Apparently, I’m neuro-spicy

Last year, I got a call from my son’s school that he could not stop talking about flipping used bikes on Facebook Marketplace. He was unable to focus on school at all. He was 13 years old at the time and he had just made $350 that weekend selling bikes he fixed up from our town dump. It was the dopamine hit of a lifetime for him. Especially for someone with two forms of ADHD - hyperactive (your body moves constantly) and inattentive (your mind wanders).  People with ADHD, like him, often get hyperfocused on topics and ideas and it’s really hard to shift gears. 

People with autism also have hyperfocus interests and I was wondering if he might be on the spectrum. ADHD and autism are now recognized as frequently co-occurring, closely related conditions. They can be diagnosed together, and some researchers argue they sit on a broader shared continuum. They also share genetic roots. 

That is to say: my son’s neurodiversity came from his parents’ genes. And that got me thinking a lot about myself. 

Never, even for a second before that moment, did I think that I might be neurodiverse. I had assumed that my son got his neurodiversity from his father who shares a lot of similar tendencies. 

I started learning more and more about autism and found this article in Wired Magazine called The Geek Syndrome: Autism—and its milder cousin Asperger's syndrome—is surging among the children of Silicon Valley. Are math-and-tech genes to blame?”  The article discusses how interesting it is that so many kids in Silicon Valley are now getting diagnosed with autism. The premise behind this finding is assorting mating, i.e. that most neurodiverse people find neurodiverse partners and then produce neurodiverse children. The article also explains why so many neurodiverse people are drawn to math and science. 

For the first time ever, I started to wonder “Am I neurodiverse, too?” 

While I was in a session with my own therapist, Jessie, around the time of that phone call from my son’s school, I asked her “You don’t think I’m neurodiverse, do you?” 

And then there was this gigantic pause, followed by a huge grin. And she was like. “Well…I have wondered about that for you.” My therapist is neurodiverse and says she has a real knack for “sniffing out neurodiversity” in others. Her dead giveaway with me, though, was watching how I solve problems. She told me that neurotypical people often solve problems linearly - i.e. step-by-step. I, however, am a systems-thinker. I can simultaneously process multiple datasets to find solutions in parallel. It’s probably one of my greatest strengths as an executive coach - I collect data in conversations with my clients, and while we’re talking, I’m doing a rapid multi-stream root cause analysis. 

Jessie introduced me to the concept of “highly sensitive people” and I have never felt so seen. It’s the idea that some of us are more sensitive to external stimuli than others and have to work hard to take care of our nervous systems. Highly sensitive people often have heightened sensitivity to lights, noises, smells, medicine, and caffeine. Their nervous system is often stretched such that these sensory inputs aren’t just unpleasant - they are overwhelming. Often highly sensitive people turn their homes into sensory sanctuaries of sorts so that they can have a space to regulate their nervous system. For those of you who have been to my house, you get why this is totally me. I literally have 100+ indoor plants and soft twinkle lights in just about every room. Everything has its spot and smells nice. I have zero clutter and spend endless hours figuring out the perfect way to display my book collection. 

Although “highly sensitive person” is not a medical diagnosis, understanding it felt like it explained so much of my life. And while I was going down that rabbit hole, I found out highly-sensitive people and high-functioning autistic people share a ton in common - especially in women. 

Apparently I’m what they call a “late-diagnosed masking autistic woman.”

Back when I was a kid in the nineties, autism wasn’t as commonly discussed - especially in girls and women who can make it look (or “mask”) like neurotypical peers. Think of it this way: there are some of us who walk into a room full of people and automatically know how to navigate the social situation. These people look around, they hop in, they leave, and it was no big deal for them. Maybe it was a little uncomfortable but they can shake it off and move on. And then there are others of us who walk into that room and immediately start studying people and doing equations in our heads to calculate the least awkward way to talk to the most accessible person in the room and then spend an enormous amount of energy figuring out how to engage. It’s work and it’s taxing. It’s not just an introversion/extoversion difference. It’s about how much effort it takes to navigate social interactions. On the outside, these look the same. On the inside, the autistic person is spending significantly more energy and effort understanding and navigating social dynamics. 

Recently I moved into a new neighborhood and met a mom at the dog park who also has an eighth grader. She kindly invited me to dinner with three other eighth grade moms. After that 2 hour dinner, I felt like a train hit me. I needed to go sit in a dark room for another 2 hours to recover. They probably had no idea how much work it was for me to be at that meal with not just one - but three - new people. I was taking in every single detail as data and trying to match their social cues. And when that same mom invited me to meet another group of eighth grade moms in the neighborhood, I graciously declined and suggested that, perhaps, we go on a walk just the two of us instead. 

I’ve always been better one-on-one with people. My parents never understood why I spent so much of my childhood reading and crafting in this tiny nook in my room and why I almost never wanted to socialize on the weekends. When I had friendships, they were always with individuals - not groups - and they were usually pretty intense, close relationships. School wiped me out. I prefered to hang out with the teachers who made way more sense to me. I needed my quiet time to do sensory-rich activities to re-regulate my nervous system to be able to make it through another week of navigating the social complexities of school. 

I always felt like I was much better at studying people than interacting with them. I could see straight through people and understand their behaviors. When I took the Clifton Strengths assessment I was shocked and horrified that my very last strength was empathy. I was like what the actual fuck, I’m an executive coach?! And it’s not like those assessments are diagnoses or even the capital “T” truth - but this was a serious cognitive dissonance for me.  I had a long long conversation with my buddy Claude and I finally understood the difference. Apparently “empathy” in Clifton Strengths refers to “intuitively sensing what others feel.” So what this means is that, while I can have empathy for others, it’s not the fast, automatic reading of neurotypical social cues, things like faces, tone, and subtext. Those cues are data that input into my brain-machine before I come to that same conclusion. 

So why am I sharing this with you? 

The realization that I am neurodiverse - or endearingly rephrased as “neurospicy,” has been a game-changer for me. I haven’t gotten formally diagnosed because I know it’s me; I don’t need a doctor to tell me that. I now go back and have the ability to understand some of my earlier years with a new more compassionate lens for myself. I wasn’t “too difficult” or “too sensitive,” I was wired differently. I wasn’t anti-social, I was naturally self-regulating my nervous system with quiet self-soothing activities.

I am sort of shocked that, at age 46, I finally realized this about myself. The truth is: I think I always knew that something was a little different about me. Now, having the frameworks and languages to understand my internal wiring has helped me really understand how to manage myself and bring out my best. I also don’t feel ashamed when I need to turn off the lights, lie on the floor, and shut my eyes when I feel sensory overloaded. This is just what I need; even after fifteen minutes of silence and darkness and I feel like my battery is recharged.  

I guess I’m sharing this with you because maybe you might be neuro-spicy, too. And maybe that framwork will help you understand yourself, too. So many of us in the STEM field are on some sort of neurodiversity spectrum. And those of us who identify as women - we have likely been able to play the part of someone who is neurotypical for most of our lives, although it is extremely draining. Instead of feeling like there is something wrong with me, I now proudly identify as being neurodiverse and use that knowledge as power to help me not just survive but thrive.  

I now understand even more than ever why Founder to Leader is such a perfect match for me. I love working with scientists and engineers. I understand why MIT was such a great place for me; it was the first time I was surrounded by neurodiverse people like me who are data-driven and often blunt with honesty. MIT felt like a meritocracy without the hidden political agendas driving decision-making that I experienced at Harvard.

Systems-thinking is one of my super-powers that allows me to help early stage founders build healthy organizational systems from the ground up that will lead to successful startups. Because social cues aren’t intuitive to me, I study humans like their behavior is a dataset, allowing me to see things that perhaps others don’t see. 

I’m a little surprised that I’m still learning so much about myself in mid-life but maybe it’s the right time to be able to hold up the mirror with clear vision to see who I am without my ego or other people’s voices getting in the way. And maybe, who knows, this blog post might just inspire you to do some learning about yourself — and that information will help guide you on your own leadership and self-management journey.