Tag: #neurodivergence

Following the breadcrumbs to understand my brain

Yesterday I went to Liege to do an IQ test with a psychologist. The idea was actually to check whether I had an attention deficit disorder, but part of it was also seeing the overlap between that and whether I am a ‘High Potential Individual’

Apparently, in France/Belgium, they speak a lot more about this idea of being ‘high potential’. What’s been a bit weird about this is that the concept of being ‘gifted’ barely exists in anglophone literature. I’m not really sure what to make of it to be honest.

At the very least, it’s pretty clear that I have a neurodivergent disposition.

Learning to let the mask slip

I’ve regularly had conversations where I’ve noticed I was different.
It’s been hard to put words to this, and whenever I’ve talked about being different to other people they have always tried to reassure me – we are all different in some way, right?
I never thought of myself as demonstrating signs of autism. My understanding was that autism were for those with very exaggerated traits. Even when I saw some resonance with certain common behaviours, I thought of autistic people as showing little regard to emotion, whereas I knew myself as highly emotional and sensitive.
Yet I read an article which highlighted that many traits of autism vary a lot – non-stereotypical autism shows up as being highly empathetic and sensitive, as well as being existential or spiritual beings. These signs of non-stereotypical behaviours are more common for women, ethnic minority and queer/gender non-confirming folk too.
So am I Autistic? Most probably.