#12 Beyond the label
What neurodivergence, sensitivity, and energy systems are teaching us about the future of healing
Hello angels,
I’d like to talk about neurodivergence. It’s a conversation that’s been surfacing everywhere lately — in my relationships, podcasts, therapy sessions, even the hairdresser’s chair.
One close friend recently shared they’d been diagnosed with ADHD after a long period of feeling unmotivated at work. Another opened up about navigating ADHD within their relationship — their partner often jumping between tasks, fixating on niche creative interests, unable to sit still. Someone else mentioned they’d be wearing headphones at the club over the weekend, so they could dance and feel joyful without getting overwhelmed.
More and more people I know are relating to the signs: Trouble focusing. Sensory overwhelm. Restlessness. Forgetfulness. Difficulty managing emotions. Inability to finish tasks and keep up sustained mental effort. Daydreaming or zoning out.
I’ve related, too. But because I’ve managed to ‘function’ in a neurotypical world — perform well at school, hold myself in social settings, fit into structured work environments — I’ve dismissed the possibility that I might sit outside that frame.
But something’s been shifting. Since stepping away from my 9-5 and building a life around what I want to do — rather than what I should do — I’ve felt a profound change. In my energy. In how I move through the world. And, most powerfully, in the stories I tell myself about how I’m meant to operate.
A few moments from the past month stand out. Nothing dramatic on their own, but together, they’ve pointed me toward something important.
Blindboy and I
A friend introduced me to The Blindboy Podcast — hosted by an Irish man who wears a plastic bag on his head and talks about everything from Kylie Minogue to Irish mythology to the history of Ginger Nuts and understanding the human condition.
I wasn’t sure I’d relate. But in the first episode I listened to, something resonated.
He spoke about his refusal to engage in small talk — explaining that, for him, it’s a form of autistic protest. Breaking traditional podcast conventions, he lets his stories and interviews unfold intuitively in unexpected directions. The conversation moves without any clear parameters, just flow.
It wasn’t just entertaining. It felt very familiar.
His intuitive, associative, dot-connecting way of thinking mirrored how I’ve always felt and thought. When ideas for my writing come together, it feels like disparate experiences and moments sparking and joining together to create harmony.
The world rewards linear, logical and structured thinking — but I’ve always felt most alive when I’m following my feelings, skipping between ideas, and letting things get a little weird as my excitement rises.
That’s when I feel most me. And that’s when my work feels most alive, too.
Surviving in overwhelming spaces
In therapy, I’ve learned about the concept of masking — the subtle and not-so-subtle ways people learn to hide their internal experience to appear 'normal'. It’s a term often used in neurodivergence discourse, but it’s also something I’ve witnessed in myself, over and over again.
I used to get frustrated that my partner couldn’t tell when I was anxious at social events. “It didn’t look like you were struggling,” he’d say.
A friend once watched me flit around a busy art exhibition opening and said, “You just talk to everyone with such ease”. Inside, I felt overstimulated and panicked.
I’ve realised now that what people were seeing wasn’t confidence — it was performance. A survival strategy that I thought was helping me.
In addition to big social gatherings, hairdressers have always been highly fertile ground for my masking. The overstimulation, the forced conversation, the lights, the sounds, the sharp tools around my head. During one particularly anxious appointment, I remember my neck twitching (out of my control) when the cold scissors touched the back of my neck. I smiled through it. Said nothing. Then avoided salons for years.
Recently, I went to a quiet salon in Melbourne recommended by a friend. The hairdresser didn’t force conversation. She listened. She moved gently. The space was calm. I told her about my hairdresser phobia and she understood. For the first time, my nervous system didn’t feel under threat. I felt safe and actually enjoyed myself. The feeling of ‘there’s something wrong with me’ shifted.
Leaving corporate full-time work has had a similar effect. In those jobs, my nervous system was constantly dysregulated. My body tense, my mind racing under the pressure of needing to conform to a particular structure and cultural norms. I thought I was just ‘too sensitive’ for high-performing environments. That I was the only one who couldn’t sit at a screen all day and felt awkward having to share ‘a moment of gratefulness’ at our weekly WIP. That I needed to adjust.
But after giving myself the freedom to follow my own rhythm — to work when I have energy, to rest when I need it, to move and think and create and converse intuitively — everything has changed. I bop between a variety of tasks and ways of working throughout the day. ‘Work’ feels joyful. My energy, my health, even my periods, have all started to regulate.
Rethinking the story of ‘what’s wrong’
In a recent therapy session, I described this new creative flow as ‘addictive’. My therapist gently questioned why I’d chosen that word. I paused. I realised I’d internalised the idea that my way of being — fast, intuitive, non-linear — was somehow bad. Untrustworthy. Pathological even.
In my Gestalt psychotherapy class, my teacher recently shared something from Gabor Maté that stayed with me: instead of asking what’s wrong with you, ask what happened to you. That simple shift in perspective cracked something open in me — an invitation to view my struggles not as flaws, but as responses to a world that hasn’t always felt safe or supportive.
When we start to query what has happened to us, what conditions have led to us feel or act this way, we open up new possibilities for healing and new ways of being. My own journey with therapy - for both my mind and body - has been a slow, deep unwinding. Making contact with past experiences and unprocessed emotion. Tracing symptoms back to their source. Learning to listen to my body’s wisdom, not override it.
I once asked a previous therapist what they thought about neurodivergence. I think I’d been telling them about the hairdresser experience. How my body felt completely overwhelmed in a space that’s supposed to be relaxing.
They gently offered a new perspective. They wondered whether conditions like ADHD, anxiety, and depression would have existed in traditional Indigenous communities — where connection to land, community, and rhythm was central. Maybe the world we’ve built — fast-paced, hyper-productive, overstimulated, and often disconnected — is simply moving faster than our nervous systems are designed to process. Perhaps what we call “neurodivergence” is not a dysfunction, but a natural response to an environment that’s lost touch with presence, care, and cyclical living.
It was a perspective shift. One that helped me start seeing my responses not as flaws, but as wisdom. My body, speaking a truth the world doesn’t always want to hear.
Embracing the energetic body
As I’ve begun to soften the belief that I needed fixing, I’ve found myself drawn to frameworks that honour the energetic body — ones that don’t reduce human experience to symptoms or labels, but invite curiosity, connection, and wholeness.
Practices like Human Design, astrology, Chinese medicine, and Gestalt psychotherapy have helped me soften the binary of right and wrong. They haven’t replaced logic — they’ve helped me remember what I’ve always felt, and given language to truths I couldn’t yet name.
Western culture has long leaned toward the analytical — favouring diagnosis, linear thinking, and quick solutions. But energetic systems, including field theory in Gestalt (which is grounded in physics), remind us that everything is connected. Body, mind, spirit, environment, systems— we’re part of the same living field.
And in that field, healing isn’t about becoming someone else. It’s about remembering who you are.
The full spectrum of human
Increasingly, I think about how many of us are quietly living in systems we were never built for. How many gifts go unused because they don’t fit the dominant mould.
For many people, having a label for their experience is validating, even life-changing. But for me, healing has come from letting go of the need for a label, and interrogating the conditions that have led me here. It’s come from making courageous actions to live more authentically. From feeling, not fixing.
Maybe there was never supposed to be a divide between the neurodivergent and neurotypical. Maybe we’ve just been living in environments that can’t hold the full spectrum of human experience. Maybe our sensitivity, our weirdness, our difference — is the medicine so many of us are deeply craving.
Something to reflect on after reading this…
Have you ever felt like your way of being wasn’t built for the systems around you? What if your sensitivity was a form of intelligence?
If my experience resonates with you... I’m about to launch a mentoring service to help people navigating career and business transitions, and seeking clarity on their unique gifts, skills and purpose.
DM me @p_oochie or respond to this newsletter if you’d like to know more.
With love,
Emma / Pooch x
Love it @emma
Thanks for sharing your experiences. I believe our sensitivity is a form of intelligence 😍