There’s this thing that happens when you’re neurodivergent and life decides to absolutely demolish whatever fragile systems you’ve built to keep yourself functional.

It’s not just that things fall apart—things fall apart for everyone. It’s that when you’re ND, you’ve spent years (decades, really) engineering these incredibly sophisticated scaffolding systems just to do what other people seem to manage automatically. And when crisis hits? That scaffolding doesn’t just wobble. It disintegrates.

Last year taught me this in ways I’m still processing.

💭 And by “processing,” I mean “occasionally lying awake at 3 AM wondering how I’m still upright.”

The Morning Everything Changed

It started ordinary enough. My partner was taking the dog out—just another morning routine in our carefully constructed life. Except she mentioned her eyesight wasn’t quite right.

💬 “But I’m still going to take the dog out.”

Ten minutes later, there’s a knock on the door. Which is weird for that time of morning. Strange enough that my brain flagged it immediately—that’s not right, that’s not the pattern—before I even opened it.

She fell through the doorway.

I caught her. Called emergency services. Watched as the life we’d been building got loaded into an ambulance.

Stroke.

She was in hospital for weeks. I stayed with her for two months while she recovered, watching someone I love struggle with tasks that used to be automatic. Watching her face the same kind of cognitive challenges I’ve been navigating my whole life, except hers appeared suddenly, traumatically, without the decades of coping mechanisms I’ve had to develop.

💭 There’s something particularly cruel about watching someone you love experience a fraction of what you deal with daily and seeing how hard it is for them. It makes you realize how hard it’s been for you all along. And also how resilient you’ve had to become without even noticing.

The Impossible Equation

Here’s where the neurodivergent experience gets especially fun during crisis:

I’m in London because that’s where work is. My partner and daughter are elsewhere. My daughter is three years old and needs her dad. My partner is recovering from a stroke and needs support. I have ADHD and dyslexia, which means sustained separation from my family while maintaining work responsibilities while managing crisis is...

Let me put this mathematically, because sometimes numbers help:

Executive Function Required = (Work demands × Physical distance) + (Family crisis × Emotional load) ÷ (Support systems - Geographic isolation) × (Neurodivergent processing challenges)

The answer? Does not compute.

And yet. Here I am. Computing it anyway. Because what’s the alternative?

What Isolation Looks Like When Your Brain Already Feels Isolated

There’s the regular isolation that everyone talks about—being physically separated from people you love, missing important moments, feeling disconnected.

Then there’s neurodivergent isolation during crisis, which is... different.

It’s not just being alone. It’s being alone while your brain is screaming for dopamine, for routine, for the exact structures that have just been obliterated. It’s needing to talk through your thoughts to process them (hello, ADHD verbal processing) but being physically separated from your people. It’s needing familiar environments to function optimally but being split between two locations because life demanded it.

It’s watching yourself struggle with things you “should” be handling better while simultaneously knowing that of course you’re struggling—your entire support infrastructure just collapsed.

💭 The cruel irony: I’ve spent years building systems to support other neurodivergent people, teaching them how to construct sustainable structures for their lives. And then life said “lol no” and knocked mine over like a toddler with blocks.

The Mythology of Resilience

People love to talk about resilience. Especially when talking about neurodivergent people or people facing challenges. “You’re so resilient!” they say, like it’s a compliment.

But here’s what resilience actually looks like in practice:

It’s trying to be consistent for the people who’ve asked for your help while your brain is doing backflips trying to remember what day it is.

It’s showing up for work calls while calculating whether you have enough executive function left to also remember to eat lunch.

It’s being present for your three-year-old daughter during precious video calls while part of your brain is spiraling about all the moments you’re missing.

It’s holding space for your partner’s recovery while your own mental health is doing that thing where it pretends everything’s fine until it absolutely isn’t.

Resilience isn’t strength. It’s the exhausting mathematics of rationing a finite resource (your cognitive capacity) across infinite demands.

And sometimes—most times—the equation doesn’t balance.

What I’m Learning (While Everything’s Still On Fire)

1. Crisis doesn’t care about your neurodivergence.

Life will absolutely hand you situations that require exactly the skills you don’t have. Sustained attention? Executive function? Emotional regulation during high-stress situations? Cool cool cool, here’s a family medical emergency across multiple cities.

2. But your neurodivergence will absolutely affect how you experience crisis.

The isolation hits different. The loss of routine is catastrophic in ways neurotypical people don’t fully grasp. The cognitive load of managing multiple locations, responsibilities, and emotional demands while your brain is already working overtime just to function normally?

It’s not just hard. It’s different hard.

3. You can’t engineer your way out of everything.

💭 This one stings, because I’ve built my entire approach around “engineering solutions” rather than “accepting limitations.”

But sometimes life presents problems that don’t have elegant solutions. Sometimes the answer is just: this is terrible, and you’re going to feel terrible, and there’s no system or app or routine that makes it not-terrible.

Sometimes you just have to be in it.

4. Asking for help is still really hard.

Even when you desperately need it. Even when you teach other people to do it. Even when you know it’s the logical thing.

Because there’s this voice (internalized ableism is fun) that says you should be able to handle this. That if you were better at managing your ADHD, more disciplined, more organized, less... you... then this would be easier.

That voice is a liar, but it’s a persistent one.

The Part Where I Try to Be Hopeful (Despite Everything)

Here’s what I know: This year has to be different. Not because I’m manifesting positive vibes or whatever, but because the current equation is unsustainable and something has to shift.

I’m pushing forward—not in that toxic productivity “hustle harder” way, but in the “I need to fundamentally restructure my life so I can actually be present for my family” way.

I’m going to keep helping people. Partly because it’s what I do, partly because supporting others actually helps me feel less isolated (ADHD brain loves being useful for other people even when it can’t support itself), and partly because I’ve been asked specifically to help with tech solutions for neurodivergent folks and that’s genuinely exciting work.

💭 Technology and AI for neurodivergent business support? YES PLEASE. This is exactly the kind of engineering-solutions-to-ND-challenges work that lights up my brain.

I’m aiming for consistency—which is hilarious given that consistency is perhaps the single hardest thing for an ADHD brain to achieve. But I’m going to try anyway, because my daughter is three and watching her dad model “trying even when it’s hard” matters.

I’m going to create educational content about applying technology in ways that actually support neurodivergent processing, because if I’ve learned anything this year it’s that we need better tools, better systems, and better understanding of how to make technology work with our brains instead of against them.

What I Want You to Know

If you’re reading this and you’re also neurodivergent and everything feels impossible right now?

You’re not failing.

Your brain isn’t broken because it can’t handle crisis the way you think it “should.”

The systems you built that worked perfectly fine until they didn’t? They weren’t inadequate. Life just exceeded their specifications.

The fact that you’re struggling with things that seem to come easily to others? That’s not a reflection of your worth or capability. That’s the difference between building a life in a world designed for different brains and experiencing that same world during catastrophe.

And if you’re isolated—physically, emotionally, cognitively—know that isolation during crisis when you’re neurodivergent is its own special kind of hell. It’s not just you. It’s the intersection of circumstance and neurology and impossible demands.

You’re doing better than you think you are.

💭 Even when you’re absolutely certain you’re doing terribly.

Moving Forward (One Executive Function Crisis at a Time)

So here we are. New year. Same brain. Different challenges.

I’m still figuring out how to be in London for work while being present for my family. Still navigating the aftermath of crisis while trying to build ...

When Everything Falls Apart (And You’re Still Expected to Hold It Together)