November 6: Calm isn’t the same as fine.

I read something online this week that I wanted to share with you.

“Autistic people can be in crisis yet sound quite calm and logical. It’s so important to believe any person who tells you they are struggling.”

If that smacked you as hard as it hit me, with the power of validation and TRUTH, take a moment.

Breathe.

There’s no rush.

And before I continue, I’d like to say that this, like many other very human things I write about, doesn’t apply to only one group. It’s not just Autistic people. It’s many people who may not respond to upset and conflict in the ways you might expect.

This hit me SO HARD.

My primary relationship before my current partner signaled the beginning of the end during a car fight (I hate those, don’t you?), when he said to me, “How was I supposed to know you were upset? You never actually seemed upset.”

Mutha… I TOLD YOU!

Ugh.

That moment, when I realized I would never be taken seriously unless I raised my voice and “acted upset,” was the moment I began to question EVERYTHING.

And although it took me a year and a half, that was the crack, it had me looking at every part of our relationship and finding the incompatibilities, the bits that fell short, and all of the things that told me we were not the best fit for each other.

And it ended.

Not because he was a bad person.

Not because I didn’t love him.

But because to continue a relationship with him, I would have to perform emotions the way he understood them to communicate.

I could never just be myself and feel understood.

That was over a decade before I was diagnosed AuDHD, and 3 1/2 years after I was misdiagnosed ASPD.

But whatever kind of freak I thought I was (and I did), I knew that I could not live the rest of my life being consistently misunderstood.

I’m sharing this so that if you’re like me, you too can feel seen.

And if you’re not like me, hopefully you can give the gift of feeling seen to someone you care about.

Maybe someone Autistic.
Maybe someone who has learned to suppress their emotions and intellectualize their feelings.
Maybe just someone having an off day who still craves to be heard.

If you’re the one saying the words and watching them bounce off, or you suspect someone you love is telling you something you keep missing, let’s talk about it.

Book a free 15-minute Big Ask consultation with me.

Bring the thing you’ve been saying that nobody seems to hear, and we’ll look at where the signal is getting lost and what you actually want instead.

👉 https://my.curiouser.life/15-minutes-big-ask

--
Rev Heather, aka Nookie, LUQ
https://my.curiouser.life
+1-855-712-5433 (toll-free)

P.S. Hit reply and tell me: have you ever been told you didn’t seem upset when you were? Or have you been the one who missed it?

I want to hear your side of it.