The Best Trauma-Informed Self-Care for Neurodivergent Survivors
Healing is a totally different ballgame when you’re a neurodivergent survivor.
I was a long-time devotee to therapy for my childhood and adoption trauma. For years, I sat in chairs across from therapists and had encounters both good and bad. From a therapist calling me a nihilist for not wanting children, to another who told me I was too “self-aware,” I saw it all and I tried it all. After years, however, I realized I wasn’t getting the desired effects. Why?
I did the work. I showed up. I changed myself. I learned, learned, and re-learned who I was and what it meant to be the person I wanted to become. Yet I still felt panicked all the time. I felt hopeless and overwhelmed.
The reality, I later discovered, was that I was a neurodivergent person.
I won’t bore you with a vellum scroll of titles that, frankly, aren’t really your concern. Suffice it to say this — there was a reason all that therapy didn’t feel (physically) like it had worked. That reason was that my *nervous system* was wired differently, which had changed the way it sustained damage from over a decade of childhood trauma.
That’s right. There’s a big difference between a neurotypical trauma survivor and a neurodivergent…
