it's available for them.

Laetitia: So that's where this episode comes from. It's about leading this initiative of vulnerable sharing, of sharing what's happening behind the scenes that not everyone may guess or see or have access to. And again, as I've said in the introduction, it's coming from a place of I am a privileged white woman and I can share those experience and those are my own lived experience. It doesn't mean that anyone else is having the same experience and it doesn't mean that anyone else should or could share about their own lived experience because they may not have the safety that I have.

Laetitia: So yeah, let me share a bit more about my story even though in the end I know when I share it there is always reaction whether it's oh I experience the same or I'm actually so different. So again coming from lived experience.

Laetitia: So, first of all, before I start the story, as I said, I am Autistic and ADHD and we've done a podcast actually around Autistic and ADHD and what it means to have both neurotype and how sometimes, the podcast title is stuck at war, how sometime it feel like this where you have two operating system conflicting with each other yet it makes us feel whole. So I just want to say that for any AuDHD or we're still in the journey of grieving and accepting who they are.

Laetitia: Then I identify as a PDA profile. So pathological demand avoidance or persistent drive for autonomy which is how I prefer to name it. For my whole life I really struggled with demand and someone else telling me what to do and now it all makes sense.

Laetitia: I've also been identified as slightly dyslexic. So I guess through my giftedness to exceptional I managed to mask and navigate through. But lots of things in my early childhood and in my difficulties with writing early on in primary school and so on could be really linked to that. But I managed to overcome that in a way that is linked to masking. So, it's taking me lots of energy to still write and do things and I'm very grateful for some of the tools that we have available today which really helps me with that such as audio book, being able to voice note, being able to translate voice to text, being able to have AI assisted written. I used to use a lot Grammarly to, yeah, review my grammar and my writing. So lots of tools are available for us which I'm very grateful about, technology enabling inclusion and not exclusion. So really something I'm passionate about.

Laetitia: And then something else about myself, I was identified as gifted early on in my childhood, same with ADHD, but my parents decided not to tell me and I was again identified as gifted to exceptional later with my Autistic assessment. So the trap is very simple when you're having this profile and I read a beautiful post about it, about whether or not giftedness is under the neurodivergence umbrella and it's really when you don't fit the norms that it can be under the umbrella and the divergence and this is where my own giftedness may exclude me from many ways of doing things because it doesn't make sense and it's not really what's accepted in our society.

Laetitia: So if you're listening to this and thinking that's a lot of label, this is just to set the scene and share from where I'm sharing my lived experience. I'm also French, coming from a regional area in France and a background where I am very grateful for the social, how do you say that, the social support I had in France to allow me to do, to go to university and go to the best business school and so on because my parents didn't study and I am the first one in my family to go to university. So really coming from a different background than the one you would expect as a French migrant to Australia.

Laetitia: So the first story that I'd like to share as part of this vulnerable episode is about my Autistic burnout. So I was in my 20s and I wrote quite a lot about this in my book which was published back in 2021, about my own burnout and how I was working at a strategic consulting firm and it was very intense, very competitive and I was really struggling with interoception and not really feeding myself like I should to survive and, and yeah, so I was very challenged and my body really collapsed and I had a very strong burnout which changed my life completely.

Laetitia: And I moved all the way to Australia, 24 hours away from home to be able to reinvent myself outside of the norms that I had put around me and where I was making and where I was, you know, really embodying the person that was productive for the society rather than being living in my own rhythm. With a setup that I needed, which is, you know, no direct lighting in my home office, which is my cave. Following my own rhythm, having not so many meetings and really harnessing the spark of how I work best.

Laetitia: Then the other thing I wanted to share with you and I did a video about this which was so uncomfortable which was about washing my hair and you know day to day hygiene task which I can struggle with which is coming from the demand avoidance which is coming from the sensory overload which is coming from just not willing to do that. And I remembered hearing a few years ago a talk about this, about the neuronorms and how hygiene is really defined by neuronormativity. And for me washing my hair is one of the things that I struggle the most with. I'll wear it dirty, properly itchy before I wash it. And actually, as I record this, I washed my hairs this morning and I hadn't washed them, I think, in two and a half weeks. And in the end it's really really itchy.

Laetitia: So for a long time that made me feel so bad as an adult, as a teenager and even you know some people will comment on my hair and it's like really about this image of how can a CEO, how can someone leading large team which I used to do when I was in big data and AI for a large company can do that in this way and that's where the norms really comes into place and now being able to just understand it and say that it's a demand and it's too much for me is really helping me at least understand myself and show forgiveness and then also advocate and hopefully be understood by other. The same level of demand is coming from brushing my teeth and doing other small task that you'd expect I should and I'm using air quote be able to.

Laetitia: Okay, one last share and then I stop there because it was supposed to be a 15 minutes episode and I've already crossed that line. But it's really around RSD and rejection sensitivity dysphoria. And for me, this term, this word really helped me make sense of so many things. When I was in strategic consulting, I would cry in a meeting with a board where we're not supposed to cry as consultants. I would cry when we lost a proposal. I would really cry in the office where you don't see many people doing that.

Laetitia: And I remember the partner in the firm drawing for me three different circle. One which was rational, one which was emotional, one which was political. And they were telling me how I was too much in the emotional and I should be more in the rational and political and really finding the, you know, the intersection of those three circle which was unconceivable for me because my emotions were embarrassing them and then in the end embarrassing me because I was just, you know, learning the way in the work and even now as a founder, like not many founder will cry and I cry and I am not ashamed of crying anymore. I know where my tears are coming from and I often share with my daughters as an example how your tears are sacred and they're showing something and this nervous system response is really helping me regulate and knowing that has been a huge shift.

Laetitia: So I have tried to hide my tears and to perform but I just can't. I can't hold them. I have cried on stage pitching Understanding Zoe. I have cried on stage winning awards for Understanding Zoe. I have screamed and cried on stage losing award for Understanding Zoe. So I don't know what's your own experience with RSD and I would love actually for some of you to reach out and share with me. But there is nothing like you grow out of RSD. It just, you grow to understand it and to live with it and to accept it and hopefully to be able to share about it and advocate for it.

Laetitia: So yeah, so this is like the kind of vulnerabilities. I had prepared some notes and I had more to share but then I realised I'm going into a monologue and I don't want this to be boring for you to listen but so that's me, that's really the story I wanted to share with you and I masked for a long time, it cost me my health, cost me a big burnout, I resisted demand for a long time and now I accept that there are demand and sometimes I don't want it and I cry when I lose very often in publics.

Laetitia: And I am just, you know, here to share a bit more about that and my ask for you is just if you've been seeing the content on Instagram or listening to this podcast and it's helping you, you can just share with someone else and maybe it will help them understand a bit more about what we experience because way too often our needs are dismissed because they're not visible. And I think having this expression of our needs and fighting our own internalised ableism and the ableism of society is really a big step forward. So I really want to be the voice that helps other in that space.

Laetitia: So yeah, so thank you for listening to this episode. I'll bring a guest back next week. This one was just for us to have this conversation. Thank you so much for listening.

Speaker: That's a wrap for The Neurodivergent Pulse. If this helped, follow the show and leave us a quick review on your favourite platform. You can even share this episode with someone who needs it. You can learn more about our platform at Understanding