Do you ever make yourself smaller, to take up less space? Find yourself reliving a memory, as if it were happening now? Or maybe just feel like a square peg in a round hole?

When you grow up neurodivergent, queer, disabled or any form outside of the ‘normal’ standard of straight, cis-gendered, able bodied, white skinned and neurotypical, it can feel really hard to fit in.

We often get told messages like, ‘you’re too chaotic’, ‘you’re too aggressive’, ‘you just need to try harder’. Messages that blame, shame and leave us feeling like we’re the problem instead of the environment that discriminates or won’t make space for us.

So we build masks to look like we’re fitting in. We figure out coping mechanisms. We might make ourselves smaller to go under the radar. We can find saying no really hard because having boundaries is nigh on impossible.

But all the while, we feel exhausted – trying so hard while constantly feeling not enough. The self-critic is working overtime to keep the mask in place but means we’re full of self-loathing.

So we learn to cut off from the parts of ourselves that aren’t ok, are chaotic or feel a bit weird. The parts we’re scared of others seeing. This might even leave us living in a state of trauma, our nervous system in overdrive.