The Grief of Not Fitting Anywhere

There is a unique kind of grief that comes with being neurodivergent. It is not only about the differences in how our brains work. It is about what happens when those differences meet a world that demands conformity.

Tone policing shows up everywhere. Tone policing is when people dismiss what you are saying because of how you say it. If you are blunt, passionate, loud, emotional, or intense, the content of your words gets lost and all people hear is their own discomfort. It becomes less about the issue at hand and more about how you should soften yourself. Quieter. Calmer. Less intense. That constant demand chips away at your self worth.

Respectability politics show up too. This is the unspoken rule that you have to look and act a certain way to be seen as credible, even in spaces that claim to be inclusive. For neurodivergent folks, that often means masking. Masking is when we hide or minimize our true ways of being in order to survive. We contort ourselves into something more acceptable to others, even when it drains us.

I live this every day. I am often told I am too loud. Too sensitive. Too intense.

Too blunt. I ask questions and people assume I am arguing. I speak honestly and people say I am intimidating. The reality is that I am kind. I am just being myself. I want to connect. But what gets reflected back to me is that I am “too much.” That message over and over becomes grief.

What hurts even more is when this happens in spaces that are supposed to be supportive. Peer support programs, mental health services, survivor advocacy centers, community health initiatives, and, ironically, even autism support organizations. These are the places that claimed to be trauma informed, neuro affirming, and grounded in lived experience. Yet those were also the spaces that asked me to be less. The grief of being hired for who I am and then told I am not good enough for being that person is heavy.

It feels like betrayal. It feels like being cut down in the very places that promise to uplift.

This is why many neurodivergent people burn out in these systems. We are constantly forced into survival mode. We mask. We soften. We apologize for existing in a way that is true to us. And it takes a toll.

The grief of not fitting anywhere is not just personal. It is systemic. It comes from workplaces and entire cultures that would rather mold us into something more comfortable than meet us where we are.

Naming this grief matters. Naming tone policing, respectability politics, and masking helps us understand that the problem is not that we are “too much.” The problem is that we live in a world that is not built to hold difference with respect.

I am still learning how to hold this grief. Some days it feels unbearable. But what I know for sure is that there is nothing wrong with being intense, blunt, real, and kind all at once. The wrongness lies in the systems that keep demanding we be less.