Understanding what might be part of your wiring, what you learned along the way, and what you may now be ready to change

What if not everything you struggle with is your neurodivergence?

And what if some of it is?

What if some of it is anxiety, some is trauma, some is learned behaviour, some is your nervous system trying to protect you, and some is simply the way your brain has always been wired?

And what if trying to separate all of those things isn't really about finding the “right” label at all?

What if it is about finally understanding you?

Maybe you overthink everything.

Maybe getting started is harder than actually doing the thing.

Maybe you can plan something beautifully and then completely lose interest in it.

Maybe uncertainty sends your nervous system into overdrive.

Maybe you crave connection but find too much social interaction exhausting.

Maybe you experience emotions intensely, avoid things that feel overwhelming, people-please, shut down, need constant reassurance or find yourself repeating patterns you don't really understand.

You may have wondered:

“Is this just how my brain is?”

Or:

“Did something happen to me that made me this way?”

Or perhaps:

“Why do I understand myself so well in some ways, but still seem to keep doing things I don't actually want to do?”

These are important questions.

But perhaps they don't always have one simple answer.

Because human beings are wonderfully complicated.

And sometimes what looks like neurodivergence may have another layer underneath it.

Sometimes what looks like anxiety may be a nervous system responding to years of uncertainty.

Sometimes what looks like avoidance may have started as protection.

Sometimes what looks like a personality trait may actually be something we learned because it helped us survive, belong or feel safe.

And sometimes something really is part of our neurodevelopmental wiring.

The interesting bit is learning to tell the difference.

First, what do we actually mean by neurodivergence?

The word neurodiversity describes the natural variation in human brains and minds.

Neurodivergence is generally used to describe people whose neurological or neurodevelopmental profile differs from what is considered typical.

This can include people who are autistic, have ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia and other neurodevelopmental differences.

Autism and ADHD are understood clinically as neurodevelopmental conditions, meaning they relate to how the brain develops rather than being something a person simply “picked up” through life.

But here's the bit I think can sometimes get lost.

A diagnosis, or a neurodivergent identity, doesn't explain the whole person.

You are not your ADHD.

You are not your autism.

You are not your dyslexia.

You are not your trauma either.

You are a whole human being with a particular nervous system, a particular history, particular strengths, particular vulnerabilities, particular relationships and a lifetime of experiences layered on top.

And that matters.

Because two people can have the same diagnosis and have completely different lives, personalities, coping strategies and experiences.

So perhaps the more useful question isn't:

“Which box do I fit into?”

Perhaps it is:

“What is actually going on for me?”

Your wiring isn't your whole story

Imagine for a moment that your brain is the starting point of the story.

It influences how you experience the world.

How you process information.

How easily you become distracted.

How much stimulation you need.

How you respond to sensory input.

How you manage change.

How you communicate.

How you regulate attention and emotions.

But then life happens.

You grow up in a particular family.

You have particular relationships.

You experience acceptance, rejection, criticism, belonging, loss, safety, instability, encouragement or fear.

You learn what gets you approval.

You learn what gets you into trouble.

You learn what keeps people happy.

You learn what you need to hide.

You learn what you need to do to feel safe.

And your nervous system learns too.

So by adulthood, what you're experiencing may be a fascinating mixture of:

your natural wiring + your nervous system + your learning + your life story.

And sometimes it can be surprisingly difficult to work out which bit is which.

🧠 Your brain, 🌡️ your nervous system, 🧩 your learning and ❤️ your story

One way I find useful to think about this is in four layers.

🧠 Layer 1: Your natural wiring

This is the part that may have been there from the beginning.

Perhaps your brain naturally seeks novelty.

Perhaps you process sensory information differently.

Perhaps you need more structure or predictability.

Perhaps your attention works differently.

Perhaps social communication has always required more conscious effort.

Perhaps you have always been intensely curious, highly focused on particular interests or easily overwhelmed by too much information.

These things may be part of your neurodevelopmental profile.

They aren't necessarily something you have “learned”.

🌡️ Layer 2: Your nervous system

Then there is your nervous system.

Your brain may naturally work a certain way, but your nervous system also responds to what happens around you.

If you have experienced prolonged stress, uncertainty, rejection, conflict or trauma, your system may become particularly alert to danger.

You may become hypervigilant.

You may scan people's faces for signs that something is wrong.

You may struggle to relax when everything is actually okay.

You may freeze, flee, fight or fawn.

You may shut down when things become too much.

And some of those responses can become so familiar that they start to feel like personality.

🧩 Layer 3: What you learned

Then there are the strategies you developed along the way.

Perhaps you learned to make yourself smaller.

Perhaps you became the helpful one.

Perhaps you became incredibly organised because chaos felt unbearable.

Perhaps you became disorganised because trying to keep everything under control became exhausting.

Perhaps you learned to avoid difficult conversations.

Perhaps you learned to over-explain yourself.

Perhaps you became a perfectionist.

Perhaps you learned to keep everyone happy because somebody else's displeasure once felt unsafe.

These strategies often make complete sense when we understand where they came from.

The problem is that something which protected us once isn't necessarily something we still need today.

❤️ Layer 4: Your personal story

And then there is simply you.

Your personality.

Your relationships.

Your experiences.

Your values.

Your beliefs.

Your culture.

Your family.

Your losses.

Your successes.

The things that happened to you.

The things you made happen.

The things you haven't yet made sense of.

All of those things interact.

Which is why trying to explain a whole person using one label can sometimes feel like trying to describe an entire forest by pointing at one tree.

Is it neurodivergence, anxiety or trauma?

Sometimes the answer may be more than one thing.

For example, an autistic person may experience sensory overwhelm because of autistic sensory differences.

They may also become anxious because they've spent years being criticised for reactions they couldn't easily control.

They may then learn to mask those reactions.

The masking may become exhausting.

The exhaustion may increase anxiety.

And eventually the person may present as anxious, withdrawn, perfectionistic or socially avoidant.

So what are we looking at?

Autism?

Anxiety?

Learned coping?

Nervous-system protection?

Possibly all of them.

This is why I think curiosity is often more useful than trying to find a single explanation as quickly as possible.

Instead of:

“Is this my ADHD?”

we might ask:

“What happens here?”

“What does my brain naturally tend to do?”

“What does my nervous system do when I'm stressed?”

“What have I learned to do because of it?”

“And is that strategy still helping me?”

That gives us a much bigger picture.

What about autism and masking?

Masking is a word often used to describe adapting or hiding aspects of yourself in order to fit into social expectations.

For some autistic people, this might mean consciously copying social behaviours, suppressing natural responses, rehearsing conversations or working extremely hard to appear comfortable when they aren't.

The outside world may see someone who is coping brilliantly.

Meanwhile, internally, the person may be working incredibly hard.

The NHS notes that some autistic people learn to adapt so that signs of autism become less noticeable, and that masking can be exhausting and stressful.

This matters because someone who has spent years masking may genuinely struggle to know:

“What is actually me, and what have I learned to do to fit in?”

And again, there may be layers.

The autistic traits aren't something therapy needs to remove.

But the anxiety, shame, exhaustion, people-pleasing or fear that developed around constantly having to hide those traits may absolutely be things someone wants support with.

That's a very different goal.

It's not:

“How do I become less autistic?”

It's:

“How do I understand myself better and stop fighting myself quite so hard?”

And what about ADHD?

ADHD brings another interesting layer to this conversation.

ADHD is a neurodevelopmental condition, and it can affect attention, impulsivity, activity levels, organisation and emotional regulation in different ways.

But people with ADHD don't all look the same.

One person may struggle to start anything.

Another may start twenty things and finish two.

One may be constantly moving.

Another may experience ADHD primarily as a very busy internal world.

One person may thrive on pressure.

Another may become completely overwhelmed by it.

And then there are all the things people can learn because of their experiences with ADHD.

Perhaps you were repeatedly told that you were lazy.

Or careless.

Or not trying hard enough.

Perhaps you learned to procrastinate because tasks became associated with shame.

Perhaps you became a perfectionist because mistakes were punished.

Perhaps you learned to hide how much effort ordinary things take.

So again:

ADHD may be part of the picture.

But it may not be the whole picture.

What if you don't fit neatly into one neurodivergent box?

Here's another reason this can all become rather fascinating.

Neurodivergence isn't a neat collection of separate boxes where you tick one and then move on.

Different neurodevelopmental conditions can overlap or co-occur. Autistic people, for example, may also have ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia or other neurodevelopmental differences.

And then, on top of all of that, there's the person.

Their personality.

Their experiences.

Their relationships.

Their nervous system.

Their coping strategies.

Their family.

Their environment.

Their history.

So perhaps it's not surprising that some people feel like a complete contradiction.

I know this from my own experience of identifying as AuDHD, a commonly used term for co-occurring autism and ADHD.

There have been times when understanding one part of my neurodivergence has made perfect sense, only to find another part of me seems to want something completely different.

One part might crave stimulation, novelty and spontaneity, while another needs predictability, routine and control.

One part might desperately want connection, while another becomes overwhelmed by too much social interaction.

One part might want to jump in and do something immediately, while another wants to analyse every possible outcome.

It can leave you thinking:

“Which one am I?”

Perhaps the answer is:

“Both.”

We don't always fit neatly into one box.

We can have overlapping neurodevelopmental traits, different needs pulling us in different directions, and life experiences layered on top of all of it.

Sometimes those parts complement each other.

Sometimes they clash spectacularly.

And sometimes we end up feeling like a walking contradiction.

But maybe we're not contradictory at all.

Maybe we're simply complex.

And perhaps that's another reason why looking at a person as a whole is so important.

A label can help us understand a particular part of the picture.

But it doesn't have to explain the whole person.

The same behaviour can have a very different story behind it

This is where things get particularly interesting.

Take procrastination.

One person may procrastinate because their ADHD makes task initiation difficult.

Another may procrastinate because they are anxious about getting something wrong.

Another may have learned to avoid tasks because criticism or failure feels threatening.

Another may simply be exhausted.

Another may be overwhelmed because they don't know where to start.

From the outside, all five people may look like they're “just procrastinating”.

But internally, their experiences could be completely different.

The same is true of people-pleasing.

It might be connected to anxiety.

It might have developed in response to a critical or unpredictable environment.

It might be a learned survival strategy.

It might be connected to rejection sensitivity.

It might be part of a person's social conditioning.

Or it might be a mixture of several things.

This is why I don't think we should be too quick to label a behaviour.

The behaviour is what we can see.

The story underneath it is what we need to get curious about.

What about the different parts of us?

Many therapeutic approaches recognise that human beings can experience different “parts” of themselves.

You might have a part that wants to be spontaneous and another that wants everything planned.

A part that desperately wants connection and another that wants to run for the hills when someone gets too close.

A part that says:

“Go on, you can do this.”

And another that immediately responds:

“Absolutely not. Have you seen what happened last time?”

These parts aren't necessarily evidence that something is wrong with us.

Often, they developed for a reason.

One part may be trying to keep us safe.

One may be trying to prevent rejection.

One may be trying to maintain control.

One may be carrying an old fear.

One may simply be trying to make sure we never experience a particular kind of pain again.

This is one reason approaches such as parts work and Internal Family Systems can be interesting.

It's also an area that connects with the way I use the MAP Method within my wider therapeutic work.

MAP is a holistic approach that considers the relationship between the mind, body and emotions, and explores how experiences can continue to influence us, sometimes outside of our conscious awareness.

One way of thinking about this is that our minds can hold onto emotional patterns long after the original situation has passed.

A part of us may still be expecting rejection.

A part may still be looking out for danger.

A part may still believe that we have to be perfect to be safe or accepted.

A part may still be carrying an emotional response that made complete sense at the time, but doesn't necessarily fit our life today.

The intention isn't to get rid of these parts.

They developed for a reason.

It's about helping us understand and work with them, so that those old protective responses don't have to automatically take over when something in the present reminds us of the past.

In my work, I bring MAP together with my wider trauma-informed therapeutic skills.

Emotional Healing Therapy encompasses a range of approaches, including counselling, creative therapy, trauma-informed techniques and MAP, because I don't believe that one approach will necessarily suit every person or every problem.

Sometimes we need to understand something.

Sometimes we need to feel it.

Sometimes we need to express it.

Sometimes we need to process what has been held onto.

And sometimes we need to learn a different way of responding.

The person comes first.

The approach is chosen around the person.

And importantly, this isn't about trying to change someone's underlying neurodivergence.

It's about understanding the whole picture:

What may be part of your natural wiring.

What may have developed through experience.

What your nervous system has learned.

And which patterns you might now want support with.

Because perhaps the most useful question isn't:

“How do I get rid of this part of myself?”

but:

“What happened that made this part of me feel it needed to work so hard?”

And then:

“Does it still need to?”

What about Gabor Maté and the role of our experiences?

There are also clinicians and writers who place greater emphasis on the role of environment, stress and childhood experiences when thinking about ADHD.

Dr Gabor Maté has written specifically about ADD/ADHD in his book Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder. His perspective places strong emphasis on early development, relationships, stress and environmental influences. He has also described his own experience of being diagnosed with ADD.

This is a different emphasis from the mainstream clinical understanding of ADHD as a neurodevelopmental condition, which recognises biological and genetic influences as important. NHS England currently describes ADHD as a neurodevelopmental disorder and notes its strong co-occurrence with autism.

I don't think this means we necessarily have to choose one explanation and reject the other.

It can be useful to ask a broader question:

Could our biology and our experiences both matter?

Our brains develop in relationship with our environment.

Our experiences can shape how we respond to the world.

Our relationships can influence what we learn about ourselves and other people.

And neurodivergent people can experience additional challenges when the environment around them isn't well matched to the way their brains work.

Human beings are complicated.

Our biology matters.

Our environment matters.

Our relationships matter.

Our experiences matter.

Our learning matters.

And the way all of these things interact over time matters too.

My own experience of discovering neurodiversity

I didn't recognise my own neurodiversity until I was in my fifties.

It was actually my therapist who suggested it.

I started looking into it and suddenly things that had always seemed a bit... different about me began to make sense.

Experiences from childhood.

The way I sometimes related to other people.

Things I found incredibly easy that other people seemed to struggle with.

Things that other people seemed to find easy that could completely overwhelm me.

It was almost as though someone had handed me a different map of my own life.

And then I started noticing something else.

Most of my family are neurodiverse too, each with their own particular flavour of “neuro-spiciness”.

Different traits.

Different challenges.

Different ways of dealing with things.

Different combinations of personalities, nervous systems and experiences.

And, unsurprisingly, when you put a whole collection of unique nervous systems and life stories into one family, things can get... interesting.

It helped me understand that neurodivergence doesn't happen in isolation.

We experience it within families.

Within relationships.

Within schools.

Within workplaces.

Within society.

And within our own understanding of ourselves.

I'm not someone who has somehow “figured herself out” and now gets to tell everyone else how to figure themselves out.

I'm still learning.

I'm still noticing things.

I'm still discovering parts of myself.

And honestly, I think that's part of being human.

I am not my disorder.

I am a person.

An individual.

A whole human being with a particular nervous system, a particular history and many different parts of myself.

And so are you.

Neurodivergence isn't something therapy needs to cure

This is really important.

If someone is autistic, therapy doesn't need to make them less autistic.

If someone has ADHD, therapy doesn't need to make them become someone else.

Neurodivergence isn't a character flaw waiting to be corrected.

And it isn't the explanation for every difficulty a person experiences either.

Therapy can, however, help with the things that may have developed around neurodivergence.

Anxiety.

Trauma.

Shame.

Low self-worth.

People-pleasing.

Relationship difficulties.

Masking and the exhaustion that can come with it.

Fear of rejection.

Perfectionism.

Emotional overwhelm.

Learned coping strategies.

Unhelpful beliefs about yourself.

Protective patterns that were once useful but have become restrictive.

The goal isn't:

“How do I become normal?”

Perhaps the better question is:

“How do I understand myself well enough to live in a way that works for me?”

So what can I actually do with all of this?

You don't have to solve your entire psychological history on a Tuesday afternoon.

You can start small.

1. Notice the pattern

Instead of simply saying:

“I always do this.”

Try:

“When does this tend to happen?”

Look for patterns.

What happened immediately before?

Who were you with?

What were you thinking?

What was happening in your body?

2. Ask what might be underneath it

If you procrastinate, is the task boring?

Overwhelming?

Too vague?

Are you afraid of getting it wrong?

Are you exhausted?

Does your brain struggle with starting?

Or is there an emotional response attached to the task?

The behaviour may be the same.

The reason may not be.

3. Separate accommodation from change

This one can be a game-changer.

Some things may need accommodation rather than fixing.

Perhaps you need headphones.

More downtime after socialising.

Written instructions.

A quieter environment.

More structure.

Movement.

Visual reminders.

Different ways of working.

Those aren't failures.

They are ways of working with your brain rather than constantly fighting it.

Other things may genuinely be patterns you want to change.

Learning the difference matters.

4. Get curious about your coping strategies

Ask:

“What does this behaviour do for me?”

Even an apparently unhelpful behaviour usually has a purpose.

Avoidance may reduce anxiety temporarily.

People-pleasing may reduce the fear of rejection.

Perfectionism may create a sense of control.

Overthinking may make uncertainty feel slightly safer.

That doesn't mean you have to keep doing it.

It means you can understand it before you try to change it.

5. Notice your body

Sometimes your body tells you something before your thinking brain catches up.

Tight chest.

Clenched jaw.

Restlessness.

Heavy limbs.

Racing thoughts.

Butterflies.

Shallow breathing.

A sudden urge to escape.

Numbness.

Shutdown.

These can all provide useful information.

Instead of asking only:

“What's wrong with me?”

try:

“What is my nervous system telling me right now?”

6. Don't try to do all of this alone

Self-understanding can be incredibly powerful.

But you don't have to become your own therapist, diagnostician, neuroscientist and emotional archaeologist all at once.

Sometimes having someone alongside you can help you see patterns that are difficult to see from inside your own head.

And if you're wondering whether you may be neurodivergent, remember that reading a list of traits online isn't the same thing as an assessment.

Self-reflection can be useful.

Professional assessment can also be useful where appropriate.

And whichever route you take, the aim should ultimately be greater understanding and appropriate support, not simply collecting another label.

A question to take away

Next time you notice yourself doing something you don't understand, pause before judging yourself.

Instead of:

“Why am I like this?”

try asking:

“What might be going on here?”

Then perhaps:

“Is this part of my natural wiring?”

“Is my nervous system responding to something?”

“Is this something I learned?”

“Is there an old protective part of me trying to help?”

“Or could it be a mixture of several things?”

You don't need to know the answer immediately.

The question itself can create a little space.

And sometimes that space is where change begins.

Maybe we need to get curious before we get labelled

Labels can be incredibly useful.

They can provide language.

Validation.

Understanding.

Access to support.

A sense of belonging.

Sometimes they can explain years of experiences that previously felt confusing.

But a label should be a tool for understanding yourself.

It doesn't have to become the definition of yourself.

Because there is a danger in looking at every behaviour through one particular lens.

If everything becomes:

“That's my ADHD.”

or:

“That's because I'm autistic.”

or:

“That's my trauma.”

we may accidentally stop asking what else might be happening.

Perhaps the more helpful approach is:

“This is part of the picture. What else belongs in the picture?”

Neurodivergent or neurotypical, you're still a person

And this isn't only a conversation for neurodivergent people.

Neurotypical people have nervous systems.

They experience anxiety.

They experience trauma.

They develop coping strategies.

They people-please.

They avoid.

They overthink.

They shut down.

They learn patterns in childhood.

They carry experiences into adulthood.

In other words:

We are all complicated.

The difference is that some people may have particular neurodevelopmental differences layered into that complexity.

That doesn't make one group more interesting, more damaged, more special or more deserving of support.

It simply means our individual maps may look different.

And understanding the map can help us navigate.

So perhaps ask yourself...

What parts of me have always been there?

What parts appeared after something happened?

What have I learned to do to keep myself safe?

What behaviours help me?

Which ones exhaust me?

What does my nervous system do when I feel threatened?

What am I still protecting myself from?

What might I need to accommodate rather than change?

And what might I now be ready to change?

These are much more interesting questions than:

“What's wrong with me?”

Final thought

Maybe the goal isn't to find one perfect explanation for ourselves.

Maybe it's to become curious enough to understand the different pieces.

The wiring.

The nervous system.

The experiences.

The protective strategies.

The relationships.

The personality.

The environment.

The bits we inherited.

The bits we learned.

The bits we've carried for years without ever stopping to ask whether we still need them.

Because when we understand ourselves more deeply, we can make better choices about what needs support, what needs accommodation, what needs acceptance and what we may finally be ready to let go of.

And perhaps that is where real emotional healing begins.

Understanding the wiring.
Understanding the story.
Understanding the protective parts.
Then working out what actually needs help.

That's where emotional healing can begin.

Want to explore this in yourself?

If this has got you wondering which parts of your own patterns might be about how you’re wired, what you’ve learned along the way, what happens when you’re stressed or overwhelmed, or simply your own particular way of being human, I’ve created a little something to help you explore it.

What’s Behind Your Pattern? is a short, seven-question reflection. It’s not a test, there are no scores and it won’t diagnose you with anything.

It simply takes a few everyday situations and asks:

I wonder what might be going on underneath that?

👉 EXPLORE WHAT’S BEHIND YOUR PATTERN →What’s Behind Your Pattern? quiz

 

With Love, Light & Magic

Karen