I was recently listening to one of my favourite songs, If I Ever Get Around To Living by John Mayer, when I was overcome by a profound sadness.
Music has been a constant companion over the past weeks as I’ve been grieving an unexpected loss, but there was something about this song in particular that hit me deeply and made me see my life with renewed clarity.
As I felt the tears well up in my eyes, it struck me that, at the age of 43, I still have hardly gotten around to living.
I have spent most of my life surviving.
🎵
You are hiding in your mind.
Working all the time.
Trying to make it better than you got it.
It’s as if I was listening to a soundtrack written for this very moment – summarising my whole life in three sentences as I found myself wandering through the woods, alone, seeking solace in the world outside my mind.
The truth is, I have hardly ever felt safe in my own life.
I’ve spent most of the time escaping it.
Survival is the only strategy I’ve ever really known.
As an undiagnosed autistic child, I felt painfully different from others in ways I couldn’t understand. All I ever wanted was to be less alone. To not be seen as the weird kid. But because the world felt so confusing and overwhelming to me, I would often hide in my own mind to shield myself from harm. It was the only place where I felt safe. Even if it meant being alone.
As an adult, I thought that if I just worked hard enough, perhaps I’d finally earn my place in the world. Perhaps I’d finally be worthy of love and acceptance, and the shame would go away. I’d find freedom.
In some ways, this constant drive for survival has served me well. It has allowed me to build a career and gain a decent level of independence, when many autistic people still find themselves in less fortunate material conditions.
But when we spend our lives in survival mode, we pay a hefty price too – in our bodies, in our souls, and in our relationships with the people we care about.
I’m only beginning to see that more clearly now. And it hurts, deeply, to confront the costs of having spent a life in survival mode. But I know there are important lessons to be learned from it as well.
What follows below is my honest attempt to uncover and share those lessons with you, in the hope they might benefit you too in some way.
The origins of trauma
One of my earliest memories involves hiding behind a tree in our school playground.
I remember watching the other kids jump around with a mix of dread and longing. Part of me wanted to join them. But their voices were too loud and unpredictable. Their movements were too jarring and chaotic. Everything felt threatening. Like my body was under attack. So I just stood there, motionless, until the school bell finally rang, wondering what on earth was wrong with me.
I spent most of my childhood years in the same state:
Frozen. Lonely.
My home didn’t exactly offer a refuge.
I grew up in a troubled family in a cramped and noisy flat. There was no safety to be found here either. I felt constantly on guard.
Every sound I heard through the walls of our flat sent a shiver down my spine. Every outburst of emotion at the dining table made me want to seek shelter in my room. Which I often did. I would rather eat alone – much to the sadness of my parents, who now also started wondering what was wrong with me.
The truth is, there was nothing “wrong” with me. I was autistic, trying to survive an unpredictable environment that scared the hell out of me.
But none of us – neither I, my parents, nor my teachers – understood any of this yet. Nor could we give words to it. This was in the eighties and nineties, long before the language of neurodiversity made its way into schools and families.
The deepest pain is the one we are unable to name.
Loneliness followed me into high school. At home, any semblance of safety had long been lost as our family further disintegrated under the weight of mental turmoil that none of us were equipped to handle. I retreated further into my own world, focusing on my studies. Focusing on survival.
And as I grew into an adolescent, I found myself hiding from life in increasingly creative ways.
One specific evening in a nightclub comes to mind, during a school trip abroad, when I clutched a pole just to avoid the touch of a girl who had asked me for a dance. I felt so overwhelmed that I was unable to move or speak. Let alone dance. I was seventeen then. It was only last year that I finally felt safe enough to surrender to a dance with a woman for the first time.
Seeking refuge in work
When I finally received my autism diagnosis in my early twenties, just as I was about to start my career, it didn’t feel like a relief. It only made me feel more scared and insecure.
Surely, if people knew I was autistic, there was no hope of me ever being loved. So, I did what I’d always done: I focused on survival.
My work became my safe haven. Everything else – the pain, the loneliness, the longing for connection – had to remain hidden behind a shield of competence.
Working hard gave me a sense of control. It was the only place where no one could hurt me. I fooled myself into thinking it would lead me to freedom, even though I was enslaving myself in the process.
When my body started hurting, begging me to slow down, I would simply caffeinate myself to numb the discomfort. Anything to keep the pain at bay.
Many of us with careers who are neurodivergent fall into this trap. We distract ourselves with work, because it’s the only area in life where we feel competent.
Pausing can seem like a threat, because it means we would have to be present with our own shame. So instead, we just keep working. Even when we’re tired. Even when we know we’re overdoing it.
We tell ourselves it’s only temporary – that if we just push through today, we will eventually “earn the right to live”.
Except, that day never arrives. We remain stuck in survival mode. And the shame only grows, because inside, we know we’re violating ourselves.
When the armour becomes you
Looking back on the arc of my life now, I realise I put on a thick armour to protect myself from a young age – a shield to keep life at a distance.
It felt like the only choice then. A choice of survival.
But the reality is that I have never been able to fully take off this shield since.
I have become the armour.
And it has separated me from myself and from others.
The outside threat is long gone. I no longer feel ashamed of being autistic, and I’m grateful to be surrounded by people who accept me for who I am.
But on a somatic level, the feeling of unsafety remains. It’s locked inside my nervous system, keeping me in a state of shallow breath and hypervigilance.
I’m still scanning the environment for threats, even when none exist anymore. And I still find it hard to fully relax when I’m around other people, unless the conditions are calm and predictable.
That’s the hallmark of trauma: it becomes imprinted in the body, long after the original experiences have passed.
The healing power of connection
What’s most painful about trauma is that it also creates a barrier between us and others, including the ones who want to love and support us the most.
When we’re focused on protecting ourselves, clinging to our armour, we can’t fully surrender to feelings of love, care, and intimacy. The more strongly we hold on to our defenses, the harder it becomes for others to connect with us.
In past relationships, earlier in my adult life, I would never feel safe to show myself. I was constantly on guard. I didn’t realise how my attempts to appear “stable and composed” were actually creating distance.
But over the past year, I’ve slowly started to learn how to drop that armour, even if imperfectly. I’ve discovered that, whatever scars we carry from the past, we can learn to focus on the present and find healing in connection. Without shame. Without the need to appear perfect.
For the first time in my life, I learned to surrender to another person’s embrace without feeling I had to protect myself or run away. I shared a dance with the woman I loved, when I previously would have clung to a pole. I didn’t freeze this time. I felt safe. I was able to hold and be held.
That felt like a victory.
And it’s this specific memory – a tender moment of connection – that lingered in my mind as I was listening to John Mayer in the woods the other day.
🎵
If I ever get around to living,
It’ll be just like I dreamed,
I’m gonna take the love I’m given,
And set it free, free.
As I continued my walk, I looked at the trees around me without wanting to hide behind them, I let out a deep breath, and thought to myself:
I have survived. Perhaps today is as good a day as any to finally start living.
Leave a Reply