Hello and welcome to Kintsugi Mind!
This week, one of my friends was booking their neurodiversity assessment. After years of waiting, the moment had finally arrived.
Were they excited? Relieved, perhaps?
Not at all.
They felt anxious and ashamed and very unsettled about it. “What if I am not neurodivergent?” they said. “What if the assessment shows that I am just making this all up?”
It was painful to hear, and yet not unfamiliar.
This got me thinking about the title of this post: what do we do when the shoe does not fit?
Well…
When the shoe does not fit, we are often taught to force it.
To break it in.
To tolerate the pain.
To walk differently.
And when the shoe still hurts, many assume the foot is the problem.
That the person is too sensitive, too rigid, too difficult.
Rarely do we stop to ask whether the shoe itself might need to change.
This is what I see so many neurodivergent clients being asked to do by families, schools, workplaces, partners, and wider systems.
As a neurotypical therapist, I do not know what it is like to live with these demands every day, to keep trying to fit into a world without standing out too much in order to feel safe.
I do not know, and that is deeply humbling.
Because however much I read, learn or try to understand, my understanding will always be limited to what my clients share.
The challenge, as a therapist, is to accept that I may not know how someone feels, and still make myself available to them in different ways.
It reminds me, again and again, that my clients are the experts of their own experience.
What does give me hope is seeing what can begin to shift when shame no longer has to remain hidden, when painful feelings can be met rather than dismissed, and when the mask does not need to do all the talking.
In that space, adaptations can begin to be explored:
The smiling along.
The withdrawing.
The overwhelm.
The paralysis.
The exhausting work of hiding differences in order to feel accepted, or at least safe.
What happens when a person’s needs or differences are only acknowledged when convenient, or used against them when they are inconvenient?
In my post “I’m Right Here! But Don’t Look at Me…”, I spoke about conditional love.
As I write this, I can’t help but think about the cost of masking in order to receive that conditional acceptance.
A cost that often goes unnoticed by the neurotypical majority, the labour behind becoming pleasant, productive and high functioning.
It is a high price to pay, even when it is tied to survival and acceptance, to minimise and mould, rather than risk being pathologised or discarded.
So when my neurodivergent clients come to therapy, I invite them to take their shoes off if it feels right.
Literally and metaphorically.
When they do, something more genuine can begin to emerge between us.
I see them more fully.
I see them in their resilience and their tenacity as we grapple with those introjects such as being:
Too sensitive
Too chaotic
Too rigid
Too much…
We explore what these mean for them, and the impact they have on their lives.
We question which ones may still serve a purpose, and which might be ready to be let go.
We sit with the feelings of loss and confusion, and try to make sense of them.
And as we do, we do not follow rules.
We ditch the norms.
Sometimes we laugh.
Sometimes we share silence.
Sometimes we discover something and regain territory.
There is never one way.
One size does not fit all.
And so, maybe the question is not whether to force the shoe or walk barefoot, but what might happen if we stopped blaming the foot and took a hard look at the shoe instead.
Maybe we can begin to recognise the quiet violence of forcing a foot into a shoe that does not fit.
Maybe we could reflect on what would happen if we invited different ways of walking.
And perhaps, from there, we might begin to walk alongside one another, as we are.
Marta Carbajo Gutiérrez is a UKCP-accredited Gestalt psychotherapist working with individuals and groups in London and online. You can find out more about her way of thinking on her substack at Kintsugi Mind.