This morning I woke up to a world hardened with the first frost of the season- a quiet signal that winter has arrived and the holiday season is now in full swing. After a long Thanksgiving break, today I'm diving back into work with renewed focus.
As the holiday spirit takes hold, I want to remind you of something special: this week, I'm giving away a personalized "favorite things" gift basket to one lucky person who signs up for MultiVersity this week. It's my way of celebrating your commitment to self-growth this year.
With the season of reflection upon us, I found myself thinking this morning about a recent substack post by Lindsey Mackereth- one that could redefine how we view neurodivergence. Her theory traces the journey of what she calls "neurocomplex" individuals, from the early promise of giftedness to the challenges of adulthood, offering her insight and hope along the way.
Neuro-complex? When we speak of neurodivergence, giftedness and even certain chronic conditions and autoimmune differences- are we talking about the same thing? Lindsey says, yes. Find that correlation theory here and here.
The Gifted Kid Label: A double-edged sword.
For many neurocomplex people, life begins somewhere in childhood with the label "gifted". This recognition often leads to accelerated learning opportunities but rarely comes with a roadmap for the sensory, emotional, and relational challenges that accompany this complexity. Parents and teachers might assume these kids will flourish on intellect alone, unintentionally leaving them without the tools to navigate a world that doesn't always support their unique needs.
In my case, I was flagged for the gifted program in second grade, when a teacher in the library noticed my rapid reading and never-ending curiosity for books. He asked me to read a college level publication and explain it to him. After seeing that I comprehended what I read from it, he had me tested for the gifted program and I was moved into it that year.
This meant that once a week, I got to spend a day at the gifted cabin and miss the classes that I found boring in exchange for playing chess and multi-level game play, while memorizing Shakespeare. What I didn't learn, were any tools for intensity management, emotional regulation or social skills. My Mom helped me a lot with this, telling me that we were going to think "psychology" and then introducing some social tools to help me not to come on so strongly and scare away friends around me. This quickly, for me, turned into masking.
It wasn't until much later in adulthood, that I realized I was actually and profoundly different than the people that I loved and wanted to be like around me. I had different needs, abilities, and thresholds of experience.
The Young Adult: Burning both ends of the match.
In early adulthood, the structures of academia and career often provide enough scaffolding for neurocomplex individuals to excel. But without an awareness of their limits, they unknowingly mask their true selves, leaving them vulnerable to burnout- whether through exploitative work environments, unbalanced relationships, or sheer overextension.
For myself, I joined a church that really highly praised women with lots of children and made a competition of homemaking. So I did what all women in that community did, I started having babies (6) and ran a homemaking blog, cooking channel, farm newsletter, worked on a farm and raised my six children (including a set of twins) which meant cloth diapering, making our own organic baby food, and knitting and quilting a lot of their linens by hand all while experiencing abuse from my very unbalanced marriage until I hit a point of severe meltdown and exhaustion.
Late Diagnoses and Path Forward
For some, burnout exposes traits that lead to later-life diagnoses of ADHD or Autism. Whether these traits were always present or emerge as a result of nervous system shifts, such diagnoses can be a turning point- offering clarity and the opportunity to build a life more suiting to their unique wiring and needs.
Mackereth's hypothesis is a powerful reminder: thriving isn't just about achievement. It's about creating environments that honor the interplay between purpose and self-care, allowing us to live meaningfully without sacrificing well-being.
Her theory states:
Neurocomplex wiring, when well-resourced, takes on a presentation, and for some the subjective experience of what education psychology refers to as "giftedness".
When under-resourced and/or in a period of burnout, neurocomplexity takes on a similar presentation and subjective experience of what the DSM refers to as Autism and ADHD.
Thus, a neurocomplex individual may not meet the criteria for Autism and/or ADHD until later in life after or during a period of extensive burnout that has impacted their nervous system functioning in areas of executive function, verbal capacity, sensory processing, and social ability- exposing these traits of complexity in a new way.
Basically:
A Reflection
As we enter this season of stillness, I invite you to reflect on your own journey or that of someone you know who might resonate with this story.
How can you support yourself- or others- in finding the resources that you/they need to move into the gifted presentation of traits, instead of lacking the environment to support it?
And don't forget- I'm here to help with that! Signing up for MultiVersity this week is the first step towards finding that balance.
Happy Holidays from my family to yours,
Jennifer Ferrante, CHt.
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