Healing Neurodivergent Shame

Neurodivergent Shame In Later Life: How finding ourselves through crafting may be very healing.

Healing neurodivergent shame is something many of us women of a certain age are facing up to now.

There’s a particular kind of shame many women over 50 carry.

It’s a shame that began in childhood, in classrooms and living rooms of the 1960s.

And it was long before words like autism, ADHD, or neurodivergence were in common use, especially about girls and women.

Back then, there was only “good behaviour” and “bad behaviour”.

An entire generation of bright, sensitive, overwhelmed girls were told they were both too much and not enough.

For those of us who grew up in that era, the experience of being ‘different’ came with a deep, unspoken shame.

We didn’t have the language to understand why we felt different.

There were only the confusing reactions of the adults around us.

We had the sighs, raised eyebrows admonitions to “try harder” or “stop being silly”.

We had the constant pressure to be quiet, tidy, polite, compliant.

To stop daydreaming, to concentrate, to stop fussing, to sit down and stop bothering others.

Many of us learned to mask before we even knew what masking was.

We were bewildered much of the time as we regularly drew harsh criticsim that hit us hard.

We didn’t know why.

It’s no wonder that so many of us are still battling with the process of healing neurodivergent shame 60 years on.

Our actions and words were frequently misunderstood.

It often felt as if we were aliens in a world that constantly frowned at us.

We were accused of being ‘naughty’ when that was not our intention.

We would often feel stung and deeply wounded by reactions to just being ourselves.

A good example of this in my young life is the garden pond incident – something I’ll never forget.

My dad made us a pond in our back garden.

It wasn’t a fancy pond – he dug a hole, lined it with a sheet of heavy duty PVC and heaped earth around the edges.

My hope was that we could put frog spawn in it and watch the Tadpoles develop.

Then came the day my older sister’s friend came round.

They were four years older than me and I looked up to them.

I was around eight at the time.

Linda, the friend showed an interest in the pond and noticed there was a cork floating about in it.

We had two garden rakes, a small one that was mine and the bigger one that was my dad’s.

Linda picked up a rake to get the cork out and immediately, my mind jumped to a brilliant idea.

We could have a fun game with this floating cork!

So I grabbed my little rake and laughing, I ran over to the pond and started the game of who could rake the cork out first.

She immediately saw the fun in this.

So we shrieked with laughter as we clawed at the water with our rakes, competing for who could get the cork.

Then we would throw it back in and repeat.

My dad heard the laughter and came outside. He was incandesent with anger.

Of course, clawing at a pond made from a PVC sheet wasn’t a good idea.

I saw that after I thought about it but the impulse of my fun idea had overriden common sense.

It wasn’t that I was being wilfully naughty at all.

My impulsive mind often lead me to do things out of good intent and that was one of them.

The humiliation of having my dad be so angry and order me indoors in front of Linda was unbearable.

Any amount of explaining that I didn’t mean to do any damage was pointless.

I was naughty and that was all there was to it.

And I felt guilty. Guilty for being so stupid that I hadn’t realised the rake game would damge the pond.

And the guilt ran deep in the lives of children like me.

Guilt for not fitting in, for being distracted, for daydreaming, for feeling everything too strongly, for struggling in ways we couldn’t explain.

It wasn’t misbehaviour and it wasn’t laziness. It was neurodivergence. But no one knew that then — not our parents, not our teachers, and certainly not us.

And consequently, healing neurodivergent shame, the shame that grew throughout our lives, has become crucial

We did our best not to do things that clearly annoyed the world but when just being yourself makes everyone cross, severe mental health problems develop.

Some of us became perfectionists; others withdrew into our own worlds.

I withdrew into my own world where I created fantasy people who really loved me regardless of this awful child I knew I was.

Now, six decades later, many women are discovering the reasons they were shamed so badly in childhood.

We are facing up to the traits we were punished for and we are really exploring the traits we had, good and ‘bad’.

The sensitivity, the creativity, the impulsive behaviour, the intensity, the fidgeting, the overwhelm — all these things point toward ADHD, autism, or both.

And that realisation brings both relief and grief.

But it also brings healing.

And for many of us creatives, that healing has been finding its way through art, craft, writing and film-making – anything that allows us to freely express ourselves, for years now.

Making paper beads for example, I find the process very calming.

For me, it’s like braking in a car that’s going too fast.

It slows my mind to a restful pace.

You start with strips of paper and gently, patiently roll them into something beautiful.

Something whole. Something with purpose.

In many ways, that mirrors the experience of revisiting our collective neurodivergent childhood with the knowledge we have now.

We take all pieces of ourselves that once confused us, all the aspects we thought were flaws, and we fashion them into something different.

Something honest and real.

Crafting, especially repetitive, tactile crafts like paper bead making, have always been a refuge for my busy mind.

Even long before I understood what was ‘wrong’ with me.

In the 1960s, those of us who struggled socially or academically often found comfort in making things with our hands.

For me, being lost in creating felt safe, calming and rewarding.

It was one of the few activities where our intensity and focus were allowed to exist without judgement.

Paper bead making still offers me that comfort today and definitley helps with healing neurodivergent shame.

The quiet process allows me to think clearly about the past and reframe the painful times through the neurodivergent lens.

The texture of the paper, the gentle motion of rolling, the attention to colour and pattern — it all creates a rhythm that soothes my nervous system and settles my mind.

And as a woman now entering my 70s, it’s such a relief to finally honour the funny little girl I was.

And to actually love her.

The quirky girl who questioned everything, annoyed everyone and couldn’t sit still.

The ‘bull in a china ship’, as I was frequently called.

The girl who needed to learn in her own way, who needed creativity, who needed sensory comfort, who needed to be understood but, sadly never was.

The shame that began in childhood doesn’t disappear overnight, but creativity has a way of dissolving it gently.

Each creative action becomes a reminder that what once felt “wrong” about us was simply different.

Every creation, whatever it is, becomes an act of honoring our worth, the worth we always had but never felt.

Each creation becomes a celebration of a mind that has always been capable, intuitive, and deeply artistic.

For women discovering their neurodivergence later in life, creativity is much more than a hobby — it’s a way of life, a homecoming.

We finally get to understand ourselves with compassion.

We get to acknowledge the pressures we survived.

And, perhaps most importantly, we get to stop apologising for who we are.

If you grew up in the 1960s and recognise yourself in these words, know this: the shame was never yours.

You were not broken, difficult, or strange.

You were neurodivergent in a world that hadn’t learned how to see you yet.

We were never the problem – we were simply ahead of our time.

Sadly, even in 2025, although the world now sees Neurodivergent people, the Neurotypical world is still not understanding us.

Does it matter for us mature people?

Hell no! The neurotypical world can Foxtrot Oscar as far as I am concerned. I’ve had enough of their ignorance.

BUT – children with Austism and ADHD are still being terrorised on a daily basis inside an education system that sees them as broken.

They are expected to thrive in a system that is made for neurotypical children.

And I do care very much about that.

If you drive your high top vehicle along a road and you encounter a low bridge that your vehicle cannot fit under – is the vehicle broken or defective?

No, it just needs a bridge that accomodates taller vehicles.

We are square pegs and no matter how hard the education system hammers square pegs, children will only fit into round holes if you break them.

And broken square pegs develop severe lifelong emotional problems.

This needs to stop – the special skills, gifts and perception of high functioning neurodivergent children need to be nurtured in environments they will excel in.

The current general school system is not the right environment because neurodivergence is seen by the neurotypical world as a disability.

I mean for heaven sake, it comes under the SEND umbrella – Special Educational Needs and Disabilities.

The disability is in the system itself – not within the child.

Many of us never developed the special gifts that come with not being Neurotypical because we were completely broken square pegs by age 15.

We were then thrown into the working world at 15 or 16, with the severe emotional problems we had developed from having our corners smashed off.

We struggled through our working years with all sorts of ‘life issues’ caused by the shame of not fitting into a world that judges us.

And for many people, it was only the relief of retiring and being able to get away from society, that allowed us to finally stop and lick our wounds.

We’ve finally had the time and space to drop to the floor and examine the wounds we have.

To recognise them as wounds that were so very wrongly inflicted on us by the neurotypical world our whole lives long.

We are the lucky ones in that we are finding ourselves now and healing with our creative ‘medicine’.

But so many of us are now feeling the pain of watching our grandchildren suffer the same fate as us in a world that is supposedly more aware.

But until they take the words ‘deficit’ and ‘disorder’ out of the equation, nothing is going to change.

Children are still being shamed for being who they are.

Yes, they are being diagnosed now (albeit very slowly!) but it’s very much a case, in many schools I read about on Social Media , that neurotypical staff are expecting a child to leave their diagnoses at the classroom door and obey the rules of the neurotypical classroom.

Do we really want our grandchildren to be healing neurodivergent shame in 60 years time?

And struggling with life the way we did throught those years?

And in the UK, some schools are falling foul of the Disability Discrimination Act by appling their general behaviour policies to children who according to them, have the disability of neurodivergence.

So, if they are going to insist neurodivergence is a disability – then abide by the Disability Discrimination Act and stop punishing neurodivergent children for breaking rules they struggle to see the point of!

Would you punish a hearing impaired child for not responding to a quietly spoken question?

Or a sight impaired child for bumping into someone?

Why are we punishing Autistic children for saying ‘rude’ things to teachers?

Neurodivergent children do say very blunt things and yet they are punished for it and left bewildered.

Tell the truth! Say the adults, but when we do, we are frequently looked at in horror.

It’s confusing for Autistic children.

We don’t say things deliberately to upset people – we are just very forthright and we don’t like BS.

To this day, I have to think hard before I say certain things because I have learned, over 69 years, the neurodivergent world can’t handle honesty.

It likes everything sugar-coated.

It’s up to us to talk about this to anyone and everyone who will listen – we have to make a noise any way we can.

How will you use your childhood wounds for the good?

How will you tell your story to push the neurotypical world closer to realising what their behaviour does to those who are different?

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That’s all from me for this time – hope you connected in some way to the issue of healing neurodivergent shame.

And if you are someone who is healing from the pain of undiagnosed neurodivergence in childhood back in time, I hope being creative is helping the way it helps me.

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