u/Due-Tax-3602

I want to share my experience growing up and living as a neurodivergent individual, hoping to connect with others who might relate. Since childhood, I’ve felt different, mainly due to my intense hyperfixations. Back then, it was celestial bodies and spinning toys; nowadays, my mind is completely consumed by social structures and the automotive market. The struggle is that whenever I'm awake, I feel this intense pressure to focus on anything outside of these fixations, which forces me to rely on coping mechanisms. Even with tools like a fidget spinner, I can only maintain focus for an hour or an hour and a half at most. If there’s even a slight interruption or a drop in dopamine, I find it incredibly difficult to get back on track. This low connectivity makes me completely zone out; if someone leaves the meeting mid conversation due to lack of internet connection or a higher priority work, I am often entirely disconnected by the time they return.

This dopamine loop and the constant mental spiraling leave me feeling starved for "me time." It affects my entire routine—to the point where I procrastinate so much in the mornings that I can't even put down my phone to use the bathroom, which delays my day by nearly two hours. I find it difficult to even open my laptop before noon, and I feel completely paralyzed to do anything productive before that. At home, I find myself masking constantly. Masking my neurodivergent traits has become so exhausting that I feel like I can't ever show my true self, which leaves me with deep feelings of guilt, laziness, and a toxic cycle of constantly seeking cheap dopamine hits. What makes the guilt worse is knowing that materially, I am completely safe. I have a roof over my head, three meals a day, and access to a phone, laptop, and TV. Yet, the thought of spending another year like this fills me with anxiety because it will make finding a job even harder. Despite the material comfort, I just don't want to be here.

My sleep schedule is also heavily impacted by revenge bedtime procrastination, which pushes my sleep back to 11 PM or much later, and ironically, this carries over into a sort of "revenge bathroom procrastination" in the morning. I can't help but wonder if leaving my family home would alleviate some of these struggles. My backstory is a bit painful; my family essentially hid my neurodivergence from me, thinking they were protecting me from the judgment of extended relatives. In my hometown, family status and an obsession with merit override everything else, so they kept it a secret to avoid anyone talking. Because of this, my school days were incredibly isolating. I couldn't form a natural bond or a "gang" of friends like other kids who seemed normal, while I always felt different. When my parents enrolled me in school, their primary concern was just making sure I wouldn't be put in a special education school, though looking back, I sometimes wonder if I would have fared better there. Today I struggle with low self-esteem, self-confidence and disillusionment with how I have perceived myself, as traits like hesitation to speak, inability to catch social norms and unwillingness to maintain eye contact were treated as character flaws, and I was constantly labeled "a child with stunted mental growth", and any mental illness carries social stigma in my community.

Now, at 22 years old, I am trying to figure out my next steps. I completed my BE in Electronics and Communication Engineering with an 8.4 CGPA, but truth be told, I crammed for everything. I don't have impressive project experience—only two decent projects that pale in comparison to what my peers accomplished—and my extracurricular record is nonexistent. My social anxieties followed me to college, preventing me from making a number of connections as wide as others, or connecting with teammates on the Formula Student team, which I eventually quit in frustration. I used to blame it all on a lack of exposure and laziness, but I know it's deeper. I got placed through campus at an IT firm, but the open-office environment was overwhelming, and after a conflict with my manager due to communication issues and ghosting, I ended up leaving in less than a month.

Given my background, I am trying to figure out what kind of job environment would actually suit me. I am also considering neuro-affirmative therapy but want to know what to expect. If anyone has insights on what happens in these sessions, the typical costs, or whether it genuinely helps with self-understanding and improvement, I would deeply appreciate your guidance. TIA.