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Sensory Stuff and Masking




3 women with a paper bag over their heads with butterflies and questionmarks


A big part of my AuDHD diagnosis has been making sense of all of my sensory stuff and masking. Sensory stuff is the things that happen that make me have to work hard to pay attention, regulate myself, and be able to participate in life in general. Masking is hiding that it's happening.


For me, if I get over sensified, I start to shut down. Things stop making sense, and I have a hard time talking. It's when masking happens, and it's so weird to think about that for 53 years I've been alive and not known what was happening to me, just that for some reason I would internally feel like I was losing my shit while externally I was acting like everything was fine.


Living in a dual world is a mind fuck. It is one of the mind fuckiest mind fucks. Having two completely different experiences at the same time without anyone noticing is also a mind fuck. How is it possible that I can be melting down internally while at the same time doing regular everyday stuff? Things like giving my order at a restaurant, making small talk, driving, grocery shopping, taking a walk, working, at the doctor, the vet, the dentist, or getting a haircut. In therapy! Externally looking fine, internally at that moment in movies where the villain is about to push the button that blows up the whole world.


I've been told I was too sensitive my whole life. "Our little drama queen" is what my mom still calls me sometimes. I'm a sensitive and intense person who learned to mask big time. I had to. When you're in a world where a hangnail, clutter, or a smell can ruin your morning, and no one gets it, you have to learn to cope somehow.


When you don't know that your sensitivity and intensity is your neurotype and not a personal failing- it makes a life built on the foundation of: you don't know what you're doing, ever.


It makes a life survived by masking.


It hurts to think about. I feel so sad for the me with all these feelings that were way too big for me that no one, especially me, understood how to manage. Sad for decades of me living with ADHD and Autism without a clue. I imagine the stacks and stacks of days I spent feeling confused, like I was looking for lost car keys for 53 years. I didn't understand why no one would tell me where the keys were, why it felt like everyone knew where the keys were and wouldn't tell me- a game of hot/cold that was never going to end.


It makes me so angry that the world is set up in this way that difference is seen as a bad thing. That being normal is the thing we should covet most. It's so fucking boring. I think about little weirdo me in second grade- sensitive, intense- what if instead of labeling me a problem child who talked too much and was always in trouble...what if. I couldn't conform, not because I was willful, or bad- but because of who I am.


It makes me angry that in 2024 we exist as a culture the way I lived my whole life- in the dual world of outer 'it's fine' while inside we are shut down and suffering. Pretending. That we can't stop trying to homogenizing our humanity. So much masking.


But, it doesn't surprise me. Humans, gosh, we're so tender and vulnerable. We yearn so hard for belonging. To see ourselves reflected back to us in the world that surrounds us. Hello we say to the world, and we want the world to say hello back. I think of little kids, out there just saying hello and getting judgement and correction back. Institutions act like being imaginative and emotional is misbehaving. It's so inconvenient when people aren't compliant and staying in line! How can we be normal if we're all moving around and talking about weird stuff??? (like little kids do.)


I've been devouring the Divergent Conversations podcast, and I joined an online group called The Nook and both have helped me SO MUCH. Who is am is who I am. Getting diagnosed as AuDHD has led me to the learning that has helped me understand why my sensory stuff is so intense, why I have always felt different from other people. It validates my experience.



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