Dear neurokin,

We all have different, individual, parts that make up the whole of us.

Giddiness, euphoric joy and enthusiasm for music, colour and the simple things in life are part of me.

Along with other more solemn parts.

It is a truth universally known that we autistic folk have a serious part to us. Be it our love of sharing the facts that we have gathered and stored. Or the formality with which we express our thoughts and opinions.

Justice and fairness matter greatly to us and will be conveyed as such.

Seriousness is our signature.

Those serious parts of us leave us wide open to ridicule.

Our unusual turn of phrase can often be poked at, examined and turned into a fest of tittering.

I experienced this as a very young child. I was often laughed at for how I said things. I’m finding that the more I ‘unmask’ or try being openly autistic, the more I’m experiencing ridicule again.

As well as being told that some of the expressions I use in my writing are a ‘non sequitur’ I’m also hearing that using words like sensuality and intensity in my descriptions are cringey and ‘not how people talk’.

It makes me feel like I’m back to being that child in the classroom who would be laughed at for my serious, sincere and heartfelt expression.

Maybe it’s my unusual sincerity that invites comments like ‘you’re so sweet’.

To which I darkly think, I’m fifty fucking one, there is nothing sweet about me.

Hearing ‘aw, you’re so sweet’ makes me feel like I’m being patted on the head. As my face reddens, I instantly feel ashamed.

I.Do.Not.Want.To.Be.Fucking.Sweet.

So, I stop commenting on social media posts, substack articles or piping up in group chats for fear of being deemed ‘sweet’ in my sincerity.

Or from being told any of the following:

The trouble with being earnest

• Stop lecturing me

When passionately standing up for myself, or when stating the facts to back up my opinion, I’m often ‘put back in my place’ by being told that I am lecturing, criticising or patronising the person I desperately want to understand me better.

• Stop making a fuss.

This is another thing I’m told when I’m trying to impart the facts or my desire for an alternative course of action.

• The gender bias

Being ‘serious’ as a woman, with the formality of tone that can come from being autistic, doesn’t fit with the gendered bias. The expectation is that women are light hearted, easy, friendly and malleable.

I find that when making serious points, especially within education or health institutions and systems, I am often labelled ‘trouble’ or told that I am being ‘difficult’.

I’d like to be ok with that. I’d like to think to myself fuck it, who cares?!

But the damage from years of not having access to information about what makes me different has conditioned me in the belief that there’s something ‘wrong’ with me and that maybe I am difficult.

And then along comes Mary

Be still, my beating heart. At last I have a poster girl for it being ok to be the ‘serious’ ‘earnest’ one.

Last week, I devoured the first five episodes The Other Bennet Sister, a tv adaptation of Janice Hadlow’s book, in which we meet Mary Bennet, the lesser known sister in Jane Austen’s, Pride and Prejudice.

Ella Bruccoleri beautifully performs the heavily autistic coded Mary Bennet.

Here’s the things I could relate to in Mary:

• Constantly being told that she is annoying. Especially by the narcissistic Mrs Bennet, who shoves poor Mary out of the way in an opening scene.

• She is awkwardly self conscious about wearing glasses.

• She can’t fathom the overly complex social rules.

  • It has to be pointed out to her that if she dances with the lowly Mr Sparrow more than twice she will become an outcast.

• When she struggles to find her place in society or to find a marriage match, she vows to make herself ok with being the ‘intelligent one’ (the geek)

• She loves music and dancing, which she shows overtly in her enthusiasm.

• She wrestles to understand the meaning of poetry, preferring facts instead.

  • until allows herself to feel the poetry and not think it

• Beyond her love of facts, she loves immersing herself in reading about crime.

• She hates playing games that involve physical co-ordination. Until the games are word related, then she’s in her element.

• When she is finally afforded, by her kindly aunt, some liberty to choose colours for her own dresses she goes for the bold, garish and clash’y…. my kinda gal!

Thank you Mary Bennet. For showing endearing, quirky and earnest qualities that make me feel ok about sometimes being the serious one.

Five Things For You To Ponder

1. What resonates about having a serious part to you?

2. What does your serious part give you?

3. What challenges does your serious part bring?

4. What goes unsaid about you being earnest or serious?

5. Who do you want to say that unsaid thing to? and, how do you want to say it?

Leave a comment

Andrea x

If you enjoy my articles, want to explore everything in the archive and can support we are neurokin with a paid subscription it’s massively appreciated.

Support With Paid Subsciption

Dear neurokin,

‘I’m confused…’

These are words I hear most week’s, when receiving feedback about my writing from the other writers on my two year creative writing programme.

I was struck by this feedback ‘I’m confused, in this bit she’s confidently striding towards him and then she’s unsure of his feelings’

Of course, I can relate to this sentiment so much…

Read more

Thank you to everyone who tuned into our Substack Live - a first for both of us!

Here’s the recording of our conversation for you to enjoy at your leisure.

Lisa shared how her neurodivergent deep interest in family history and her strengths are colliding into clarity on her dream job:

• Love of research

• Pattern recognition

• Curiosity about places and feeling intuitively drawn to certain places in the world

• Systemic thinking

• Love of maps

• Hyperfocus

• Dopamine hits from research leading to discovery

If you want to find out more about ’s work in genealogy and research go and check out her Substack

The Ancestor Audit

I’m on a journey to verify my family tree, one ancestor at a time. I’m sharing the discoveries, the dead ends, and the methods that move me forward. If you’re rebuilding your own tree or looking for company along the way, I’d love for you to join me.

By Lisa Rex

And Ancestor Audit YouTube

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this conversation. Is it helping you to think about how your deep interests and strengths collide? What’s your dream job?

Leave a comment

Get in touch with me if you would like to be in conversation about what’s opening up for you about your dream job.

Andrea x

If you enjoy my articles and can support we are neurokin with a paid subscription it’s massively appreciated.

Support with paid subscription

Dear neurokin,

Belong…we are neurokin is all about learning and growth as we move beyond the discovery phase of our neurodivergence.

I also love to celebrate and shine a light on the great work neurokin are doing - using our neurodivergent strengths to bring fulfilment in our work.

For many of us late life neurodivergent discovery brings a sense of our …

Read more

Dear neurokin,

Thank you so much for reading, liking or commenting on the articles I’ve written this year. I’m appreciative to every single one of you who subscribes to we are neurokin.

Ring out, wild bells

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
   The flying cloud, the frosty light:
   The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells and let him die…

Read more

Dear neurokin,

With this month’s neurokin practitioner at the helm of the LEARN session you are in for a treat.

In our conversation we cover:

• Hannah’s peace and profit system - a simple and effective way for neurodivergent women to turn your business into a peaceful and profitable one

• we explore the self limiting conditioning and beliefs of neurokin women

• Hannah reframes these limiting beliefs into our evidenced neurodivergent genius qualities

I love Hannah’s energy and deeply respect her knowledge and experience.

I came away from our conversation about shifting your mindset to value your neurdivergent talent and contribution inspired and excited for you, dear neurokin subscriber.

I know that if you are Self Employed neurokin this will be a really valuable learning session for you.

If you’ve experienced

• debilitating burnout and health crisis from working in ways that don’t work for you

• feel you’re stuck in feast and famine cycles in Self Employment

Hannah share’s her lived experience of what helped her to move beyond burnout and regular energetic system collapses, which she experienced too.

• how working in NT ways can make us feel shame and failure when they don’t work

• Hannah has explored and put in place a way that you can do things differently in your work:

  • work that you love

  • aligned to your nervous system

    that doesn’t burn you out

  • provides you with financial abundance

Other resources Hannah mentioned in her session

Hannah mentions two other resources that you might want to explore if you’re looking to simplify what you spend time on in your business.

Here are two article’s Hannah has written to help you:

• Get off the social media treadmill

• Getting support in place to allow you to use your energy on things you love

If you want to sign up to Hannah’s website for Business Unmasked newsletters or to explore ways to work with Hannah you can do that here

We’d love to know what you’re taking away from this LEARN session with

Leave a comment

Andrea x

This month’s LEARN includes:

• A conversation with Interpersonal Psychotherapist and Therapeutic Coach

• A Learning Resource Alice has developed for Belong subscribers, which includes an Attachment Theory questionnaire for you to identify your attachment type.

I learned so much from this conversation with Alice where she explains in depth:

• friendship challenges for neurodivergent people

• how our friendship patterns can give you clues to your underlying struggles

• The Attachment Theory

• Inner/Outer friendship circles

• Questions for you to consider how you want to shape some of your friendships.

How using the Attachment Theory can help us develop the relationships we want

In the very early days, when I was first discovered I’m autistic, I was part of a learning community which was running workshop about the Attachment theory.

The person running it is a Dating Coach and I arrived at the workshop looking for more insight into how to communicate better with my partner.

I was in for quite a few surprises in that workshop! I learned a whole lot more about myself than I had anticipated.

I knew I was anxious in all my relationships, because I never seemed to communicate in ways that others did. I was always hyper vigilant for signs of wrongness and I was ‘masking’ difficulties that I wasn’t even aware of.

Learning about how my Attachment type was affecting me in all of my relationships, including my friendships, helped me to understand not only was I anxious but also avoidant.

I really, really wanted to have close connections to people who mattered most to me but was struggling because of the weight of fear I was carrying.

I’d got it so wrong in the past it was making me avoid close connection.

Understanding this, along with really starting to consider which of my friendships were making me feel good and which weren’t, helped me to grow in confidence to be more of myself in friendships I really wanted in my life.

That’s just one of the reasons I thought that covering the Attachment Theory in this month’s LEARN session about Friendship would be really valuable to Belong subscribers.

Your Friendship Learning Resource

A huge thanks to who has been so generous in sharing these resources with Belong…we are neurokin subscribers

Belong Neurodivergent Friendships

3.86MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

We’d love to hear what you got from both the conversation and the learning resource

Leave a comment

Ways that you can connect and work with Alice

• Substack

• follow on Instagram

• Or visit website for more Information

• Join the Waitlist for S.E.C.U.R.E a self paced on demand course to help us

  understand our attachment style influences, communication preferences,

  social energy, boundaries & relationships

Dear neurokin,

In this month’s Belong…we are neurokin our focus is on YOU and your learning. This article will help you to consider the things you want to learn and how you want to grow as a neurodivergent human this year.

This article is packed with learning resources and insight to help you consider how you best learn and the activities you could try out to support you with this

This month, our inspiration comes from a conversation with AuDHD Psychotherapist and Coach, Christine Doyle, who shares how her discovery and acceptance of her own neurodivergence finally gave her access to the right map for her. The right map for her is glowing and shimmering golden and was hidden underneath that normal grey map that so many of us try to follow.

I’ll also be sharing my personal insight on how embracing my own learning preferences has already helped me to access some inspirational learning communities, which are completely free.

Read more

• Deep knowing and honesty; in sharing our own neurodivergent strengths and how you can really embrace yours

• Full of energy and enthusiasm for all that neurodiverg…

Read more

Dear neurokin,

For the month of November in Belong…we are neurokin we’ll be exploring, learning and growing in our understanding of what it means for you to be healing from a late life neurodivergent discovery.

The link between chronic health conditions and neurodivergence

There is a growing understanding of the chronic pain and health conditions that can…

Read more

Dear neurokin,

Coming up in October our focus for LEARN and GROW is raising your awareness of neurodivergent masking.

Realising you’ve spent a lifetime masking; covering up and trying your best to hide your neurodivergence, is a huge part of the unravelling that comes when you make a late life neurodivergent discovery.

That unravelling, looking at your li…

Read more

What a fantastic LEARN session we had in September.

Hosted by the brilliant we learned:

• How our hormones effect:

  • our energy

  • feelings of overwhelm

  • emotions we may experience

  • heightened RSD (Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria)

  • anxiety

  • sleep

• How self understanding and compassion is vital to us during the highs and lows we experience as part of our hormone cycles or …

Read more

I am beyond delighted to tell you that our next TRANSFORM learning experience session is going to be led by the wonderful to help us learn how supporting our hormones can nurture our neurodivergence.

Sophie is a late discoverd autisitic and adhd, menopause and hormone health educator and founder of Hormones on the blink.

Read more

Rebecca Caution was our first ever TRANSFORM neurodivergent practitioner to create a wonderful Breathwork Learning Experience for us.

Rebecca has created two short videos and two audio files for BELONG subscribers to watch and listen to.

Coherence breathwork below.

Read more

One of my key aims with this Belong…we are neurokin community is to bring in the experiences and voices of other late discovered neurokin. I do this in two ways:

• Bringing neurodivergent practitioners in to create learning experiences for you to learn about your neu…

Read more

The Health Risks of Not Knowing You’re Neuordivergent

For so long, before I understood of even had an inkling that I was wired differently, whenever I was feeling overwhelmed, dysregulated, anxious, navigating problems or feeling like something awful was about to…

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The Health Risks of Not Knowing You’re Neuordivergent

For so long, before I understood of even had an inkling that I was wired differently, whenever I was feeling overwhelmed, dysregulated, anxious, navigating problems or feeling like something awful was about to…

Read more

We’ll be holding our first learning experience session on Thursday 27th June at 7pm Together: a Breathwork for Belonging with Rebecca Caution

The session will give you access to a vital tool that you can easily use every day to be able to regulate your nervous system - which is a core part of looking after our neurodivergent bodies and minds that are pr…

Read more