Pretending to Be Neurotypical

Autism might be the key to your depression and anxiety

Over a decade ago, I picked up the book The Highly Sensitive Person, by Dr. Elaine Aron, and immediately related to her message.

Overwhelmed by sensory stimuli? Check.

Trouble handling even “fun” social interactions? Check.

Picking up on subtleties in the environment others miss? Double check.

Aron’s description felt accurate, but she didn’t describe the significant fallout from chronic social exclusion and emotional dysregulation.

Maybe it was the pejorative term “sensitive” I couldn’t swallow?

I tried others: Highly responsive person. Highly perceptive person.

She seemed to be describing a superpower, but I felt unable to fulfill my intellectual potential, and the tips on how to adapt seemed obvious — I’d tried them all and they didn’t help.

Being “highly sensitive” made my life a social hell, and set me up for constant disappointments at school and work.

In addition, I often felt I was perceived as the opposite of “sensitive,” as if I was operating on a different plane than other people. I was viewed as cerebral, logical, and intellectual.

Autism is considered a disability

The term neurodivergent still carries a bias. We are in the minority, an aberration, an outlier, a problem.

An outsider.

The world needs outsiders, as Colin Wilson so eloquently described in his sociological and philosophical masterpiece The Outsider.

He wrote, “The outsider is a social problem.”

Wilson wrote about extraordinary people (usually men) such as Van Gogh, T.E. Lawrence, Nietzsche, and several existential writers. That made his message engaging because the lives of winners are interesting.

Being an outsider is a social problem unless you’re famous.

I‘ve never wanted to be an outsider and if you asked most kids, “Would you like to be different, or like everyone else?” they would choose option B.

The best word we’ve got right now is neurodiverse and it still carries a stigma. So does aspie, autistic, HSP, or a rose by any other name.

We’ve made some strides in understanding why minorities need to be protected, heard, and given support. We even have a few laws. We need to be allowed to be ourselves, without abuse and erasure.

We are genuine, righteous nonconforming essential contributors, but we don’t yet have a word for that in English.

The HSP trait felt intractable but I had hope because, according to online lore, I could lean into my strengths. I quickly put down the book because I knew it was a dead end.

Something smelled off.

In this life, I’ve taken every test I could find and not one disability fit, except the HSP inventory.

It was obvious to me I had a disability, but what?

In high school, I was voted “most intellectual” in my senior class.

I was labeled gifted, but my grades were mediocre and despite multiple degrees, I couldn’t earn much money.

I didn’t get a diagnosis, but I got a lot of opinions.

Lazy, underachiever, slacker, sarcastic, nonconforming, willful, smart-ass.

I was often accused of laziness, but my life felt like a blur of overwhelming toil, new tasks to learn, obligations, and homework assignments.

When I look back, I see how hard I struggled at every juncture and how I was right, and they were wrong.

I wasn’t being willful. I am autistic as a mo-fo.

Failing tests

I am responsible, conscientious, well-educated, and empathetic — and terrible at adulting.

I couldn’t let go of thinking about bad experiences, but I wasn’t OCD. I just had so many bad social experiences, embarrassments, missteps, and miscues.

A “friend” once told me her parents thought I was ugly but on the inside.

I tested for ADHD. Unfortunately, I failed. It was obvious I had trouble with daily tasks, but ADHD was a no-go. The MMPI said I had some compulsivity, gender identity issues, and problems with authority, but nothing to worry about.

I was chronically depressed and anxious despite a constant stream of therapy, self-help, self-examination, diets, exercise, testing, breathing training, drugs, 12-step groups, and meditation.

But the worst part is I was always, always, misunderstood and misperceived.

It’s hard to overstate the pain of constant social exclusion despite massive, ongoing, studied efforts to fit in.

I could never succeed at the subtleties of body language, facial expression, tone of voice, and other critical aspects of group and reciprocal social behavior and communication.

I can get some of it right, but rarely all of it.

I can usually speak up, enunciate, look people in the eye (but not too much), speak slowly, have open body language (but not too open), and speak in a linear way using colloquial and not technical vocabulary — but then I forget to use any intonation and after four seconds, my listener tunes out completely and resents me for being boring.

I can sort of succeed sometimes, with lots of practice and preparation, in the right circumstances, usually a half beat too late, with a sympathetic audience.

Kind people were sweet but often patronizing, while the mean ones ran amuck. I would interpret their kindness as wanting to be friends, but then find out they were just being nice.

I am autistic, and like most women, never got diagnosed.

It’s a relief to have a coherent explanation for why people have so long treated me like a charity case.

I think Aron has added greatly to the discussion of neurodiversity with the HSP category because it helped people like me get a clear but non-threatening description.

She has shown that 15–20% of mammals share this trait, which means if HSP is usually autism, there are a lot of us.

I think it is likely that HSP describes high-functioning autistic people (especially women) and whitewashes the stigma of autism.

I think it describes masking, exhaustion, shyness, and problems with group dynamics in ways that speak to those of us who try and fail socially.

Where the HSP label fails is in suggesting proper behavioral management as the answer. The constant social cuts, nasty remarks, and exclusion will never stop. The onus is put on the autistic individual to “just manage.”

In my experience, that is utterly unrealistic. The world doesn’t like us, and that should frankly be acknowledged.

I’ve been “just managing” for decades as a privileged white girl who has had every advantage toward mastering the art of socializing.

I’m exhausted and lonely.

What I need is for other people to accept me as neurodivergent, not socially deficient.

Autistic or HSP or neurodivergent, we deserve the same dignity as the majority: to be treated with respect.

Ironically sarcastically alone

When I spoke with passion, I sounded sarcastic.

So my default became sarcasm, causing me to make most people uncomfortable.

When I took a chance and expressed sincerity, they didn’t believe me.

When I felt hurt, my face looked angry. When I felt energetic, my body seemed hyper. Fleeting confidence was met with, “Calm down.”

I’ve been called unapproachable, and a co-worker once asked:

“You like to spend time by yourself, don’t you?”

He wasn’t asking out of concern, but to make me feel vulnerable and self-conscious.

I wonder why someone like me would want to spend time alone? [Sarcasm]

During an in-service training, I worked with a partner to demonstrate the expression of awe. My partner said I looked bored.

When I tried to make friends, I felt awkward and clumsy. When I didn’t try to connect, I was boring or snobbish.

I was a walking Rorschach test in a crowd of normies who found me boring when I was emotionally overstimulated, and comical when I was being earnest.

When you are literal, you act earnest, and the socially sophisticated mock you.

My father was a diplomat who often reminded me success in life depends mainly on social skills, so I was trained like a ninja in social acrobatics from a young age.

I can remember my meltdowns as a child when I had to attend events with kids I didn’t know. I would run and hide.

Chronic ill-treatment by friends, family, and society causes depression and anxiety.

I don’t know if my parents were autistic but my mother was diagnosed as bipolar. She died from kidney failure after decades on Lithium, then Depakote when she developed Lithium toxicity in her 70s. She had a Harvard-trained psychiatrist who talked down to her like she was a child.

Being misunderstood, and then blamed for it, causes you to feel crazy. Chronic ill-treatment by friends, family, and society causes depression, anxiety, and despair.

Until I met my husband, I felt no one had ever listened to me. My parents seemed to tolerate me, in the way you do a young child trying to learn to tell a joke or story.

I used to believe I was inept at jokes because I didn’t get enough practice, especially since I was the youngest and often infantilized, but I get it now — my social naivete is something I will never outgrow.

I once had a boyfriend who told me, “You’re terrible at telling jokes.”

Around my parents, I felt myself a disappointment. Did they feel sorry for me? Did they even like me?

My father once told my sister I seemed “self-contained,” and that maybe I would become a writer. I was self-contained. I felt invisible and mute because the pain of constant, chronic, insidious, covert, and overt social rejection is exhausting.

But I figured I’d grow out of it. I did not.

Telling stories in public places

Despite being a writer, I can’t tell a story to save my life.

I conquered punctuation, sentence diagramming, and vocabulary. Because writing requires so much repetition — and my entire life has been practice and repetition — I accidentally got good at writing.

I’ve had numerous experiences telling true stories based on personal experience and being told I was lying. As soon as I begin talking about myself, people look away.

It’s like I’m the most boring person on the planet.

In case you wonder how this affects you socially and in work situations, it’s a disaster.

My social naivete meant I rarely picked up on how unskilled I was, but I always felt a weird vibe, like I’d recently stepped in a steaming pile of turds and was stinking up the conversation.

An awkward echo after I spoke, then a sense of familiar panic and dread. Oh, no, not again.

The sound of nothing

The worst social sphere is groups, where I‘m already overwhelmed by the conflicting energies of too many people — in groups I disappear, ramble, become frazzled by interruptions, and can’t get anyone to follow what I’m saying.

I hunch over, focus on eating or drinking, and become the world’s most intent listener. I speak at the wrong time and don’t speak up when I should.

In meetings, I am continually distracted by someone looking at me as if I am an alien, or the fidgeting of someone next to me. When I speak, the act of speaking causes panic, distraction, and further loss of focus. An observant co-worker sees me struggle and pounces.

Workplace meetings often led in one direction: me being disliked, and sometimes openly ridiculed.

The only way I’m heard is if someone in authority tells everyone to listen to me, and sometimes even that isn’t enough.

I’ve had people stare at me in public, and I don’t know why. I used to assume I was ugly — but it’s not that. It’s my flat expression which, when tired or distracted or upset, I cannot mask.

Now I understand why I can never seem to beat depression and anxiety. I want the social world to be a safe place, but it isn’t.

Imagine only pulling all these experiences together into a coherent picture at the age of 57.

I’m grateful, but I am also amazed at how many wrong turns I’ve taken in trying to pinpoint the source of my suffering.

Maybe I should give myself some credit. I got so good at masking that I deceived myself. The funny thing is, I’ve often wondered if I was masking … something else. Maybe I’m gay and in denial? Maybe smoking pot when I was 14 permanently altered my brain? Maybe I’m a born soldier raised by a family of artistic diplomats?

Nope, it’s autism.

Disclosing autism

I’m afraid to disclose about myself because odds are, I’ll be dismissed, ignored, brushed off, told “that can’t be right”, or “it must be a mild case,” or some combination of all of the above.

Most likely, the person listening will get distracted by the sound of the wind outside and tell me to hold on, I’ll be right back, then never return.

I don’t really expect acquaintances to get it but it would be nice if my friends and family did.

I think most females who identify as HSP are autistic, but the latter term is so pejorative that we cannot, after a lifetime of failure at social acceptance, admit another failure.

Ever want to be Rain Man? That’s right, nobody wants to be Rain Man.

Social failure hurts, but for white women, it’s the ultimate cancelation.

All medical diagnoses have a societal context, and “autistic white women” might require HSP as a bridge. We’ve learned to mask social skills better than anyone else on the planet.

I am afraid to disclose because I know I will not be believed.

I have two master’s degrees, a so-called high IQ, and at 57, I’m surely an adult by now. Yet none of those credentials means much when my body language and tone of voice rub people wrong.

Something’s off. She must be lying.

I know that other autistics, particularly women diagnosed later in life, will understand the pain of confronting this diagnosis. After you’ve spent a lifetime being told you were out of sync, hostile, sarcastic, whining, too sensitive, angry, unfashionable, too logical, illogical, too mentally ill — can you expect to be taken seriously?

I’m working on accepting the fact that I’m probably a writer because it’s the only way I’ve been able to get anyone to pay attention to what I’m saying.

It’s kind of gothically funny that I’m a writer who’s a lousy storyteller.