Neurodivergence, masking, and mutual empathy
I donât often post stuff thatâs as personally revealing as this essay is going to be. But itâs about a dichotomy that Iâve noticed recently and which has radically altered how I see being neurodivergent, almost exclusively for the better. Really, itâs about cultivating empathy across neurotypical/neurodivergent lines, which can be easier said than done.
And to be clear, this is meant primarily as a marker of progress I am trying to make in improving how I treat other people without using ADHD as an excuse for being shitty to someone, or some kind of super power or reason I should be evaluated more leniently than other people when I mess up. To whatever extent I seem critical below of how neurotypical people sometimes perceive neurodivergent people, I intend only to observe and adapt, not to criticize, or at least not to unproductively criticize. (With the caveat, of course, that assholes indulging discrimination, prejudice, or bullying should be fed to Cthulu.)
I focus on ADHD because I was diagnosed with it about four years ago at age 38. I canât say with certainty that I know what itâs like to be autistic, though there is evidence that the two conditions are significantly comorbid, and letâs just say the possibility has been raised to me by lay people with frequent-enough exposure to me to have earned the right to speculateâŚ
Anyway, many people with ADHD will tell you they are constantly accused of not caring or not taking problems seriously or belittling someoneâs anxiety or being âflightyâ or hard to connect deeply with in vitally important everyday contexts like family and workplaces.
However, if they arenât as late to the following realization as I was, they will also tell you ADHD has two settings in high stress situations:
Surrender to the explosion. This means you fully crash out, without resistance. You give up and fall down and stay down until the shockwave and the flames and the screams and the aftershocks have passed, then you emerge, reluctantly, in fear, like a cat thatâs just survived 30 minutes under a passing freight train because, while it was unlucky enough to be caught under the train, it was lucky enough to be standing between the tracks when the behemoth bore down on it. _Or⌠_
You keep that demeanor steady to preserve morale, to use limited time, energy, and resources as efficiently as possible, and to be ready to say fuck you to the perfect when the good is all you need to get safely across the chasm. Another way I like to think of it is: A bad plan means youâre almost certainly going to need a better plan later, but no plan means there may be no laterâŚ
When the shit hits the fan for us or someone we love, the stress, worry, anxiety, empathy, sympathy, care, concern, and love are all there. But we are highly experienced in masking for three quarters of every single day simply to fit into a neurotypical world that is too quick to write us off as lazy, disinterested, unreliable, unloving, unlovable or broken.
The truth is, for me at least, but I suspect for many other neurodivergent people, the less we seem to care in high pressure moments, the more we absolutely care. The quieter and more disconnected I seem, the harder I am working internally to overclock my brain and, by some combination of emotion, intellect, and sheer force of will, slow down the matrix of everyday life (an ability that comes naturally to most neurotypical people and which they therefore often take for granted), and find a solution.
It doesnât always work, but whether it does or not, itâs always incredibly exhausting and even painful in the context of having to do it almost constantly just to get through most days.
But when the shit hits the fan, that masking has the potential to let us watch the floodwaters start crashing over the levees and just take a few deep breaths, part the waters of disaster like some elder millennial Moses with a pocketful of prescribed amphetamines, and walk ourselves or our kids or our partner or our team across the damp sand to the other side of the problem.
But that brings me to one of the worst parts about ADHD: our subjective experience of time is the reverse of that of people who donât have ADHD. When a neurotypical person is chugging along at the mental equivalent of a saunter, neurodivergents are sprinting around an expanding outward spiral. And when a neurotypical person is watching a rock and a hard place approach them at equally high speed from opposite sides, a neurodivergent person is picking at the wallpaper, to see if maybe thereâs a earlier layer of wallpaper under the top one, and maybe a layer of paint under the first layer of wallpaper, as they wait, consciously or subconsciously, for the seed of a solution to the end of the world to germinate in their otherwise racetrack-erratic mind. The tactile equivalent of elevator music.
Sometimes, the seed never comes, or it does but it dies instantly, like a star born into a black hole and never seen again. In both instances, of course, the solution never comes.
In those moments, we are likely to give up and vocalize our constant inner microwave background monologue about how sorry we are to have failed you again and yes of course we care and weâve been trying and what do you mean what do we mean when we say weâve been trying, havenât you seen us thinking until our brain felt ready to leak out of our ears and our hearts went supernova in our chest cavity and oh well no of course you didnât because who can see someone else thinking or feeling if they arenât outwardly manifesting it in actions that evidence the authenticity of their care and concern?
But other times, maybe that seed does germinate, and an idea bursts into existence where just a few moments before, there was only empty space. we get on our phone, and start searching the internet for ways to assemble the components of our idea into something that more closely resembles a solution. Meanwhile, the neurotypical folks standing around us, still crashing out, but louder now, start to think, to themselves silently, or if the situation is dire enough, out loud to one another, or, in a worst case scenario that frankly puts the taste of battery acid in my mouth just thinking about it, even directly to the neurodivergent person, that they donât seem to care that the world is ending, and that they wish the neurodivergent person had a contribution to make.
By now, the neurodivergent person is done searching the internet on their phone, and now they are making improvised measurements based on a random memory that just hit them about a documentary on how standard pencils like the one they just picked up off your desk are 7 inches long without an eraser, and 7 1/2 inches with an eraser, give or take a centimeter or so. They are flipping the pencil over end-to-end across a surface important to solving the problem while someone who liked them well enough until they saw this display of apparent dissociation at what seems like the least opportune time leans over and whispers in that exasperated screaming whisper people sometimes do, why arenât you helping?
The time it would take to make himself understood would jeopardize holding this focus for which heâs worked so hard, and heâs too close to a solution to give up now, so rather than answer the perfectly reasonable question, he smiles gently at the inquisitor, maybe winks if heâs feeling especially confident, playful, or hopeless, and continues to chip, slice, hack away at the problem. This, of course, only serves as evidence in the minds of the inquisitor and other onlookers that the neurodivergent person is so disinterested in their collective fate as to apparently be fidgeting or reading or doodling. And why shouldnât it? To them, the only evidence they have in that moment of crisis of the neurodivergentâs subjective experience is their own subjective experience.
Anyway, you get the point. I hope. Maybe the neurodivergent solves the problem that the neurotypical people could not solve. Maybe he does not. But, sadly, the likelihood that either type of person has correctly identified, and appropriately responded to, the subjective experience of the other is close enough to zero to break your heart if you think (or feel) about it for too long.
And thatâs a problem for which there isnât really any complex solution. We probably just need to assume better of each other until weâre proven wrong. Sure, itâs a risk.
But you know that feeling when you just dropped your last quarter into the claw machine and, while youâre mumbling about what a scam these things are, it suddenly grabs the exact worthless toy your teary, tired four-year-old has been begging for since you first walked up to the machine, cursing quietly to yourself that thereâs no way youâre going to waste ten dollars of quarters on this thing, and then the kidâs face turns a shade of smile you didnât know humans were capable of, and for a few minutes you forget every hurt and loss and pain that has ever burrowed into your soul?
Thatâs how it also feels to discover someone you didnât think understood you or cared about holds you in the center of their own personal universe, even when it doesnât look like they do, maybe especially when it doesnât look like they do.