03/10/2026
"Why do you always need to be different? Why can't you just be like everyone else?"
"There's nothing wrong with you — but don't tell people. They won't understand."
I don't know if anyone said those exact words to me. But I heard them anyway — in every raised eyebrow, every "just try harder," every time I was praised for "finally" doing something that cost me everything to do.
So I learned. I learned to perform normal, like everyone else. But no matter how hard I tried, I still ended up "a little weird." I smiled through the overwhelm. I followed rules that made no sense to my brain — rules that made me furious, while I quietly hated myself every time I couldn't follow them.
Nobody told me I had to hide. I just understood, somewhere very young, that being accepted meant not being too much of whatever I actually was.
I was diagnosed AuDHD and PDA as an adult — not as a child who got help early, but as someone who spent decades expecting to hit the same milestones as everyone else. Decades wearing a mask I didn't even know I had on, because I'd worn it since before I could remember not wearing it.
Unlearning that mask isn't simple. It's not "just be yourself now." Here's the part that took me the longest to understand: a good day was never supposed to be measured by how many boxes I checked off a list that was never built for how my brain works. A good day is one where I feel okay with myself — even if nothing on that list got done.
It's grief, for the years spent fighting a body and brain that were never broken — just misunderstood, by me most of all. It's rebuilding, slowly, a relationship with myself, my values, food, and routines — this time with rules I actually recognize as mine.
If you're reading this and something in your chest just tightened — It's ok. You're not too much. You were just never given the instructions that matched your brain
I help late-diagnosed AuDHD & PDA adults do exactly this — starting with the most basic, most loaded place of all: food and daily habits.
What's one thing you're still unlearning, after your diagnosis?
