Living with Low Support Needs

Trigger warning: This piece mentions childhood trauma, psychiatric hospitalization, burnout, autism, and neurodivergence.

Before you read on, take a breath.

This is raw and real. It might feel intense.
If it's not for you today, please, honor your nervous system and your needs.

But if you’ve ever wondered why you get exhausted by things that “should be easy,”or why your sensitivity sometimes feel like weakness -
let me remind you what real strength is:

I remember my first real aspiration. 

Maybe it was an ‘affirmation’.
(This was long before I knew what those are).

I just knew I needed something to hold onto.

I needed a word to live up to.

I was about six or seven, and had started to realize things around me were out of control.

By things, I also include people. People, like my parents, but not only them.
So I had to figure out how to be.
Who to be.

I chose my word:

‘Strong’.

There were things that came easy, like learning to read. 

My grandmother gets the credit for taking the time to sit with me.
She made a game, it came in a mysterious black box that had cards spelling out words, with little matching trinkets and toys. Every time I read a word correctly, I got the matching toy. 
At the end of the game, both the cards and the toys had to be put back inside the black box. 
I remember thinking it was kind of pointless, because I didn’t get to keep anything.

Now I know what I got to keep was knowledge.

School confirmed it. I was “gifted.”
Ahead of the curve. A reader. A thinker.

I remember thinking thats just because grandma sat so patiently with me and showed me how.

Other things were much more difficult. Like numbers, and direction.
It was one thing reading words, it was something very different to read numbers.

I struggled telling time, knowing left from right and doing what I was told -  “because I say so” just didn’t work on me. 

Every afternoon as I walked back from school, about 200 meters from home, I peed my pants. 
I never told anyone. 
Because I knew. 
“There is something wrong with me”.

So I made myself a mask.
I had to be good.
I had to hide the parts of me that couldn’t keep up.

And I held myself together with that word: strong.
Sometimes I forgot to breathe.

When my parents came home, I turned my skin inside out to feel into them, often to my own detriment. I had to monitor their moods, to do what they wanted before they said it because by then it would be too late. 

I failed. Often. And their punishments were severe. 

I fought too. I stood up for my younger siblings, defended them against the monsters. And there were times I took the monsters into me.

I needed to be strong. I held onto it like a life raft in the stormy seas.

They called me a lot of other words, like “ugly”, “fat”, “stupid”, “unloveable”, and “destined to fail”. 

As I got older, there were things that became so difficult I sought help.

Now other words were offered, like “bipolar”, “depressed” and “imbalanced”.

I was told the problem was me.

But something inside of me resisted. None of their labels ever felt right, and because I was strong, I left the diagnosticians and their pills and didn’t look back. I knew I had to if I was gonna make it out.

One day, a friend said simply “You’re autistic” and at first I thought “No I can’t be”.

Mostly because I struggled so much with numbers.

But it stuck with me, and struck a chord, so I fell into the rabbit hole and started learning more.

And there I found more words. Better words. Like ‘neurodiversity', ‘masking’, and ‘support needs’.

The more I learned, the angrier I got.

Because from that perspective, it was so glaringly obvious, I couldn’t believe nobody had noticed. There was something wrong with me, well, not wrong, but ‘different’.

I was left to do it all on my own. 

I did it alone because when I asked for help,

I became the problem.

The world was so confusing, people said one thing and underneath their energy spoke of something different. The messages I received were so distorted, I had to stay strong enough to process and pretend to be what they needed.

Nobody is coming to save you.

You’re not worth it. 

Theres something wrong with you.

Wouldn’t it be nice if I could say, “oh but fast forward to today and I am winning at life, everything is a breeze and I am in total control of the whole thing”.

But that is not true. Some things are easier for me than for you. Other things are much much harder. 

Many people who know me well, who get close enough to see inside me, will say that they both admire and are afraid of my mind. I perceive things beyond what is ‘normal’, and have a way of recognizing patterns and go to places beyond the visible and superficial.

Sometimes its a gift. Other times its pain.

Not being able to fit in, means I have two choices: break apart or stand out. 

I do both, at regular intervals.

There are days when my system just needs to rest, digest and process.

Like I’m playing catch up, and I just don’t have the energy for anything else. 

It’s too easy to shame yourself when you cant perform the most basic things, especially when you’re so gifted at others.

I’ve hit rock bottom several times. Most notably in 2005, when I signed myself into the loony bin after losing the strength keep going.

Most recently in 2021-2022, when I was so burnt out, all I could do was sleep, and occasionally eat, on repeat. I tried to speak up, to ask for help, but my self fulfilling prophecy of being “strong” meant people didn’t take me seriously.

Or maybe they were all just too busy. Or maybe I didn’t shout loud enough.

So I took myself out. Stayed away, alone with only a cat for company. I spent months in deep silence, without speaking to anyone, without thinking too much about anything.

When I looked in the mirror I saw an old woman, life-tired and and tired of living in a world out of control.

And slowly, I processed, and my insides felt less raw.

But I am not the same as I was.

I used to dream of being invincible, living as if my energy was infinite.

I lived that way for a long time. When I look back, I wonder at how I managed to do so much. In hindsight I see that I was living on borrowed time.

My burnout was the inevitable result from pushing past my own limits.

I had no boundaries, I didn’t know what was mine and what wasn’t.  

These days, I know I am limited. That I need a lot of rest and time to process. I know that from the perspective of ‘modernity’ I am disabled. When I try to fit in there, it feels disabling, and its just a matter of time before I break, or break free.

Today I woke up and couldn’t find any reasons to get up.

Nothing special had happened, I don’t have a reason for feeling this way. No new stories to attach these heavy feelings to. No drama. No current crisis.
Just that deep, frozen feeling.

My system says, “Not today.”

I've learned to listen.

It’s just part of me, this time in freeze-mode. My system can’t perform, my hands are tied and I cant put on the mask and force myself to smile for your convenience. 

Rest or die trying.

Sometimes I wish I was more disabled. Most of the time, I wish I was stronger. Of course, that’s what you’re meant to do. But sometimes I wish I could have been seen when I was younger, that someone had been able to hold me and say:

“It’s not you.”

“You are not the problem”.

“You just need to go at your own speed”.

I’ll sit here, quietly, with you.”

“No pressure”.

“You just feel what the rest of the world refuses”.

Today I decided to write these words out, 
not because I want your pity. 
That is the last, the worst, you could ever do for me. 

I write because I’ve learned that none of this, no matter how isolating the pain feels, is mine alone. 

I unmask this hurt, because maybe, just maybe, showing this part of my heart, is healing some part of you that has been exiled, hidden or shamed.

There are days when I forget to shower. There are days when I am just sat in silence and its not blissful meditation, its just me holding myself together because that is all I have the strength to do.

In a world that wants us to numb and stay small, I am proud of who I am because I choose, again and again, to stay open and feel it all. 

Because deep down I know this to be true:

Real strength is always soft. 

I hope that this finds You.

I know parts of this might sound like failure. Maybe some of you finally understand why sometimes I need to disappear.

The truth is - holding it together is a sacred mess.

We don't talk enough about how much strength it takes to feel it all, to stay open in a world that tells you to sit down and shut up (and smile, if you're a girl). 

I’m not here despite my pain. I am here because of it. 

And I know this is part of my medicine - not pretending to be perfect, but staying real and really present. For all of it. 

To little me: You are doing a good job, kid.

Thank your for making it here. 

If something cracked open while you read this, I urge you to let it breathe . Try not to shove it down or seal it up - if you can. Maybe drink some water. Let your system catch up. 

I wrote this to remind both you and me that we are not alone, especially when it really, really feels that way. 
If you’d like to be supported by a Spiritual Mentor who gets it, I’ve got spaces in my calendar. We begin with an honest conversation around what your needs and dreams are. You can apply here: Application

Come sit with me, let me see you, let me hold you. We can walk this path together for a while, you, me, and my tigress. 

And to honor my many incredible mentors who supported me when I needed it most -I offer free 1:1 sessions every Friday for those who are in financial hardship but are ready to do the work with integrity. Book here