A Divergent Journey:

Healing from, and expanding beyond constricting Christianity by Catherine Quiring

and

May 14, 2024

Edit from Cathering Quiring: Thank you to the people who have let us know that some of the terms I originally used in this piece were misappropriated or problematic. The term neuroexpansive was trademarked to refer exclusively to Black disabled people by Ngwagwa, so I have changed it to neurodiverse / divergent. And the term HSP (highly-sensitive person) carries the undertone of Elaine Aron's work, which is not neuro-affirming to all, so I have adjusted it according to the similar and recommended, "high sensitivity," without using Elaine Aron's Acronym.

Welcome to Healing is My Special Interest, the newsletter at the intersection of late-diagnosed neurodivergence and healing from high control environments. Today we have a guest post that is CHOCK FULL of links and information while also being really playful and fun. Take some time to poke around on the websites and assessments listed here, and feel free to add your own resources in the comments! Thank you to everyone who supports this newsletter so that I can pay my fantastic guest writers :)

black and white picture of a woman smiling and covering her ears while wearing vintage sunglasses — photo by Seth Doyle

A Divergent Journey: Diverging, healing from, and expanding beyond constricting Christianity

by Catherine Quiring, MA, LMHC

For a lot of us, the last few years have been marked by a lot of intense processing and healing. For me, this has included releasing and healing from high-control Christianity, reclaiming lovely parts of me that weren’t welcome before, and discovering my neurodivergence. Although monumental and a lot to wade through, these changes have been for the better, and for good. (I hope you don’t mind the foray into the Wicked soundtrack. That song demanded to be included here, which is fitting since Elphabah has a lot of neurodivergent characteristics.)

As I’ve explored what it means to be neurodivergent, it’s given me an additional framework for understanding myself, authoritarian religion’s impact on me, and what helps me thrive now. I’d like to share some of that with you for your own journey. Let’s start by exploring neurodivergence a bit more…

Neurodivergence

Q: What happens when you have a brain that processes information differently from “the norm”?

A: You can consider yourself neurodivergent!

Neurodivergence is often used in reference to autism, and I think a definition of autism is a great place to start. Autism is: “A neurodevelopmental difference characterized by alterations in social functioning, hypersensitivity to stimuli, repetitive behaviors, and deep interests—often combined with advanced cognitive & perceptive abilities” (Embrace Autism).

Neurodivergence can also include many other brain diversities, such as ADHD, sensory processing differences, and sensitivies). Some of the commonalities among these brain diversities are heightened sensitivity (see Divergent Mind), differences in how we process sensory stimuli (internal and external), and a neurological diversity component present from childhood. There is often overlap, which is why I often use the umbrella term neurodivergent.

I mean, I did write a whole book of poems titled I AM: Poems for Expansion and Renewal before I even knew about the term neurodiverse. I think curiosity, wonder, exploration, and expansion are our natural state of being once we find enough healing, safety, and rest to explore. At least, it’s mine. Which is part of why constricting ideologies and controlling systems are especially awful.

I was originally going to include the medical/psychological terms associated with neurodivergence here, because they are the ones clinicians use to diagnose (via the DSM-5, or Diagnostic and Statistical Manual). But I erased it all because the entire DSM-5 measures everything against the neurotypical “norm” and calls anything else a deficit or a disorder. And that makes me really angry.

I am so grateful for the current neurodiversity movement working to change this, and for more ways to thrive as who we are, rather than being pressured into assimilating.

Exploring Our Neurodiversity

As I have been investigating my own neurodivergence, I have taken an ADHD self-assessment, several autism assessments, and a Highly Sensitive Person checklist, as well as reading books and articles.

I am enjoying finding features of neurodiversity that help me make sense of my own experiences. I have been less enamored with the limitations of many assessments in accurately diagnosing autism in people born with female anatomy and socialized to be female. I have found the assessments out there to be too focused on specific divergent behaviors, measured against neurotypical standards, and developed by male researchers with male subjects.

Thus, I haven’t found labels that encompass all of my neurodiverse traits in a neat package, but I have found so much insight in the search. I know I meet criteria for ADHD, and have features of high sensitivity and autism.

I resonate so much with what it’s like in the inner world of women with autism, and the challenges they experience navigating a neurotypical, pressure-filled, capitalistic society. When I hear their experiences that echo mine so closely, and make me feel at home, I conclude that I am also on the autism spectrum.

But when I take autism assessments, I never meet the criteria for a full diagnosis because of my high empathy and low alexithymia. Are the assessments inadequate because they conflate autism and alexithymia? (Alexithymia is difficulty identifying and describing emotions in the self, in case you wanted to know.) Or do I have features of autism, but do not meet criteria for a full diagnosis? Is there a subset of empathic autism? Or just overlap, and I fit better in the empath category? I’m a clinician, and I’m not sure what the official label would be. It’s okay if you aren’t either. What feels most true for me is empathic autism, so that is what I use for now to help me understand myself and connect with others.

Using Neurodiversity to Process Religious Experiences

As I was taking the RAADS-R autism assessment, I realized I basically could use each item to write a whole story about my religious upbringing. Using this lens has helped me add a new layer of understanding to my experiences. Here is one example:

I have to “act normal” to please other people and make them like me. (RAADS-R statement)

My reflection:

Trying to think, feel, or behave like you’re told a normal person is commonly referred to as “masking.” Whether you knew you were different, or just knew it took a lot of hard work and willpower to meet the expectations, I see you.

I often avoided conflict, judgment, relational tension, or unwanted interventions, by finding out what authority figures wanted and choosing that. With peers, I found out what they wanted in a friend and became that. (I justified it with 1 Cor. 9:22 “All things to all people”...“that I may win some” and such.) You can call that people pleasing, fawning, masking, molding to expectations, submitting, assimilating, etc.

Molding to expectations helped me feel less vulnerable, and avoid shame and judgment. I listened for the “right answers” and put a lot of pressure on myself to live that way. I rarely expressed my own ideas, but performed, achieved, and parroted what I was taught. Putting my own ideas out there felt too vulnerable. These strategies helped me navigate a high-control environment where the rules were ambiguous. I used careful observation to predict each person’s interpretation of these societal and “god-ordained” rules for living an acceptable life.

This pressure to act “normal” to fit into neurotypical society is eerily similar to the pressure I have felt in Christian communities to act, speak, think, pray, feel, and relate in certain ways to be acceptable. The specific behaviors that God (and the community) would accept seemed similarly confusing and unpredictable as the unstructured socializing in everyday life did to me. When the teachings were “clearer,” they were literal, rigid, exacting, burdensome, and exhausting. They led to self-abandonment, self-questioning, self-denial, self-sacrifice, self-criticism, self-policing, and self-flagellation.

It’s no wonder that in my current role as a mental health therapist, I have specialized in helping people find enough safety to release the survival tactic of people-pleasing and finally be able to know and express themselves. It’s been amazing to me that people-pleasing is so similar to masking, if not the same thing altogether, that most of the clients who have come to me to work on recovering from people-pleasing have ended up being neurodiverse. Masking and people-pleasing are really common survival strategies for neurodivergent women based on my clinical experience and research into the subject. We try to figure out what someone else wants and choose that. We try to be “normal” and do what is expected to navigate this confusing life.

What I’ve observed for myself, and is echoed in What I Mean When I Say I’m Autistic, is that there are so many levels of communication happening at one time, that it can be hard to keep track of all of them. For me, if they line up, they are easier to track. If they don’t, it gets really confusing, really fast. I am so tuned in to what people are communicating with their feelings (and mood and energy), that when it doesn’t line up with what they are saying verbally, the conversation can feel really confusing and messy.

I know a lot of women on the spectrum who have told me that this is when they start to question themselves. They must be missing something since the verbals and nonverbals don’t line up. I posit that maybe a lot (or all) of us who are neurodivergent are more attuned to what is clear and what people really mean, and are annoyed and distracted by all the layers of social and hierarchical games layered on top. Once we know how to identify and separate the confusing fluff on the top from what is actually being communicated, we can more effectively trust ourselves and our perceptions.

That leads me to my next section…

A Neurodivergent Narrative

I’ve touched on stories, messages, and experiences that were especially daunting or painful as an undiagnosed neurodivergent person. Now, I’d like to explore the stories that enhance our understanding of, love of, and acceptance of our neurodivergent selves.

Who are the characters you resonate with and look up to? One of my recent favorites is neurodivergent-coded chemist Elizabeth Zott (found in Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus). I “encountered” Elizabeth as I was wondering whether my experiences of religious trauma were uniquely neurodivergent, and whether what I feel so impassioned to share is widely applicable. I found in Elizabeth an example of someone who spoke and lived her truth. She empowered so many others just by being herself and speaking without guile.

The entire novel Lessons in Chemistry highlights neurodivergent values and strengths. We “meet” protagonists who are clear, curious, courageous, and often neurodivergent. We get to experience life from their perspective, and see how they impact their world. All those who don’t embody these values—the antagonists of the story—are in some way manipulative, misogynistic, and controlling; or they take advantage of others to hide their incompetence and ignorance.

You can hear more of my reflections about Lessons in Chemistry on the April episode of Trauma and Pop Culture podcast.

Other neuroexpansive strengths I have encountered:

heightened perception
more connectivity in brain
ability to think outside the box
rich inner world
sensitive
curious
creative
clear
honest
precise
honesty is an antidote to the manipulation, fake news, etc. in our society
special interests and ability to research leads to in-depth knowledge
passionate about injustice
doesn’t care about the social power and control games that cause so much harm in our society, like hierarchies, controlling others, or social niceties
more easily connect with rhythms and attachments that our society needs to heal–earth, animals, etc.
amazing at creating frameworks, making connections, and meaning-making
able to access many qualities of resilience and healing easier - wonder, curiosity, focus and presence, perceptivity, sensitivity, can cut through the bullshit once they learn self-trust

You can find more autistic-specific strengths at Embrace Autism.

A mini manifesto

We are wonderful. We are worthy. We are needed. As neuroexpansive people, we have the opportunity to point the way to more expansiveness for others. As neurodivergent people we feel so keenly how constricting, confining, and controlling it is to live with a narrow definition of what and who is acceptable.

We are already outside the “norm” and can be social critics and activists in ways that align with our nervous system needs (i.e. it may be from our computers more often than in the streets because our nervous systems get overwhelmed so quickly, but we are in the revolution against ableism, authoritarianism, and other forms of oppression nonetheless). We are the canaries in the coal mine. Because we are more sensitive, we are the first to feel the brunt of many things that aren’t working in our society. We can trust ourselves to know, live, and speak our truth.

Our exquisite sensitivity may have been unseen, unappreciated, misunderstood, maligned, and even weaponized against us, but this awareness is also what helped us know we needed to escape an environment and ideology that was crushing. And even more than that, it can be our medicine to heal.

Neuro-exploration: to infinity and beyond!

If you want to learn more about neurodiversity, there are so many great resources. I’m going to include some that I’ve found helpful:

Divergent Mind by Jenara Nerenberg (@neurodiversityproject)
What I Mean When I Say I’m Autistic by Annie Kotowicz (@neurobeautiful)
Camouflage: The Hidden Lives of Autistic Women by Dr. Sarah Bargiela
Unmasking Autism by Devon Price, PhD
Samatha’s Craft Checklist an unofficial list of female experiences of autism
Orchid Reach - clinicians broadening our understanding of neurodivergence and creating a more inclusive future
Embrace Autism - a variety of tests for autism and more, with clear explanations of their purpose, strengths, and limitations. If you want to get a formal assessment, I’ve heard these clinicians are a great option.
ADHD assessments - The ASRS-5 and ASRS-v1.1 are the main options that a doctor or a psychiatrist would want to see. You can find other informal questionnaires on additudemag.com.
Sensory Processing Disorder Checklist
Highly Sensitive Person Test

The AWAKE Project (Autistic World Advocacy, Activism, Knowledge and Empowerment), @the_awake_project - Dr. Dana Waters
Share

About Cathering Quiring:

I am a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Self-Trust Coach, Podcast Host, and Author.

I help people who feel and care deeply to reconnect to their inner wisdom, heal from the pressures and traumas they have experienced, reclaim their playfulness, and liberate through collective care.

I am a cis-gendered, gray-A, white, thin, neurodivergent female spoonie, in a heteronormative relationship. I am a reformed people-pleaser and exvangelical. I am an advocate for needs-based well-being, particularly in the realms of psychology, sociology, and spirituality. My office is located in Pensacola, FL on the unceded land of the Muscogee.

Outside of work, I am an avid podcast-listener, book lover, paddleboard enthusiast, and little-kid-chaser.

Websites: www.cqcounseling.com, catherinequiring.com

Instagram: @catherinequiring (https://www.instagram.com/catherinequiring/

Substack: