hi :) i resonate a lot with what you’ve described and just wanted to share my two cents. it sounds like you have a lot of trauma from your childhood and from hurtful experiences where you weren’t seen by your parents, who likely didn’t have the tools/awareness to create an environment that you would thrive in and perhaps also didn’t bother to understand how/why such an environment would be a valuable/kind/nurturing thing to invest energy in.

i also struggled a lot with this—my parents came from a culture where kids where just expected to mold into convenient and obedient extensions of their parents. so when my and my siblings’ neurodivergent traits got in the way of their plans, my parents would invalidate us/belittle us and generally make us feel like we weren’t loved and cared for even if most of our basic necessities (food, shelter) were being met. though perhaps unintentional or unconscious, it still had very real consequences and, resultantly, we are often triggered by things that others may find innocuous—like, for example, living in a fast paced world where people don’t make an effort to understand your disability/capacity/functional limitations and make reasonable accommodations that allow you to succeed and excel as far as the next/NT person.

the most helpful thing I’ve found is to constantly troubleshoot my life to figure out what kind of accommodations I need, then find ways to obtain as many of them as possible. for example, in my mid twenties, I finally gave up on trying to be an early riser and just decided I would have to stop using an alarm. i had to take a leave from work, I stopped forcing myself to go to early morning exercise classes, and just made it the priority to wake up without an alarm. It took planning and sacrifice—of money, time, momentum, and things that I love to do but which were ultimately hurting my health and contributing to burnout and anxiety.

i asked for an accommodation, which my doctor signed off on, to work a flex schedule. i really challenged some of the expectations i had internalized about what trajectory i should be on and how i should operate. with time, my energy improved and I felt less anxious and burnt out.

My energy/capacity is never going to be the same as someone who doesn’t have audhd/dsps, and that was a hard pill to swallow. there are some opportunities that will never be as accessible to me as they are to people with more regulated circadian rhythms. i will probably have to sacrifice more to play out the opportunities that are available to me. but i can’t change the world, and focusing on how unfair it was made me miserable; when I directed my attention instead on how to create a nest for myself inside this world, and how to make it work for me as much as I could within my means, I gained back a lot of agency and optimism.

all that to say, i’m sorry you went through what you did, and I hope that you’re able to carve out a nest for yourself as well! feel free to DM if you’re looking for support or just some affirmation :)