And as an adolescent I experienced the same thing firsthand. Some of my memories as a teenager are punctuated with war like it’s so normal—like it’s just a background setting. Do you remember when you were a kid and you misbehaved and your parents told you to go to your room? What I remember is that I misbehaved and my dad told me to go to my room and me being terrified because I was stuck in my room and the air-raid sirens going off and me thinking I wanted to be with my parents because if our house came crashing down at least I wanted to die with my parents. What I remember is crying in the corner not because I was being punished but because I was afraid I was going to die alone.

You know how you text your friends to make sure they got home safely? What I remember is texting my friend to make sure he made it out safely when his hometown was bombed.

I tend to tell myself that I’m relatively privileged because I am, all things considered. I mean I can only imagine what Palestinians go through on a daily basis. But I’ve also had school cancelled because of war, and when we went back to school, it wasn’t because the war was over, but because life had to go on. My middle school years were punctuated with air-raid siren drills and missile attacks.

And now, several decades later, my parents and family are fasting Ramadan under air-raid sirens in yet another war. And it’s become so blasé that we don’t even talk about it anymore.

When you’re an Arab, your perspective of what’s normal violence is so skewed that you need an outside perspective to realize how messed up it is.

In one of my first years of living in Toronto, I went to a Middle Eastern restaurant with a white friend of mine. We were standing in line waiting to order when she suddenly rushed outside the restaurant. I followed her. “What’s wrong?” I asked. She told me that she couldn’t stand what was on the TV. “Oh, that,” I said. “Honestly, it didn’t even register to me. I guess we’re so used to it.” We had been watching the news on the TV while in line and it didn’t even occur to me that someone might feel uncomfortable watching footage of a child crushed under rubble.

When the war started a couple of weeks ago, Western countries advised their citizens to evacuate our countries. When I found out about it, my first thought was, “Why are they making such a big deal out of this?” It took me a few seconds to process that if many countries are telling their citizens to leave, then it must really be a big deal. But when you’re an Arab, your scope of what’s safe is so messed up. Because your scope stops being “This country is under attack, it must be unsafe,” or even “This city is under attack, it must be unsafe.” It becomes more like, “I heard an explosion, but I’m okay, so it must be safe.”

I remember once hearing an explosion at night and wondering what it was. I looked up the news and there was nothing. I woke up the next day and it was life as usual and I completely forgot about it. Later during the day, I remembered what had happened and looked up the news again and found a short article about a bomb that went off.

Imagine if a bomb had gone off in Toronto, or whichever Western city you live in. Would no one have spoken about it? Would life have gone as usual? Would it have been barely mentioned in the news?

And yet I’m still privileged. Because I’ve lived through war and violence throughout my life, but have I really?

A while ago, I was watching a video by a Palestinian vlogger documenting his life in Gaza. He, a literal child, was talking about how he’d walk for hours to go to the supermarket looking for whatever food he could get, then looking for water, then going to his neighbour’s house to get his phone charged to stay connected to the outside world, and how a building next to his home got destroyed by a missile but he’s safe and life goes on. And I was just… so overwhelmed by the existential absurdity of it all. Why do I get to move ten thousand kilometres away and tell my story like a story to be told, and he has to live his story as his everyday life?

When the war started, the first thought I had was that I wanted to move back to be with my parents. But then I pulled myself back and told myself that it wouldn’t make sense for me to waste the opportunity I’ve been given in life out of survivor’s guilt. And my parents would’ve thought it would be silly for me to do so. “We’re safe,” they would’ve told me. “Alhamdulillah.”

I was actually hesitant to even write this story. I felt like, “Oh yeah, you’ve been through war a couple of times, you’ve been under air-raid sirens a few times, big fucking whoop.” But this—and even much less—is what Israel is constantly selling the West as a massive threat to Israeli lives. I mean, Israeli TV even ran a story about a little girl who lost her hamster from air-raid sirens like it was a big fucking tragedy. And they’re able to sell this bullshit because they know what tugs at the heartstrings of a Western audience because they know white people have empathy towards them but little to no empathy towards Arabs. And the truth of the matter is that as an Arab, one of the things you learn is the exact same thing: we have little empathy towards ourselves. War and violence become so normalized that we dismiss or minimize our experiences of it. “Trauma? Haha, nah, this isn’t trauma; it’s just a story. Don’t make a big deal out of it.”

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My sister came out to me before I even came out to myself, and I was the first one in our family she came out to. She told me it was because she knew she could feel safe with me. Ironically, just a few years earlier, she had been arguing with me over my beliefs on LGBTQ rights.

There was a very brief time when I tried to be homophobic, which is when I pretended to be religious—and I really mean tried, because I didn’t actually believe in it, because it felt deeply dissonant with my conception of ethics and justice. I just thought it was what I was supposed to believe if I wanted to be religious.

I’ve never been able to relate to people who get sucked into their environments and have their beliefs shaped by them. Maybe it’s an autistic thing—it definitely is—but I’ve always been told that humans need belonging and community, and that that shapes their belief system, and that has always felt like a foreign thing to me, like I was an outsider learning about a foreign species, not something I have ever been a part of.

And yet I see people—fully grown adults—talk about themselves as if they were victims of manipulation because they got sucked into far-right ideology. I see people who want to convince others, and have maybe even convinced themselves, that it wasn’t their fault that they were racist, as if they slipped and fell and… oops, they were now bigots.

On one hand, I recognize that ideology is a social and cultural force, and that humans can be susceptible to manipulation. On the other, I reject the notion that that’s all there is to forming one’s beliefs, as if humans don’t have agency over their beliefs.

I can sort of understand if it were a child, or if these people grew out of their bigoted beliefs when they grew to become adults. That wasn’t my experience personally, but I can sort of get it. But for fully grown adults to hold bigoted beliefs, and then play the victim when they change their beliefs, I just don’t buy it.

Having your beliefs shaped by your environment might have been true in the past, but we live in the twenty-first century. If you have the ability to share your beliefs on social media, you have access to all the information you need not to have those beliefs.

I don’t have empathy for people who voted for a fascist three times and after the third time decided that “that wasn’t what they voted for”. Nor do I feel sorry for them because people aren’t embracing them with open arms, praising them, forgiving them. Frankly, I think voting for a fascist—three times!—speaks to their character. Even if they no longer support fascism, by their own admission, they are people whose beliefs are easily swayed, people who might very easily fall for the next fascist who appeals to their self-interest.

I want to be clear that I’m talking about people who voted for fascism as an example. What I’m talking about applies to all kinds of bigotry.

If you used to be a bigot and now you aren’t anymore, the first thing you need to do is stop playing the victim. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Stop telling yourself that you were manipulated, brainwashed, lied to. Because we’re all exposed to the same lies, the same propaganda, but many of us are able to see them for what they are, and yet you want us to believe that you weren’t able to. You were either wilfully evil, or you chose to give up your agency. And if really want to move forward, if you really want to grow, you need to stop giving up your agency—stop seeing yourself as the victim—and take accountability for your past beliefs. Anything less than that makes you not a former bigot, but a dormant bigot. If you don’t hold yourself accountable, if you keep telling yourself that you were “manipulated” into being a bigot, I don’t trust that you’re not going to be “manipulated” into being a bigot again, and again, and again…

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Trans people don’t owe you transitioning.

Trans people don’t transition to fit into your cisnormative conception of gender.

A trans person’s transition is deeply personal and intimate. It has nothing to do with you or your expectations.

Trans people transition to feel good in our bodies, to feel that we belong in our bodies. We do it for ourselves.

Many of us don’t care about passing, and that does not invalidate our gender identity.

If you think “Trans women are women, but they need to look a certain way,” you don’t actually think that trans women are women—what you think is that a trans person has to look a certain way to prove their womanhood/manhood, that a trans person has to look like the cisnormative expectation of their gender to have their gender identity validated. You’re telling us what to do with our bodies. That’s not allyship.

Stop claiming to be an ally—stop claiming that you’re trans-inclusive—when you’re not. Stop claiming that your “safe spaces” include us when they don’t include all of us. You don’t get to pick and choose what the “right” type of trans person is.

Trans women and transfeminine people can have facial hair. Trans men and transmasculine people can have breasts. You have no idea why we look the way we do. Maybe we’ve just come out. Maybe we don’t have the financial means to transition. Maybe we don’t have the social support and freedom to transition. Maybe we simply don’t want to. Every trans person has their own life story and experiences, every trans person has their own experience of their gender and their body, and it has nothing to do with your conception of what it means to be trans.

If you want to claim the title of ‘trans ally’, you need to do the work—including the internal work—of being a trans ally. You don’t get to claim to be a trans ally while holding beliefs that police our bodies and our genders. You don’t get to claim to be a trans ally while invalidating our identities. Being a trans ally requires work, and it can be hard work.

If you want to create a space with “no cis men”, you need to find a way to do it without invalidating the identities of trans people. A trans person who “looks like a cis man” is not a cis man just because you think they are. If you don’t want to give cis men access to your spaces, the only trans-inclusive way to do it is to believe trans people when we tell you who we are. And if that creates a loophole for cis men to invade your spaces, you need to find a way to solve this issue without throwing trans people under the bus. Don’t make trans people a casualty of the shit that cis men do. You’re marginalizing gender minorities that are already marginalized. That is not real social justice work.

“But I can allow whoever I want in spaces I create,” you might say.

Yes, you certainly can. But don’t call yourself a trans ally if you don’t want to listen to trans people on how to stop invalidating our identities.

If you don’t want to navigate the difficult questions that arise from being a trans ally, then don’t claim to be a trans ally. Be honest with yourself even before you’re honest with us. Signalling that you’re an ally, that you’re a safe person and creating safe spaces for us, when you don’t listen to us—all of us—is dishonest and deceptive. If you want to claim the label of ‘trans ally’, then listen to us and do better.

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When you meet someone, you’re expected to show interest in their job, their life, their interests—by actively asking about it. When you talk to people, you’re expected to talk about them. You’re expected to talk about yourself sparingly and keep redirecting the conversation back to the other person.

Writing for an audience comes from the same place. You’re expected to write based on what other people are interested in, with the implication that what you want to write for yourself isn’t interesting. If you talk about yourself, you’re expected not to centre yourself, and if you talk about yourself, only use yourself to make a larger point that your readers would be able to relate to. You become a mere anecdote, rather than the protagonist, in your own writing.

What I find puzzling is that if we’re all told not to speak “too much” about ourselves and our interests, then how exactly are we going to know each other? If we’re all told that we’re not interesting—that our stories and our lives are not interesting—then who is? Whose story is worth telling? Whose life experiences, passions, interests, are worth talking about?

Neuronormative communication feels like two people playing pingpong with each other. Each person throws the ball to the other as soon as they receive it, and neither holds on to it—neither goes in depth. The resulting conversation ends up lacking substance and depth, and consequently, lacking vulnerability and real connection.

Neurodivergent people are often told that the way we communicate is self-centred. We talk about our special interests. We monologue and are expected not to. We’re told that we’re “deficient in social communication” and in “social-emotional reciprocity” because we don’t engage in “normal back-and-forth conversation”, as per the diagnostic criteria for autism. The way we communicate is rejected and stigmatized to the point of pathologization.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that we do actually engage in reciprocal communication. It’s just that our communication creates space for more depth. When you throw the ball to me, I will throw it back once I’m ready, but you threw the ball to me—you engaged me in conversation—and that carries the implication that you want to hear me talk.

From this perspective, neuronormative communication seems to carry resentment: you throw the ball to me because you actually want me—expect me—to throw the ball back to you, which leaves me wondering why you didn’t speak in the first place, because you threw it before you were done speaking. The constant back-and-forth feels like two people who want to talk but don’t give themselves permission to because they both think they’re uninteresting, and each person constantly has to reassure the other that they’re interesting by redirecting the conversation back to them.

Personally, in my own conversations when I meet people, I’ve found that the best way to move a conversation forward is not to give, but to take—to hold onto the ball long enough to give the conversation depth. Taking gives the other person permission to take. It’s not selfish, but actually vulnerable. It’s vulnerable both because you’re breaking the social convention and making yourself open to judgment and rejection, and because by sharing, you’re opening yourself up, and that also opens you up to rejection.

As a writer, I write about my life experiences because I believe my story is worth telling, but I also write about my life experiences because I want others to share theirs too. I write the kind of content that I like to read. Memoirs are one of my favourite genres. I have read memoirs of people I had never even heard of before, with life experiences vastly different from mine, and they’re some of my favourite books. They have enriched my life and expanded my worldview.

I actually dislike books written for a general audience, books that are for everyone and thus no one in particular. Those kinds of books feel like people pleasers—you know, the kind of person who tries to impress everyone that they end up not forming any real connections with people who resonate with who they really are, because they’ve never actually revealed themselves for anyone to resonate with.

A person who opens up, who’s true to themselves and expresses themselves, is naturally not going to have everyone resonate with them. But that’s the price of forming true connections. When you open up about yourself, you open yourself up to rejection—but that’s how you open yourself up for true connection.

When I write the way I write, I accept that my writing isn’t going to resonate with everyone. But that’s a price I’m willing to pay for genuine connection. My writing is intentionally not for everyone, because if it were, it would be for no one. I don’t just want my writing to be interesting, to grab as large of an audience as possible; I want my writing to create connections. My writing is a doorway into my world. It allows people to see me. And because of that, it allows people who have experiences similar to mine to feel not alone and connect with me.

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Some people find it confusing when I talk about having a crush on someone and not wanting to pursue them, but for me, that’s often how a crush plays out. My crushes often don’t feel explicitly romantic, but rather seem to have dormant or never-realized romantic attraction that’s been channeled into something else.

I had a friend that I had this kind of crush on when we first met. We quickly became really close, but because she was in a monogamous relationship, I never expected anything romantic with her. I was just very happy to have the relationship I had with her.

Her relationship with her partner was untraditional, and they had room for me to be very close to her.

I was once lying in bed with them. She was sitting in front of me. I was looking at her. She looked at me. “Hey,” she said softly. “Do you love me?”

This is an excerpt of an essay in my book, At the Intersection of the Margins.

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The first conversation about our relationship they ever had with me was when, one day, they wanted to break up with me. They told me that I wasn’t meeting their needs and that we were incompatible. I pulled them back and told them that I’d try to meet their needs if they expressed them. Retrospectively, I think I should’ve let go, because from that moment, I became anxious about what they’re not telling me, and constantly wondered when they’d want to break up with me next.

Even their communication style was avoidant. When I would text them, they’d take a really long time—sometimes weeks—to respond to me. I talked to them about it more than once, trying to understand why they took so long to respond, and they’d tell me that they were worried they were bothering me. I assured them that they weren’t, that I was the one who initiated contact and really wanted to talk to them. They’d tell me they’d do better, which they would for a few days before going back to the beginning of the same cycle. If they had any communication needs that they could’ve expressed to me to make them feel more secure, I would’ve tried to meet them, but they never said anything to me besides that they’d do better next time.

By the end of our relationship…

This is an excerpt of an essay in my book, At the Intersection of the Margins.

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So what does romance mean?

To me, it’s signified by a high level of intimacy and commitment. I can be physically and sexually and emotionally intimate with a lot of people, but a romantic partner has to experience me fully. One of the main ways this shows up, as a transfeminine person, is that my partner and our relationship create space for me to be able to express my femininity.

This level of intimacy has been an uncommon occurrence for me in relationships, not least because I didn’t even know it myself. I’ve only ever had one partner I’ve experienced this with, and it’s this experience that allowed me to fall in love with them.

I truly believe that understanding my gender identity has helped me unlock my understanding of what romance means to me. Few people get to experience my femininity, because they don’t create space for it. Especially as someone who has had trauma around needing to perform masculinity, it takes a lot for me to feel safe to unmask. And because I didn’t know that it’s something I need—the space to feel feminine—I didn’t even know to look for it.

Romance to me is that deep level of intimacy, where someone can see my naked soul, where they love me fully and I feel safe with them.

Once I understand this to be my experience of romance, how can it not be of primary importance in my life?

I actually have a non-romantic relationship in my life that comes close to this…

This is an excerpt of an essay in my book, At the Intersection of the Margins.

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To understand how phenomenology is anti-essentialist, try this out: Think of a bird. You’re probably thinking of a creature with feathers and a beak and two wings. This creature, when you see it in your head, is your experience of what a bird is—but what is it that makes it a bird? A bird’s being as a bird—the category we place it in and the meanings we associate with it—doesn’t exist outside of our relationship with it. It’s a bird because we categorize it as a bird. We might change—expand or narrow down—the definition, collect more empirical data to refine what makes a bird a bird, but ultimately, a bird’s being as a bird exists because we’ve called it a bird. So even though the bird is real, phenomenology lets us see that our experience of it is always mediated by our relationship with it.

It’s often said that gender is performative. This is sometimes understood to mean that gender isn’t real. But that’s not what performativity means. What it means is that something develops meaning through a social practice that creates its meaning. A bird is a bird because we call it a bird. The meaning we give it—its being as a bird—arises out of our constantly calling it a bird. This doesn’t deny the existence of the creature, but how we experience it is inherently mediated through the social practice of our calling it a bird. You can’t think of a bird without calling it a bird, but your calling it a bird is a result of your learning that this creature is called a bird. So a bird is a social construct—not because you’ve constructed the creature, but because what makes you call it a bird, what gives it its meaning as a bird, is a social construct. A bird can’t exist in your head without this construct. In the same way, gender is performative—not because it isn’t real, but because it’s always mediated through the meaning we give it.

I often come across the question, “Would you be nonbinary if the binary genders weren’t so narrow?” But this question is misleading. It’s like asking if a bird would still be a bird if we stopped calling it a bird, with the implication that a bird would cease to exist if we stopped calling it a bird, or it would transform into something else, as if if we called it a human instead of a bird, it would magically grow human feet and a human body and its wings would fall off.

If the definitions of the binary genders expanded to include my experience, I would obviously become a binary gender—that’s a truism. And it’s ultimately meaningless. Because my experience of myself wouldn’t change. The only thing that would change would be that the language of gender would’ve been performed differently to include my experience in the meaning of a binary gender.

This doesn’t mean that being nonbinary isn’t real. Because gender is inherently mediated. There is no unmediated gender. A man is a man the same way a bird is a bird. The person exists, but we’re the ones who call this person a man. So a man is a social construct—not because we’ve constructed the person, but because what makes you call the person a man, what gives him his meaning as a man, is a social construct. And our perception of this person is inherently mediated through our construction of the meaning we’ve given him. Likewise, being nonbinary is a social construct—not because being nonbinary isn’t real, but because what we experience as nonbinariness is mediated through how binariness is performed. Calling myself nonbinary isn’t an essentialist statement about myself. I use the label as a word that helps me understand myself and communicate this understanding to others given the way gender is performed in the social context that I live in.

What makes this understanding of gender really cool is that once we recognize that gender doesn’t have an essence—that it’s mediated through how we perform it—we realize that we can redefine gender however we want. The meaning of gender can be reconstructed by simply changing the way we perform it. Trans men are men and trans women are women because we say they are, and there’s nothing more to manhood and womanhood than that.

This understanding of reality is liberatory. It makes us active participants in the shaping of our reality. It makes us realize that reality isn’t something that’s imposed on us, but rather something we can play with, something we create and recreate.

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Many binary people, when they become exposed to nonbinary gender identities, become curious. They start asking questions, to make sense of the new data, which doesn’t fit into the model of the world they have. This, in itself, isn’t a bad thing. It can’t be anything but good to seek to adjust your model when the data you have no longer fits it.

However, an approach I see people taking over and over again is that they question the data—the nonbinary gender identities—rather than the model. (To be clear, I’m not talking about people who deny nonbinary gender identities. What I’m talking about are the often well-meaning people who are genuinely curious about what it means to be nonbinary.) Oftentimes, they take the binary model of gender as a given and ask questions that put the onus on nonbinary people to prove that we deserve a space in their model. I regularly come across questions like, “Can’t you just be gender nonconforming?” and, “If some cis people are gender nonconforming, then doesn’t there have to be something else to identify as nonbinary?”

My answer to this is no. Even though some nonbinary people experience physical dysphoria, not all do, nor is this a requirement. Assuming that there has to be “something else” is cisnormative and binary-normative. It takes the binary model of gender as already justified and objectively true, and asks nonbinary people to justify a need to break this model.

I can flip this argument on its head and say that many gender-nonconforming people fit the definition of nonbinary.

If you think this claim seems odd and invalidating of gender nonconformity, I ask you to ask yourself this: Why do you take it as a given that one gender model is justified, but can’t take it as a given that another is? The answer to this is cisnormativity and binary-normativity. You take what you’ve been socialized into as self-evidently true.

The nonbinary model of gender doesn’t just ask you to expand the model of gender you already have, but rather to fundamentally change your conception of truth. I can’t tell you to accept nonbinary gender identities then go around and invalidate the identities of gender-nonconforming binary people.

So how can the two be true at the same time? How can gender-nonconforming binary people exist and nonbinary people exist?

The answer is that the language we use to talk about gender is subjective. When I talk about my gender identity, what I’m talking about isn’t just my experience of gender, but also how the language around gender that I grew up with reflects my experience.

By way of analogy: In English, light blue is called light blue—it’s treated as a shade of blue. On the other hand, pink is not called light red—it’s treated as a separate colour, rather than a shade of red. But this isn’t a universal experience. In Chinese, for example, pink is treated as a shade of red. One language isn’t more correct than the other. English can’t impose its truth onto Chinese; and likewise, Chinese can’t impose its truth onto English. The way English speakers and Chinese speakers speak is reflective of their exposure to their respective language. They talk about the same thing using different boundaries for what defines a colour, based on their personal experience.

A gender-nonconforming man might have a very similar experience of gender to my experience, and might have grown up with a definition of manhood that they fit into. I didn’t grow up with a definition of manhood that I fit into. Neither experience is more correct than the other; they’re simply different subjective truths.

At the end of the day, you don’t need to understand an identity to respect it; you just need to recognize that it exists.

An English speaker doesn’t need to understand why Chinese speakers treat pink differently; they just need to recognize the way pink is conceptualized in Chinese, and if they want to learn Chinese, use the correct terminology to communicate with Chinese speakers.

The need to respect language without needing to understand the experience is even more important when it comes to gender identity. This is because gender minorities are constantly probed about our identities, but when was the last time a cis man or cis woman was asked why they identify as a man/woman? The question itself is a product of cisnormativity—and further perpetuates it.

If you want to be an ally to nonbinary people, you need to recognize that other people have experiences different from yours, and believe them when they tell you about their experiences. The only person who truly knows you and your experiences is you, and by extension, you don’t truly know other people’s experiences. I’d even argue that respecting an identity necessarily implies not having access to it. Respecting an identity allows you to have cognitive empathy for it, even when you don’t have emotional empathy towards it. It asks you to create space for other people to share their truths, even when they don’t align with yours. Expecting an explanation from nonbinary people puts an imbalanced burden on us that binary people, especially cis people, have never had to carry.

Expecting to understand all experiences is a normative mentality. You expect to understand all experiences if you’re used to your experience being framed as universal, if you’re used to believing that you have access to all experiences because you think that they’re similar to yours.

I’ve never understood what it means to be a man. I’ve never understood why some people are so invested in masculinity. Even positive masculinity makes me scratch my head and wonder why it matters so much. Why do we need to maintain and reimagine masculinity? Why does it matter so much, that we don’t just scrap it altogether? What value does masculinity have? I’ve come to realize that I will never have an answer that will truly satisfy me. But I’ve learned to accept that this doesn’t actually matter. I’ve learned to just accept it. Masculinity clearly matters enough to some people that they’re invested in it. And I recognize this because masculinity is all around me. It has plenty of exposure. There’s no room for anyone to deny its existence. I don’t have the possibility to not accept the existence of masculinity, despite not having access to it and not understanding it, because masculinity is the norm. Masculinity doesn’t need me to understand it.

I’d like to ask you to treat nonbinary gender identities as a norm. Instead of questioning the new data, question the model of gender that you have. Don’t ask me why I identify as nonbinary, but rather, turn the question onto yourself and ask yourself why you can’t see nonbinary gender experiences. This might lead you to deconstruct your internalized binary-normativity and create space for more empathy, create space for all the gender subjectivities in the world that don’t align with yours, and recognize that your experience of your gender—as well as your experience of gendered language—is not universal.

I recently got back into playing the guitar after a long time off, and I decided to use the same points system to stay committed. The way I’m doing it right now is that I give myself a point every day I practice, and another point if I practice something new—to keep myself learning new things. I also give myself a point if I record something—which motivates me to record regularly without obsessing over perfecting my playing, which is something I need right now.

I recently realized that I had accumulated so many points in my sleep and guitar logs that I had enough to buy myself a Nintendo Switch (a point represents $1), which is something that I really wanted.

When I got my Switch, that’s when the fun really started, and I felt that I hacked my ADHD. I set up a rule that I wouldn’t buy any game unless I earn it with enough points. I actually don’t like buying things randomly, and prefer to have some kind of meaning to purchases that I make, so attaching the games that I buy to my points and rewards system gives me a better relationship with my games, because it gives them meaning in my life.

I say that I “hacked my ADHD” because I am hyperfixated on acquiring all of the games that I want. I have the urge to get everything all at once—because this is the latest novelty in my life, and my brain is fixated on this New Thing and wants more and more of it. What this means is that my brain really wants to accumulate as many points as possible as fast as possible. I am, in fact, hyperfixating on accumulating points. So I’m using this to motivate me to be productive. In other words, I’ve hooked my hyperfixations on my productivity, so that I have to be productive to be able to enjoy my hyperfixations.

Aside from my sleep and guitar logs, I set up an “other” category where I accumulate points on various things—really, whatever I want to be productive on. And I’ve been finding that it helps me tremendously to be productive. Whenever I’m struggling with something that I need or want to do, I tell myself that I’ll reward myself if I do it, and doing it becomes much easier. My internal dialogue goes something like this:

“Urgh, I don’t have the energy to do X task.”

“There’s a reward in it for you, and you’ll be able to buy the game that you want sooner.”

“Oh, okay! Let me get started!”

I’ve noticed that I’m much more committed to being productive and accumulating points because the reward is concrete, and also more easily attained—which is to say, closer to me in time. When I know exactly what I want (such as a specific game, rather than just an abstract concept of “I’ll think of something to reward myself with”), and when it’s not too far away from me (because I can accumulate enough points for it within a few weeks, rather than months or more), it feels more real, and therefore I can stay focused on it more. Even with my sleep, I’ve been more committed to staying on track and going to bed on time since I attached the concrete reward of buying myself games (in the past, I just collected points and didn’t have a specific reward that I worked towards).

At first I thought that I was just finding excuses to accumulate points, but then I realized that if it works and makes me productive, that’s all that matters. In fact, I started writing this post by giving myself two points if I start and write 250 words. I ended up writing over 400 words on the first day, and on the following days, I didn’t need to give myself a point as motivation, because I had already gotten the executive dysfunction of starting out of the way (although I struggled to go back to the post to edit it, so I gave myself points to finalize it).

Of course, what I need a reward for depends on the task. For tasks that I find more difficult to get to every day, I can give myself a reward every day. I try not to feel guilty that I’m just looking for excuses to give myself points, because at least accumulating points means I’m being productive—and at the end of the day, I’m the one who set up this system, so I don’t really need to justify buying games; I just feel I have something to be proud of by attaching buying games to having a better grasp of my mental health and accomplishing my goals.

If you’re thinking that this system seems overwhelming to keep track of, and are wondering how I do it, the answer is that I use databases on Notion. I’ve automated everything as much as possible to minimize the amount of work I have to do to keep track of everything. This had the added benefit of making me need to figure out how to program the databases and write the formulas to make it all work, and as someone really into programming, really, I just love an excuse to learn to program something.

This is the sleep log (I’ve actually been to sleep on time every time since I started this system, but I selected the ‘late’ option to demonstrate how the points system works):

This is the guitar log:

This is the master log. I connected the sleep and guitar logs to each day and added an ‘other’ column. The ‘total award’ column keeps track of the total points I’ve accumulated each day. I also added a ‘spent’ column to keep track of the points that I spend and subtract them from the points I’ve accumulated. This gives me the number of points I have at any point in time, which is shown at the bottom of the ‘total award’ column.

What’s cool about this system is that it’s future-proofed. I might stop hyperfixating on my Nintendo Switch, but my brain will no doubt find something else to hyperfixate on that I will want to spend on. I have way too many expensive interests and can spend hundreds of dollars on them, only to later feel that I wasted money on something that I’m not using anymore. So I can easily replace one reward goal for another depending on whatever I’m hyperfixating on at the moment.

This also allows me to feel less guilty about spending on my hyperfixations, because it makes me feel that I earned the things that I bought. Rather than feeling that I have to justify what I buy by telling myself that I’m going to actually use it (which feels like a promise that I cannot keep), I feel that what I buy is already justified, because it’s something I’ve worked towards and that represents my accomplishments. What I do with it is up to me.

The irony of confidence is that it has the facade of being direct and outspoken—after all, isn’t that what confidence is about?—but in reality, confidence can hide a lot. If you have anxieties and fears, you need to set them aside, push through them. Asking for accommodations for your feelings that prevent you from being confident gives them too much weight. You have to “fake it till you make it.” Rather than address your anxieties head on, you have to ignore them till they’re overshadowed by confidence.

But does this actually happen? If it does, is it a universal experience? And more importantly, is it something that needs to happen? Do people need to be confident? Is confidence a prerequisite to finding love, to building a career, to being happy? Is confidence the determiner of our worthiness?

As a neurodivergent person, my experience of confidence is as a mask. I can pretend to play a leading role, but it’s not something I can internalize. To tell me to fake it till I make it is to tell me to fake being neurotypical till I make it. It’s a form of neuronormativity, and is ultimately derived from the same framework as the abusive applied behaviour analysis. It’s based on the premise that neurodivergent people can—and should—adapt themselves towards neurotypicality, and that that is the only way we are deemed worthy of functioning in society and living our best lives. (Would they even be our best lives? After being shaped to fit into the mold, would they even be our lives?)

Once I started identifying as nonbinary, I’ve felt a path opening up for me to let go of the need to put on a pretence of confidence. It’s become easier for me to be myself in all my awkwardness, my shyness, my hesitations. I no longer feel that I need to exude assertiveness. I no longer feel the pressure to take on the leading role, to initiate conversations, to always push myself out of my comfort zone to be more social and more socially confident. And this has been allowing me to feel more grounded—to feel that I can exist in this world, not an idealized, confident, neurotypical, “manly”, modified replica of me.

This has also allowed me to think critically of the very concept of confidence, and to deconstruct it. What I want to—and strive to—build in the space that deconstructing confidence leaves behind is a framework of comfort. This framework creates space for accommodation. If I don’t feel comfortable doing something, I ask myself why that is. If I don’t feel comfortable talking in a certain social environment, I try to figure out what’s impeding my comfort: maybe it’s too noisy, maybe I’m tired, maybe I’m hungry. All of these are factors that tend to affect my ability to socialize. Then I ask myself if I can alleviate the cause: maybe I need to get something to eat. Or I can just accept the situation as it is, especially if it’s out of my control (such as if it’s too noisy), and allow myself to exist in my current headspace without judging myself for it.

The framework of comfort allows me to think about my needs to find long-term solutions. Maybe I need to use earplugs to reduce my perception of noise in noisy environments. Maybe I need to avoid noisy environments altogether and find quieter environments where I can socialize. Maybe I can find a balance between the two and adjust my expectations of how my experience is going to be depending on the social situation.

In interpersonal connections, the framework of comfort allows me to experience the dynamic like a dance in which we’re in harmony with each other, where we build comfort with each other. It allows me to be mindful of what I’m comfortable doing at the moment, and what I’m not comfortable doing—it allows me to hold my boundaries, rather than feeling that I need to push against them and pull them down for the sake of “confidence”.

Unlike performative confidence, the framework of comfort doesn’t require hiding your anxieties. I can share my anxieties and fears that I feel comfortable and safe sharing in the dynamic. I can be direct in my communication, which aligns with my being as a neurodivergent person. This, in turn, allows me to ask for accommodations, which augments my feeling of comfort and safety, creating a positive feedback loop that allows me to unmask, to feel seen and accepted.

By allowing me to unmask, the framework of comfort also allows me to stop performing masculinity. I no longer anxiously feel that I need to constantly push myself out of my comfort zone, to socialize more, to be more outgoing. I can accept my emotional state at the moment. If I’m feeling awkward, I can allow myself to feel awkward. I’m the only one who decides when to push against the awkwardness. There’s no social force looming over me pressuring me to act in a certain way to prove myself.

The framework of comfort itself creates comfort. It peels off the performativity of confidence, of masculinity, a facade that has been put on me by society, a heavy facade that I have been carrying on me, a facade so heavy that it has created a layer of anxiety on top of it. The framework of comfort allows me to be comfortable in my being, to be kind to myself. It allows me to breathe, to be free. It allows me to just be.

Parallel play is something that has to be done intentionally. It doesn’t happen by default. Most people assume that you want to socialize when you spend time together—that spending time with them means you want to talk and engage with them and focus on them. We’re often socialized to feel uncomfortable when there’s silence between people. The silence feels like a gap that needs to be filled. I’ve found that many people feel awkward around me because I don’t feel obligated to engage them. But they interpret this as me being awkward.

I experience two different kinds of silence in social settings: silence when I want to be silent, and silence when I want to say something but can’t get myself to say it. The latter is social anxiety; it’s awkwardness. The former is not. Because silence isn’t inherently awkward. The awkwardness comes from an unmet expectation of wanting to socialize. Being quiet around others when you want to be quiet isn’t awkward; it’s comfortable. To me, there’s nothing more comfortable than having the serenity and confidence to say something when you want to say something and only when you want to say something. This is a goal I’d like to be able to reach: knowing when I want to be quiet, knowing when I want to talk, and talking when I want to. This requires a lot of mindfulness, confidence, and self-control. It requires letting go of trying to read other people’s minds—are they expecting me to talk?—and being centred within myself.

You might ask what the point of parallel play is. If you want to be quiet, why not be by yourself? However, the way I see it is that this is a loaded question rooted in neuronormativity. It assumes that the default form of socialization is to talk, and any other form of socialization has to be justified to be able to exist.

Parallel play exists because neurodivergent people also have social needs. Being quiet, wanting to hyperfocus on something, wanting to be productive, wanting to be stimulated by something—these factors don’t preclude wanting to socialize. Parallel play allows neurodivergent minds to connect with each other. It’s a form of relating with each other. It allows us to share space with each other and see that there are others who engage with the world the way we engage with it. Parallel play creates space for neurodivergent joy, for neurodivergent ways of relating.

It’s often thought that neurodivergent people aren’t social, but we are. We appear not to be social in a neuronormative world because neuronormative environments are draining to us. Not only are we expected to constantly talk and engage with others, but we’re expected to do so in often crowded, noisy environments. This means that we can only exist in social spaces in small periods of time, thus giving the impression that we don’t like to be social. We might even interpret our own behaviour as a lack of interest in socialization, because we might not be aware that there are other ways to socialize.

We’re also expected to focus on others when socializing, pulling us away from our special interests and passions. This creates a conflict between our desire to socialize and our desire to lose ourselves in our interests. This, again, gives the impression that we don’t like to be social. If we have to choose between being social in neuronormative settings and focusing on our special interests, we’re likely to choose the latter. But this is a false dilemma. Socialization can look however you want it to look. It’s up to the people involved to shape the social setting.

So the question is, how do we create an environment of parallel play?

I think the most important thing is to be intentional about it. Because we’re socialized to believe that being around others means that we have to engage with them, we have to counter that by setting out to intentionally create an environment where we can exist around others without having to engage with them. We can create parallel play as an expectation. For example, you can get together with a group of friends at a particular time and say that you’re not going to engage with each other, but rather that you’re each going to focus on your own special interest or project—you’re simply going to exist around each other.

I also think it would help if the setting is quiet and uncrowded, and in general more accessible to neurodivergent minds, and conducive to being able to hyperfocus. This might mean choosing a space that has little to no background noise. This can help maximize the amount of time you can spend in this environment. For example, a library might be a better setting than a coffee shop.

It might also be helpful to create a timeframe for talking. For example, you can set the first few minutes of a session as talking time. If there’s anyone new in the group, this can be the time to make introductions. This can help create an environment where people can feel comfortable being quiet with each other. Because we’re socialized to have to engage with others when we’re around them, some people might not feel comfortable unmasking and being their neurodivergent selves until they have a certain level of familiarity with the people around them. However, I think it’s also important to emphasize that talking is always optional. Whether it’s because you’re too shy to talk, or you simply don’t want to talk, you can choose not to talk. Talking should never be expected; the expectation should be to allow a person to be quiet if they choose to be.

I really wish—and hope—that we can deconstruct neuronormativity and make our societies more accommodating to neurodivergent people; I really wish we can make public spaces more accommodating to neurodivergences and different ways of playing and socializing. However, in the meantime, I strongly believe in creating intentional spaces for parallel play where neurodivergent people can unmask and experience social settings that allow us to be our true neurodivergent selves—experience social settings that give us joy.

When I do want to talk to someone, my brain hyperfixates on what to say that it blacks out. I overthink myself into a paralysis. But my hyperfixation prevents me from being able to shift my attention to something else. I feel decentred. For example, when there’s someone close to me that I want to talk to, and I’m trying to get work done, I cannot focus on my work, because my mind is fixated on my desire to talk to that person. I end up having to tell myself that I’m not actually going to talk to them, as a way to shut my mind up in an on/off manner. (I either want to talk to someone, which makes me hyperfixate, or I don’t. I don’t know how to get to an in-between mental state, where I can make peace with my desire to talk to someone but also focus on my work.) Sometimes I even have to move away from them to get them out of sight, out of mind.

I think that this is the root cause of my social anxiety. I’m pretty good at carrying a conversation, but where I struggle is initiating a conversation: the gap, the silence makes my mind overthink and hyperfixate.

I’ve decided to try out an experiment where I don’t go out of my way to initiate conversation but only carry a conversation if and when it happens naturally. This puts a hard “off” switch on my hyperfixation on how to initiate conversation. Whenever my mind starts to wonder towards wanting to approach someone, or to initiate a conversation, I remind myself that I’m focusing on myself and pull myself back to my goal.

Truth be told, I do feel defeated. I feel that I’m taking a step back. I want to overcome my social anxiety, but instead I’m having to consciously avoid socializing to avoid hyperfixating and decentering myself. But I have to remind myself that I’m taking a step back to take a step forward. To overcome my social anxiety, I need to first learn to centre myself—I need to first learn to bring myself back from hyperfixating on how to initiate a conversation, to prevent myself from overthinking myself into paralysis.

When a conversation feels natural—when I don’t put myself in a position where I have to overcome my executive dysfunction of initiating a conversation—it’s a lot easier for me to participate in a conversation. This makes me realize that my social anxiety is rooted in executive dysfunction. So instead of seeing it as a step back, I can see it as taking the first step towards overcoming my social anxiety. I don’t have to jump down the deep end and force myself to learn to cope with the challenge. Instead, I can work on my social anxiety in a situation that requires less executive functioning, as an early stage towards a more difficult stage. I can practice participating in conversations rather than shutting myself from the world socially. Importantly, this stage also trains me to become aware of my limits. I can pull myself back when I feel that I don’t have the social energy to socialize—I can become mindful and centre myself, rather than judging myself. This can allow me to feel safe when I’m in social spaces, and that I’m not going to push myself beyond my limits, which can allow me to feel more comfortable being in social spaces, because I don’t feel out of control and decentred in them.

I’m also already thinking about how to make initiating conversations more accessible for me. By knowing that my social anxiety is rooted in me hyperfixating on how to initiate a conversation, I can think of ways to minimize my hyperfixation. This means that the step I’m taking isn’t a step back at all, but rather a preparatory step.

However, I also have to contextualize why I want to initiate a conversation. Sometimes I feel that I push myself to initiate a conversation just to prove to myself that I can, and judge myself for not being able to. But I’m a goal-oriented person. If there’s no purpose for me initiating a conversation, the mental effort that goes into me initiating a conversation doesn’t seem worth it. Perhaps that’s why I tend not to initiate conversations: Rather than giving myself a purpose to overcome my social anxiety, I try to push myself to do it just to prove that I can do it. This makes me shoot myself in the foot. The challenge feels purposeless: Why do I need to prove anything to myself? What do I get out of it?

The purpose doesn’t have to be long term (such as that I want to meet a potential partner). It can be anything. I actually think it’d be better not to hyperfixate on a long-term goal, but rather find a way to enjoy short-term interactions for what they are, and not only see overcoming my social anxiety as a means to finding a partner. For example, if I’m travelling, the purpose of meeting people could be to find people to hang out and explore the city with. What I could do is create short-term challenges with attainable goals that allow me to enjoy short-term interactions. That way, I can use my need for clearly defined goals towards overcoming my social anxiety, and as such create a mental environment for myself that’s as accommodating for me as possible.

However, I don’t want to think this about this too much for now—I’d like to focus more on the stage I’m at right now, which is taking the pressure of starting a conversation off me, centring myself, and engaging in conversations only when they develop naturally. I’ll think more about the next stage when the time comes for it and I feel ready.

I sometimes feel anxious that I don’t show up in the ways that the person needs me to show up. I sometimes feel an internalized pressure to show up more, show up better. But I never feel that the person is “too needy”. I see the issue as stemming from me—it’s something that I need to learn to manage.

I feel that I need to have a better sense of my own boundaries, and learn to draw them accordingly. I need to learn how to express my boundaries while simultaneously assuring the other person that my need to draw my boundaries isn’t a rejection of them. Maybe I don’t need to constantly reassure them, but I do feel that I need to as part of my role as a caregiver—that even if I need to take space, I am still there, and they can feel safe and secure with me.

Perhaps I project my rejection sensitive dysphoria. Perhaps I give constant reassurance of my continuing presence because I need constant reassurance. But knowing this doesn’t make the feeling dissipate. This makes me struggle to take space for myself in a relationship when I need it. I worry that the other person would feel rejected. I worry that they wouldn’t feel safe and secure with me.

I often let the other person take the lead in asking for alone time if they need it. If they do this, it assures me that they don’t experience taking space for oneself as a form of rejection, and thus this allows me to take space for myself, knowing that they’re okay with it.

Interestingly, even though I struggle with rejection sensitive dysphoria, I don’t experience someone taking space for themselves as a form of rejection. I’m comfortable with it. Rather, I fear that that’s how the other person might experience it. Why do I feel this way? Because growing up, that’s how I experienced it. In my family of origin, taking space for myself felt that it was taken personally, taken as a rejection—and generally, I wasn’t allowed to have my own space. So I grew up socialized into the belief that taking space for myself is viewed negatively and interpreted as a rejection, and it was my responsibility to make the other person feel not rejected.

I wish that I can just proclaim that I have the right to take space for myself, and enforce this boundary accordingly. But it’s not that easy. It goes against decades of socialization. This is why I give reassurances. In a way, it’s to reassure me that the other person is okay with me taking space for myself: I gauge their reaction to make sure that they don’t take it personally.

Is this a bad thing? I don’t think it is, in and of itself. It feels like a small accommodation I have to make for myself to give myself permission to take space. But I have to recognize that it’s my own need, not the other person’s. And the other person has to recognize this as well: that this is something I do for my own feeling of security in the relationship. I don’t want the other person to feel rejected because I want the dynamic to remain stable. I don’t want my taking space to indicate a shift in the dynamic. I want to be able to take space then return “home”. When the other person feels rejected, it creates a conflict, a detachment. If this happened every time I took space, the relationship feels rocky, like we’re in a constant storm, and I constantly need to expend emotional energy to reconnect.

Is there a way I can overcome this constant need to give reassurance when I need to take space for myself? Perhaps if the person told me that they don’t need it. But I don’t know if I can trust that they’re being truthful, with me and with themselves, that they really don’t need it. Maybe they’re trying to play it cool and underplaying their own needs.

This for me is a carryover from a past relationship: I have been in a relationship where my partner didn’t express their needs to me, despite telling me that they would. I felt responsible for it. I felt that I could’ve created space to allow them to express their needs. So maybe this is precisely what I need to do: Create regular check-ins where we can both express how we feel, so we become proactive in expressing our needs and have equal space in doing so. This is all I can do. I can’t make someone figure out their needs if they’re not ready for it, nor can I make them express them if they’re not ready for it. I cannot hold myself responsible for how far along someone is in their own emotional journey, or how much they can express themselves—beyond creating and nurturing a space for it in our relationship.

Would this be enough to assuage my anxiety? Honesty, I don’t know. But I do know that I have to accept that I cannot control whether or how much someone shares their needs. I have to accept that this is a compatibility issue. If someone doesn’t know their needs, or isn’t able to open up about them, they do not give me what I look for in a relationship. And I have to learn to trust my intuition when I feel that something is amiss. Because in my previous relationship, I did feel that something was amiss; I just ignored it. I told myself that maybe my partner didn’t have many needs, and maybe I’m just self-conscious of appearing “needy”. But the truth was that our dynamic was very imbalanced, because I was expressing my needs and my partner wasn’t. My needs came to dominate the dynamic. This made me feel “needy”, but it also ironically made me feel that my needs weren’t being met, because one of my needs is for my partner to open up to me and express their needs to me. As I was unaware of what was happening, this created a negative feedback loop: the more detached I felt from my partner, the more I asked for, and the more my needs dominated the relationship, which in turn made my partner feel that it was more difficult to express their own needs.

There’s no blame here. I don’t blame myself for having needs, nor do I blame my partner for not knowing or being able to express their needs. We were in different stages in our emotional development. Having regular check-ins could have proactively created space for them, but it would have still been on them to be able to know their needs and express them.

The problem, though, is that I don’t know what my basic needs are. More than any concrete need, the need I have is perhaps a meta-need: I need someone to show me that they put effort into our relationship. But how do I gauge the amount of effort that someone puts in our relationship? How do I know whether they’re putting in enough or not? Perhaps the answer is to rely on my intuition, but I feel that I don’t have this intuition. If I did, I wouldn’t be writing this. And this is where I struggle in determining whether a relationship is fulfilling for me or not. At the same time, though, I feel that this isn’t something that I can quantify—or rather, I feel that quantifying it wouldn’t be satisfying to me. I rely on my intuition to make these kinds of decisions. If I made a decision based on a quantification, such as a pros and cons list, I wouldn’t feel that I made the right decision. It would feel like a hollow—almost forced— decision, not one I have conviction in.

I think the solution is to develop my intuition. And to develop it, I need to train it by nurturing it in the right conditions.

I need mental clarity to allow my intuition to come through and thrive. But it tends to get drowned under the anxiety and the rejection sensitivity. I tend to fixate on trying to find a solution, trying to make the person become present for me in a way that I need, to assuage the feeling of rejection, that I’m not aware of whether they’re giving me enough in our relationship to make it fulfilling for me. This suffocates my intuition. My attention drifts away from my needs. I hyperfixate on fixing the relationship that I forget to think about whether it’s worth fixing. My attention drifts away from my needs, and thus I feel decentred. My intuition doesn’t speak to me because I don’t give it a chance to speak. My intuition is my centre, but I’m always getting drifted to the outskirts. I need to train myself to stay centred, in order to give my intuition a voice and listen to it.

I’ve been taking a break from relationships and meeting new people over the past few weeks, and it has been really good for me. I feel that I am more mindful and more in touch with my needs and desires, that I can hear my wishes better. I feel that I have more control over myself. I tend to get overwhelmed with anxious thoughts, feelings of rejections, compulsions—I tend to get lost in the fray and lose control over myself. Taking time for myself has allowed me to take a step away from all the noise and let it pass by me. I can see it for what it is and disengage from it, disempower it and empower myself.

Stepping away from the noise creates space for my intuition to speak, and allows me to direct my attention towards it. I’ve been thinking of frequently taking a break from relationships, something like a mental vacation. I also think that I need to slow down regularly, in my day-to-day life, and find ways to be more mindful and listen to my intuition. Admittedly, though, I don’t know how to do that, because it takes me a long time to quiet my mind. It took me about a week to reach a point of having peace of mind and clarity. But I don’t need to be in a hurry. If I need to process my thoughts, it’s okay for me to take several days to allow my mind to settle. I need to give myself the space that I need. I don’t need to feel guilty, nor feel frantic to find the answer immediately. I will know that I have the answer to something when my intuition feels good about it.

To figure out whether someone is showing up for me in the ways that I need, and whether our relationship is fulfilling to me and worth the work to sustain it and build on it, I can take time for myself to create a distance from the relationship, as well as any other relationship that might be affecting how I’m feeling, to detach myself from any anxious thoughts, from any fear of rejection I might be feeling, any behaviour I might be exhibiting as a result of this. By doing this, I can allow my mind to wind down and reach a state of clarity. Once I reach the state of clarity, I will be able to hear my true needs and desires better—my intuition will be able to speak to me, and I will be able to hear it. When I reconnect, I will be able to show up in the relationship in a self-empowered way—how I want to show up, not how my anxiety makes me show up.

I’m a very limerant person. And because of that, I tend to hyperfixate on people. I have a specific, rigid fantasy of what my dynamic with someone looks like. If the reality doesn’t meet the fantasy, I feel let down.

I would like to create space to allow reality in. I would like to minimize the power of the fantasy and stop it from taking over my connections.

The key question here is, how do I minimize the power of the fantasy?

I think the most important thing is to express myself early. The fantasy builds in the space created by the unknown. So by expressing myself early and finding out what the other person is looking for, I can stay rooted in reality and prevent the fantasy from building.

I tend to be afraid of expressing myself because I tend to be afraid of rejection. I tell myself that maybe the other person doesn’t feel how I’m feeling and isn’t experiencing our dynamic as I’m experiencing it. But isn’t that exactly the point of expressing myself early? If the person isn’t experiencing our dynamic as I’m experiencing it, it’s better for me to know early on rather than let the fantasy build. I need to trust that I’m better off being single than living in a fantasy. But I also need to have faith that the other person probably also feels something and wants to have some sort of connection with me—isn’t that why they’re talking to me? We might not have the same idea of what we’re looking for, but that’s why I need to ask about what they’re looking for.

I’m often afraid that I come off too serious if I start talking about our dynamic early on. But talking about what we’re each looking for in our connection is one of my fundamental needs, as it keeps me grounded in reality. How in-depth this conversation is can depend on how far along we are in our connection. It doesn’t have to be a long or deep conversation. But I have to be mindful of their answer when they tell me what they’re looking for and take them at face value. And if the person finds the conversation “too serious”, then we are clearly incompatible, as they don’t meet my fundamental need. And it’s better to know this early on.

Additionally, I can’t be afraid of feeling too vulnerable. What I’m looking for might be more than what the other person is looking for. I can’t look to reflect their emotions and needs, but rather express my own. If the other person does not want what I want, I always have the power to reduce my emotional investment in our connection. If I need to, I can de-escalate my behaviour in our connection to allow my emotions to de-escalate.

I need to stop treating our agreements and commitments as “tests” to prove that the other person will show up for me—that they’re actually into me and committed to our connection. I need to trust that they are. I need to trust that if they don’t follow through for me, it’s not a reflection of their commitment to our connection, but perhaps something they themselves are struggling with. I need to see it as an issue we can solve together as a team, rather than as a sign that they don’t care about me.

This is not an easy task, and not something I can just start magically doing, ignoring my feelings of being rejected. If it were, I would’ve been able to do it already. Rather, I need to ask for assurances that the person cares about me. I need to disconnect the feelings of being cared about from the things they are unable to give me. I need to recognize and internalize that the ways they cannot show up to our connection is not a reflection of how they feel towards me. I also need to be mindful of and grateful for all the things they do give me and the ways in which they do show up for me. I need to view my connections from a perspective of gratitude. Anything that the person gives me, any way that they show up for me, is a gift that reflects my importance to them and their willingness to show up for me.

By taking this approach, I can accept whatever people give me, no matter how big or small, and cherish the natural connection that we have. I can ask for things, but the asks become less loaded with expectations, and less burdened with the weight of needing to prove that the person cares about me and our connection. I can do this because, ultimately, having connections in my life adds to its richness, but I am emotionally whole. I do not need any one connection to complete me. By mindfully accepting what people give me and not hyperfixating on what they don’t give me, I can create space for others in my life who can give me more, without needing to remove what I already have. I do not need to cut off a person who cannot meet all my needs, because I do not hyperfixate on them, and having them in my life does not take away from my ability to create space for someone else.

I’ve been trying to think of ways to get back on track as soon as possible when my routine is broken, but this is not an easy task. Even as I’m writing this, I’m struggling to get back into my routine and into being productive. When I have an established routine, I feel I can function on autopilot, and my life feels smooth and automatic. But getting there often feels like it requires a gargantuan amount of executive function.

I often get stuck in “either/or” thinking: I’m either in my routine, or I’m out of my routine. So when I’m out of my routine, I tend to think of my task as one big task—to get back into my routine—rather than a bunch of small tasks that together comprise my routine. This adds to the feeling of needing a gargantuan amount of executive function to get back into my routine.

Additionally, when I know that my routine is going to be broken again soon, I tend to feel defeated, and thus not bother. Why put in all that effort to rebuild my routine when I’m going to be travelling again soon and thus going to have to put in the same amount of effort to rebuild my routine all over again?

The problem, though, is that I travel and move around a lot. So if the feeling that I’ll have to reestablish my routine demotivates me from establishing my routine, I will simply not have my routine at any point in time. And this creates a conflict between my need to travel around and my need to have a routine. I need to constantly be on the move, to constantly have novelty in my life, but I can’t let that hinder my need for a routine.

So what is the solution?

If I had a solution, I wouldn’t be writing this. Because this isn’t a guide on how to overcome executive dysfunction in the face of needing to establish a routine. It’s an attempt to think through my experiences and try to construct a possible solution—something that might or might not work. So the solution is a work in progress. Even the pieces that bring it together are a work in progress. Because I’m sure that my thought process is missing something. But something is better than nothing. Even finding a solution to my executive dysfunction—I have to think about it as a series of tasks of trial and error, rather than one big task. I don’t need to have the perfect solution, as long as I’m working towards improving.

The solution I’m thinking of right now is to reframe my constant travel and moving around. Rather than thinking of it as an obstacle to maintaining my routine, I can think of it as being my routine.

This thought, of course, in and of itself is only a thought. It’s not an action. The issue does not get magically fixed by a mere thought. But this thought can act as the basis of what I can do to prevent my routine from getting constantly thrown off. To making travelling and moving around a true part of my routine, I need to establish it as such mentally and stop giving it the power to disrupt my routine.

If travelling and moving around is a constant in my life, then it is literally part of my routine. So why does it feel like a constant disruption, rather than just a constant? Perhaps it’s the executive function required to prepare to travel. Preparing to travel gives me a lot of anxiety, to the point that it disrupts my routine a week or more before my trip. And this is part of the cause: the preparation disrupts my routine, before the trip itself actually does. So I fall off my routine before I even go anywhere, and in my anxious state I end up forming a new, anxiety-based routine, which means I already have this anxiety-based routine to default on after I move.

What I need to do, then, is minimize the amount of disruption preparing to travel causes my routine. And the good thing is that, since I travel a lot, I already have a routine established around preparing to travel. I even have a checklist saved of the things that I need to pack. This saves me from having to think about what I need to pack, and therefore helps minimize the anxiety I usually get from being afraid that I might forget something.

I’ve also found that I tend to feel less anxious when I don’t start packing too soon. Perhaps this is ironic (doesn’t preparation help prevent anxiety?), but starting to pack puts me in the headspace of a change about to occur, and as such starting to pack too soon can make the transition period feel long. Being prepared beforehand—such as having a pre-written checklist—allows me to start thinking about packing later and thus shortens the transition period.

I tend to think of my travel transitions as transitions and accentuate that. What I mean is that I do a lot of tasks right before travelling, and think of my trip as a new start. So on the days before my trip, I not only pack, but also groom and go to the barber and do other tasks that make me feel fresh. While I enjoy the feeling of being fresh, there is no reason for it to coincide with travelling. Adding those tasks to my to-do list has the double effect of not only giving me more tasks to do before travelling, thus increasing my anxiety and requiring more executive function from me, but also mentally making the transition more pronounced. This on/off approach to transitions makes it very apparent that what I’m experiencing is a transition, and thus disrupts my routine. Even the fact that I need to do these extra tasks disrupts my routine: instead of performing my routine tasks, I neglect my routine and expend energy performing these other tasks in a time slot other than their routine time slot. For example, instead of going to the barber when I actually need to go to the barber (which would be after travelling and going to the new place), I go before I actually need to go, just to go before I travel.

The ironic thing is that I do these tasks to reduce the amount of tasks I need to do when I go to a new place—for example, I feel anxious looking for a new barber when I’m in a new place, and want to postpone it for as long as possible, so I go to the barber right before travelling—but the cumulative effect this has is the opposite. I end up having too many tasks as part of my transition. As such, to minimize my transition anxiety, I need to accept the anxiety of having to perform these tasks perhaps soon after I arrive to a new place. This can reduce the feeling of transitioning. It can also have the effect of maintaining my routine: If I perform a task every five weeks, but because of my transition, I perform it on the third week after the last time (right before travelling), this throws off my transition. But if I keep it till I’ve arrived to the place, I can perform it on the fifth week after performing it last. This creates a sense of continuity in my routine.

Continuity reduces disruption in my routine and thus the feeling of transitioning. So the best way to minimize the feeling of transitioning is to reduce the number of tasks I associate with preparing to travel, and instead keep as much of my routine as possible. This makes it easier to continue my routine wherever I go, because it still has the momentum to keep going and does not need the executive function of rebuilding my routine.