There’s a version of you from a few months into your neurocomplex integration journey who would be genuinely exhausting to have dinner with. You’d just learned the word “masking” and used it in every other sentence. You diagnosed your mother’s texting style. You launched a podcast on all that you are learning.
Nobody warned you about this cringey part.
If you’re neurocomplex (autistic, ADHD, gifted, AuDHD, sensory sensitive, some combination the DSM hasn’t caught up to), you already know parts of this story. Here’s the full arc, broken into phases, so you can see where you’ve been and where you’re headed.
17 Phases of Healing From Chronic Misattunement in Neurocomplexity
How neurocomplex people move from self-abandonment to integration, including the messy middle where healing can make you surprisingly self-absorbed.
One note before you start: these phases don’t run in a clean line. You can be in phase 14 with your family and phase 2 at your job, in the same week. Read it less like a staircase and more like weather you cycle through.
1. Mistaking Difference for Defect
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