Revisiting The Waking Nightmare: What I Wish I Had Known About Neurodiversity

I recently stumbled across an article I wrote for The Huffington Post back in 2015. It was titled “The Waking Nightmare”, and reading it now felt like opening the diary of a completely different person.

I was 23 then. I had just moved to London, and for the first time in my life I was trying to speak openly about something that had shaped almost every part of my existence: my crippling social anxiety.

Reading those words now, from where I stand today as the founder of Divergent Thinking, is emotional in a way I did not expect. Not because I have forgotten what that version of me felt like, but because I can see so clearly now what he could not see then.

Back then, I thought the anxiety was the problem.

Now, I understand it was often the consequence.

You can read the original 2015 piece here: The Waking Nightmare | HuffPost UK

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When everyday life feels like a threat

In that article, I described my anxiety as something that was with me all day, every day. I wrote that the fear people usually associate with nightmares was the same fear I carried into ordinary life.

That was not exaggeration.

At the time, the hardest part of my day was not writing an essay or doing a piece of work. It was opening my own front door. It was the thought of being seen. It was social interaction, public transport, group situations, eye contact, meetings, parties — all the things other people seemed to move through without a second thought.

I felt as though everyday life was asking something of me that I simply did not know how to give.

What I did not understand then was neurodiversity

Looking back now, one of the most painful things is realising how little I understood about why I felt the way I did.

Yes, I knew I was autistic, dyslexic and dyspraxic. Those labels existed in my life. But I did not yet have a deeper understanding of neurodiversity — of what it really meant for my brain to process the world differently, or how much of my anxiety was being shaped by trying to survive in environments that were not designed for the way my mind worked.

That changes everything in hindsight.

Because if I had truly understood then what I know now, I think things could have been very different.

I do not mean I would have been magically free of anxiety. I do not want to oversimplify it. But I think I would have carried far less shame. I think I would have blamed myself less. I think I would have understood that I was not weak or broken, but exhausted from constantly trying to force a neurodivergent brain through neurotypical expectations.

I think I would have realised much earlier that what I was experiencing was not a personal failure. It was often the natural result of masking, overload, fear of judgement, sensory strain, social decoding and trying to “pass” in a world that treated difference as something risky.

The anxiety was real — but so was the context

That is something I feel very strongly now.

The anxiety was real. The fear was real. The panic, avoidance, self-doubt and social exhaustion were all real. But they did not exist in a vacuum.

They were shaped by the fact that I was:

• autistic in a world built around neurotypical social rules

• dyslexic in a world that overvalued speed and written fluency

• dyspraxic in a world that often equated coordination and ease with competence

• trying to hide all of this because I believed visibility would lead to rejection

That context matters.

Because when neurodiversity is not understood, the person is left carrying the entire weight of adaptation. You assume it is your job to become more normal, more effortless, more socially acceptable. You spend enormous energy trying to close a gap that was never really about your worth to begin with.

That is exactly what I was doing.

I was not just anxious — I was masking

When I read the article now, what breaks my heart is how clear it is that I was spending huge parts of my life trying to perform normality.

I forced eye contact even though it felt physically wrong.

I froze when people looked at me.

I monitored myself constantly.

I hid my autism because I was terrified people would judge me.

I was using most of my energy not to live, but to appear manageable.

At the time, I did not have the language for that in the way I do now.

Now I would call a lot of it masking.

And that matters, because masking is not harmless. It can look like coping from the outside, but internally it can be exhausting, destabilising and deeply lonely. If I had understood that earlier — if I had understood that I was not simply failing at social life, but living under the strain of chronic masking and neurodivergent overload — I think I would have treated myself with a lot more compassion.

Education changed the meaning of my experience

One of the biggest turning points in my life was education — not only formal education, but education about myself.

Studying applied neuroscience helped me understand that my brain was not defective. It was different. The same wiring that made certain environments so overwhelming also gave me things I had not yet fully valued:

• intense focus

• pattern recognition

• creative problem-solving

• strong systems thinking

• a different perspective on people and the world

That did not erase the anxiety, but it changed the meaning of it.

Instead of seeing myself as someone who was simply “bad at life”, I started to understand that a lot of what I had experienced made sense through the lens of neurodiversity. That was a profound shift.

Because once you understand that your brain works differently, the goal stops being to “fix” yourself into a more acceptable version. The goal becomes learning how to work with your wiring, not constantly against it.

That is still a huge part of the work I do now through Divergent Thinking: helping other people and organisations understand that neurodiversity is not just a label. It changes how people process, communicate, cope, learn and thrive.

What would have been different if I had known?

I think about this a lot.

If I had really understood neurodiversity back then — not just as a diagnostic fact, but as a meaningful explanation of how my mind worked — I think several things could have been different.

I think I would have:

• felt less ashamed of struggling

• pushed myself less cruelly in environments that were overwhelming

• recognised that needing support was not failure

• understood my anxiety as connected to overload and masking, not just weakness

• stopped spending so much energy trying to look normal

• asked earlier what would help, rather than only what was wrong with me

I think I would also have seen my future differently.

At 23, I was still deeply afraid that if people really knew I was autistic, dyslexic and dyspraxic, they would reject me. Now, those same parts of me are inseparable from the work I do, the voice I have, and the reason I have been able to build a career helping others.

If I had known that then, I think I would have suffered less alone.

I still experience anxiety — but not the same shame

I want to be honest about that.

This is not a story where the anxiety disappeared and never returned. I still know what overwhelm feels like. I still know what social exhaustion feels like. I still know that loud, unstructured environments can drain me very quickly.

But the difference now is enormous.

I no longer treat those reactions as proof that there is something wrong with me. I understand them in context. I understand when I am overloaded. I understand when I need space. I understand that my brain’s needs are not a source of embarrassment.

Most importantly, I do not hide my neurodivergence in the same way.

What I once thought would make people reject me has become part of my voice, my work and my purpose. It is one of the reasons I have been able to advise organisations, contribute to public conversations, and build a platform that is now centred on helping other people make sense of their own experiences.

That is why the blog and our wider work are so important to me. So many people are still living inside their own version of that waking nightmare without yet understanding the role neurodiversity may be playing in it.

To my younger self

If I could go back and speak to that 23-year-old version of me, I would not tell him that anxiety disappears.

I would tell him something much more important:

You are not broken.

Your fear is real, but it is not random.

Your brain is not failing — it is trying to survive conditions that were never designed for it.

If you understood your neurodiversity more deeply now, you would see yourself with much more compassion.

I would tell him that one day he would stop viewing his differences only through the lens of pain. That one day he would understand that the same brain he was trying so desperately to hide would become the basis of his life’s work.

And I would tell him that he did not need to be fixed. He needed understanding.

A note to anyone living in that place now

If you are reading this and recognise yourself in that younger version of me, I want to say something clearly:

Sometimes anxiety is not only about fear. Sometimes it is also about what happens when a neurodivergent person spends years trying to function in spaces that demand constant adaptation, masking and self-erasure.

If that is true for you, then your struggle deserves context, not just judgement.

You may not need to become more normal.

You may need to understand your wiring more deeply.

You may need support that actually fits.

You may need permission to stop blaming yourself for the cost of surviving in the wrong conditions.

That is not weakness. That is insight.

Final reflection

Reading The Waking Nightmare now feels like meeting a younger self who was trying so hard to survive that he could not yet imagine a life beyond that fear.

What has changed since then is not that I have become perfectly fearless. It is that I understand my experience differently. I understand the role neurodiversity played in shaping it. And I know now that if I had truly understood that earlier, I think I would have been much kinder to myself.

I would have known that the problem was never simply me.

And that, more than anything, is what I wish I could give back to that younger version of myself.

You can read the original 2015 article here: The Waking Nightmare | HuffPost UK

To explore more of my work through Divergent Thinking, visit divergentthinking.uk, read the blog, or learn more about workplace needs assessments.