There are times when I absolutely devour every possible piece of a thing. I mean this both literally, when I get too hangry, and figuratively when I positively become obsessed with a fictional world or idea or historical era or whatever. Most recently it’s been Warhammer Kill Team. Besides slapping together terrain and models, I’ve been eating up the rules and lore and scoping out every podcast or battle report I can.

Contrast this with, say, my current Pathfinder campaign. I have to quite honestly force myself to look over my notes and campaign guide for an hour before game time. It’s a real struggle.

This has been true of my entire life: if there’s excitement, I’m all-in; if not, the task nears impossibility.

At the risk of repeating myself, interest and engagement wane for every human person but neurodivergence deeply exaggerates such normal symptoms of humanity. So gorging myself on a particular thing, without escape, while ignoring more objectively pressing things is, well, not normal.

The realization is helpful, as they often are, because it gives me a sense of relief and a clear course forward. Without that I’m left to my own courses of action and these largely include (a) beating myself up and (b) sulking.

Understanding that I’m not just a screw-up, but that I have a condition that causes my brain to function a particular way, is immensely relieving. It doesn’t change the fact that things are imperfect but it creates an objective target for me to approach as opposed to the subjective target of “myself.”

A final example of this type of realization came in a lecture I watched in which Dr. Dodson reframes ADHD as not just a neurological deficit but an entirely different type of nervous system. Along with that comes the symptom referred to as rejection sensitivity disorder. For one reason or another, when I sense that something is off I take it as rejection. It becomes personal. It’s my fault.

Being able to see this as a product of my brain’s functionality (or dysfunction) is palatable. It lets me hold the feeling at arm’s length and look at it objectively and not spiral into a puddle of emotion.