On being a neurodivergent woman

[Supercuriousforever]

Do you think being a woman made neurodivergence harder for you? Like do you think life would have been easier if you were male? Did you face some extra challenges along the way?

Personally I don't think it makes a difference being a man or women with autism,it's more about how you cope ,I think

I think it has been harder insofar as my ND was not recognised as such in childhood: had I been male it probably would have been picked up on and recognised for what it is. Other than that, I'm not sure the actual experience of being autistic is harder or easier for women than men.

@InertBird . actually you are right , though males do get diagnosed quicker and noticed sooner ,,with women schools ,colleges don't seem to spot it .
I wasn't diagnosed until age 50 ..a lifetime of being told I was just depressed or it was just anxiety..feel quite cheated actually

100% this

It's been absolutely life changing to finally understand that my lifetime of struggles was not just being a failure/chronic depression/anxiety after all, but I also feel cheated that I didn't know it sooner. Thinking of the life I could have had. But mostly I'm just glad that I know now.

Of course being female makes it harder.

• Cutting-in bras and itchy tights. At a school with mandatory skirts, you get to itch or freeze.
• Menstruation, both the biological effects and the nasty uncomfortable products. Itchy pad or painful tampon insertion: you must choose!
• 90% sexual assault prevalance, because being autistic doesn't take you off men's target list and we have less social skills to detect and dodge the abusers and skeeves.
• "Beauty" shit that stinks, feels horrid on the skin, and is too hard to apply if you have any dyspraxia in your presentation.
• Social expectations being wildly different from men's so we have to work harder to "pass" and are judged harsher when we don't.
• Missed childhood diagnosis.

Hard to say - more of an expectation of good behaviour on girls. But both sexes can experience perceived failing at performative masculinity or femininity. And 100% there's the risk of sexual violence. And greater critique of women's bodies - most of which women seem to lead on and internalise. So actually yes there's quite a lot.

As a family of three neurodivergent adults I definitely think it has been harder for me as the only female. I received a very late diagnosis and my report referenced that I learned to mask by late childhood. As a child I was just labelled oversensitive and it is only through watching my child's discomfort, that I saw similarities in my own difficulties. I don't think autism and adhd for girls was even a consideration in the 1970's.

I remember desperately trying to mirror other children to fit in and this was a pattern repeated throughout my adult interactions. I constantly rehearse conversations and then dissect them afterwards. This is something I don't see in my husband and son. There is still more of an acceptance of autistic behaviours in boys. I really do hope that this changes.

I also think there is more pressure on neurodivergent women to confirm to societal norms and even the diagnostic route seemed more biased towards the male autistic/adhd presentation.

This is pretty much how things are/were for me too and I was also a child in the 1970s. The terms used then for such girls would've been "nervy", "highly strung", "overly conscientious".

Ditto as well the rehearsing/ruminating over interactions, which I still do. I said on another thread that things often seem trebly stressful: the rehearsal/anticipation beforehand, then the actual interaction, followed by the neverending "post mortems" I inflict on myself afterwards.

I agree Trees, Highly strung was used by my own Mother. Its was sad but also a bit of a relief to learn that the rehearsing and 'Post Mortems' (beautifully put) were part and parcel of neuro diversity in girls. I have learned so much more about myself since my diagnosis last year. Learning not to be my own worst critic will take longer.

I also grew up in the 70s so I can relate to everything you've said here @Neuronimo and @TreesAtSea.

I was labelled "oversensitive", "difficult", and, later, "avoidant". I got such a negative response from others to what I now recognise as autistic behaviours that I became profoundly alienated from myself and experienced the world as hostile from there on, with pretty devastating knock on effects in terms of the decisions I made for myself going into adulthood. Only now in my late 50s (with the aid of a good therapist) am I understanding myself for the first time and no longer subjecting myself to relentless negativity and criticism.

@Neuronimo
I have learned so much more about myself since my diagnosis last year. Learning not to be my own worst critic will take longer.

Me too. I only started considering neurodivergence during a difficult menopause, when the wheels really came off in my life. Still working on the self-acceptance though: I find it easy on an intellectual level (it's something my logical mind can latch on to) but it's much harder to actually put into practice.

@InertBird Ah, yes, "difficult". "Such a difficult child", though thankfully not said by my parents, at least not that I'm aware of.

Agree too about experiencing such hostility by just being myself. I remember reading an article decades ago which mentioned someone seeing the world as a hostile, threatening place. I thought at the time. "Well, how else would anyone see it? It is a flaming hostile place."

It sounds like it all had a terrible impact on you. I've had various mental health problems througout my whole life, but it's only on the last five years or so that I've started to understand how much being ND has played its role in this.

I'm so sorry that happened to you too but it's also quite a relief to be understood about the 'hostile world' thing. It's not something I talk about with people because I assume I'm being weird!

I have had problems with chronic anxiety and periods of depression/inability to function 'normally' which all make a lot more sense now. It was only when I hit menopause that it all became impossible to ignore any longer. All my autistic traits became magnified.

I agree so much about learning to view the world through a hostile lens. For our generation, there were so many societal expectations around acceptable behaviour for girls generally. It is really quite nuanced isn't it? I find is an ongoing process for me, to unravel the difficulties in my childhood. I wonder how many of us received a general anxiety diagnosis along the way. I am finding therapy much more helpful, looking back retrospectively as a neuro diverse adult.

The labels taught me that my own feelings and discomfort, particularly sensory/emotional regulations needed to supressed, in order to be a compliant child. I became really quite successful at masking as I felt that my own judgement of social rules and feelings were unsafe.

Completely agree about absorbing the requirement to suppress your own needs and feelings and quash discomfort. In all, it felt that I was essentially faulty as a human being, and that continued way beyond childhood.

I was often blamed for having different needs, e.g. finding it difficult to concentrate in one job because there was always a radio playing in the office. Apparently this meant I was stuck up, a spoilsport etc, and that I wanted everyone else to be miserable. Whereas the truth was I would've loved to be able to not be bothered by it. No-one likes to be ostracised but my need was labelled as a choice, something I could easily change, which it wasn't.

It also led to me being in a long-term abusive relationship. It wasn't that I didn't recognise my own feelings and upset, but rather that it hardly occurred to me that I had a right not be treated badly. Where that relationship was concerned menopause, despite its difficulties, was a godsend. It effectively killed my libido for a long time and meant I simply didn't have the energy or headspace anymore to care what he thought and expected, so finally I left. I'm horrified now when I think what I put up with.

I'm really glad that you were able to leave Trees and so sorry that you had to live through all of that. I do think that whilst the menopause can feel like the wheels coming off for neuro divergent women, it can also be the beginning of a pathway to some degree of self acceptance and understanding.

I really hope that it will be different for those coming after us. It is good to read and hear more female voices, coming to the forefront. I am very grateful for this thread, it has been very insightful.

I'm also so grateful for this thread. @TreesAtSea I'm so sorry you went through that and I'm glad for you that you got out in the end. I also had a rotten marriage. Looking back now I can see that I was just a vulnerable kid (I was 19, but emotionally immature) who was so alienated from herself I'd internalised this critical voice, felt weird and unlovable, and didn't think I could would ever do any better. It was a miserable marriage, he was emotionally abusive to me and our kids. I did get out in the end but the fallout from it has been immense. I just wish I had known why I was the way I was. My life could have been so different. I also hope and believe that things will be different for those coming after us.

So many things resonate, there seems to be a pre disposed, vulnerability in life for many neurodiverse women. I often wish I could jump in front t of my younger self and wave whacking, great, red warning flags.

I think that there can be an initial elation after diagnosis and then a bit of a season of mourning for what might have been.

It's a recipe for disaster really. You have a young girl who learns that her way of being in the world is unacceptable. Girls do experience greater pressure than boys to conform and 'be nice', so we have to learn to mask earlier and more thoroughly in order to be 'acceptable'. If our neurodiversity has not been recognised and supported (and it wouldn't have been in the 70s) then we're just left with the feeling and belief that there is some undefinable thing fundamentally wrong with us. We learn not to trust our own instincts and this leaves us extremely vulnerable to abusive others. We're so used to thinking we are the ones with the problem that it makes negotiating toxic relationships even more confusing than it would be if we were 'normal'. If we find ourselves in a relationship with a man who blames and berates us for difficulties in the relationship, we're more likely to believe it because we've already learned not to trust ourselves. We're anxious and depressed, but even if we seek help, the help we get may not actually help, or even make matters worse, because it doesn't factor in our undiagnosed autism.

It is exactly that! I grew up with an extremely fragmented view of the world and of myself. The constant need to try and decode social interactions has become exhausting and I do feel that this is more prevalent for autistic girls. I think that my husband does mask, but in a different, more subtle way. He says what he thinks without filter and doesn't have the same amount of shame and fear of saying the wrong thing. I wonder if mirroring others, is more common for girls also.

I have more or less totally withdrawn socially, where as he is much more gregarious. This is not to down play his difficulties in any way, but he is extremely eloquent and great at public speaking.

I do believe that becoming so adept at masking, led me to the very late realisation that my difficulties were part of neurodiversity. In other words I fooled myself!😀

@InertBird You're so right about being alienated from oneself. If during our upbringing and later we're being told to effectively change into a different kind of person, at best we become shadows of ourselves, at worst completely divorced from who we actually are.

A couple of years ago I became closer to two people I'd known casually for a long time. I really liked them and still do, but they're very different from me and have a totally different lifestyle. So far so good: it was interesting to be exposed to other ways of doing things and so on. But...though they made absolutely no attempt to change me, I automatically began to adapt myself to them, to be the kind of person I thought they would approve of etc. Daft and unnecessary as they liked me as I was, but I quickly fell into my old pattern of trying to guess what others expect and please them. The big fat red flag, which I only truly see now, was that I almost immediately experienced a severe resurgence of an eating disorder which had pretty much lain dormant for decades. My body was screaming at me to stay true to myself and not pretend to be someone I'm not, but my mind didn't quite grasp it, thinking instead it had come out of the blue.

In menopause particularly I often felt that I had no idea whether I liked something or not, or "worse" still, how do I know if I like something? It could be anything from a piece of clothing to where I might like to live. Now I realise that was my real self coming to the fore at last, whereas before I'd felt I was making free choices but usually getting them wrong. Not sure I've explained that very well, but I now listen to my intuition a lot more. Though as the example above shows, I still have some way to go :-)

Trees It is so sad that the need to conform gets so entrenched, even though we fight so hard against it. There is that inner voice that whispers you are not enough and I find it similarly hard to access a solid sense of self.

It sounds as though your friends like you as you are and yet that inner critic hammers away doesn't it? My relationship with food is similarly fragile. I joined 'an organisation' who asked you to come as your are, but who had a blue print for how they thought women should behave. Logically, I didn't agree with their beliefs and their ethos, but the lure of acceptance and belonging was so attractive to me. I had a resurgence of an eating disorder, I had battled successfully for decades.

I am resolving to change this, maybe menopause come with a sense of empowerment.

@Neuronimo I had to smile wryly at the idea of an organisation asking women to "come as you are"...mmm, not easy when you know being yourself often gets a negative reaction. It's the same as saying "Just be yourself", when there's often a subtext that this actually excludes being x,y ot z etc. Then when people self-exclude to protect ourselves, we're seen as anti-social and aloof.

@InertBird I'm sorry that you also had an abusive relationship; meant to say that in my last post.
On another thread about neurodivergence someone mentioned that she deals with thoughts about how her life could've been different by telling herself that each of us starts life with certain cards already dealt to us, neurodivergence being one of them, and that all we can do is act to the best of our abilities and understanding at any given time. I've found that helps me somewhat, though the thing I really need to avoid is comparing myself to other people. By society's standards I've been quite a failure: academic potential when young but never fulfilled it, succession of low-paid and low-status jobs, disastrous personal life. But we're all unique and overall I've tried to make the best decisions possible at the time.

I have been thinking about this thread a lot, it is both comforting but heart breaking to read how painful and similar experiences can be.

I was a ye olde Mumsnetter but deregistered after the hacking, which left a lot of people feeling quite vulnerable. I find even now that I type and delete a lot of my posts, in case I am over sharing.

One thing I have been ruminating on is whether Women are underdiagnosed, because trauma symptoms can present in a similar way to autism/adhd. For me, my ADHD was as clear as the nose on my face and I had school reports as clear evidence. I nearly came away without an autism diagnosis, because of honesty around trauma related experiences and an inability not to drop the mask.

I found it almost impossible not to answer, in a socially acceptable way, because socials rules have been drummed into me. Inside however, I felt completely exhausted and socially drained for weeks if not months afterwards. The assessment process, felt traumatic in itself. I do wonder if the interpretation of the answers on the autism questionnaires, don't adequately take into account that women on the spectrum present quite differently. We are more sensitive to criticism and I think that there is more of a desire to fit in.

I also ponder, whether there is a kind of a chicken or egg scenario in terms of trauma/neuro diversity. Being unable to read people and social cues well, meant that I lacked some of the survival instincts and could not easily see alerts to danger. We were taught to respect adults in authority, be kind, accept cruelty as jokes or banter, particularly with regard to the other sex. So aren't neurodiverse girls, more likely to suffer trauma as a result? I know other women who have been misdiagnosed with other disorder and have subsequently gone onto to receive an autism diagnosis.

So aren't neurodiverse girls, more likely to suffer trauma as a result?

There is evidence that autistic women certainly are. I wrote upthread "90% sexual assault prevalance, because being autistic doesn't take you off men's target list and we have less social skills to detect and dodge the abusers and skeeves."

The sexual assault victimisation rate for women in general is one in three. Nine out of ten autistic women versus one in three. Let that sink in.

I suspect that ADHD ladies would have elevated rates too, because of inattentiveness to surroundings causing them to miss behavioural clues and impulsivity generally causing higher risk-taking. I've not looked to see if anyone's researched that.