To be Neurodivergent….
What does that even mean?
What even is neurodivergent? Well to simplify it - it’s the way a person thinks. The way their brain works is different than what would be considered “normal”. And when I say normal, I mean how the majority of people think.
That’s not really something that we thought about growing up, or really knew anything about. For most of my life I have struggled in social settings. I also struggled with dyslexia as a child. I remember having to go to a special class to help teach me to write the correct way. I would literally write things backwards. I found some stuff my mom kept from my elementary school years and I literally spelled my name lirpa. When I see it now it’s hard to imagine my brain seeing it that way, but it did. I still get certain things all mixed up when I’m writing/typing. Like switching my/me or the/they. My brain will say one thing, but I’ll write the other one.
As a kid, I didn’t have a whole lot of friends and I had a very difficult time keeping friends if I did get any. When I look back at it, I honestly don’t even know why I struggled so much, maybe because I was a bit standoffish. But not meaning to be standoffish. I never knew what kind of things to talk about. And I grew up in a very negative house so a lot of the things that I did talk about was very negative as well, and people just don’t wanna hear it. Even at a young age, nobody wants to hear all the negative stuff.
I wrote a post about bullying and I discussed a lot of the issues that I had growing up with bullies, and a part of that was because I was so different, the way that I thought and the way that I did things.
I don’t know if it has to do with genetics or if it has to do with the way that I was raised. My mom was very strict. Didn’t let me go out much. When I got in trouble for anything, she would send me to my room for extended periods of time, where all I had to do was sit by myself and stare at the wall. She didn’t let me go outside and play very often because she didn’t trust me or the kids in my neighborhood. But looking back, that wasn’t always a bad thing, because I know that the kids in my neighborhood were not good kids, and I did do bad things like smoking cigarettes in middle school. But that’s all about learning right, so I didn’t get a whole lot of those opportunities. I started seeing a therapist at around the age of five or six. I remember sitting with him and he taught me Uno, we played a lot of that. I was put on Ritalin at a very young age. I took it up until sixth grade when I decided that I was not going to keep walking to the nurse every lunchtime. I had classes pretty far from the main school, my classes were under the bleachers, which were far back behind the school, and so I just got sick of walking there, especially when it was raining out. I also didn’t wanna be different, although I was very different anyway. I shopped in the boys section until I was in sixth grade, towards the end is when I stopped. I loved wearing dickies, which I really don’t even know why because they weren’t that comfortable.
I was the outcasts of the outcasts, especially when I got into high school. I always struggled with depression, and with just wanting to be seen. I used to cut my arms because I wanted so badly for someone to just notice that something was wrong, but the only person that ever did notice was my mom, and it wasn’t the reaction that I had always hoped for. It was “if you keep doing this, I will send you away just like you seem to want”, when all I ever wanted was for her to say what’s going on, how can we help? What can we do to fix this in a nice way, not I’m gonna send you away because you’re freaking crazy. I’ve learned that often times people aren’t crazy. They’re misunderstood. They wanna be heard and people just wanna look at them like they’re crazy instead.
Here is a list of the common traits of neurodivergent minds. It’s not limited to these either. And there are definitely neurotypical people with some of these traits as well.
For me…. I’m going to highlight the ones that I’ve struggled with throughout my life.
Attention and thinking
Hyperfocus on interests
Difficulty sustaining attention on uninteresting tasks
Easily distracted
Racing thoughts
Thinking in highly creative or unconventional ways
Strong pattern recognition
Sensory processing
Overwhelmed by loud noises, bright lights, certain textures, or strong smells
Seeking sensory input (fidgeting, rocking, tapping)
Feeling exhausted after being in busy environments
Communication
Taking language very literally
Difficulty interpreting sarcasm or social cues
Preferring direct, honest communication
Needing extra time to process conversations
Executive functioning
Difficulty starting tasks
Trouble organizing or prioritizing
Frequently losing items
Time blindness (poor sense of how long tasks take)
Forgetting appointments despite good intentions
Emotional regulation
Intense emotions
Feeling overwhelmed more easily
Difficulty shifting between emotions (this one I learned to get past)
Rejection sensitivity (especially common with ADHD)
Learning
Learning much faster in some areas than others
Needing information presented differently
Exceptional memory for specific topics while forgetting everyday details
Social interaction
Feeling different from peers
Becoming exhausted from socializing (“social fatigue”)
Preferring deep conversations over small talk
Having a few close friends rather than many acquaintances
What neurodivergent does not mean
It doesn’t mean someone:
Has low intelligence.
Has a mental illness.
Cannot live independently.
Needs treatment simply because they’re neurodivergent.
If you struggle with all these things too know you aren’t alone.
Let’s make being different normal!!!!
I would love for you to check out my recently published book, “Between Then and Now”, a collection of 60 poems written between the ages of 15 and 39, it’s currently being sold at Amazon. It’s also available on kindle unlimited.
Stay tuned for my book “Between Now and Hope.” It will be released sometime in 2026. It’s a collection of poems that focus on making this world a better place.
Thank you for taking the time to read my words.
I was an undiagnosed neurodivergent child. I will always get my numbers backwards, even till this day. We undiagnosed neurodivergents went through the whole self hate period as we could not understand why we were the way we were. The anger at not being disciplined enough when discipline had nothing to do with it. Why do I overshare, why did I just do that? There is pain, confusion and frustration when a simple diagnosis could explain so much. So I guess both being diagnosed and misunderstood and being undiagnosed and misunderstood, is equally difficult for a growing child.
April, the details you share about writing your name backward, walking to the nurse for Ritalin, feeling like the outcast of the outcasts, and struggling to be understood give this reflection real lived weight. The moment where you say you wanted someone to notice and ask what was wrong is especially important, since so much pain deepens when people respond to distress with threat or shame. I appreciate how you turn your own story into reassurance for others who may recognize themselves in the traits, the social exhaustion, the sensitivity, or the feeling of being different before they had language for it. Grateful for your honesty and for the way you keep making room for people to feel less alone in how their minds move through the world.