Needing to Have a Point

The autistic quest for meaning, purpose, depth and authenticity and the joy of finding some

Light showing way through dark woods. Photo by jplenio1 on Freepix

It can be such a mixed bag, delving into the world of neurodivergence. Not because we’re inherently broken, but because we’re often made to feel broken by the misfit of our experiences.

And it’s not that I ever gloss over all the trauma and struggle (I’ve loudly addressed some of these things in previous posts), but sometimes my nervous system just needs to be allowed to take a break from the heaviness and look to something lighter. To spin some of the positives, not in the way of toxic positivity, but to remind myself and others that we’re not a disaster or a mistake (far from it), though some of our circumstances can feel that way. I need this kind of respite, especially at this darker, more pulled-back time of the year when all the overwhelm of the preceding months tends to catch up with me, demanding to be processed towards some sort of tidy-ish conclusion intended to spur me on into yet another year.

What I’m really trying to offer here is an outline for potentially reframing how you look at some of this, especially if you’ve spent years concluding it must be you. In my case, this has been the biggest year ever of realising it was less to do with me and much more to do with looking at it all through the wrong framework, hence the purpose of writing on the topics that I do here.

So, perhaps because it’s Christmas, I’m feeling the pull to write something much more uplifting about the AuDHD experience this week before I take a short pause. I thought a few of us could use it as we approach this deeply ponderous time of year, poised to stir the pot of our recent experiences, a stew which is so often strongly flavoured by the pungent notes of self-judgement or a good handful of rejection sensitivity.

Sometimes my heart just needs to hear that nothing here is broken or wrong, not even my communication style versus the rest of the world. And, for once in my life, I feel like I finally have some concrete evidence that that is true, since starting to lead with my written communication preference over trying so hard to communicate in more typical ways. Moving my blog to Substack has helped end this year on a note of, “well maybe, it wasn’t just me after all”, which is exactly what I needed to hear and yet I almost talked myself of it (more on that later).

Writing here has finally taught me that there’s nothing inherently wrong with my communication style. In fact, I can be quite the relentless communicator, given the right circumstances, and that goes for all of us who find writing easier than communicating face to face (I gather there are quite a few of us). In my case, writing gives pause for thought, allowing me to gather my ideas in the non-linear way that they organically take form before editing for clarity, and because it feels more like authentic me when I express in this way since the mask is dropped, the performance stripped away. Writing allows for the depth that is so often impossible to achieve, or even frowned upon, in spoken conversation. Yet I had become so accustomed to depth and authenticity alarming people, as though I had stripped naked and galloped around the room, even when it they were in written form, when addressed to the wrong audience.

So finding an audience for my writing is no small thing and has provided me with a good solid reason for continuing on with it, which has offered me such a renewed sense of purpose, something that has been sorely absent in the past. I could quite happily spend the rest of my days writing and now I feel like there is some excuse for continuing, something I lacked three short months ago when I was seriously considering stopping forever. Yet I don’t think I am alone in contemplating giving up what we love because it isn’t well met, amongst us neurodivergent folk, and sometimes it is made to feel like the only polite or appropriate option is for us to shut up shop, something I now want to challenge.

There are so many reasons that I write, compelled as I am to do it. I write for meaningful connection, personal catharsis, and the kind of depth I’ve craved all my life: authenticity, vulnerability, discernment, that sense of trust in action when someone meets you honestly with their own version of vulnerability. Some of my tenderest posts here, including my last one, even though it was more controversial in some ways, have been met by such a surprising spirit of openness and preparedness to share similar stories that I have been truly overwhelmed reading some of the comments. This is the kind of depth, authenticity and openness that I mean when I say meaningful connection, and it’s been noticeably missing from my life for years.

So this is the part that feels worth taking a pause at the end of the year to offer up to others too: maybe it’s not you, maybe it’s just the context, and maybe there are spaces where your way of sharing (and it doesn’t have to be writing) becomes a strength. I would hardly have believed it about myself a year ago, but here I am.

As it turns out, it wasn’t that I was inherently unrelatable (as I thought), but that I was sharing in the wrong spaces for that kind of material. I’ve spent literally decades striving to be heard in a corner of the internet where engagements were few and far between but, with one simple shift, here I am with a readership that is rapidly growing every day. It astonishes my eyes and warms my heart.

So it wasn’t so much that my sharings were too raw or too self-exposing (conclusions I had previously drawn), with the result that I kept trying to express myself more like other people, editing myself back to the bone, which is really just another form of masking. Now I realise that I was simply directing them at the wrong audience. It’s been like a long-running metaphor for trying to thrive and succeed in a world designed for typicality, not for us. These kinds of navigational twist can make you feel like such an abject failure and allow rejection sensitivity to run rife and then, with one subtle redirection, everything changes.

Now that I’m having my experiences echoed back to me daily, sometimes hourly, it’s helping me to heal old absolutes: believing I was completely alone, that I might never find people who related to me, that this was how it would always be and that there was no point even trying. I’m so grateful to all of you who take time to engage with my writing and make me feel heard. That kind of being heard can be medicine for the soul, especially when your loneliness hasn’t come from having a quiet life, but from not feeling met where you are.

I think the reason you’re finding me, and I’m finding you, is that we’re drawn to this particular style of engagement. We’re looking for depth and meaning, the two things I hunted down for so long that, for a while, I assumed my only place was in spiritual circles, as I shared about last time. I’m overjoyed to discover I can have those kinds of conversations right here, in something far more grounded and relevant to daily reality. Neurodivergent occupied corners of the internet like this offer me the depth I need, the permission to go wide, and the honesty that makes my soul breathe, without drifting off into escapism, even more masking or toxic positivity.

Looking for that level of connection in the wrong place turns out to be much like searching for something lost in the one “sensible” drawer where it should be, based on how everyone else organises their life, when you know full well you rarely put things there. But when you stop outsourcing your logic and think about how your own brain actually works, the places you instinctively leave things so they’re on hand when you actually need them most, the ones that make perfect sense to you in your practical daily life, you start to get somewhere and the thing you were looking for is often right under your nose. Likewise, Substack is somewhere I was drawn to for quality, truthful and engaging reading matter long before I moved my blog, and now it feels obvious that it’s where I belong as a writer. My biggest stumbling block, for a while, was the imposter syndrome that had me believing I wasn’t good enough (or young enough…) to write there!

At a bigger scale, with my post-diagnosis shift of focus and the reframe of what my neurodivergence actually needs for a more fulfilling life, it’s starting to look like so much of it was a case of wrong place, wrong time until now. I have been trying to live my life “typically” for decades but that’s no longer the case and, the more I make subtle but strategic sideways shifts, the more comfortable and sustainable my life is starting to be at last.

Certainly when it comes to having chronic health, I was stuck in the wrong era for years because pre-Covid times were the veritable dark ages for finding out much about these conditions. The whole business of looking for answers could feel pointless and demoralising during those long dark years when answers were so thin on the ground, and it was exhausting and demotivating to keep looking against the tide of medical lethargy and disinterest. And yet there always was a point, and that point was me, even if I had to keep reminding myself that I was deserving of answers. I was the very point that kept me getting up from the mire and dusting myself off to continue the weary search for clues when nobody else seemed prepared to do anything. If there’s one good thing to have come out of Covid, it’s that information and conversation around mystery chronic health conditions have opened up and gained some momentum even while mainstream coverage remains frustratingly limited.

The same timeframe has also seen conversations around neurodivergence open up wide, which is why this feels like the right time to make it the focus of my writing now. So I’ve now made a conscious switch away from mostly chronic health topics to neurodivergence topics, not because the former lost interest or relevance but because this is where my real interest lies. It’s where I find the most meaningful connections, also the most life-fuel to keep going in a way that feels life affirming versus how writing about struggling health could sometimes feel more saddening than boosting. It feels like the right re-emphasis for me at this time, as a twenty year veteran blogger, and its uplifting me with renewed enthusiasm.

For all of us here, this is a generally better time to be around (could get better…) because neurodiversity has never been more socially accepted, and even, in some corners, celebrated, than it is right now. While certain parties still want to shut us down and negate our very existence, the wild horse has been let out of the stable (where it should never have been kept in the first place) and is now galloping around the paddock, if not quite joyously then at least with some wind in its mane and a little sparkle back in its eyes. With more room to manoeuvre, we get to express ourselves more readily, and to be ourselves more often, without always feeling too threatened to speak our truth out loud. I want to be part of that, to connect over our shared experiences, and to help purge the old distortions that never deserved to be perpetuated. My writing feels thoroughly reinvigorated for having a point at last.

Because the more we air these topics, sharing our lived experience, the more we take solace and power from knowing we were never really alone, it’s just that we were being kept isolated by the walls of faulty opinions perpetuated by others. And there’s a huge difference. Our version of reality was being negated and that is no longer the case, at least not where we all hang out with each other and take our cues from lived experience, not text books or politicians.

Alone in the experience has that “last person left on earth” feeling, stranded and doomed. Whereas isolated is more like being locked in a cell: horrible, yes, but only up until the point you find a key. Keys can be found in many places, for instance, getting diagnosed thus finally validated enough to self-advocate and claim accommodations. Finding other neurodivergent folk, online or through podcast conversations between people that sound just like you (yes, they do exist!), hearing them talk on such relatable topics that it’s like a blast of oxygen. Starting to unmask and set new boundaries, a little more each day. Tweaking the way you work and socialise so that it fits in with you, not the other way round.

And yes, another huge key can be sharing lived experience in the right places to be received well and properly heard, then realising there are others like you who have been through such similar experiences, who think and feel like you and are dealing with daily conundrums just like yours. This sets up the feeling of being in actual dialogue with people, which can be the part that is so desperately missing from so many of our lives because who do we get to talk to, really? In here, it happens all the time.

So realising how much context matters, even for writing, has felt like a metaphor for life itself. It gives me hope for what might get better for all of us, in our own individual ways, as we find the kind of places where we can actually breathe and be ourselves. I used to feel there was very little point in making any effort to be heard, not just as a writer but in general, but now I’m talking to the right people, you people, it turns out there is a point after all. And maybe that can ripple outward into other quarters of my life.

Because in this space it feels like we neurodivergent are all engaging and sharing and generally feeling far less alone, we’re eager and we’re motivated to comment, to share and to keep the dialogue going, which refutes so many of the old concepts about whether we supposedly want to get along or are even capable of being in community in the first place. So many stereotypes are being challenged here, daily, and I love it so much because it’s truly exciting to behold, like we are bursting out of our collective shell. The point is, when there is a point, we really do these things so well but it was highly illogical to persist until there was any point in it, therefore so many of us didn’t do these things in the past. Do you see my point?

And if I seem to be over labouring the need to have a point it’s because, to my AuDHD mind, everything has to have one, otherwise why expend energy doing it…and without one, I simply can’t get started, my on switch won’t work. And so much of what I was doing until now felt pointless, thus I was constantly demotivated and borderline depressed. In fact, there has always been a sort of tarnish to life due to feeling disconnected from purpose in a world driven by motivators that don’t naturally drive me. From the very start, the whole point of following the prescribed path…study hard to regurgitate information so that you pass exams to get a job and make money, to never have any free time and burn out with poor health or midlife crisis thus question the rationale of it all, after which your stamina or capacity to do what you’re naturally best equipped for has drizzled away…has often felt pretty misguided. I always felt like I could predict the likely outcome of all the expected life tracks even before I started so how was I expected to get excited by any of them. This inbuilt capacity for end-game forecasting is such a common autistic trait, but not so great for point-finding in a life framework designed for other people.

In fact, so many popular human rituals seem utterly pointless. Let’s take one trivial seasonal example, the annual Christmas card ceremony. So we chop down trees and spend resources making bits of brightly coloured card, write a mark inside, buy a small square of gummed paper which costs an astonishing 87p, or a whopping £1.70 for first class if you’re running late (which I usually am), and push the whole darned thing through a hole in a wall. Only to expect, nay demand, to receive back an equivalent piece of folded card with another sticky square and a squiggle inside, and nothing of any importance really said. I mean, it’s ludicrous.

So I’ve rebelled against it for years, long before I knew it was autism in action, and as a result my sending pile is a mere five cards, mostly to older family members, but I still bitterly resent it every year. It’s like a silly metaphor for so much communication done neurotypical style, being all about the performance of being seen to do the right thing, not necessarily with meaning. It’s like the cardboard version of small talk, crassly insignificant, whereas if I truly care, I want to share, and hear about, the deeper stuff, what really matters, what’s actually going on in all our lives. But I’ve tried that in the past and, frankly, my newsy Christmas letters of old scared people into a state of such awkwardness around me that I eventually gave them up. In fact there’s a lifelong trend that when I open up to people in my friendliest, most authentic way, they suddenly disappear for months on end.

And this, after all, is the bumper season of small talk, which is so often treated as social glue, the very reason we all get together, but for me it’s spoon-expensive, script-heavy, and strangely pointless when it’s disconnected from meaning. It isn’t that I don’t care. It’s that I care too much to perform a ritualised version of caring. When I meet people infrequently, the last thing I want is a performance of niceness over quality and depth. And that is one of the many reasons I keep being drawn back to written connection, where depth is less “othered” and where taking up space with a lot of words isn’t always treated as a social crime.

In fact, for so many years I was made to feel that the wordy part of me was wrong, right from the start of being that hyperlexic kid. Too much said out loud, too intense using too many words and too demanding of people’s attention. So finding spaces where using many words is not only tolerated but welcomed has been quietly life-changing.

This ties into the whole matter of truth versus harmony, which I recently posted a note about because it’s a significant area of friction for me. Most people seem to veer towards maintaining harmony at all costs, but when you can feel the dissonance in the room when people say things they don’t actually mean, done to keep things smooth rather than truthful, it can send my whole nervous system into an alarmed state. My lie-detector instincts start clanging around social situations that are all about making nice and not being genuine, and I would rather receive truth, gently delivered, than the kind of social smoothness that asks everyone to pretend. Which brings me back again to writing, shared in appropriate spaces, where I can be real and hope for realness back.

Which is why, the more I spread my Substack wings, following the breadcrumb trail of people who engage with my posts to discover what they’re also reading, it’s been a journey into more authenticity and meaning than I’ve been able to enjoy and reciprocate for a long time. I find myself spending far more time reading and replying to posts on here than I ever do with other media because it’s genuinely interesting and feels like I’m finding my folks, people who think deeply, want to join dots, notice patterns, and share lived experience. In fact the very way that people intersect on here is its own sort of pattern or map, leading me deeper into the territory of exploring some of the common trends that I’m so eager to hear about from lived experience, as I continue to explore my own mixed neurotypes through the mirrored lens of others.

This has felt like such a massive transformation on the inside that I can hardly put it into words. Until not that long ago, I used to think my life was a plate of cold leftovers nobody else wanted, because everyone else was living the authorised life and mine was just the cast-off version. Especially when it came to communication, I was left to feel like my preferences around writing my thoughts down over verbal communication, particularly when it matters (I’ve always tended to turn to letters, emails, online messages) were the “less-than” version. Also that I was better off being mute than facing constant disparagement for using too many words but that doesn’t seem to be the case here and far from it.

We’re told that social media has killed the written word, that nobody reads anymore, that attention span has withered…but I’d like to warrant that many of us neurodivergent folk get far more out of these wordy kinds of engagements than the popular alternatives, because we are getting fed at the soul level. The content is deep and it affirms the intensity and beauty, yes even the pain, of being alive. Because even pain feels less isolating for being talked about rather than stepped over, yet in the normative world pain is still one of the great taboos, whether emotional or physical. Try naming it and you can feel the shutters come down immediately.

Yet there is such value in delving deeply and fearlessly into topics such as these. I know I certainly feel like this and that nothing is wrong or wasted, not even the worst bits, as long as I’m not shut down or othered for having lived them or wanting to name them. The sharing is what transforms experience into something usable, and it’s what turns life into something with purpose, even clarity, once you can gain some kind of overview through comparing and contrasting patterns.

I would never have traded the intensity and depth of my autistic experiences for more triviality, not even at the lowest points, because of the richness and profound sensitivity I’ve been party to. However, one of the biggest pains until now was feeling like there was no one around to share it all with, even though I somehow knew that if it could be shared there would be so much merit to crystallising experiences such as ours by way of contrast with, and challenge to, some of the normative perspectives that rule our collective culture (as if they are the only reality that exists). Our realities exist too and they deserve expression, however inconvenient that may be.

And when it comes to this cultural muteness around pain, I sometimes wonder if this is one way chronic pain gets started. Because when pain becomes trapped inside a sensitive nervous system and has nowhere else to go because it isn’t acceptable to air it, especially when it’s invisible or unrelatable kinds of pain, we’re forced to hold it in. So it can end up ranging around the system like a ball bearing inside a Christmas cracker puzzle, bouncing off the sides, working its way through the maze, but eternally trapped inside. Years of doing that with all our emotional and physical sensitivities, and all the added shame and rejection when we try to articulate, can do something to a person over time.

So maybe there’s another point here too, which is not only to be heard, but to give what we carry somewhere to go. Which is why putting my lived reality out there and then having it met, echoed back, and recognised by people who actually relate has felt so cathartic, not in a performative way but in a nervous-system way, as if something trapped has finally been allowed to move out of me into daylight and breathe a little.

In fact one of the driving points of my life, ironically given certain stereotypes of autism, has been this longing to share the best bits, even the hard-won bits, by actively sharing it all with others, like some sort of collaborative science project or a pooling of wisdom assets. As presumably drives many a compulsive writer past and present, I’ve been driven along by this craving to be in some kind of “helpful mode” through my writing for so very long, even at times when I’ve been almost too exhausted to write and yet I kept hard at it. In fact my one and only ambition as a child was to become a writer…until I reached an age when I adopted the belief, mid teens, that I had nothing much to share because nothing I had to offer was apparently of any interest or relevance to others. Well, maybe it is possible and I can be helpful after all, even when my life has been less mainstream.

I also think when people come together and see themselves reflected back, we de-traumatise a little. Like an ice block melting, we become more receptive to insights that astound us after years of going it alone. When we find ourselves in the experiences of others, and then notice others finding themselves in even some of the most isolating and least relatable (or so we think) of ours, we are so very glad we had the courage to speak out, or at least I know I am. That’s the powerful paradox of it all…that the very things that separated us all this time are now connecting us all the more powerfully.

In my case, this is all starting to thaw out some sort of emotional rigour mortis in my cells from a lifetime of trauma responses; that compulsive muscle-braced crash-stance rigidity held in my body for years, adopted to pre-empt the almost inevitable hurts I have learned to expect. As those nervous system responses soften, they seem to be allowing healing in ways I didn’t even know I needed.

So I’m noticing it daily, how some small part of my worry mind can finally go a little quieter from the not-so-small factor of feeling heard. How my endlessly looping thoughts can start to let go of some of their compulsiveness from being able to offload some of the old stories and then have them validated through recognition and shared fragility from kindly commenters. How I am starting to notice some subtle sensations of feeling warmed and held by daily gestures of care and commentary that make me feel less invisible. And how I’m sleeping more deeply, waking more refreshed than I have for a long time. I wish for all of these things for my audience this Christmas. These are some of the things that connection and receiving validation can do for us, like rain on the desert of our nervous systems springing flowers into life.

So I wanted to share these thought threads to express my gratitude, and to explore the gift, value, and power of persisting with connection in our own unique ways. To encourage others to dare to reach out, but above all to do it in ways that work for us, so our efforts don’t keep getting met by deaf ears or constant rebuff. If you’re not being heard in one place, move on to where it might be more receptive, but don’t give up and please don’t assume it’s just you.

And just one caveat: I do appreciate that none of this has been easy for so many of us in the past and brings along with it the potential for some trauma if we haven’t always been met well in the past. So when we find more comfortable spaces to become more visible in, we need to approach them gently and without putting pressure on ourselves. Above all, without overwhelming any ingrained reticence to be seen, which can be profound if you’ve had to stay invisible for a long time in order to stay safe.

Because I too have phases where all I want is to connect and be heard, followed by even longer phases where I want to disappear completely. Both are valid impulses and both must be allowed to exist within me if I am to thrive. Respecting those contradictions is part of my ongoing work now. No more pushing myself into what doesn’t feel safe, because my capacity is variable and I need to honour that.

In fact I so nearly didn’t start this Substack at all and it was a very close thing. Once decided, I urged myself to postpone it until I was feeling much better, which really meant strong enough to deal with what I assumed would be inevitable disappointment and the sharp dread, or regret, of being seen as has so often hit me in the past. I’m so glad I took the leap yet I still reserve the right for it to ebb and flow according to self-regulation needs, which are the higher priority than regular output. If I ever need to pause then pause I will, and trusting that this small print exists is just so important to my ability to write at all.

At this point, I feel genuinely optimistic about where this kind of connection can lead for anyone who has not only sat on the fence about expressing themselves, but cowered behind it as I used to do. Many of us have so much to express, and others like me are genuinely hungry to hear it.

And I’m not saying any of this as a smug little victory lap… more as a signpost for anyone who might need it. Let’s stop feeling inherently shut down by our neurotypes and keep finding other ways to be heard, trusting that we’re now entering safer spaces to be all that we are. Most of all, let’s not rule out connection itself just because we’ve had such a bruising time with it in the wrong contexts. Through whatever device works for us, could be art, could be knitting, could be software design, let’s put it out there and stand behind it, harvesting its many benefits and feeding its fuel to our sense of belonging.

Here on Substack, it can be as trivial-seeming as making ourselves more visible by saying thank you to someone whose sharing touched us, which is no small thing when we are used to hovering behind the scene. I try to comment on at least one post per day and its usually many more, which is my way of saying thank you, I see you, to others. And that’s what I’m doing right here as my wrap-up for the year… thanking all of you who have touched me through your engagement, your recognition, and your incredible kindness. It’s truly mattered.

Whatever this year has brought you, I sincerely hope you feel less alone in it than when it first started, and that 2026 brings you much more of the good stuff. I’m set for a very quiet, boundaries-in-place Christmas, but I’ll see you on the other side.