November 17, 2025

My therapist told me something yesterday that really threw me off guard. It was both relieving and unsettling.

Background: this is a therapist to specializes in overachieving neurodivergent women. She uses a ground-up method. She took me through an exercise where I took a recent professional disappointment that was traumatizing and still very painful. I wanted to really like dissect that experience and figure out what I can do with that emotion.

The background of what experience can be read in an earlier blog, but the short version is that I was nominated for one of the highest honors for my profession, and I did not ultimately win that recognition. This feeling was complicated by my confidence in winning, and that I know the person who won the award very well. It would have honestly been easier for me to accept someone I don’t know winning.

Anyway, we walked through my experience and she used her amazing, fascinating, and sometimes slightly awkward ground-up approach. The underlying source of pain that I uncovered in this exercise is that I was faced with the reality that the lack of recognition, that feeling– is not going to get better. I’m faced with the quandary that I can see all nuance at once, and I am always 20 cognitive steps ahead of others. I think the source of my pain is that this is always going to be a problem. It doesn’t matter if I’m working in this field or another, I’m going to encounter this problem again. I’m forced to face that this is a social system issue that I may not see fixed in my lifetime.

What I do and how I accept or refute this realization, and what that means for me professionally and personally is a big deal.

It was a challenging exercise, but typically when she does this kind of work with me, I will approach it with openness. This work can be kind of awkward when I sometimes need to say something to my inner self aloud, or have a dialogue with myself or someone else. She pushed me to see if these feelings have a shape or color. I think it was really interesting that when she asked me to push, I saw was an iridescent bubble, much like Glinda the Good Witch would travel in. It just hovered in front of me and followed me wherever I went. I couldn’t pop it, which I think represents the permanence of this feeling.

At the end of the session, she said to me, “I do just have to tell you that the level of work that you are able to access in sessions like this is just incredibly exceptional and something that only excellent neurodivergent therapists can access…so I need you to understand that you are not crazy, your experience is real, and you’re correct…and that others just can’t access the level that you’re on.”

I’m still reeling from this. Do I feel validated? Honored? Weirded out?

I guess it’s a compliment because she does validate that I’m not psychotic and self-absorbed. There are way too many times throughout my life that I’ve just basically gaslight myself and wondered if I’m overly dramatic or hyper-focusing on some unnecessary detail.

Others that aren’t able to see the nuance I see can sometimes think that I’m rigid or too emotionally connected. In other words, I’m either being gaslit by myself or others.

I’ve grown tired, and I think with my discovery of my autism and ADHD I’ve started to de-mask a little bit. I’ve started to say “I’m not the problem.”

There’s a system problem. So in a way, it’s very validating and powerful. If anything, this therapist can be the first person who’s actually ever made me feel like I’m not crazy. On the other hand, it’s kind of depressing to know that I’m in such a minority because I know that I’m not gonna encounter a lot of folks on the same wavelength.

Let me know your thoughts. Is it a good thing or a bad thing when your therapist says that you are exceptional? Have you had this happen?