What Does Your Thriving Look Like?

A guest post on unmasking to yourself by Jennifer Berney

Aug 22, 2025

Welcome to Healing is My Special Interest, the newsletter at the intersection of late-diagnosed neurodivergence and healing from high control environments. We are still going strong on our “summer of deconstructing” series, and this essay is a beautiful reflection on deconstructing the ways we had to suppress our stims (and ourselves) in order to survive. I too am in the midst of a few hard weeks so this post was just what I needed. Thank you to everyone who supports this newsletter and allows me to pay my guest writers for their creativity, beauty, and wisdom.

What Does Your Thriving Look Like?

A guest post by Jennifer Berney

Over the past three days, I’ve listened to the song “All Night Long” by Lionel Richie at least forty times. I’ve listened to it through my earbuds while doing dishes, or through my phone’s speaker while doing chores in the greenhouse. I’ve danced to it alone; I’ve listened with my eyes closed, sprawled out on the couch. I’m listening obsessively because my nervous system is shot from weeks of managing a family crisis, and this week in particular has been a bad one. I’d felt unbearably raw, until a couple of days ago—moments after a somatic therapy session—when Lionel Richie’s voice unspooled in my head. Why that song? I had no idea. I was a child in the eighties and remember loving that song when it played on the radio, but I hadn’t heard it since. But it came to me like a gift, and so I looked it up, played it, and found that it brought me instant relief. The music seemed to complete whatever healing had begun during the therapy session, to help me settle what I had stirred up by talking.

I wouldn’t have access to this kind of relief if it weren’t my recent learning on neurodivergence. Until recently, I’d spent a lifetime masking not just to the world but to myself. After pursuing autism diagnoses for both of my children, I began to more actively notice how, ever since we’d moved outside of city limits, I was constantly singing and talking to myself. This was an urge I’d long suppressed when we had close neighbors; I didn’t want to be perceived, and so, while outside, I remained nearly silent.

In fact, I had suppressed these urges so effectively that I barely noticed them. But once I moved into a more spacious life, they emerged instantly as if they’d been waiting to be freed. If I had not been learning about neurodivergence, I might have assumed that my verbal stimming was a sign of unwellness, or that my ability to suppress the urge to stim was proof of my sanity.

I was twelve when I’d made the conscious decision to shut up. Throughout childhood I sang to myself and talked about special interests to anyone who would listen. As I hit adolescence it became clear to me that my vocal hyperactivity was alienating me from my peers. Or, to put it another way, I understood that I was annoying. It was easier to shut up completely than to try and moderate my loquaciousness, and so I became, in public at least, a quiet and controlled person. At home I played the radio and sang along; I wore out cassette tapes by playing them over and over. But once I entered adulthood and started living with housemates, I modified that too.

I wonder now, what was the cost of losing that regulation tool? How much stress did I carry that I might have released if I’d found a way to grant myself access to verbal stimming and repetition?

Five years ago, not wanting to appear unhinged even to myself, I would have cut myself off after three or four listens. But today, listening to Lionel Ritchie, I can access a state of feeling both raw and blissed out—the rawness facilitates the bliss. The chorus of “All Night Long” is the perfect, swooning stim, full of repetition and joy:

All night long (all night), All night (all night)

All night long!

Over ten years ago, I began somatic therapy as a treatment for CPTSD, believing that complex childhood trauma was the sole reason for my chronic anxiety. If you had asked me what symptoms I was trying to treat, I would have described my introversion, my discomfort around authority figures, my urge to disappear at parties. I was hopeful that the right kind of therapy would transform me, that I would more closely resemble the picture I had in my mind of a healthy, thriving person. I understand now that the person I was picturing wasn’t me; they were a neurotypical extrovert.

Somatic therapy didn’t cure me (there was no disease to cure)—but it did help me tune into my body’s actual truth. Somatic therapy taught me to slow down and find my footing in hard moments, and to stay inside my body rather than flee.

Learning about neurodivergence helped me incorporate those lessons more deeply. A breakthrough for me occurred last year when I walked my teenage son down the road to a friend’s party. As we approached the house, I felt dread. At least a dozen cars lined the driveway, and I didn’t see anyone I knew. My son looked at me. “I have no idea why I wanted to come to this,” he said. I didn’t push him to stay for five minutes or give it a try. I honored his clarity, and watched as he turned around to walk home. I didn’t offer myself the same grace immediately. Instead, I laid out my contribution to the pot luck, spotted two friends, and had a brief conversation. But once that conversation ended, I felt a sharp anxiety accompanied by a vast and sinking emptiness. I decided I’d honor my own signals and leave immediately, that I’d leave behind my plate and tote bag, and forego saying goodbye to the host. I embraced my sudden departure as an act of self-care rather that a sign of maladjustment, and I nearly wept with relief. My own permission was a blessing I’d needed for decades.

I used to think that thriving, for me, would look like fitting in. It would look like showing up at a party and making new friends, or never feeling self-conscious, or being able to speak in front of a crowd without feeling like I might float away. But learning about neurodivergence has helped me identify the joy I experience in solitude, in making art and writing.

It’s helped me to see and validate the deep sense of connection I feel when sharing special interests with friends—and also the exhaustion I feel in social situations that require me to disconnect from my body’s signals of distress. Understanding my own auDHD has helped me accept that, if I want to, I can speak in front of a crowd, but I will probably never fully vanquish that floaty feeling—that floaty feeling is wired into me and so I must befriend it. And I can! I can wiggle my toes and feel them on the floor. I take a breath and see if my voice has become less thready. I can accept that there is no perfect solution, that part of me will always want to flee. And then, when the event ends, I can count on returning to the safety of my own space and finding refuge in the grounding practices I now have room for.

I can sing along to Lionel Richie, not just once or twice but all night long.

Jennifer Berney lives on a small farm in Olympia Washington with her partner, two sons, and many animals. She writes a newsletter about creativity at the intersection of joy and grief, The Scrap Heap, with her collaborator Sarah Tavis. Her memoir on queer family building, The Other Mothers, explores the many ways that the fertility industry has sidelined the LGBTQ community. She facilitates workshops on joyful practice, a neuro-affirming approach to art-making, and works as a creative coach and developmental editor.

Thank you so much Jennifer for this wonderful essay. Life feels so overwhelming for so many of us right now — what are the ways you are learning to honor yourself and let yourself find some relief for your nervous system?

Healing is My Special Interest

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