Nurturing Neurodivergence by Aileen Slein
In a world governed by an unwritten code of behaviour and appropriation, it can feel, as an autistic person, permanently unsafe. Unsafe to be yourself. You find yourself asking: Am I getting it right? Replaying conversations and interactions, wondering if you’ve offended someone, then breathing a sigh of relief when you see them again and they don’t seem unhappy with you. But even then, doubt creeps in. Maybe they’re just pretending.
This is a familiar place for many neurodivergent people who have learned, from a young age, to wear a mask. To suppress their natural way of being because they’ve been told, directly and indirectly, that it isn’t acceptable. I’ve spoken often about these unseen systems, the structures that shape how we operate as a society. But who created them? And why are we expected to fit into one or two narrow, binary ways of thinking and behaving?
As an autistic person, I can see how hard I’ve worked to be malleable, to become what I thought others wanted me to be. I learned to people-please, to avoid confrontation, to stay below the radar. Being quiet, compliant, even docile felt safer. In recent years, with a deeper understanding of my neurodivergence, I’ve realised I don’t need to bend myself to maintain relationships with people who only accept me on their terms. In fact, I’ve come to recognise the hollowness of relationships built on control and subtle manipulation.
Over the years, I’ve been fortunate to find a small number of friends who accept me as I am, and whom I accept as they are: human, generous, and imperfect. Around these people, I don’t feel judged, and I don’t judge them. That doesn’t mean we always agree. We don’t. We disagree, we fall out, but we’re willing to talk, to repair what’s been misunderstood. We don’t take disagreement as a personal attack. We can say hard things, and we can hear them, because we remain open to the possibility that we might be wrong.
This, to me, is the great value of friendships among neurodivergent people. There is a shared directness, an honesty. What we say and how we behave tends to reflect what we genuinely think and feel. If I ask a friend something, I trust I’ll get a truthful answer. Sometimes that truth is uncomfortable, but the safety it creates far outweighs the discomfort. There is no need to perform, no need to pretend. And that is a profound gift, especially in a world where I have, at times, believed relationships were genuine only to discover, painfully, that I had misread them.
By contrast, relationships shaped by mixed signals can be deeply confusing. When someone appears warm and engaged in person but withdraws or excludes you elsewhere, it creates a disorienting contradiction. As a neurodivergent person, I find it far easier to accept that someone simply doesn’t like me. That’s okay. It’s not possible to like everyone. What’s difficult is the pretence.
We don’t need to be unkind, but we also don’t need to perform connection where it doesn’t exist. We can be honest, compassionately. The idea that we’re meant to be friends with everyone is both exhausting and untrue. We won’t connect with everyone, and that’s natural. It doesn’t prevent coexistence. It doesn’t rule out the possibility that, over time, circumstances might change and connection might grow. Difference is not a deficit; it is simply difference.
Real relationships involve friction. Disagreement is not the problem. How we navigate it is what reveals our humanity. Do we retreat into silence, blame, or gossip? Or do we step into honesty, expressing how we feel while remaining open to perspectives that differ from our own?
For me, real relationships are places where I can finally relax, where I can show up as myself and feel accepted. I don’t have to shrink or edit who I am. My friends feel the same, and that mutual freedom is a gift.
Perhaps, as humans, we might pause the next time we are tempted to silence, ridicule, or dismiss someone, and ask ourselves: why does this feel acceptable? If we are to become truly capable of collaboration, we need to embrace honesty. We don’t have to like everyone, but we can still relate with respect. Real friendships will include friction and, at times, hurt, but it is in how we repair those moments that our humanity is most clearly revealed.