My NeuroSparkles and My Work
There’s more to say about both of these things, but I was diagnosed with ADHD in the summer of 2022, and with Autism in the spring of 2024. So here I am, firmly in my mid-40s, and I finally have some insights into why I have felt broken, overwhelmed, and utterly flummoxed by life throughout my time on earth thus far.
While my ADHD diagnosis was helpful to me, it’s really been claiming my autism that has felt like I’ve finally gotten the cheat code to my life. I just understand how I work in ways that were never available to me before. There are A LOT of biases and misconceptions about autism, and I can talk more about that later, and at the risk of leaning into my own internalized ableism, here are some things I would love for you to know about me and my autism:
1. I think that autism is a major reason that I am good at my jobs.
I’ve been studying people and their emotions for as long as I can remember, trying to figure out social norms. How much emotion is allowed to show in public? How much is too much? What kinds of things make others uncomfortable? What does it do to a person to hold everything inside? What are the subtle signs that someone is not being honest about how they feel?
I’ve been studying people this way forever because I’ve always been a super sensitive soul and would cry, hard, at the drop of a hat. School was especially hard in this regard. I remember a well-meaning friend telling me “when we get to the high school, you can’t just cry all the time.” So I had all these huge feelings and didn’t really know what to do with them. So I watched. And learned. In my 30s, another friend said “oh: you’re like, an expert observer of the human condition.” And I think: yes.
So this helps me in multiple facets of my professional life:
As a person with huge feelings, I know how to do huge feelings on stage and in my music (though this took a pretty long time to figure out and probably deserves its own post)
As a teacher who was at times very frustrated in their own learning process, I know a lot of the signs that a singer is getting frustrated, or giving up on themselves, or shutting down. Those are the moments where I’ve gotten really good at reaching out, slowing everything down, and giving that person the time and space to tell the truth about what they’re feeling, and to change our course when necessary.
In my trauma work, I see everything. When your eyes lose focus, when your hands start a repetitive gesture, when the lump starts to form in your throat or you get a tear in your eye. Occasionally, I will also feel some things on your behalf; my stomach will knot up or my hands will get cold and I may need to ask: is this yours or mine?
2. My particular lived autism helps me connect dots that might seem unconnectable.
I think this is how I first got curious about the link between trauma and the voice
This is why I’m passionate about including body awareness and emotional intelligence into all of my work. Because none of the things that bother us exist in isolation. Pretending that they did kept me from making progress for a long time. I’m a big picture kinda gal.
3. Because of my big picture thinking, I sometimes suck at details and follow through.
When I have A Big Idea, I just sort of want it to happen and am not always patient with a process, or interested in the appropriate steps of a thing. Sorry.
When something is done in my mind, I can sometimes be Totally Over It and not be interested in continuing to update it and revise it.
One of my biggest ADHD symptoms is Ye Olde Executive Dysfunction. I’m not good at identifying the tasks that make up a thing, and I often feel like I can’t start a thing until I know everything that has to happen, and know that I can do them, ideally in one sitting. You can maybe guess that this can lead to a conundrum of
Not knowing how to start
Not being willing to start
Not feeling like I have the information to start.
So, often, I do not start.
4. I love you and I love that you think of me, but usually I am not going to watch the youtube videos or tiktoks you send me.
Day to day existence is pretty exhausting for me, and sometimes Extra Stuff, even if it’s small and silly and probably takes five seconds of my life, often just feels wayyyyyyyy too hard.
5. I saw a meme not that long ago that many autistic folks interpreted the advice to “do your best” to mean giving 100% of yourself at all times, and doing THE MOST that you can do. And boy howdy, have I ever.
This is how I lived for as long as I can remember, starting in high school where I was in band and chorus, on the swim team, on the newspaper staff, in the musicals, getting great grades and going to church on Sundays. Even when I started my tenure-track job, I still had a massive, national-level volunteer position outside of my school while also teaching a full load of students, writing a book, presenting at conferences, and performing as much as possible in as many places and ways as possible. This was very very very not good for me, throughout my whole life, and probably has contributed greatly to my depression, ongoing issues with migraines, and other generally not-good states of being.
Now that I am building the life of my dreams in Colorado with my love, I am trying really really hard to figure out what sustainable working practices are for me and my very cool, easily overstimulated brain. How would I work if taking care of myself was just as important as whatever work I was doing? Stay tuned!
In short, I’m really good at my jobs. I’m really bad at email. I love you and I see you and that’s very easy for me. I’m a good teacher because I know my shit and because I understand people. It’s okay to remind me of things, especially if I told you I would do something and you’re waiting to hear from me. I also think it’s really important for me to be transparent about all these things. It’s easy to look at my shmoopy pictures with my husband, or to see me post about my fitness pursuits, or time outside, and to think that I have a magically blessed life and nothing is hard for me. Hee hee hee. There are still a lot of parts of me that are just for me (and my poor husband when I’m, like, sobbing for reasons that are unclear or having a hard time getting off the couch on any given day), but I want you to know that I’m out here trying to figure it out just like you are. And I want you to know that change is possible. Healing is possible. Self-knowledge is incredibly powerful. Telling the truth about yourself can help you make progress and start to learn your own cheat codes. Like my wise doctoral mentor Lynn Eustis always said, I’m not the teacher because I have all the answers; I’ve just been walking down the road longer.
