Reframe Fridays is a weekly conversation starter for our ADHD Moms Support Group. Join us to read + listen to the full article, share your story in the comments, connect with moms who get you and feel seen while growing in community.
The Experience
When I think back to my own experience as a neurodivergent child sitting in the classroom, I was constantly dysregulated.
My body was consistently in that space of fight or flight anticipating the moment when I was going to be humiliated or embarrassed because I was daydreaming and the teacher called on me and I didn't know the answer. Or all of a sudden it was time to get up and move and follow directions, and I had no idea where we were going or what to do.
The embarrassment I felt in having to ask that question made me shrink and feel small. The messages and responses I received on the other end of those moments sparked feelings of shame, like something was wrong with me, and I was somehow less than, less capable, or not as smart as my peers.
The Story
As neurodivergent students, Dr. Susan Baum says we're redirected 40 more times than neurotypicals. So, if you think about it, as neurodivergent people moving through the world, moving through the classrooms, if we're constantly being redirected, we're constantly being told to do it differently than we would naturally do it.
Or, we may feel ashamed or embarrassed because we don't do the thing as well as others in the way that we're “supposed” to do it.
The interesting thing about trauma is that while the incident may not be a big T trauma, those small Ts are registering as traumatic events in our bodies because of what we're making those moments mean about ourselves.
It's not just the moment of being called on in class and feeling embarrassed because I didn't know the answer. That moment passes. It's what I made that moment mean about me, the story I created for myself around the event, and my nervous system response to that moment that is still held in my body. That is the trauma.
The Question
Trauma, neurodivergence, and high sensitivity often coincide with each other- which is why I’ve been thinking lately- is one an impetus for the other? It’s like a what came first, the chicken or the egg, scenario. Or is it all unrelated? (I don’t think so, though.)
As someone who is highly sensitive, neurodivergent, and also holds a lot of complex trauma in my body, I feel like these things are very intertwined for me personally and affect the way I show up. So I’m working on pulling these things apart, understanding what's at the root, and how to work through these stories and subsequent reactions I’ve held on to from my childhood so I can react differently now and better support myself and my kids in the present.
An Example
When I went back to graduate school a couple of years ago and started my master's in cognitive diversity, it was amazing how I was immediately transported back to being that 8-year-old dyslexic girl who dreaded the moment when I would be called on to read aloud in class.
I was a choppy, slower, more deliberate reader as a kid, especially when I was anxious, on the spot, or worried about what everyone else would think about my reading. When put on the spot, my brain would literally go blank, and I wouldn’t have access to the words. Knowing this about myself made me even more anxious and just fueled the fire and fed those pesky negative thought loops. And so the fear of that moment, the anticipation of feeling humiliated, like I looked like I couldn't read or wasn't a good reader, was SO intense and dysregulating to my nervous system. (Side note- why I believe we must STOP cold calling on kids in our classrooms if we want our ND kids to feel safe and available to learn).
After my undergrad work, when I was sitting in that class, the teacher called on me to read. I was in my twenties at this point, a grown adult pursuing my teaching credential, and I immediately felt that familiar panic all over again. That trauma from my youth flooded my nervous system without warning. My heart began to race, my palms began to sweat, and my mind went blank. More panic. I still remember looking around the room at this group of young adults with whom I'd been in class for months. They were staring back at me with disbelief because I could not access the words. I still remember the look on the teacher’s face. All the old stories immediately came flooding back… I’m not smart, I’m not capable; what’s wrong with me? And then the shame.
It's not rational, right? It's not like I wasn't paying attention or that I didn't know how to read the words. Obviously, if I didn't have that trauma response, I would be fully capable of reading the words on that page.
It was this trauma response in my body from childhood that my nervous system immediately took me back to. To that place of feeling like if the teacher calls on me and I don't know the answer or what I say sounds dumb- this means I'm not smart. This means I'm not capable of this. This means I'm ashamed. I'm going to be embarrassed. Everyone's going to think all these things about me. It’s the experiences I had growing up in a world that sent us those messages paired with the story that I made those moments mean about me- that impacts us today.
That's the trauma. And those stories and those beliefs that we create about ourselves are what we carry on into adulthood, and why, 30-plus years later, I can be sitting in a class with lovely, safe people, but I don't feel safe because of my previous experience and the trauma I'm holding in my body.
The other layer here is, so often, as neurodivergent people, we're highly sensitive too, right? And there's this judgment around, what’s wrong with you that: the music is too loud, or the noise level in the classroom is too much for you, or you're distracted by the perfume in the room, the bright lighting, your scratchy sock or your perceived judgment of your teacher. We're so sensitive to our environments in ways that a lot of neurotypical people may not be. (Some neurotypical people are highly sensitive as well.) But less sensitive people just don't experience the world in this same way. And this can lead to a deep-seated feeling of being misunderstood.
So now, when I think about our neurodivergent kids and us as neurodivergent adults and how much more often we are corrected, how many messages are thrown at us that something's wrong with us, that we aren't as capable, that we're not doing it the “right” way, or that we're projects that need to be fixed to be more neurotypical, that messaging is really damaging.
And what's even more harmful are the stories we create around that messaging within ourselves.
So that's a lot of the work that I've been doing now as an adult, becoming aware of it all. There was a point in my graduate work when I could sit there and observe my body immediately going into fight-or-flight and just feeling that panic about being called on in class. I was intellectually able to rationalize that I was safe. If the teacher calls on me, I'm going to be okay.
But because I hadn't really worked through that trauma that was still stored in my body, my nervous system was reacting as though there was a tiger in front of me. My heart would race, I’d start sweating, and all I could think about was how to get out of the moment.
The Reframe
So, what do we do with this as adults? And what do we do with this, now that we have children who are honestly coming up in a system that isn't that different from when we were younger…….
Reframe Fridays is a weekly conversation starter for our ADHD Moms Support Group. Join us to read + listen to the full article, share your story in the comments, connect with moms who get you and feel seen while growing in community.
