It can be excruciatingly difficult to practice putting yourself first and being loyal to yourself in a society that teaches us from day one to shrink ourselves, to put everyone else’s needs above our own, and that being selfish automatically means you’re an evil, egocentric megalomaniac.

Especially for late-realized auDHDers who didn’t know that they are the way they are and have the needs they have until well into adulthood.

We grew up being told almost every day that we were being “dramatic” for voicing our own needs or discomfort, being told that we needed to “toughen up” and “work harder,” otherwise we would be a total burden on everyone around us.

We learned so quickly, too quickly, that if we pretended not to have needs and did everything we could to take care of those around us, always be as helpful to others as possible, that we would be (for the most part) left alone, safe from judgement and criticism.

And bonus points if you grew up with a sibling whose needs (and struggles) were much more obvious, intense, or accepted than yours. Giving you the constant internal belief that others needed even more than you did, and if you asked for more you were taking away from them.

After all, how could you be so bold as to ask for something from your parents who were already so very busy taking care of your sibling, or siblings? You’re supposed to be the strong one, what are you doing? Can’t you just go play by yourself for a while? Oh, but on your way can you also make a snack for your brother?

Shit like that.

Then, we grow into adults who, at least for a while, become overachievers, striving to be the best at everything they do (and feeling like huge failures for getting anything less than an A+, or making a small mistake), diving into every activity and event they possibly can, being the most productive and independent person the world has ever seen, and always getting praised for it along the way - which only reinforces what you’re doing.

Meanwhile, there’s a part of you that knows, deep down, that you deserve more than this. That longs for someone who won’t put you up on that pedestal, for once. Who will actually take care of you the way you’ve been taking care of everyone else your entire life.

But you’re quick to stifle that part like a match in a bomb factory.

You tell yourself “Shh! Don’t think like that! How selfish! Who do you think you are? You’re supposed to be the strong, tough one, remember? You’re fine without anyone else. You have to be. What will happen to the others if you start spending all your time being a selfish bitch?”

So you put off prioritizing yourself, getting more and more burned out every day, feeling like you have less capacity all the time. You keep saying yes to everything, but you either wind up flaking at the last minute, or totally resenting the people who are asking you for help or attention in the first place. But you’re also terrified to say no, because doesn’t that make you a horrible person?

No the fuck it doesn’t.

You deserve to be taken care of in the same ways that you have spent your life taking care of others. But because we were raised in a society that tells us, from every angle, that asking for the same support you give is inherently bad, you believe it.

This is internalized oppression, and it’s one of many examples if it that I’m going help you see in my upcoming workshop Detox From Neuronormativity.

And I know it’s internalized oppression because I used to be that person. For the first 21 years of my life, I only ever thought about the people around me. I took pride in being so independent, and was always praised by adults for how “wise” and “grown” i seemed at such a young age.

This pattern of self sacrificing and ignoring my own needs and boundaries landed me in a pretty intense emotionally abusive relationship from when I was 16 until I was 21.

Then, thanks to the internet, I learned that everything I was going through wasn’t just because I was being too sensitive, or not trying hard enough, or not being loyal enough to others… it was my own internalized oppression that trickled down to me from our patriarchal, capitalist, white supremacist society that benefits from making people who actually care about the world feel small and undeserving.

I learned that it would actually be a radical act to start putting myself first, especially as a queer person (I didn’t know then that I was also auDHD and disabled) because “they” want us to be silent, to not ask for anything, to stay quietly on the sidelines and use all our energy on trying to help everyone else so we have none left to spend on changing the world in the ways we want to see.

Because you see, putting yourself first doesn’t mean that you’ll never help anyone again, or that everyone will think you only care about yourself. When you’re able to let to of this pattern of self sacrificing, of people pleasing, and start prioritizing your own needs without the guilt that society puts on us for it, you’ll be even more well-resourced to continue showing up in the world and helping in exactly the ways you want to, without getting totally burned out or resentful every single time.

The biggest breakthroughs in the trauma healing journey I’ve been on since then have been when I was able to continue recognizing internalized oppression in all the forms it takes. ANd now I’m on a mission to give those same breakthroughs, that same liberation, to late-realized auDHDers everywhere.

This Friday at 11am Eastern, I’m hosting my new workshop Detox From Neuronormativity so that you, too, can spot where your own internalized oppression lies, fight against the dehumanization we all go through in this society, and start taking small steps to rehumanize yourself, one bit at a time.

You can learn more and sign up by clicking the button below, or go to my website jesdiverges.com/detoxfromneuronormativity. I hope to see you there, because you deserve to know all the ways that society teaches us to be small.

Click here to learn more & sign up

You have spent your entire life sacrificing your own needs for the sake of those around you.

You learned very early that if you put yourself first, others will suffer. That if you aren’t constantly self-sacrificing, you’re not actually a good person. That prioritizing your needs means that you don’t care about other people.

None of those things are true. In fact, the complete opposite is true.

All of the people you are always trying to help, would benefit way more from the version of you that puts your needs before theirs.

I always refer to radical self-love as the “real” trickle-down economics.

By putting your needs first, you are ensuring that you will be well resourced enough to show up for others in the ways you actually want to.

It only sounds counterintuitive because our white supremacist society has taught you that good people are self-sacrificing, that it’s “egotistical” to put yourself first, and if you don’t only care about other people, then you’re a horrible person.

Whenever I bring up the topic of being wildly selfish, so many of my clients worry “But what if I become some megalomaniac who goes around hurting people all the time for the sake of my own enjoyment?”

Because if you’re someone who always defaults to helping others and putting other people first, even if it’s at times a trauma response, you chose this specific response because you do care about other people.

Being selfish will not make you an evil, hurtful person because you are not one.

And when you start putting yourself first, you also give permission to everyone around you to do the same. Literally everyone benefits.

And you also get to see who has issue with you also having needs for once, so you can do with that information what you will moving forward.

I’ll dive deep into how to practice being radically selfish in my AuDHD Summer Camp program.

We start on June 2. Tiered pricing is available. Learn more and sign up here, or click the button below:

Learn more about AuDHD Summer Camp

I did not know my last day there was my last day, and never got to say a proper goodbye to the place that had been so important to me for most of my adult life.

I have a long history with a lack of proper goodbyes, so this in itself particularly sucked.

Then about a week later, I also lost a very, very good friend I had for 6 years who works at the bakery because she decided to side with my former boss, and I also found out she’d apparently had a years long grudge against me that I didn’t know about until our final discussion.

And the other baker, who was one of my favorite coworkers and (so I thought) also a good friend, also turned against me in this time.

I felt more alone and betrayed than I have in years.

Now that it’s been a couple of months and I’ve had time to process all of it, I’m realizing that, miraculously, I don’t actually feel traumatized by what happened.

I could have easily slipped into a place I’ve been countless times before when I’ve suddenly found out someone hates my guts, where I convinced myself that everyone around me also secretly hates me and I should just give up and go back to being a total hermit forever.

But I didn’t.

So what’s the difference between now and then? How did I get through these emotionally intense, incredibly stressful events that reminded me of so many traumatizing endings from my past?

(To be clear, I’m not saying this all didn’t totally suck ass and cause me a lot of stress. It definitely did. But I don’t feel traumatized by it, and I’m able to start moving on.)

Truthfully, it was a few things that made a difference this time.

For one thing, I felt the feelings as they were coming up, rather than trying to fight them.

In the beginning especially, I cried, a lot. I screamed, I yelled, I asked “Why???” over and over and over again. I punched and ripped things. I may have also done some witchcraft about it.

But I let myself feel it, when before I would have done everything in my power to keep it all inside, telling myself “it’s okay” and avoiding the pain, because experience has taught me that the pain will bubble up anyway so I just let it happen instead of eventually totally exploding like I have in the past.

For another thing, I processed it out loud, over and over again, a lot, with myself and with trusted friends.

I repeated myself a lot, telling the same story and asking the same questions, and even just having folks who listened to me and made me feel seen helped immensely, even if they couldn’t necessarily “fix” it.

(Shout out to all of y’all by the way, you all who’ve heard the whole story know who you are and I’m forever grateful 💜💜💜💜)

I also knew that with so many big losses at once, I was about to go through a huge and unexpected transition - which is extra difficult for an auDHDer.

I knew that I was going to feel, and be, a bit wonky for a while... so I let myself be wonky.

I gave myself space to be frustrated at how much had changed, and grace while my nervous system recalibrated.

Another major thing that helped was the amount of self trust I’ve been building up over the years.

Through the whole process, I was asking myself the question I encourage all my clients to ask during emotionally tricky situations: What can I do to walk away from this with my own self respect intact?

And I did exactly that. I made decisions that aligned with my values, and even took every step I possibly could to try to salvage my friendship.

This time, I know for a fact that there was nothing I could have done or said differently that would have changed anything that happened. Her values are her values, and she’s allowed to have them, just like I have mine.

And I ultimately made the decision to end the friendship, because I love myself enough not to allow people in my life who meet me with bad faith and mistrust. Period.

I learned what their “true colors” were, in the same way they learned mine, and now we’ve parted ways.

I know I am not wrong for this, or overreacting, and there’s not a single part of me doubting a decision I made or a word I said.

And no, it’s not because the whole thing went “perfectly.” It was a messy ass situation all around. But I genuinely know I did the best I could, because my voice is now way louder than my inner critic ever was.

I say this all the time to clients, but being “healed” doesn’t necessarily mean nothing stressful will happen, that you’ll never have conflict or intensely emotional situations.

But it does mean you can trust yourself to handle them when they do come, to know that you’re always doing the best you can with what you have, and not to expect perfection out of yourself every time.

This is exactly what I teach in AuDHD Summer Camp.

It’s not about avoiding conflict, disagreements, or unexpected and major life shifts. It’s about building the self trust to know that no matter what, you’ll still come out on the other side, and learning how to actually have your own back along the way.

And in my Summer Camp program, I go into detail about how to build these (very learnable) skills yourself.

We start on June 2. Tiered pricing is available. Learn more and sign up here, or click the button below:

Learn more about AuDHD Summer Camp

I say this with all the love in the world...

But your trauma is not uniquely complicated, or uniquely heavy, or uniquely the worst thing that's ever happened to someone.

I've been working with folks with autism, ADHD, and CPTSD for about 4 years now (I'm also one myself) and I've noticed that people tend to think they are particularly complicated cases, unsolvable at best and unbearable for others to hear about at worst.

This creates a cycle wherein you just continue to hide it deep inside you for fear of confusing or scaring others, or fear that even if you did tell someone they would never understand anyway so why should you even bother?

But even still, after 4 years and talking to dozens and dozens of people, I haven't yet heard a story too complex to understand & work with, or that was "too much" to hear about

Folks will warn me that they are complicated, or that the things that happened to them (or even the things they've done themself) will be too much for my ears.

And every time I assure them I can take it, they tell me something I either already surmised from talking to them (my psychological pattern recognition is very strong), or something unexpected but that nonetheless I've heard similar before.

In other words, I've never really been "shocked" by something a client has told me.

Now to be fair, I know this isn't always the case when talking about certain things with the general public. I've had specific classes and training that allow me to process "complicated" backstories and hear about folks' experiences without having my own shit rocked about it.

And I've worked with enough people now that, while I wouldn't necessarily say I've heard it "all," I have heard quite a bit of it.

All this to say: yes, your background is complex, and yes, you've had painful things happen to you that may involve many layers of trauma from your immediate family to inherited intergenerational trauma, to having a plethora of neurotypes, to having chronic illnesses and other disabilities, to just straight up bad things happening.

But so have a lot of other people. You are not alone in how many layers you have going on.

No one's background is necessarily simple or easy to parse apart. You are not uniquely unhelpable.

One thing that trauma is really good at, is convincing you that you are alone.

And it also doesn't help that the system is full of mental health "professionals" who aren't properly prepared for the natural complexity of the human psyche & experience.

But I'm here to tell you: you are not alone. You are only just as complicated as the rest of us 💜

I now have spots open for individual auDHD coaching, available for a limited time. Click the button to learn more & schedule a free consult:

Schedule a consult

This is the audio & transcript from the most recent episode of my podcast Unshaming AuDHD, with more episodes available on Spotify and Apple.

Hello Hello and welcome to UnShaming AuDHD: a podcast for autistic ADHDers who want to remove shame, blame and guilt from their lives and replace them with curiosity, compassion, and joy. I’m your host, Jes Diverges, and I’m here to help you reconnect to the authentic and unapologetic version of yourself that’s been hidden away by systemic, interpersonal and intergenerational shame. My goal with each episode is that you walk away feeling at least 1% more seen, heard, valued and loved. Because you belong here, you have always belonged here. Let’s get into it.

Hello hello everyone! I’m so happy to sit down and record again, it’s been a while.

Now that I’m about a year and a half into this podcast, I figured it was a good time to explain what I mean when I say “unshaming auDHD.” A lot of what I now teach about shame has been built on what I’ve learned from David Bedrick, who first introduced me to the word unshaming during a workshop about 3 years ago. Since then, shame has become a central part of the work I do with adult auDHDers, and i’ve spent a lot of time learning how to recognize it, work with it, and lesson the impact it has on my clients and, of course, myself as well.

If after listening to this, you’re interested in learning to put some unshaming practices into place for yourself, I do have some individual coaching spots open right now. I also talk a lot about this in AuDHD Summer Camp, which is now available as a self-study program if you don’t have space in your life to attend coaching sessions. I actually borrowed a lot from Summer Camp to write this episode. There will be links for both of those in the show notes if you want more details.

AuDHD Summer Camp

Individual AuDHD Coaching

The topic of shame is something that comes up with just about every single auDHDer I speak to - even the ones who don’t think they experience shame.

Actually, one of my favorite moments that happens when coaching is whenever I bring up shame, and the client says something along the lines of “Oh, I don’t think I have a lot of shame. It’s just that I have all of these inherent flaws and negative traits that make it so I’m terrible at being a functioning, normal, happy adult human person. It’s not shame, I’m just broken and need to learn how to fix myself so I can not be broken anymore.” and I have to go, “my friend, that is shame.”

And I say this because I also have struggled with shame for a long time without realizing it. I spent most of my life carrying around an enormous amount of shame with me at all times, but if you’d asked me I would have told you I was super confident and nonjudgmental about myself.

The thing is, I believed that I could do it, whatever “it” happened to be at the time, as long as I worked at it and tried hard and didn’t slack off and get lazy like I usually do, or make one of those stupid small mistakes I always make, or accidentally do the whole thing wrong because I missed a tiny detail.

All of those “small” criticisms are actually signs of shame that I believed to be totally normal, and thought that everyone dealt with. Turns out, that’s not the case. It’s just that shame is a lot sneakier than we’ve been led to believe.

I think one of the main reasons why we often don’t recognize shame for what it is, is because there’s a misconception that shame is an emotion, when it’s actually not. Shame is a witness, a lens through which we are taught to view ourselves.

Shame is like an umbrella that casts a shadow over all of the mental health struggles that we already have to deal with, and it just adds so much extra weight that turns an already difficult situation into an almost impossible one.

Shame is that voice in your head telling you to stop shaking your leg because it makes you look like a weirdo.

Shame is the thoughts that start when you say something that didn’t get the reaction you expected, and so you automatically think the other person hates you.

Shame is that urge to keep working on a project until it’s absolutely perfect, otherwise the whole thing will just be a failure.

Shame is the thought you get after a meltdown that you’re a monster who needs to just be locked away forever because no one should have to see you act like that.

Shame is the lump in your throat that pops up when you swallow your opinion for the 15th time that day because you think no one wants to hear about it anyway.

Shame is the way you keep chasing that one piece of information you know is out there somewhere, that will explain everything and finally “fix” you.

Shame is a lens through which others see us, and that we in turn learn to see ourselves through. It is a learned behavior that has been passed down to us through generations of all of our undiagnosed neurodivergent ancestors who experienced societal oppression that led them to learn to be smaller, quieter, friendlier, more productive, and more “normal,” so that they would continue to be accepted by others.

It stems from systems that assign moral values to things that are actually inherently neutral. For example, the capitalistic idea that if you aren’t being the most productive you can be at all times, you are automatically a bad member of society and don’t deserve to have basic necessities. Or the white supremacist idea that something has to be perfect and “proper” (aka bland, behaved, and beige) in order to be considered valid, people included. Or the ableist idea that if you prefer to move around, fidget, stim, and make noise, that you are a nuisance to society and need to be kept away from the others.

The reason why I focus so much on shame in my work is because when we view ourselves through a shaming lens, that shame conceals and hides our deepest, truest, most authentic, most intelligent parts under a shroud of darkness and fear. A lot of my clients come to me wanting to work on things like being more productive, having better time management skills, or figuring out how to get out of and/or manage burnout.

And the thing is, there is quite a lot of content and resources out there already that talk about how to get things done, a hundred different planners and apps that claim to help you manage your time, and articles on ways to conserve energy during burnout. I could choose to walk my clients through things like the pomodoro method, habit stacking, body doubling, etc., and I definitely have - don’t get me wrong, strategies like these can absolutely be helpful at times. But I know from personal experience, and from spending the last 4 years working exclusively with other auDHDers, that none of those strategies will stick, or will even work at all, if you’re implementing them from a place of shame.

From a place of “I need to figure out how to do all the things I want or need to do or else it means I suck at being a person.”

or “I just need to learn to craft the perfect, most predictable schedule ever that will stop me from being so lazy all the time.”

or “It’s been two months and I should really be over this burnout already, I’ve rested enough and I need to get back to ‘normal!’”

So how do you tell if you’re operating from shame? Here are some, but definitely not all, signs of shame:

One sign of shame is that you don’t trust yourself, your intuition or your instincts, to be correct, and so you rely on external input to tell you how to feel and what to do. Rather than trusting your own answers that come up inside of you, you’ll look to others for validation and direction.

For example, say you’re with a group of friends and someone says something to you that rubs you the wrong way. However, your reaction to this is to believe that your instinct is wrong and so you look at those around you who are just laughing and continuing the conversation. You assume they’re right, and don’t say anything, keeping your feelings to yourself. Then later, you wind up frustrated with yourself for not speaking up, which starts the shame cycle all over again.

Another sign of shame is that you’re always trying to “fix” yourself because you believe there is something “wrong” inside of you that can be solved by the right book, teacher, coach, therapist, podcast, job, etc.

You might constantly be searching for new resources, trying to find the “one thing” you know is out there somewhere that you’re missing that will help you not be this way anymore. Now, I’m not saying that you should never look for outside help as there is a lot of helpful information out there, and no one is expected to do everything on their own.

However, the issue comes when you’re viewing it as a way to fix yourself, or because you believe that you aren’t capable of finding the answers inside of yourself. Likewise, by telling yourself you can’t be the way you are now and insisting you need to change, you’re stopping yourself from getting to know and understand your current experience. You’re sending yourself the message that who you are and how you feel now is bad and needs to change, rather than giving yourself a chance to just be where you are.

A third sign of shame is that you might fail to protect yourself from harm because you don’t trust your internal senses to guide you and will in turn invalidate your own experiences.

Think of all the times you’ve thought to yourself “Oh, it’s not that bad” or “It’s not that hard, I should be able to do this” only to wind up getting hurt or overexerting yourself. Then, you wind up shaming yourself with things like “Ugh, why do I always do this to myself? What’s wrong with me? Why does this pattern always show up?” You blame yourself rather than just recognizing that you’re being hurt.

I mentioned earlier that shame is a witness. All those thoughts in your head telling you you’re wrong or bad or need to be better are the voices of a shaming witness, which you learned from the way others have seen and spoke to you throughout the years. In fact, shame is the main reason that trauma and CPTSD develop. It has nothing to do with the intensity or severity of the event itself. There are people who’ve been through horrific, devastating things that didn’t necessarily develop trauma from it. Not that they weren’t upset by it, to be clear, but it is possible to process and move through a stressful event without it turning into a trauma. For them, the event was an injury that they recover from

And it’s not always a “big” event that causes trauma either. Trauma can be caused by literally anything, big or small. The difference between an injury and a trauma lies in how the people who were around you when the event occurred reacted to or witnessed you in that moment, or when they heard about the event later if they weren’t there.

For example, say there’s a kid at a carnival with his family. He’s having fun, but at some points the noise level gets too loud and so he covers his ears. His parent could then become a shaming witness, or a loving witness, in that moment.

A loving witness would see him covering his ears and realize that it’s too loud for him, saying something like “Hey, I noticed that you’re covering your ears. Is that because it’s too loud? Do you want to go somewhere quieter?” Here, his pain is seen and validated by someone else, and he gets the message that his discomfort matters, and that the people around him are willing to help him. His need for quiet is recognized, and he’s able to accommodate it by bringing noise cancelling headphones to potentially loud places in the future.

A shaming witness would see the child covering his ears and say something like “Why are you doing that? It’s not that loud. Don’t be so dramatic. Stop being rude, you’re ruining everyone’s fun.” Because his pain is not seen or validated, he gets the message that his discomfort isn’t important, and that expressing discomfort also hurts other people in the process. His need for quiet noise levels gets hidden under a veil of shame, and he learns to hide it next time in order to keep the peace.

Unfortunately for late-accepted auDHDers, we often grow up with a metric fuckton of these so-called “small” moments of shame and invalidation, meaning that our authentic selves, our needs, our desires, the parts of us that make us “us,” get blurred and hidden away, never getting a chance to be seen again.

Which is a real shame - no pun intended - because those parts of us often hold the most intelligence, the most wisdom, and the most real, authentic, human parts of ourselves.

So how do you make those parts feel safe again to come out? You start building a practice of creating your own loving witness, to be just as loud if not louder than the shaming witness. Whenever you catch yourself thinking shaming thoughts, ask yourself what you would say if you heard someone talking like that to someone else, and speak to the shaming voice that way.

You can also start by think of times from your past where someone else shamed you for something. What do you wish someone had said to them at the time? What do you wish you could say to your past self, if you had been there?

Building a loving witness is something that takes a lot of time, practice, and experimentation. Your shaming witness has been developing for years, so it’s natural for the loving witness to also take years. But stick with it, 1% at a time, and I promise it’ll be worth it.

The final point I want to make in this episode is to talk about what I mean when I say the intelligence behind your shame. Now, I’m not saying the shame itself is intelligent, but I am saying that shame will hide something, a piece of knowledge, a kernel of truth, usually as a way to protect whatever is behind it from being seen and therefore hurt again, or getting some other need met. Every time you are doing something, or not doing something, you are doing something, even if it doesn’t seem like it.

This right here is really the main focus of my work with auDHDers, is figuring out what gems, jewels, and rocks we can dig out that have been buried under a mountain of shame for their whole lives. It’s like those toy dinosaur eggs you can get that you chip away at until you find the surprise inside, except instead of a tiny plastic dinosaur I’m helping people find their most authentic parts of themselves that they can then bring into the light and remove all that heaviness and darkness from, and live in the way they really want to, rather than the way their shame tells them they have to.

For example, something that comes up a lot with my clients is the concept of procrastination. They claim that they spend their time doing “nothing” instead of anything they actually want to or need to do. My ears always perk up when I hear them say this, because I know this is exactly where the gold is.

At this point, I’ll ask them “When you are doing nothing, what are you doing?” and very often they reply “Literally nothing, just sitting scrolling on my phone watching the hours pass by and thinking about everything else I could be doing”

So I ask, “When you’re scrolling, what are you doing?” And low and behold, we find out that whatever they happen to be gravitating towards when they use their phone is actually a key need that they are just not tending to in other areas of their life, and their brain and body is making sure they get it through their phone.

Sometimes, it’ll be that they don’t really let themselves have fun or take a break ever, unless they’re scrolling on TikTok watching funny videos, and that’s the one source of joy they have in their life.

Sometimes, they’ll be going down rabbit holes of research articles on various topics, because they have a passion for learning new things and aren’t giving themselves permission to make time for it during their days.

Other times, they’ll realize they are constantly refreshing their social apps looking for messages from their friends, because they’re craving human connection but don’t realize it because their brains are clouded with thoughts of “I’m just procrastinating.”

There’s always a reason for whatever thing you’re doing that you keep shaming yourself for. When you can recognize the shame, take a step back, and get curious about what’s truly going on, you can find that intelligence, and then find ways to get that need met that are more aligned with who you are, rather than who you think you need to be.

And that concludes my episode on what I mean when I say “unshaming.” There is, of course, a lot more that I could have talked about, but I hope you walk away feeling at least 1% more able to understand and work with your shame.

And if you’d like support in finding out what intelligence might be hiding under your shame, or where your shame even lies in the first place, I now have spots available for individual coaching. I also have a self-study program called AuDHD Summer Camp that will guide you through working with your shame, as well as a bunch of other topics made to support late-realized auDHDers. Those links will be in the show notes.

Thanks so much for listening. Take care, and I’ll see you next time

Thanks for listening to UnShaming AuDHD. If you enjoyed this episode and want to support the podcast, please leave a comment or review, letting me know your thoughts and consider sharing it with someone else who you think might enjoy it. Word of mouth is the best way to support me and get the word out. And if you’re interested in more support from me, you can sign up for my email list at jesdiverges.com/newsletter for updates on my latest programs and offers. That link, as well as links to my other content and social media can be found in the show notes. Take care of yourself, and I’ll see you next time.

AuDHD Summer Camp (self-guided program)

Individual AuDHD Coaching

Now that it's been over a decade since I left him, I consider myself about as "healed" as one can be from a trauma like that.

To be clear, that doesn't mean that I am not still healing from said relationship. I was left with emotional scars that I'll carry forever. I also know that healing is a lifelong process, and it's not possible to be fully "healed" from trauma.

That said, I am at a point in my healing where I'm able to move on and live my life without it impacting my current decisions.

I don't involuntarily think about him nearly as often as I used to. I no longer fear that my partner will do or say the things he did. Hell, I even hope he's leading a happy life now. Far away from me, to be sure, but happy.

The reason I'm able to be in this place now isn't because I'm just magically strong and can get over trauma and abuse without putting in the work.

It's not because the abuse wasn't "as intense" as others have it.

It wasn’t because I found the answer to all my problems hidden in a self-help book that changed everything overnight.

And it wasn't even due to years of work in therapy, as I didn't start doing that regularly until the last couple of years.

The real reason I was able to move on from my abuse is a lot simpler than you may think: when I finally left him, I decided to give myself a happy life wherein I chose to put myself first wherever possible, and trust myself to get back on that path whenever I faltered.

I even got a tattoo on my left arm, right next to my own heart, of a heart that says the word "myself" in the middle of it, to remind me of the promise I made if and when I forgot.

I understood that self love and healing weren't just things that happened, they were active practices.

Choices I had to make, and put intention into, every single day.

I knew I would fuck up, and I did. A lot. But that just meant I was trying.

I knew some people would think I became a selfish bitch, and they did. But I knew that just meant they weren't my people, and I kept walking to find others.

I knew some people would think I was delusional for being able to be so happy and optimistic in spite of everything. But I knew my happiness did not ignore - or forget - what happened. My happiness is meant to make up for it and then some.

I knew my choice wasn't for the weak, but I also knew I wasn't weak, because I survived long enough to make that choice in the first place.

As long as you are alive, no matter how hard things feel in the moment, there is always a chance for you to find happiness. You just have to be alive to find it.

If you want to heal, you have to choose to do it.

No one is going to do it for you. You get to do it.

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I help late-realized autistic ADHDers understand who they truly are and move beyond surviving to thriving by breaking down neuronormative ideas and replacing them with human-centered, empowering, neurodivergent affirming ones. For more about my offers and services, go to my website:

www.jesdiverges.com

It feels so freaking weird to just keep going about our daily lives while there’s an orange demon in the white house ruining lives left and right, and multiple genocides are co-occurring, and the earth gets hotter and hotter, and, and and… yeah. I don’t have to tell you.

If you’re stuck in that “What’s the point?” energy, it’s more important now than ever that you practice finding things in your life that will remind you what “the point” is, even if they’re small.

I pulled this excerpt directly from my AuDHD Summer Camp program that explains a small, but actionable, practice you can do to find joy a little bit easier in your life, and stay present with what’s in front of you while the “big picture” is so scary to look at.

If the following is helpful for you, I’d love to have you join my next round starting August 29! Here is the link to learn more.

But for now, here’s a free sample that I think is particularly useful right now:

“You’ve probably heard of triggers, which are moments, experiences, or sensations that remind you of a traumatic instance or pattern from your past and cause emotional, mental, or physical stress.

The opposite of a trigger, then, is called a glimmer, which is a small, positive moment, experience, or sensation that brings a sense of joy, safety, and/or calm. Glimmers are similar to triggers, but instead of inciting stress/sadness/anger, they trigger joy and happiness.

Remember in the last lesson, when we talked about how we can be a lot more positively affected by things than non-auDHDers, and find joy in even the smallest of things? This is where glimmers come into play!

Making it a practice to notice glimmers can be an instrumental tool when it comes to self-love as an auDHDer. As I’ve said, we live in a difficult world full of oppressive systems and awful happenings, as disabled individuals. Life being hard AF is, unfortunately, normal for us. So, that makes it all the more important to focus as much energy as you can on creating and finding your own joy whenever possible.

It can be so difficult to get started with having fun when you really haven’t had the space to do that for pretty much your whole life. Believe me, I get that.

And the way to counteract that is by showing yourself, and your nervous system, that it’s

a) okay for you to let yourself have fun and be happy and

b) that it’s possible and even easy (most of the time) to do so.

Our activity for this week is meant to help you start exercising that fun-having muscle. Similar to what I said about self-trust, creating your own joy is a practice in itself too. It’s also a muscle that needs to be rebuilt. Take it slow, one step at a time, and trust yourself to just try things and play for now.

Starting with: creating your own glimmer scavenger hunt!

Spend the next week or so looking around your environment to find as many small joys as you can. Trust whatever you find that sparks joy, even if it seems “silly” or “too small” - I promise you that it is not.

When you find one, take a moment to really appreciate the glimmer for what it is. You can take a picture, draw what it is, and/or write about the thing and reflect on how it makes you feel.

After the week is over, take some time to reflect on the practice.

Was it easier than you thought? Harder? Has anything changed when it comes to your confidence in finding joy?

Feel free to repeat this activity as often as you like.

I also want to invite you to share at least one found glimmer with us in the comments, if you’re comfortable doing so. Let’s show off our glimmers!

AuDHD Summer Camp

I’d been identifying as a perfectionist ever since I learned what that word meant, and even in elementary school I rarely gave myself the opportunity to not do absolutely everything that I’d been taught was expected of me, and then some. I think I stayed home sick from school once, and it was because I had a stomach bug so bad I physically could not be present without being an actual biohazard.

Hell, even when my childhood cat died, I was only an hour late to school because I still felt obligated to go despite being heartbroken.

I would even go so far as to judge my own peers for “slacking off,” as I saw it, believing that they wouldn’t get anywhere in life since they obviously weren’t working as hard as me at everything.

Then one year, when I was 11, we got a catalogue in the mail (so retro, I know) filled with a bunch of summer camp programs at a camp that was only about 20 minutes away from us. I saw the picture of all the smiling girls on the cover, surrounded by nature (and, more importantly, friends) having what I could only assume was the absolute time of their freaking lives.

Immediately, my mind started racing with all the possibilities of what it could mean for me to be able to go somewhere - that wasn’t even that far from home - to have the chance to be whoever my little self wanted to be for a week or two, before returning home to my life of overachieving and high standards.

I begged my parents to let me go and, even though we weren’t exactly swimming in savings at the time, they were able to make it happen.

I proceeded to daydream for months about the person I might be when I wasn’t being bogged down by real life expectations, when I didn’t have to worry about small-town judgement and the spreading of rumors about “that weird girl Jes” that would lead to me losing the handful of friends I’d managed to make in school. When I could just be that weird girl and it would be fine because no one knew me there, it was a fresh start, a perfectly clean slate.

And man, did I have an amazing time being the absolute weirdest I could possibly be for those two weeks at a time, roaming around in the woods and creating absurd inside jokes with the friends I made there.

I became extremely good friends with one girl in particular, who I’ve since lost touch with due to having been 11 and not knowing how to properly collect someone’s contact information before departing from camp never to see each other again.

We especially bonded over our mutual love for a certain story about a wizard boy (a special interest I’ve since renounced due to the horrible bigotry of its author, but I digress). We would routinely spend a few minutes outside the dining hall before mealtimes having a wizards duel with sticks we’d find on the ground, using the actual spells from the book and taking turns mimicking the magical effects until one of us “lost” or it was time to go in and eat. And mind you, this was with all 200 other campers nearby as well, with the two of us in our own little world.

It’s a kind of freedom I never allowed myself to have in my “real life.”

And that’s not even to mention the deep talks we would all also have at night, when we were supposed to be sleeping, and we would share our deepest darkest secrets with each other under the cover of the moon and the safety that a sleepaway camp provides.

Even though camp was only for a few weeks over a handful of summers, having just that small space to practice what it meant to fully “be myself” without all of the everything else that’s constantly bogging all of us down, was healing for me in ways that my 11-year-old brain couldn’t even comprehend at the time.

And that is why I call it the AuDHD Summer Camp program. It’s not because it takes place in summer, but it’s a culture I want to provide. Because I want to give you a space, even a temporary one, where you’re free to explore who it is you are without that feeling of having someone’s eyes on your back just waiting for you to do something embarrassing, or weird, or too sensitive, or whatever else.

Where you, too, can feel safe to have those deep discussions you’re dying to have, because you know that the people there are actually listening for once.

Where you can break free of the chains of perfectionism, people pleasing, and shame, that have kept you from getting to know who you really, actually are underneath that mask that you’ve been building up this whole time, while being supported by a group of others doing the exact same thing.

Sound like your kind of place?

My next round of AuDHD Summer Camp starts August, 29, 2025.

Click here to learn more. Let’s get freaking weird.

With love,

Jes

PS- As always, this is an anti-FOMO space, meaning that if signing up isn’t in the cards for you right now, please don’t fret! There will be plenty more programs from me in the future.

Doing what is best and financially safest for you will always be the right decision 💜

You're having trouble focusing, and can't really seem to enjoy your down time, scrolling mindlessly or half listening to a show.

You find yourself thinking about those past times when you actually cared about things, did things. But what happened?

Everyday you tell yourself "alright, today I'm gonna be different. I'm actually gonna do those things I've been wanting to do today."

Then 10 hours later you're back where you've been for the past... wait, how long has this even been going on??

You've lost track of time and can't even remember the last time you felt "normal," or didn't have that ever looming sense of exhaustion.

For months you've been floating, fluctuating between shaming and guilting yourself for not doing more while also trying to be self compassionate about where you're at.

You don't want to beat yourself up about it, but it keeps happening.

Maybe part of you thinks you can't get out of this hole without a healthy dose of "tough love.”

But that flip-flopping between "tough love" and self-compassion is probably what's keeping you stuck in this frustrating, cyclic loop.

The truth is, you can't just strong arm your way out of stuckness by telling yourself to just "try harder" or beating yourself up because "it's not even that bad, just do it!"

And the other truth is, acceptance only goes so far.

It's certainly important to accept yourself where you're at - anyone who's talked to me knows I believe this.

But acceptance without action is still stuckness. Gentler stuckness, to be sure, but there's more to it if you're in a spot where you're wanting to start moving forward.

So how do you take that radical acceptance and turn it into action without using "tough love" to get shit done?

By letting yourself get sick of your own bullshit.

"Acceptance" doesn't mean you have to stay in a spot you don't want to be.

It means accepting that you don't want to be there, and leaning into the discomfort of what it means to not take action rather than try to "accept" it away or else push yourself out of it.

You see, our brains are really good at avoiding the uncomfortable. We can be very creative when it comes to avoiding problems - even by making it seem like we're addressing them.

But when you start to actually admit to yourself what you're doing, and what will happen if you keep it up, you can use the emotion that comes up to fuel those actions you've been struggling to take.

Often what you'll find in that discomfort is frustration, anger, maybe even grief. All emotions that most of us would prefer to avoid.

But those emotions might be exactly what you're missing, exactly what you need to actually do the thing you know you need to do in order to change your situation.

Sit with them a minute. Ask them what they're trying to tell you. And then listen.

I help people with this all the time in my coaching work.

Individual spots are now open. Sign up for a free consult to learn more:

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I write for neurodivergent, queer, and otherwise marginalized adults who want to deconstruct everything they know about mental health and actually learn to be a human rather than a robot. If you want to support my mission, please join my Patreon:

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A source of much confusion, frustration, grief, and overwhelm for late-realized auDHDers is the realization that you’ve been masking for so long that you’re not actually sure who you are as a person.

This level of identity crisis feels like the proverbial rug has been swept out from underneath you, and you’ve landed face down into a hot, steamy pile of nothing-ness.

When you first realize you’re autistic and ADHD, it can be exciting to start out with. Suddenly, your whole life makes sense, and things click into place that you didn’t even realize were things in the first place. “Oh, that’s why I do that!!”

You’ve finally found “the thing” that’s been holding you back from being yourself, and you figure all you need to do now is put a few accommodations in place, set some new boundaries, and you’ll be able to continue on through life as normal.

But then, as you start unmasking, you start to realize that you’re actually a much different person than you once thought.

Things that didn’t used to make you tired now exhaust you. You find yourself needing more and more recovery time between events, or even between tasks. You’re not sure whether the job you have is the one you wanted, or the one that everyone else said you “should” want. You learn you actually can hear the electricity in the walls and now it’s louder than ever. You start to notice your clothes more, how scratchy they are and how they’re tight in all the wrong places.

You look back on the person you were before, and wonder how in the hell they were able to do all of those things. You begin to question whether you’ll ever be able to get back to that place, to get back to that version of yourself.

And then you ask yourself if that’s even what you wanted to begin with. You have the thought that maybe, after all this time, you actually don’t know what you truly want. And you realize: “Oh, shit… how do I figure out how to be a person all over again??”

There are a lot of potential starting points here, but I encourage my clients to start by first understanding their mask, and getting curious about what’s underneath it.

Masking & What’s Underneath

A lot of people, when they think of masking, picture literally putting on a “mask” that’s an invented, external persona that you’ve created in order to seem like a different person. While that can be a form of masking, it’s actually a bit more broad and subtle than that most of the time.

When I talk about masking, I’m mostly referring to the act of hiding, suppressing, or ignoring traits, feelings, or behaviors that you have. So rather than a mask like you’d wear on Halloween, it’s more like how you might use make up or a blending tool on photoshop to “mask” a blemish.

In other words, masking is less pretending to be something, and more pretending not to be something.

For example, maybe you’ve spent most of your life pretending not to be fidgety. Spending so much energy on sitting still and ignoring your body’s urges to shake your leg, or twirl your hair, or bite your nails, or spin around, and instead try to sit as still as possible at all times. And maybe now there’s this tension in your neck that never fully seems to go away, no matter how much you try to massage it out.

Maybe you’ve pretended not to be sensitive, and learned to either ignore it or hide it when your emotions got “too intense” about things. Maybe you even did this so much that now, you can’t even really tell when you're feeling emotional about something until after the fact, because you learned how to ignore it too well.

Maybe you’ve pretended that it doesn’t bother you when plans are changed last minute, and would instead always be a “go with the flow” type person as you swallow your frustration. And maybe now and then that frustration will bubble to the surface and come out way sharper than you meant it to, because you’d been holding it in for so long.

Masking is quite the double-edged sword for auDHDers because on the one hand, it is exhausting and can even have long term effects on your mental and physical health due to how stressful it is to pretend you’re not who you are.

But on the other hand, it can also be a vital coping skill in order to keep us safe in a society that would rather we didn’t exist - especially if you are an autist of the global majority (BIPOC). For some of us, masking isn’t really a choice - we need to do it in order to get that job, or avoid isolation, or even to keep ourselves alive.

It’s for that reason that I never actually encourage “unmasking” for anyone. Even if your life wouldn’t necessarily be in danger, it is still protecting you from something - otherwise you wouldn’t have started doing it in the first place. If you suddenly went out tomorrow acting as your whole, authentic, neurodivergent self, you’d probably feel like a raw wound exposed to an open flame, and that sensitive nervous system we talked about before will not thank you for that.

What I encourage instead is intentional masking. Becoming aware of when you are masking, why, and how to take care of yourself before & after the fact.

The first step to intentional masking is to understand when and how you’re masking.

Exercise: Who Are You… Really?

I invite you to get really curious about your own masking. Over the next few days or weeks, try to notice when you’re stopping yourself from doing something, or when you’re ignoring a certain need or frustration.

Here are some reflection questions to help you explore and get to know your mask, so you can start being more intentional with it:

Who, or what, are you pretending not to be?

What is something you would never want someone to think about you?

What do you think you can’t do or be in order to be liked/respected/accepted?

What do you have “too much” of that needs to be toned down in front of others?

What would it be like to let even 1% more of this side of yourself out?

Who are you usually around when you feel the urge to mask?

What thoughts or feelings do you have when you mask?

This is a sample taken from my AuDHD Summer Camp Program, a four month virtual summer camp made specifically for autistic ADHDers who want to better understand themselves, learn to overcome shame and people pleasing, and be more compassionate toward themselves. Tiered pricing is available. Registration is open until March 31.

Learn more and sign up here:

Sign Up For AuDHD Summer Camp

Whether or not a stressful or harmful event becomes a trauma doesn’t have anything to do with the actual event itself, and everything to do with how the people around you reacted to the event (or events).

There are lots of people who’ve gone through horrifically tragic things like family members being murdered, assaults, abusive relationships, etc., who don’t necessarily become traumatized by what happened.

They experience emotional distress, of course, but they're able to process what happened, give themselves time to heal, and then move on relatively unaffected. For them, the event is nothing more than an injury.

On the other hand, some people experience those same events and are traumatized by what happened. They aren’t able to process what happened, and wind up either disconnecting, dissociating from, or discounting the event. They aren’t able to heal, and instead go through life with an unaddressed mental/emotional wound that creates cycles which mimic the original event. Their injury becomes a trauma.

This doesn’t just pertain to major events, either, to be clear. Any event that causes stress or harm to you has the potential to become a trauma, no matter how “big” or “small.”

It’s not the scale of the event that matters, which I want to reiterate because as auDHDers, we often experience a ton of seemingly “minor” events that over time pile up on top of each other to eventually become CPTSD. So if it’s not the scale, what makes something a trauma?

The difference lies in how the people who were around you when the event occurred reacted to or witnessed you in that moment (or when they heard about the event if they weren’t there).

For example, say there’s a kid at a carnival with his family. He’s having fun, but at some points the noise level gets too loud and so he covers his ears. His parent could then become a shaming witness, or a loving witness, in that moment.

A loving witness would see him covering his ears and realize that it’s too loud for him, saying something like “Hey, I noticed that you’re covering your ears. Is that because it’s too loud? Do you want to go somewhere quieter?” Here, his pain is seen and validated by someone else, and he gets the message that his discomfort matters, and that the people around him are willing to help him. His need for quiet is recognized, and he’s able to accommodate it by bringing noise cancelling headphones to potentially loud places in the future.

A shaming witness would see the child covering his ears and say something like “Why are you doing that? It’s not that loud. Don’t be so dramatic. Stop being rude, you’re ruining everyone’s fun.” Because his pain is not seen or validated, he gets the message that his discomfort isn’t important, and that expressing discomfort also hurts other people in the process. His need for quiet noise levels gets hidden under a veil of shame, and he learns to hide it next time in order to keep the peace.

Growing up, you learn how to treat and view yourself the way others around you treat and view you. And unfortunately for late-realized auDHDers, this means we have a lot of needs that went unseen and invalidated all throughout our lives that haven’t yet had a chance to be seen by a loving witness.

Instead, much of our authentic selves gets blurred and hidden underneath the lens of shame - which is most unfortunate, because it’s often the most authentic, vulnerable, wise, intelligent parts that wind up getting covered up.

And when you’re spending all of your time trying to cover up those parts and pretend to be something you’re not, you wind up missing out on the parts of you that truly make you you.

It’s no wonder why so many auDHDers have trouble knowing who they are - it’s because you’ve never had a chance to truly be seen without worrying about being shamed for it.

But there is good news: it is never too late for someone to come and be a loving witness for all those messy, scared, hurt, or forgotten parts.

You can also make it a practice to be your own loving witness.

The following reflection questions will help get you started on looking back and learning about where shame started for you. You can use them for as many instances as you like, but I recommend starting with just one for now and working from there.

Exercise: Understanding Past Shaming Witnesses

Can you remember a time from your past where a caregiver, teacher, or other adult made you feel wrong or guilty for expressing a need or emotion?

What messages do you think you learned during that instance?

How do those internalized messages show up for you now as an adult?

Pretend you’ve gone back in time to witness that moment as your current adult self. What would you say to your younger self, as a loving witness?

This is a sample taken from my AuDHD Summer Camp Program, a four month virtual summer camp made specifically for autistic ADHDers who want to better understand themselves, learn to overcome shame and people pleasing, and be in community with others who get it (and can be the best loving witnesses). It starts March 4, and tiered pricing is available. Registration is open until March 31.

Learn more and sign up here:

Sign Up For AuDHD Summer Camp

But for auDHDers, the problem we run into when this is our idea of rest is that those things are usually boring as shit for us.

Which means, when you go to try and rest like everyone always tells you to, you just wind up frustrated at yourself for not being able to “relax correctly” because you get bored and find whatever distraction is nearest (i.e. scrolling on your phone) and never get around to the “relaxing” part.

On the other hand, you might also become so dysregulated from how understimulating typical “relaxation” activities are for ADHDers that you wind up actually having a meltdown from doing too little.

So how do you actually rest as an auDHDer? The truth is, you might never be able to achieve the typical type of rest where you fully “shut off” your whole brain at once. The trick for us, is to instead focus on allowing parts of your brain to rest. That way, those parts of you that are resting can regain energy and sort of “take turns” with the other parts.

For example, one of my favorite ways to rest is to play video games that take a lot of strategizing and mental energy, so that I can take a break from being in my body for a while and give my brain some nice, proverbial clay to play with. On the other hand, I’ve also come to view my part time job at the bakery as a form of rest, because it gives me a chance to move my body and make something with my hands so that I can, in turn, let my brain shut off for a bit and recoup some energy for when I have to get back to coaching.

Some other examples of atypical forms of rest could include reading an interesting book that might offer some new perspectives and challenge your brain, doing an art project, or taking a walk while listening to a podcast. Feel free to get creative and do whatever sounds fun or interesting to you. You can also look at some things you do now for rest and see if you can make them just a tiny bit more interesting or stimulating.

It might sound counterintuitive, but I promise, it works! And if you’d like, please share your unique ways to rest with us in the comments 💜

This is a sample taken from my AuDHD Summer Camp Program, a four month virtual summer camp made specifically for autistic ADHDers who want to better understand themselves, learn to overcome shame and people pleasing, and be in community with others who get it. It starts March 4, and tiered pricing is available.

Learn more and sign up here:

Sign up for AuDHD Summer Camp

Grieving the person that you thought you were, the life you thought you would lead, the accomplishments you thought you would achieve.

Grieving the time lost over the years as you look back and realize how much harder everything has been for you than it needed to be.

Grieving the person you may have become if someone, anyone, had recognized your neurodivergence a little earlier.

Grieving the amount of time you’ve spent trying to become someone who you very much are not.

This grief is one of the hardest, most uncomfortable parts of all of this, which is why a lot of auDHDers tend to avoid it the most. But the thing about unprocessed grief, is that when it goes unchecked, it can manifest as anger and resentment - both toward others, and toward yourself.

Unprocessed grief can also contribute to feeling unsafe, because you’re ignoring a - probably very huge - chunk of your current emotional state, and being ignored is never fun.

In order to truly move through this grief, and begin to finally step into the next version of yourself, you must take the time to mourn what has been lost, so that you can actually make room for the “new” you.

So much mental space is taken up with “what if”s and “should have done”s, and it doesn’t leave much room for the “now I can"s. If you’re spending all your time and energy thinking about all the things that could have been different, or all the time you’ve “wasted,” of course you’re never going to be able to fully move on and step into your future.

In order to embrace the future, you must let go of the past, and part of that letting go involves giving your past self permission to “die.”

I know it sounds a little morbid, and maybe it is. But the good news is, it’s not actually you that’s dying. It’s the stories you’ve told yourself about who you are, the roles you’ve tried to fill that don’t serve you, the values that you thought were yours but that actually belong to someone else.

And once you allow your past self to “die,” it makes some great fertilizer for creating the person that you are becoming. You are a part of nature, and this is how the cycle of life goes. Things are born, they live, then they die and are reabsorbed into the ecosystem to become food for new life.

Exercise: Write a letter to your past self

Set aside some time, no less than 20 minutes and no more than an hour, to write a letter to your past self. In your own words, tell them about all the things that came up for you as you read this section. If it feels right, thank them for all that they did to get you to this place, and forgive them for the times they inadvertently made things more difficult. Let them know that it’s okay for them to let go, because now, you’re going to take care of things from here. Think of some things you wish someone had said you, and say them here.

NOTE: This exercise may be very emotionally heavy, so make sure you have plenty of space and time to take care of yourself after you’ve completed it.

This is a sample taken from my AuDHD Summer Camp Program, a four month virtual summer camp made specifically for autistic ADHDers who want to better understand themselves, learn to overcome shame and people pleasing, and be in community with others who get it. It starts March 4, and tiered pricing is available.

Learn more and sign up here:

Sign up for AuDHD Summer Camp

Even if you don’t have a dissociative disorder (such as OSDD or DID), so many auDHDers say that they feel like they have multiple “parts” of themselves that are at odds with one another.

There’s the ADHD part that wants to do all the things and have all the adventures, and the autistic part that would prefer to sit in a quiet room and do the same thing you’ve always done.

Even in day-to-day conversation, you might say something like “Well, there’s one part of me that wants do to this, and another part that wants to do that.”

We all have parts, and the “part” of this (no-pun-intended) that creates feelings of overwhelm or feeling stuck is when you try to figure out which part is “right” or the “most valid.”

More often than not, this looks like a chaotic internal argument followed by either indecision, or making a choice that later, you wind up regretting.

The way I like to approach parts work with clients is to first, remind them that every single part of them is equally valid.

Then, there’s a metaphor I like to use to help visualize how to work with your parts, rather than letting them run the show, so-to-speak.

Imagine that you and your parts are all on a big party bus, moving through life.

When you feel overwhelmed and out of control, this usually means that one of your parts is in the driver’s seat of the bus, rather than you.

Therefore, in order to regain that sense of control, rather than trying to suppress that part or pretend it doesn’t exist by throwing it out of the bus, you can let that part take a seat in the back while you take hold of the wheel.

As the bus driver, it is your responsibility to listen to your passengers, aka your parts, to conversate with them along the journey, and maybe stop every now and then so someone can get off and use the bathroom.

You can listen to input from your parts and take it into consideration, but ultimately, you get to decide which direction to head.

To be clear, I am not saying that your ADHD and your autism are just “parts” of you.

You are autistic, and you are ADHD. That doesn’t change.

But many of my clients find this metaphor helpful when it comes to bringing a semblance of sense into the chaotic-ness that our brains can turn into sometimes.

I’m going way deeper into concepts like this during AuDHD Summer Camp, including where to get started with identifying your parts and how to balance the multi-faceted and often contradictory nature of the auDHD experience.

Starts on March 4th. Sign up today at the link in my bio or at www.jesdiverges.com/audhdsummercamp, because you know having your own private party bus sounds dope as hell 😎

One of my favorite topics when it comes to auDHD is monotropism.

Simply put, monotropism is the tendency for a person to only be able to focus on, think about, or be interested in one thing at a time.

Anyone can be monotropic, ADHDers tend to be more monotropic, autists tend to be more monotropic than that, and if you’re an auDHDer then, well, congratulations! You won the monotropism lottery!

The term monotropism was first coined by Dinah Murray in 2005 and is believed to be a major underlying feature of autism that can explain almost every autistic trait. There are lots of ways that monotropism impacts auDHD individuals.

One such way is special interests. When you become interested in something as an auDHDer, you tend to become very interested in it and will learn about/engage with said thing as much as you are able to. You might also be able to connect just about everything you come across with your special interest in some way, because your brain is already “primed” to think about your special interests.

Your monotropic brain is also the reason why change and transitions are difficult. When you’re doing a certain task, or are in a certain state, it takes a lot of energy for your brain to be able to switch from focusing on the initial task and into the new one. This is also partly why autistic inertia is a thing. Autistic people can sometimes become so focused on or engulfed in something that we become physically unable to do anything different, and wind up in a freeze/stuck state, even if what we’re doing isn’t fun or comfortable for us.

Monotropism is also the reason why auDHDers tend to interpret things “literally.” Notice the quotes around the word literally. I put those there because a lot of folks even tend to take the word literally… too literally. In reality, even literal interpretations are subjective - meaning they differ from person to person. This is because your monotropic brain will learn what a specific word or phrase means, and then will remember only that specific meaning and apply it moving forward unless you intentionally remember other potential meanings.

On that same vein, monotropism is also why we tend to have routines and do things the same way each time we do them. It’s because the first time you do something, your brain will remember that specific way you learned how to do it, and so you’re only able to do it in that specific order each time, otherwise confusion and overwhelm ensues.

Another fun way this shows up is, if you are in a certain state of mind or are feeling a particular emotion, your monotropic brain will feel like you’re going to be in that state for… forever. This applies to positive and negative emotions.

So for example, say you have a day or two where things are going well for you, you have a good number of spoons, and are able to get a lot done. You might start thinking that you’ve “fully healed” and start planning as though you’re going to have this amount of spoons forever, when that’s not really the case. Alternatively, if you’re in the middle of a meltdown, it can feel like you’re just going to be overwhelmed and panicked for the rest of time, which is definitely not fun.

Being aware of your monotropism isn’t necessarily going to make any of this go away, and in fact, I happen to really like my monotropic brain. Not many people can hyperfocus and deep dive into a topic quite like we can, and having a lot of in-depth knowledge about certain topics has come in handy more than once. But it can definitely help in the self-compassion department when things aren’t going so well to know why your brain does these things.

So where does monotropism come from? It comes from the hyperconnectivity that we have in our brains!

Research has shown that autistic brains actually have way more neural pathways than allistic (non-autistic) brains, and as a result, process about 42% more information at rest than our allistic peers.

That’s at rest, meaning that even when you’re sitting there not doing anything or “using” your brain, you’re still processing a ton more information than the average person. Just imagine how much more information you’re processing when you’re actually using your brain!

This abundance of neural pathways is because autistic children will experience much less neural pruning than non-autistic children. Neural pruning is a process that our brains go through where, as you age and your brain learns what pathways you are using and which you aren’t, it will go through and remove or “prune” the pathways that don't get used so it can focus energy on developing the parts of your brain that are important.

You know how when you have a plant, you’re supposed to cut away the dead parts so that the parts that are still alive can grow stronger? Same concept.

For allistic people, this neural pruning usually ends up in a similarly patterned brain as their peers. If you compare two allistic brains in a brain scan, their brains will tend to light up in a lot of the same areas as each other. But something interesting about us, is that:

1. A lot more of our brains will light up in these same brain scans than allistic brains

2. The pattern that our brains light up in is totally unique to each individual person, meaning no two autistic brains are alike.

This is why they say if you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person.

So, when you realize that your brain is processing a metric shitton of information at once when it’s focused on something, it makes sense that you can only focus on a few things at a time. Otherwise, you’ll quite literally get overloaded with information and could short circuit - which is a cause of many a meltdown.

This hyperconnectivity also explains why it takes auDHDers a little more time to process  or remember information in our brains. We’re not just sifting through a few brain pathways to get what we need. We basically have to travel through our entire brain in order to fully process something.

So, yeah, it’s gonna take a little more time, but it’s not because we’re “slow.” It’s because we literally have the entire Library of Alexandria going on in our heads.

(This is a sample taken from my AuDHD Summer Camp Program, a four month virtual summer camp made specifically for autistic ADHDers who want to better understand themselves, learn to overcome shame and people pleasing,  and be in community with others who get it. It starts March 4, and tiered pricing is available. Learn more by going to my linktree in my bio, or head to www.jesdiverges.com/audhdsummercamp!)

"Ugh, I'm so lazy, I only did half my to do list today. Okay, I'll just add all that stuff to tomorrow's list, and then I'll definitely, for sure do it all tomorrow. I don't want to feel like this again."

Rinse, and repeat.

Until, of course, you end up hitting that inevitable point of no return and totally burn out.

From a recovering overachieving perfectionist: the only way you're ever going to get that sense of accomplishment you're working so hard towards...

...is to lower your damn standards, for the love of god.

No one, I repeat no one, is supposed to be constantly working, 24/7, without a single break or any time for fun.

And anyone who says they are is either a liar, or is sure to hit a hard stopping point eventually. And I mean hard.

Let go of the idea that you can do it all tomorrow. You can't.

Let go of the idea that if you say no to one or two things, it means you're a lazy heathen. You aren't.

Let go of the idea that taking time to rest and recuperate is a "waste of time." It isn't.

Believing that you have to "earn" rest is like telling a child they have to "earn" their meals.

Basic human needs don't need to be earned. They're needs for a reason. And yes, rest is a need, not a luxury reserved for the elite.

Find the time to allow yourself to rest, even if it's for just 5 minutes.

Otherwise, your body will eventually decide for you. Ask me how I know.

I spent a month as a teacher’s aide in an autism classroom.

I have half a master’s in clinical social work.

And I didn't know anything about autism or ADHD until I heard other auDHDers sharing their lived experiences on social media.

When I was first self-diagnosing, I got caught up in so much guilt and shame around it because of the folks who claim that we’re “taking away resources from actually neurodivergent people who need them” and “just looking for excuses/attention.”

There is so much bullshit to unpack here, but I'll try to keep it concise.

First of all, what resources?? Even with an “official” diagnosis, it is almost impossible for auDHDers to find support that actually helps them and makes their lives easier.

If people who shit on self-diagnosis spent as much energy fighting for more accessible and neurodiversity-affirming supports as they do shaming autistics and ADHDers, this wouldn't be nearly as much of a problem.

Second of all, if you truly think all we’re doing is “attention-seeking”… why keep giving us attention in the form of engaging with our posts??

You wanna know what I do when I see something on the internet that I wish wasn't there?

I keep scrolling, or I block them.

I am not so entitled as to think I have the right to tell other people what they are and are not allowed to do with their lives. Period.

Not to mention the fact that “attention-seeking” is just an ableist way of saying “looking for support.”

If all we were looking for was attention, there are way better and simpler ways to go about it than “faking” being autistic or ADHD.

It's not that we want to be disabled, or see it as some “trend” to hop on.

In fact, most of us have spent our lives avoiding attention at all costs, because it just brings more shame and rejection.

Third of all, the process of getting an “official” diagnosis as an adult is inherently inaccessible, especially when it comes to autism assessments.

I did get an official ADHD diagnosis, but when I learned that the autism evaluation would cost thousands of dollars and weeks of grueling assessments (*seriously*) I decided to forego it for the sake of my own mental health.

As I said, there aren't a lot of benefits to an official autism diagnosis as an adult anyway and for me, it would have just done more harm than good.

Speaking of more harm than good, there are a lot of drawbacks to having an official diagnosis of autism. As in, you risk having your own human rights violated for the sake of a piece of paper.

If you're a parent, your co-parent can claim full custody of your children by claiming you're not “mentally fit."

In emergencies, doctors can decide that you don't have the autonomy to make your own medical decisions and refuse care.

And some countries won't let you in *or* out if you have a diagnosis on your record.

All of this is why lived experience is a core value in all the work I do

And it's also why I'm pissed they've decided to use such a huge part of queer and disabled folks life's as a political pawn

I quite literally would be a completely different person without that app, but I'm looking forward to building community here as well - I don't think TikTok will be the same now.

(I wrote this piece a while ago but thought it’d make a good first substack post, especially in light of recent events. Hello everyone! Nice to meet you all.)