In the middle of a pitch-black night, beneath a light blanket suited to the end-of-school-year heat, I lay in bed wrestling with the thoughts racing through my mind. I tried to stop them before my mother discovered I was still awake at that hour.

Final exams were approaching, and the multiplication table simply refused to settle into my memory. Then there was the parsing question that always came at the end of Arabic grammar exams. That was another problem. I had already given up hope of solving it. It would remain an empty square, and I would lose every mark assigned to it.

This insomnia and overthinking were nothing unusual for me. The nervous system does not wait for us to reach adulthood before it starts warning us that something is wrong, or that there may be danger. What I lacked then was simply the ability to learn its language and understand it properly. I am not exaggerating when I say it is one of the most important languages we can learn.

That day, I had exhausted my mother as she tried to help me study while also taking care of my relative’s two baby girls. Their mother needed some time alone with her husband so they could resolve a “small” disagreement, the kind that sometimes emerges when two people stop being simply a young man and woman and become a mother and father.

My mother rocked one of the babies on her legs and sang:

“Come on, sleep now, sleep.”

So that was how babies fell asleep, apparently.

How could I rock myself and sing myself to sleep when I was far too big to lie across someone else’s legs?

I would try.

I shook my leg.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Four…

Five…

My whole body began moving with it until I fell asleep.

I felt as though I had made a monumental discovery.

“I’ll never have trouble falling asleep again!”

A “Quirk” or a Disorder?

Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I moved my body in all sorts of ways, in different places and situations.

I still do.

My mother called these strange movements a “quirk”, by which she meant a “bad habit”.

Doctors say some of these movements can be symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, ADHD.

But let’s not rush to conclusions.

It is not quite like what most people think they know about this “disorder”.

When people hear ADHD, they tend to imagine an exhausting child who never stops moving or talking, who cannot concentrate, struggles at school, and never listens.

“Poor parents. God help them.”

Rarely, if ever, do we hear:

“God help the child.”

In reality, the story is simply one of a brain that developed differently. A neurodivergent brain, with difficulties in its self-management system compared with the neurotypical brains most people have.

That difference appears in countless forms and degrees. No two look exactly alike.

I was diagnosed around two years ago. A late diagnosis that came only after I had exhausted every other possibility that might explain my chronic anxiety and episodic depression.

And despite my deep knowledge of its symptoms, their effects, manifestations and meanings, despite the serious work I do to increase public understanding of them, the explanation my mind still finds most convincing is that I am probably just another eccentric alien creature.

Recognising a girl with attention difficulties was extremely difficult when I was growing up. Information about ADHD and the different ways its symptoms could appear was nowhere near as clear or accessible as it is today.

Even now, many questions surrounding the condition remain unsettled, with doctors still disagreeing over them.

As for me, I was a girl whose symptoms were mostly internal, and who was very good at hiding them.

I was highly sensitive. My mental activity was almost constantly fighting with my ability to focus and suppress impulses. I leaned more towards distraction than visible hyperactivity.

My restless movements helped stimulate me: one leg shaking, two thumbs twisting around each other or dancing around their joints.

I wanted to taste and smell my body and my hair.

And my mind kept escaping into my own world.

The wide world of dreams, relatively safe from judgement and pressure.

Masking to Survive

Today, I fled my house, which was filled with the sounds of the weekly cleaning and unexpected visitors.

Sounds and distractions that stir up my nervous system and steal the few crumbs of dopamine I live on.

I am sitting in a quiet café, almost empty, trying to write these words.

I choose the cafés I visit carefully. I look for places that feel safe, places without curious eyes, or judgemental ones.

When I am trying to concentrate on a task, I cannot always control how my body moves, or the things it does that other people may find annoying or strange.

I put my laptop on my lap and rest one leg on the wooden bar beneath the table. I bounce it up and down, and the laptop bounces with it.

The table is empty except for my cup of coffee.

Despite coffee’s stimulating effect on my nervous system, the cup itself needs to remain perfectly still so it does not break or spill and leave behind stubborn stains, rather like childhood wounds and the core beliefs stamped into our brains.

I smile at the waitress and thank her when she interrupts me to ask whether the coffee is “to my liking”.

A completely normal gesture. One that neurotypical people would probably consider “nice”.

But its cost is enormous for someone whose attention is easily scattered.

That kind question stole from me a rare ability to concentrate.

And the smile I gave her did not come from my heart. It was simply an imitation of what “normal” people do.

My heart, meanwhile, had moved one step closer to exploding with anger, exhaustion and grief over all the years I have lost trying to pull my concentration back into place and begin again.

Then I enter another spiral of anxiety about my future and the number of hours I will lose to other interruptions that are equally innocent, kind and ordinary.

Many people living with different forms of neurodivergence, myself included, experience chronic anxiety fuelled by years of failed attempts to adapt to surroundings that do not understand our different needs.

Little by little, we learn to hide our feelings or our distress.

Sometimes we learn to imitate other people.

We develop skills that allow us to inhabit another personality, one that is more socially acceptable, so we can avoid the rejection that follows when we struggle to meet the expectations of a neurotypical environment.

We survive its judgements and assumptions.

And so diagnosis is delayed until we reach the age of burnout, just before the larger explosion.

How Did My Body Save Me Without My Permission?

One of the most common strategies mental-health professionals recommend for people with anxiety is grounding, a way of calming the nervous system by bringing a person back to the “ground” through the five senses:

sight, smell, hearing, touch and taste.

I look at those self-management strategies now and compare them with the things my body used to get up to while I was growing up.

I laugh through tears at myself.

“What are you doing?!”

One of my colleagues shouted in disgust when she noticed one of those strange movements during a work meeting.

That may actually have been one of the milder reactions I have received to the strange things my body sometimes urges me to do, unconsciously grounding me.

I did not know that everyone’s thumb joint did not move that way.

I had not even realised my thumb was dancing at the time.

My body was doing everything it could to help me focus, trying to protect me from missing some important piece of information that I might later pay for.

Do you remember free periods in middle school, when we were considered grown-up enough to be left alone in the classroom?

The noise would rise until the room became something like a school-trip bus.

Shouting.

Laughter.

Voices from every direction.

Impromptu performances, challenges, chaos enough to set any nervous system on edge.

In the middle of all that noise, some of the girls were playing charades. One of them stood in front of the class and imitated another student, while everyone else had to guess who she was.

I think I had a headache that day.

I laid my head on the desk and tried unsuccessfully to sleep until I heard the girls shouting my name.

I lifted my head.

There she was.

A girl standing in front of everyone, pressing a finger against her nose and laughing while the others screamed my name and pointed at me from behind.

I understood what was happening both quickly and slowly.

Amid everyone’s shouting, and the girl’s embarrassed glances towards me, I realised she was imitating me.

Everyone collapsed into laughter, then quickly tried to make light of it so I would not get upset.

“It’s fine, we’re just joking!”

I began asking myself whether I had made that movement while trying to sleep on the desk.

Had they just seen me doing it?

Or did I do it so often without noticing that everyone already knew me by it?

I felt naked.

As though every effort I had made to appear normal and acceptable had failed, and I had exposed myself in front of everyone.

A spiral of terror opened inside me.

I hid it skilfully behind the face that laughed along with them.

The same face that still laughs with everyone, so they do not have to feel awkward, at the expense of the person inside it who is always the embarrassed one.

I know now that I had been trying to smell the skin beneath my nose.

I would breathe it in deeply, the way my cat smells my clothes before sleeping on them.

It was as though, even as a child, I somehow knew that no one knew me except me.

I would press my nose so I could smell myself and feel that I really existed there, in that place, amid all that noise.

I would remind myself:

I am me.

I am not other people’s mirror.

Then I would quickly press my nose again, pushing it back into place, afraid of their judgement.

That was not the only way I unconsciously checked in with myself and sensed that I existed.

When I was younger, I strangely enjoyed tasting my fingers.

I remember becoming absorbed in it in kindergarten as though it happened yesterday.

I look at that little girl now and feel embarrassed by what she was doing.

I try to hide her from my memory, even though I know she had done nothing wrong at that age.

I stand there watching her in her pink school smock and become frightened with her when the teacher shouts and scolds her in front of everyone.

That was the last time I tasted my skin.

I remember it being salty and delicious, like crisps.

But the taste was not worth the terror I felt afterwards.

I think that may have been the first time I understood that I was being watched.

That this place was not safe.

Later, it turned out the entire planet was unsafe.

My Ears Aren’t Just for Hearing

That realisation did not cancel my body’s need for grounding.

Every time I try to get rid of one “quirk”, my body proves remarkably good at discovering another.

The latest is folding my ear.

Let me tell you about this discovery.

You know how your face becomes red and hot when you are angry or tense, and you feel as though you need something to cool you down?

At a very young age, my magnificent body discovered that the edge of my ear remained cool at exactly those moments.

So, without thinking, I would fold that cool edge inward against the warmer part.

Ahhhhhhh!

Coolness.

Bliss.

Instant relief!

I do not recommend trying it.

You might become addicted to the feeling.

I am still failing to get rid of this particular “quirk” because it answers more than one need.

On one hand, folding the ear closes it slightly and keeps some of the noise away.

On another, it cools my face and settles my nerves.

It helps me focus and release energy.

It reminds me that I exist and that I am not other people’s mirror.

And, for once, it is something I still have not allowed myself to feel ashamed of.

How intelligent this body is.

How capable it is of acting without our permission to protect us.

Imagine if my body had not done all of this on its own.

If my mind had not somehow led it towards those methods of grounding.

Would I have made it here today?

Would I have managed to live through a neurodivergence I did not even recognise until I was thirty-four?

I look now at that girl who suffered from insomnia far earlier than anyone thought she should.

The girl who tasted her hair and her skin.

Who smelled herself and recognised herself.

The girl who still cannot sit perfectly still, unlike the coffee cup on her table.

I imagine a world that understands her difference, that builds systems around her strengths and celebrates her abilities and qualities.

I imagine this chronic anxiety finally leaving her body so she can sleep the peaceful, quiet sleep she deserves.

I wish I could visit her today in those embarrassing moments.

I would tell her so much about what I discovered later.

And I would thank her body for its extraordinary creativity in protecting her from exploding inside.

Note: The information and symptoms described in this article are provided for awareness purposes only and should not be used for self-diagnosis. Confirming attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder requires an assessment by a qualified professional. Symptoms vary from one person to another and may resemble or overlap with those of other physical or mental health conditions.