Have you ever been asked an unclear interview question, and you tried to answer it but ended up answering it wrong? Maybe you didn’t realize your answer was incorrect until you shared it with your friend, and they pointed it out to you. Then they explain it to you multiple times, but you still do not understand what you did wrong.That sucks right? Well, confusion and misunderstandings are a big part of my life and have been since childhood.
As a child and now as an adult, many things are confusing to me and I have yet to understand them. Why is it considered rude to not make small talk, especially when two people aren’t friends and don’t like each other? Why is it considered rude not to want to hug relatives that you only see 1 to 3 times a year? These are a couple, but of many social situations, I never understood.
I hate being touched. Growing up, I noticed my brothers understood these unspoken rules of society, and I wondered why I didn’t understand like my brothers. I thought hey, I would understand it eventually, but that did not happen. Instead, my life on the daily became an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, where I was similar to Larry. I noticed that my brothers can socialize for hours without getting tired and then spend time with other people later. I could not spend two hours with someone and then be around anyone else for the rest of the day. I would become exhausted.
Therefore, I thought, okay, when I grow up, I will be able to be around people for hours without getting drained. Sike, now an adult, I can be around people for 3 to 4 hours; then I’ll have to hermit. So, I went from having the social stamina of a heavy smoker trying to run half a mile to having the social stamina of a light smoker trying to run a half mile. I prefer spending my time alone. I remember when I asked my mom when I wanted to do stuff, she would always ask or say the following; “Why don’t you do that with a friend ?”, “People do not do that alone.”,”You should be more social and spend less time in your room.” I had friends that wasn’t the issue, but some of the things I would do, I wouldn’t think to ask someone to do it with. My first instinct was to do whatever I did by myself 90% of the time.
I remember feeling like I did not fit and I felt something was wrong with me because I had these things I would misunderstand. I remember thinking that I was confused about many things, which was the reason, I was not in the Gifted and Talented (GT) classes in school. I just thought tons of misunderstandings were part of having ADHD.
I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) at age 8. Once diagnosed, I was put on medications and started seeing a psychiatrist. Even though now I could focus in class, I still had these social struggles. When my youngest brother was diagnosed with ADHD, I was confused. How could my brother have ADHD? My brother never struggled socially and had tons of friends. He understood the unwritten rules. I’m aware that there are things that I do not know about him, and symptoms show up differently in everyone. Still, it did not make sense at the time. Then around my junior year of high school, I developed anxiety and depression. I despised school and honestly had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.
Because of my anxiety and depression, I started seeing a therapist. My therapist, while working with me, diagnosed me with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in addition to the ADHD I already had. The doctor explained autism is a spectrum and that women with ASD have different symptoms. I did not believe her when she first said that because how could I have autism? I babysat a kid with autism; if I had autism, surely I would not be allowed to babysit for a child with autism. It is like letting a blind person drive a car for another blind person. However, I did not fight it and ignored it for a few weeks. A couple weeks later, I reflected upon my life and researched symptoms.
I thought about all the social mishaps, how people overwhelm me, and how going out in public is overwhelming. I remembered something my parents told me—as a toddler my parents noticed some off-things about me and took me to a specialist. They diagnosed me with ASD, Autism Spectrum disorder. Given the diagnosis, my parents wanted a second opinion, along with my mom taking me to acupuncture. While attending acupuncture, she noticed I was becoming more “normal”, whatever the hell that meant and my parents’ worries eased. When I remembered that moment, everything started clicking and that’s when I would admit to being on the spectrum. Once I was able to admit out loud to being on the spectrum, I gradually started to feel more comfortable advocating for myself. In high school, with my supportive parents, I felt comfortable admitting when I needed alone time to recharge my social battery. Additionally, throughout that time and still to this day, my parents will walk through social situations with me and explain these social rules that I do not understand.
Even when things were getting better for me, I noticed I would still try to do things because I thought I needed to. In my freshman year of college, I went through sorority recruitment. I chose to go through sorority recruitment because I assumed it beneficial to have a large group of friends like a sisterhood. I used to believe that having a big circle of friends was necessary. I have always had friends, but I wanted to be in a big group. I did not get into any of the sororities. Apparently, when I have to present skills during the recruitment process that are my major weaknesses, it will obviously end badly. I would keep doing activities that I thought I had to do similar to recruitment because I thought I had to fit in. Given there are plenty of activities in life that you have to do such as paying bills, even if you do not want to. Yet, I was doing a lot of these activities because I thought it was what I needed to do to fit in and for my resume.
Only an unpredicted turn of events in my life would take me to where I am today. During one of my years at college, I had a breakdown. The breakdown was caused by the stress from the job search for post-graduation which spun an existential crisis. I was applying to many jobs because I wanted to have something before I graduated in the spring. Indeed, I applied for jobs in the fall because I wanted to be early. While applying for jobs, I received tons of rejections, which is normal. As a result of the rejections, I decided to modify my strategy, rather than regularly applying, I did the following: obsessively applied to jobs on LinkedIn, obsessively networked, and obsessively tailored my resume, all for a field that seemed to only want engineering majors.
Naturally, I started to question my major, and the point of college began to regret everything I had done over the years and realized college had not prepared me for the real world. I thought I made huge improvements in my social skills and fitting in. I thought I built my professional skills through past work experiences and internships. I felt hopeless and lost. I began to have tons of crying spells, phone calls with my parents, not eating, not sleeping, and forgetting to drink water. Eventually, I broke down. I felt like a failure: I went home.
At home, I took a gap year and ended up at a community college for a semester. At community college, I joined a support group for neurodivergent folk. The support group met weekly and went over strategies to support our neurodivergence. The group also mentioned that even though the world has said many negative things to us we were special and had our own strengths. Through that group, I learned organizational strategies and ways to increase social battery and focus that I still use today. The group also helped me realize I am too hard on myself and need to be kinder to myself.
I learned and felt confident to embrace my strengths of planning ability, researching, and creative thinking in ways I did not realize. As for my weaknesses in social cues, eye contact, having a filter, etc, naturally, the gap is larger, and all I can do is my best to learn and grow. In addition to discovering my strengths, the biggest takeaway from the group was I purchased earplugs to carry with me and wear when I get overstimulated in public. Wearing earplugs has changed my life. They have increased my social battery and my willingness to go out to loud places by 1000%. Personally, it’s not just that I purchased the earplugs, but the willingness to wear them in public and put them in front of people. Eventually, I transferred colleges; now I am here at KU. Here at KU during my first semester, I embraced my strengths of being strong with researching things, and being a creative thinker and found an internship for the summer at the job fair while wearing my earplugs.
