One mind diverged

When I was in kindergarten, my teacher wrote on my report card, “Rebecca is very sensitive and her feelings get hurt easily.”

More than 22 years later — in July 2020 — I came across the term “Highly Sensitive Person,” or HSP for short.

In childhood, I got used to being called “too sensitive” or a “crybaby.” I would lie in bed and wonder if I had been adopted by a family of aliens, because I felt so different from the people in my household. Other nights, I would wonder if I was, in fact, the alien. As I got older, I started to wonder why my sensitivity was considered the negative trait, rather than everyone else’s lack of tact or empathy. By the time I was 18, I had been diagnosed with multiple mental illnesses: depression, anxiety and body dysmorphic disorder (a form of OCD). I chalked up my feelings of alien-ness, otherness and brokenness to those illnesses and tried to function as best I could. However, I couldn’t shake the idea that I had a harder time dealing with my emotions than most others around me.

Things that might upset the average person for an hour would leave my stomach in knots or trigger a depressive episode so intense I could hardly get out of bed. In relationships (romantic or otherwise), I was often overbearing or a doormat with little in-between. Even though things improved with antidepressants and therapy, sometimes I would simply cry because I couldn’t understand what was “wrong” with me. Sometimes, I still do.

But something shifted during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. I looked inward even more than usual. Once the initial “lockdown blues” passed, I noticed my energy levels went up. My depressive episodes became shorter and less frequent than they’d been in ages. For the last three years or so, I had felt I was in a permanent state of burnout. That feeling was finally starting to fade.

Then, scrolling through TikTok one day, I came upon Paige Hennekam (AKA Paige Layle). Hennekam is a 20-year-old autistic woman living in Ontario who often uses her platform to make videos about autism, including myths about the so-called “disorder.” Her video about masking stopped me in my tracks.

Masking, or camouflaging, is basically “hiding aspects of yourself” or “finding ways to hide autism or make it less visible to other people, even if the autistic person is not aware of doing this.” When Hennekam described her experiences, they aligned with much of my own — experiences I’d had since I was a kid.

I didn’t think this necessarily meant I was autistic, but I wondered if some of the traits and behaviours I had previously attributed to anxiety or depression were, in fact, due to some form of neurodivergence that I had yet to realize. I started following more neurodiverse people on social media and reading up on the topic. This is how I learned that my “episodes,” as I called them, are actually meltdowns or shutdowns. My strong sensitivity to grating sounds is, in fact, a sensory processing sensitivity.

I picked up Divergent Mind by Jenara Nerenberg after reading an interview with her from Bitch magazine. This is how I first discovered that I may be — must be — a Highly Sensitive Person. Since then, I’ve started reading Elaine Aron’s The Highly Sensitive Person, which Nerenberg referenced in her own book.

I still suspect I could be autistic or perhaps have ADHD, but without a formal diagnosis, I’m not comfortable saying either. (That’s not to say I’m against self-diagnosis. I am absolutely not. I just don’t want to have to deal with the stigma that comes with it.) I’m currently most comfortable with calling myself an HSP. That said, it’s not a term familiar to everyone and I dread having to explain it. My burnout returned when I spent two months working a retail job that I’ve since left. Perhaps I could’ve avoided this had I tried to express my struggles and neurodivergence to my employers and coworkers instead of breaking under the pressure of masking during every shift, but I doubt they would have been understanding. Few workplaces and classrooms are willing to make space for those of us who think and feel differently from many of our peers.

At the same time, I’ll try to end on a positive note. Thanks to the work of people like Nerenberg and the folks she interviewed in her book, I think we are getting closer to a world that’s more welcoming and accommodating to neurodivergent people.