Guest post by Lewis Kemp, CEO at Lightbulb Media.
Have you ever walked into a packed bar or a football stadium?
Y’know, where you’re enveloped by that dull buzz of inaudible noise like you’re stepping into a wall of treacle?
Well, imagine that your brain tried to process every single word from every single conversation simultaneously.
Tricky, right?
I always remember watching the scene in Bruce Almighty where he starts hearing millions of prayers all at once and thinking:
“That’s exactly how my head sounds.”
Now imagine having that tsunami of noise inside your brain constantly from the moment you wake up, to the moment you close your eyes at night (and often beyond that).
So, when you are inevitably faced with a social situation, you’re left with two options:
Retreat or Attack.
Retreating means going inwards and completely shutting down. This feels safe but it will draw attention to you, so you feel it’s best to be done in private if possible.
Attacking means pretending everything is fine and becoming the life of the party instead. You do this to try and fit in as best you can, and to make sure everyone else is having a good time whilst not alerting anyone to the internal screaming in your mind.
The irony of it all is that attacking does mean that you just kick the can down the road a little, and will definitely have to retreat for the days or weeks after to build back what you spent.
So, yeah. That’s why I’m quiet today.
Just a little snippet from inside an autistic mind.
Hope it helps to shed a little light for any parents struggling to understand how their ND child’s brain operates.
Lewis Kemp is the CEO of Lightbulb Media. They scale epic brands with paid ads, copywriting & content that converts. He’s a bit of a ‘LinkedIn celebrity‘, also autistic, and a massive advocate for education around neurodiversity.
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