The first time I felt unequivocally understood was when I was thirteen; I had just taken the 16 Personalities version of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (“MBTI”) assessment.
16 Personalities has rebranded its site and descriptions since I took this assessment fifteen years ago, so I can’t pull the exact verbiage. However, I will never forget reading the first sentence. It said something along the lines of: “INFJs walk around with a profound sense that they are misunderstood.”
The second time I felt a similar release was when I stumbled across the post that led to me seeking my own AuDHD assessment, which began with: “My whole life, I have felt misunderstood.”
Feeling misunderstood was, and still is, my deepest, most gnarly and keloid of emotional scars.
Anytime I feel misunderstood, I am still viscerally triggered. My chest tightens, my heart races, ice fills my limbs, and my stomach sours in a chilly knot; I momentarily freeze before my body enters fight-or-flight mode.
For people I don’t know, I flee. Simple as that. For people I know but don’t feel a strong bond with, I gravitate towards fleeing or fawning. For the few people I’m close with and trust? Wrap up the gloves and call me Cassius Clay, because I am ready to hit you with a combo of facts and logic before uppercutting you with my perspective and intentions.
Being misunderstood, unseen, and unheard has, up until recently, defined me; pressing that wounded button makes me either float away like an ethereal butterfly or sting harshly like a bee.
While my diagnoses and finding whys to my life-long perceived differences eased the attack on my oldest wound, the feeling is still incredibly triggering for me. Case in point: a situation before my weekly coaching call triggered the feeling and response.
When I shared with my coach (who works with sensitive, neurodivergent women) what had happened, the universe decided it had had enough of my “I’m so misunderstood” melodramatics.
“What if you replaced misunderstood with unaccepted?”
My coach posed the question, words hanging in the virtual space between us while my mind scratched its neuroplastic nails on a chalkboard.
“Because whenever someone says to me, I feel misunderstood, to me that actually means they don’t feel like they’re accepted.”
The logical part of my brain quickly synthesized the statement, applying it to the past three to five times I had felt misunderstood. And dammit-to-Betsy, the statement worked. All the times I had felt misunderstood had led me to go on a tirade trying to explain my logic, in an attempt to gain approval and acceptance of my reasoning. Every time I felt misunderstood, it felt like my way of doing things was unacceptable in the eyes of the other person, and I was desperate for them to understand why, to me, it made complete sense.
“What do you think about that?” My coach pressed.
Acceptance equates to safety in terms of neuroscience and psychology; so, with the addition of empirical science, my logical brain felt resolute in its quick analysis of my coach’s statement.
My emotional brain, however, seethed.
Accepted? Accepted?
Apple campaign posters plastered my gifted literature classroom in middle school. I saw Jackie Robinson, Amelia Earhart, and Einstein. I looked up at them —individuals who were provocative and controversial during their time alive—and knew they were world-changing. I wanted to be on one of those posters; I wanted to be them as much as I needed air to breathe.
And the posters said Think Different.
And different didn’t care about being accepted, right?
To be honest, I can’t remember what I responded to my coach. I think I was crying. Perhaps something along the lines of it not being wrong without confirming its accuracy, either, because the concept of confirming that I, the ‘march to the beat of my own drum’ girl, care about acceptance so deeply feels altogether nauseating and impossible.
I couldn’t escape the logic for the next few days, so I posed a lot of questions to that battle-scarred trigger. I recalled moments in my life when I felt the most misunderstood. My amygdala and nervous system rose, sword and shield in hand. So I asked the angry, misunderstood warrior—would feeling accepted make you lay down your weapons?
It was a strange thing to experience internally, for the wound that had so easily raised its fists to fight dropped them instantly and laughed at me.
Acceptance? Ha! Couldn’t care less about that. That’s not it at all!
However, after repeated reflection, my unconscious mind broke through a barrier and revealed something new as it finally laid down its weapons and tossed off its armor.
Acceptance? Ha! That’s not it at all! We’re just tired of feeling so alone and disconnected from other people.
Oh. Oh, wow.
I will never forget the feeling as I stood in my kitchen, like the hundreds of pounds worth of armor fell off me emotionally when I had the realization.
Feeling misunderstood didn’t trigger a feeling of unacceptance; it was a front for the deeper, more difficult-to-address emotions.
Loneliness. Disconnection.
That’s where my nervous system pulled the feeling of being unsafe from. I never felt a part of a pack; I was a lone wolf, navigating the wild of humanity on my own for so long.
There was a strange sense of solace and piercing clarity.
Loneliness—disconnection—is a feeling I am well-versed in and one I have been working through while getting sober. And I want to clarify: loneliness to me isn’t the status of not being surrounded by people. Loneliness is being in a setting where there are other people, yet knowing I’d feel far less alone if I were at home by myself.
This whole experience with misunderstood masking loneliness appeared to be yet another case of my neurodivergent alexithymia, albeit a complex one, so I took it with a grain of salt and moved onward with the wisdom.
A few weeks later, I was doing my morning grounding routines. In this practice, I listen to my coach’s quick little daily podcast. And within it, she discussed how anger is the emotion that the majority of people quickly resort to because it is an energizing emotion—it’s a feeling that often calls us to action—namely, it prompts us with energy to fix something.
If you’ve read anything in the self-help and improvement sector, you probably know what I’m about to say.
You can’t fix feelings; feelings need to be felt and experienced.
My coach reminded us listeners of this as soon as she finished laughing because she knew we knew that, and then said:
Anger is like a Mama Bear emotion, protecting us from emotions that make us feel like we have less control because they aren’t things we can fix.
When she said this, my autistic pattern-seeking brain entered hyperdrive.
To me, feeling misunderstood was an energizing emotion; when I felt misunderstood, I thought there was an action I could take to rectify it (overexplaining myself) and ease, or altogether remove, the need to sit with and feel my emotions over the entire situation, which was loneliness and disconnection.
Feeling misunderstood was the Mama Bear emotion to my loneliness and sense of disconnection.
The craziest thing in all of this?
When I try to sense where I feel misunderstood in my body, to see its color and shape, to observe its speed and form so I can breathe and let it pass, it never passes. Instead, the feeling huffs its breath and stomps its foot, like I’m missing something, and intensifies in my body. However, when I pull off the Mama Bear armor and recognize the entire range and complexity of the emotions I’m feeling, and then take myself through the same exercise?
The emotion settles—it passes—all without me “fixing” anything.
Over the next few days, whenever I felt those hot, energizing emotions that often invoke a sense of action and control—anger, irritation, frustration—I took myself through this exercise. I looked at the armed warrior of an emotion and asked it to put its weapons down; I asked Mama Bear to show me her cub.
As always, what I’m saying at a conceptual level sounds about as concrete as the Milky Way. Below are some additional examples of the unfolding I did with Mama Bear Emotions.
Example 1: Frustration With My Job
Situation + Feeling Invoked: A couple of months ago at work, I commented on something I saw as a potential problem on our project, hoping to prevent issues and additional work; however, leadership quickly disregarded my comment. Then the here and now came, and look at that—the issue I posed months ago was, in fact, an issue! However, since we didn’t catch it when I initially raised my hand, we not only wasted months of work, but we also now had more work to do to document it. I felt like flipping a table and (metaphorically) burning a building because this has happened to me too many times to count. This is a widespread occurrence for neurodivergents to experience, given our bottom-up thinking (autists), creativity (ADHD), and critical thinking (giftedness). I got so frustrated that even after going for an hour walk, doing a yoga flow, and having a coaching call… I still couldn’t release the emotion, rendering productivity to zero.
Mama Bear’s Cub: When I worked through my emotional release, it didn’t settle. So, I looked at my frustration and asked, “Mama Bear, are you there? What more complex emotion are you protecting me from?” First, she revealed her impatience to me—my impatience with transitioning full-time to the work I feel is more aligned with my purpose and calling. And with that thought, out crawled fear from behind Mama. Fear that I’m wasting my time, my life; fear that I’m not going to achieve what I want to achieve because I’m spending my talents and gifts on work that instead gets overridden or becomes null in the cogs of corporate.
My Call to Action: Whenever similar frustration arises, I acknowledge the fear that accompanies it and release it. I remind myself that anything worthwhile takes time. I remind myself of the journey I have been on to get here, and how while at the time I thought I wasn’t on the right course and not meeting the mark, I can look back now and see the wisdom those experiences granted me, and how I was always on the path that would lead me to this exact moment where I would get to reflect on my experiences and share my story on this blog.
Example 2: Infuration When People Say “We’re All A Little on the Spectrum/ADHD/Neurodivergent”
Situation + Feeling Invoked: Since my diagnosis, there have been numerous instances where someone has carelessly made a statement like the above. My knee-jerk reaction? I often have to fight an eye twitch and a growl because if they knew anything about neurodivergence, they would know that’s not how it works. You can’t be “kind of” or “a little” on the autism spectrum, and no, we don’t all have ADHD; it’s like saying to a blind person, “Oh, we’re all a little blind because most people have corrective lenses!” Even writing about this right now I feel myself getting infuriated, and frankly, pissed off because it’s incredibly out of touch with the reality of the diagnoses. It makes me want to embark on a dissertation of reasons and educate people why that’s not the case; however, no one is going to listen to a word I say when I’m speaking from a place of enragement.
Mama Bear’s Cub: If it wasn’t apparent from the last bit, this is a sore spot for me, as I know it is for other neurodivergents. But how is getting pissed off and preaching at people about their lack of education in this situation helpful? Surprise: it’s not. Which raises the question: what emotion lies beneath that I need to experience so I can approach these situations more empowered? Baby Bear revealed itself in two unique ways as I dove into introspection.
First was sadness and despair. Neurodivergence isn’t the norm, and it’s also not rare enough that we don’t encounter people in our day-to-day lives struggling with the unique needs that neurodivergence requires. Society is incredibly undereducated on these topics. How does this happen? How can something be such a part of society and not be discussed? Why do we not make it a higher priority to educate people? Why do we allow these outdated stereotypes and misconceptions to persist? My AuDHD justice sensitivity roars at this.
Second was something more peculiar and unexpected—it was shame and guilt. I have a sister who is also autistic, and she was diagnosed when she was three, nonverbal until five; I also have a sister who is ADHD, and she was diagnosed in early childhood. Loved ones who surrounded me lived with these diagnoses for two decades before my life-altering and saving diagnosis. Did I educate myself on their experiences to better understand them? Did I get curious about their unique internal experience to be a better sister? No. Instead, I said uneducated things like, “Oh, well, we’re all a little on the spectrum!”
My Call to Action: First, I must forgive myself to release the shame and guilt that accompany saying the very things that now irritate me. I have to accept that I was doing the best I could, and I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And rather than let infuriation fester or wallow in despair, I can take action to help do what helped me change my narrative to stop saying these out of touch things—I can educate people about neurodivergence with compassion and invoke curiousity into them to want to know more because I, too, was that person who once didn’t know any better.
Each instance above required reflection and prompted me to release the grip of wanting to fix my feelings. And each time, I found a softer emotion, one that left me with no choice but to sit with it and feel it. Miraculously, every time, the consuming emotion passed. And with it? I found focus; I found empowering emotions that I could then apply wisdom to and act intentionally on. Maybe I’m biased, but that sounds like a pretty exceptional way to live.
I know what you’re thinking—sometimes I’m just angry, Liv! Well, yes, of course you are! However, limiting ourselves to one singular emotion for anything that stirs up such powerful feelings seems short-sighted; we are all complex creatures, and when we sit with the chemical call of our feelings, we often find more profound answers and deeper, more rooted, and longer-lasting issues simmering beneath our initial reactions. We must acknowledge that feelings are composed of multiple emotions, and we need to explore and recognize all of them to feel and release them properly.
Can you recall any recent times when powerful feelings stirred up in you? Upon reflection, was it a Mama Bear emotion to a gentle, soft cub? Does identifying the baby bear underneath prompt you to adopt a more empowered and intentional approach? Let me know below!
XOXO, Liv
Exceptional Living 
Leave a comment