After writing yesterday’s piece, something clicked for me: I realised that I’ve spent a lifetime feeling like the difficult one because people kept trying to fix me, not my sensory environment.

My husband kept struggling to communicate with me and he, and the couple’s counsellors we saw, and the counsellors that I saw on my own all saw my behaviour as the problem rather than wondering whether there was something actually different about me. They all saw my coping mechanisms as avoidance – even when I was clearly trying very, very hard to handle and process what was being said. My husband took this personally.

My brain kinda panics, but it panics because it is being flooded with information: factual and emotional data – from the speaker (ie my husband), or the environment, or just my own internal responses to things.

The fear I felt in difficult situations wasn’t necessarily over the content of what was being said, but the sheer quantity and intensity of information being processed – the actual spoken words, the way they were spoken, the searching for the meaning behind the words, and then there’s my own internal reactions, the feelings that come up in me – and by the time I’ve processed a tenth of this data-flood, things have moved on and there is yet more information for me to absorb.

This is intense in emotionally charged one-on-one conversations – but the data-overload happens in more relaxed situations where everything in a room low-level competes for my attention – and my bloody brain doesn’t even seem to try to focus on one source of stimulation.

One counsellor only came close to understanding what happens in my head when she commented that it sounded like I was searching through an old fashioned card-index for a perfect “answer”. Close, but way off. She still thought that it was something I could choose to do differently.

Years of masking in therapy with therapists who just didn’t get it, was an enormous waste of time, money, and energy. The counselling sessions themselves left me feeling even more drained than before – and each session slowly whittled away at my belief in myself that I was an OK human being and a useless piece of s**t.

My husband would get frustrated with me talking in metaphors, I now realise that they are a key way that I make sense and communicate my perception of the world around me. they’re not me trying to be “intellectual” (a way he would dismiss my attempts at communication).

So what is the emotional impact of being so misread?

It left me feeling inadequate, faulty and broken, like I should be trying harder, and as though everybody else could cope with these things and I was just rubbish.

I felt that counsellors thought that I was either incompetent or a fraud because I could cope on a day to day business – hell! I even held down a well paid job that had some public facing and social aspects to it – even if it did drain my batteries. They would see me as being neurotic, an over-thinker, and deliberately avoiding difficult situations.

I suppose the misreading of my situation isn’t anybody’s fault really: doctors, therapists, and partners can only assess things based on the framework of knowledge that they already have. “High-functioning” neurodivergents it seems are a relatively recent discovery.

Nevertheless, it felt horrible – and I feel some grief that life might have been different if I had been recognised sooner. I lost confidence in my ability to communicate. Perhaps my husband and I might have been able to have those conversations necessary for the health and survival of our relationship.

Discovering that the problem might be a hardwire difference in how my brain handles information that itself might have other uses was a revelation. It not me, its the environment … and there are others that suffer in a similar way.

This is a key way in which Richard, my current counsellor, has shifted my perception of therapy from a chore to get through to an encounter that I feel excited about: I feel seen and heard in a way that I never have before. The right counsellor is life-changing!

Realising that my brain isn’t broken, just different, and that I was asking it to do things that it wasn’t designed to do, is a relief. Acceptance opens up opportunities for doing things differently – like ducking out of a good night before it becomes a bad night.

Looking after my social capacity and looking for times where I can recharge or escape enable me to feel more positive about situations.

Learning to leave early without guilt is wonderful. If I can, I say goodbye, but I don’t have to – a few key people know that I am not being rude, I am being overwhelmed and they are OK with that knowledge because I am taking steps towards self-care.