Growing up highly sensitive and neurodivergent, I wasn’t seen as struggling — I was seen as willful and defiant, seeking control and attention with my needs. Survival meant submission — something I never fully understood or mastered — and it cost me dearly just to exist.
I was not taught to soothe myself.
I was not allowed to understand myself.
In fact, my attempts were discouraged — even punished.
If I had an uncomfortable or overwhelming feeling, it was regarded disobedience and disrespect.
It was regarded as a problem I was speaking into existence.
The responses were shaming, shunning, stonewalling — banishment.
And nobody explained any of it to me. The pain and confusion were devastating.
Nobody said, “Hey, here’s what’s happening. You’re safe. You’re loved. We are here with you.”
My unmasked discomfort became the reason for everything that was wrong.
And I couldn’t process it.
I couldn’t make it make sense.
I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong — and I couldn’t stop doing it — because it was just me: my body, my feelings, my reactions.
I was not taught to regulate.
Now, at 56 years old, I’m trying to learn.
Trying to learn how to stay with myself through discomfort instead of shutting down, spiraling, or abandoning myself the way I was abandoned.
Trying to navigate the panic that comes when my system gets overloaded.
Because it happens fast.
Because trauma rewired my body.
Because sensory integration issues mean I get overstimulated easily — lights, sounds, textures, crowds, too much too fast, any emotional input — and my whole system floods.
And it’s not just the discomfort — it’s the fear of the panic that compounds it.
Terrified: how much will this cost me?
It’s the fear of what happens when I get overwhelmed — because when I was little, the cost of overwhelm was love, inclusion, access.
So I was always anxious.
Anxious about being anxious.
Anxious about getting in trouble for being anxious.
Anxious about ruining everything.
I can’t tell you how many times I heard:
“Why must you ruin everything?”
“Why can’t you just be grateful?”
And I didn’t understand.
I didn’t understand that what they meant was:
- If I were grateful, I wouldn’t burden anyone with my needs.
- If I were considerate, I would figure it out by myself.
- If I were a better kid, I would make it easier for them to be kind to me — by not needing anything.
But I didn’t understand that.
I didn’t understand the code.
I didn’t understand that I was feeling things more intensely than the people around me.
I didn’t understand that what overwhelmed me didn’t even register for them.
And I never could comprehend how in place of comfort, there would be alienation, invalidation, and persecution.
I was raised to believe that any pain of mine- was either imagined or well earned.
Either way, there was no comfort for pain of that sort — for a piece of shit like myself.
No support.
No nurturing.
No safety.
