On Belonging and Fitting-In: A Neurodivergent Moment in an Ordinary Room
In an ordinary seminar room, a small disruption revealed the fragile balance between masking and authenticity. This is the story of a body seeking alignment, of belonging from within, and of what it truly means to be seen.
1445 words — 7 minutes reading time
“I belong to the eyes that see me.”
Last Wednesday, I attended the weekly seminar that’s part of a course I’m taking this semester. There are six of us in my group, out of the 150 students that make up the total cohort this fall. It’s now Week 4, and we’re beginning to know each other a little better. We’ve also started to settle into certain group habits — most of us sit in the same spots each week.
In Week 1, I arrived early, wanting to scan the seminar room and figure out where I might feel the least discomfort — a spot that would let me minimise masking and compensation, so that my energy could go toward listening and contributing rather than fighting off sensory storms.
I took in everything: the natural light and the angle of the sunrays on the desks; the draft of air (the buildings are old — part of the university’s charm, though not without its comfort issues); the texture of the chair seats; the natural paths people tend to walk through the room (I always try to sit somewhere with minimal foot traffic — away from people passing by to leave, to go to the bathroom — to avoid the comet-like traces left by moving bodies); enough space around me, never between two people but ideally with one “free” side; testing whether the chair creaks; checking the position of the fluorescent lights (I try not to sit directly under them to avoid that sharp intensity).
All these details are part of a basic “check” I always do whenever I know I’ll be spending time in a place regularly over the coming weeks or months. It’s a major source of stress, because if I can’t find a spot where I feel at least somewhat comfortable, I simply won’t last.
Since my burnout, my defences and filters have almost disappeared — along with my ability to compensate and mask. I don’t know if these reserves, protections, or capacities will ever come back. The direct consequence is that I now mask far less than before. Very concretely, when something bothers, irritates, or exhausts me, I slip into distress very quickly — I just can’t manage it.
When that happens, my reflex is to hit the left side of my head — my left temple — with the palm of my left hand (more precisely, with the base of the hypothenar eminence for the medically inclined, or the lower part of the so-called Mount of the Moon for palmistry enthusiasts). That repetitive motion is a form of self-stimulation and self-regulation — a way my body responds when I can’t handle a surplus of sensory input. It helps me calm down, momentarily, and re-centre myself.
Last Wesdnesday, a new student joined our group. I set my things down in my usual spot — next to my usual table partner, on my usual chair, at my usual angle relative to the windows and the fluorescent lights — and briefly stepped out to the bathroom before the seminar began. When I came back, the new student had sat down (or rather squeezed himself in) between me and my usual neighbour, even though there wasn’t really space for another person.
Suddenly, I was unbearably close to him — to his energy field, his smell, the sound of his breathing, the scratch of his pen on the page, the vibration of his presence. My right knee was pressed against the cold metal leg of the table, sharp and unpleasant against my skin. I couldn’t move farther to the right — that was the end of the table — which also left me painfully close to the lecturer leading the seminar.
To make things worse, three students join us online via Microsoft Teams, and to make sure everyone in the room can hear them, the lecturer sets the computer volume to maximum. I live with severe hyperacusis, which means that any sound above 69 decibels (roughly the volume of a quiet conversation) is painful and unbearable. Most of the time I wear custom earplugs with filters, but that means I lose almost all feedback to regulate my own voice — I often end up speaking too loudly, so I tend to take them off when joining indoor conversations, just to “fit in” acoustically. And there’s also the skin irritation: the ear canal isn’t meant to host anything permanently, so I constantly deal with chronic ear dermatitis.
My whole setup is suddeny shattered in pieces — my habits suddenly erased, thrown away — along with all the carefully tuned sensory reference points I had built for myself. It feels as if I’m in a new room altogether. Everything has to be recalibrated.
The seminar begins; I can’t focus. I’m paralysed, trapped in a space-time where everything seems to move around me except me. My body is frozen; my thoughts frozen. The only impulse alive in me is the burning urge in my hand — the urge to strike my temple, to release the unbearable tension. I can’t hold it back.
I try to resist, but the pull is too strong. As my arm begins to rise, I squint in shame, tucking my chin into my sternum, and feel the almost guilty relief that comes with the impact of my hand against my skull. I could go on for minutes, but two strikes already feel excessive in this space where I am so utterly exposed.
Yet when I open my eyes again, no one seems to have moved or even noticed.
And yet, how I longed for someone — just one person — to meet my gaze, to ask silently, “Are you okay? What do you need?”
The simple thought of that imagined scene brings tears to my eyes.
Why am I telling you all this? Because in that moment — when I allowed my system to act as it needed to, striking my head with my hand — I felt a deep sense of alignment. A sense of being there for myself, of giving myself permission to act in the only way my body knew how. In that gesture, I was, somehow, caring for myself. I felt a strange, quiet sense of belonging.
Identity is a complex construct. One thing is for sure: It is never formed in isolation. It is shaped by how we see ourselves, how others see us, and how we navigate the spaces between. Indeed, for those of us in neurominority groups, this shaping process is often complicated by a tension between the internal experience of our neurotype and its external perception (Botha et al., 2020, as cited in Botha & Gillespie-Lynch, 2022).
Brené Brown (2020) argues that “the opposite of belonging is fitting in.” For me, the sense of belonging begins from within. Being in alignment with myself allows me to truly belong — first and foremost, to myself. Masking, on the other hand, takes my identity away — it renders invisible who I truly am, how I express my fears, my joy, and my enthusiasm.
That day, in that room, surrounded by others, my behaviour placed me far outside the boundaries of what would be considered normal within the group. And yet, it also brought me profoundly closer to myself. In that contradiction lies the very essence of what it means to belong as a neurominority. For I know that, in that same moment, many other neurodivergent individuals — across the campus, the city, and beyond — were feeling that same tension between fitting in and belonging.
To all of them: I see you. And we belong.
Post-Scriptum
When I stopped hitting my head, the paralysis returned — stronger this time. My body and my thoughts felt like frozen stone. Inside, the volcano of distress roared; my throat tightened, and tears began to rise. All I wanted was to run — to escape.
With what little energy I had left, I stood up and moved to the other side of the room — the worst possible spot in terms of foot traffic, light angles, and window glare. The graceful motion of branches outside, stirred by the wind, kept tugging at my attention, pulling me away from any fragile thread of concentration.
By the end of the class, I had only one thought left: to go home. To warmth. To safety.
I spent the rest of the day beneath the duvet, recovering — emptied, but somehow still intact. Yet the fatigue lingered for days. Episodes like this drain the week’s energy in advance; what might look like a single moment of distress quietly rewrites the days that follow. The next day, there was a PhD potluck I had planned to attend — I didn’t go. My body had already spent everything it had on surviving Wednesday.
References
Botha, M., & Frost, D. M. (2020). Extending the Minority Stress Model to Understand Mental Health Problems Experienced by the Autistic Population. Society and Mental Health, 10(1), 20-34. https://doi.org/10.1177/2156869318804297
Botha, M., & Gillespie-Lynch, K. (2022). Come as You Are: Examining Autistic Identity Development and the Neurodiversity Movement through an Intersectional Lens. Human Development, 66(2), 93-112. https://doi.org/10.1159/000524123
Brené Brown: Create True Belonging and Heal the World. (2020, January 7). Lewis Howes. https://lewishowes.com/podcast/r-brene-brown-create-true-belonging-and-heal-the-world/