Tag: neurodivergent

Am I actually an introvert?

~ Hannah ~ Leave a comment

When I was a college freshman at K-State, I took Intro to Leadership Studies. I can’t remember why I took it. I think it was part of my scholarship requirements. I was briefly interested in pursuing the leadership minor, but other courses got in the way. Anyway…as part of the course, we took the Myers-Briggs Personality Test (MBTI). Not an online one, but the actual paper-and-pencil fill-in-the-bubble test that you have to wait for the results in the mail. I remember the professor being very adamant that we needed to think seriously about our answers and not answer with how we want people to see us. We needed to be honest with ourselves about our responses. That’s a lot to ask of a room full of 18 and 19 year olds.

When I look back on those instructions from the professor, I realize I was full of baloney. I definitely did not answer those questions with how I truly felt about myself and my interactions with other humans. But I know I wasn’t fully aware that’s what I was doing. I realize now that I was masking my neurodivergence…my ADHD, my social anxiety, my sensory issues. To hide the true way that my brain functioned, I acted like an outgoing, confident, smart young woman ready to take on the world. Inside, I was insecure, lost, and always anxious.

As a college freshman, I tested as an ENTP. This personality is what 16personalities.com calls The Debater. At the time, it made sense. That’s how I wanted to be perceived. When I take any of the online versions of the MBTI now, I test as a INTJ or The Architect. This makes a lot more sense with how my adult life has progressed and with the discoveries I have made about my mental health.

Am I really an introvert that has been masking as an extrovert most of my life? I have often referred to myself as an ambivert since I tend to share traits from both types.

It’s incredibly unnerving, but at the same time, enlightening to realize these things about myself at the age of 39. I suppose that’s why I feel such a sense of hope for 2023. I am finally coming out of my shell and embracing my “oddness” rather than try to hide it or avoid it. Or argue with my family members when they point out how “weird” I am.

I’m not weird…I’m not odd…I’m neurodivergent. And it may be corny to say, but I do think my neurodivergence is one of my superpowers.

Identity Crisis

~ Hannah ~ Leave a comment

For nearly two months now I have been brainstorming how to rebrand my blog/social media identity online. NeonRunnerGirl has worked for so many years, but now I feel like it’s not as relevant and not really what I want to focus on with my blog writing.

Of course, being neurodivergent has made this task extra challenging. I spend waste large chunks of time checking different username configurations. At a minimum, I’d like to have twitter, instagram, and a .com URL. This is proving to be a stumbling block in 2022. Lots of usernames are already taken, even if they aren’t being actively used.I have a long list of buzz words that I would like to use in some combination. And so far, I’ve come up empty on a final idea. I even recruited my husband and oldest son to help me. They both helped me add a few more ideas to the list, but I’m still stuck. And as of now, I’m still NeonRunnerGirl.

This identity crisis I find myself in the middle of has two parts. One part is attached to my lack of motivation for running. While running will always be a huge part of my adult transformation, I just feel like it’s not the foreground of who I am. Being a runner isn’t the first thing I want the online community to see about me.

The other part of the identity crisis is that I am going through the typical (such a funny word for me to use right now) unmasking following a late stage (or adult) ADHD diagnosis. So many parentheses. But then my mind often works in parenthetical thoughts. Tangets! Squirrel!

More later.