The Secret That Found Me:Awakening Twice, Autism, & Awkwardly Hurtling Through Life
I always felt I had a secret.
There was something about me that wasn’t quite “right”. Different.
From a young age, I learned this secret needed to be worked around, managed, shielded from others.
Well into adulthood, I finally relaxed into who I am. But it was always there. A quiet truth, patiently waiting beneath the surface of my life.
What was it about me that didn’t quite make sense with how the world works?
“Sensory meltdowns happened daily—whether it was brushing my hair, the seams on my socks, or people singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to me.”
Childhood Clues
As a toddler and young child, sensory meltdowns happened daily—whether it was brushing my hair, the seams on my socks, or people singing “Happy Birthday” to me.
I was called restless and hyperactive, always moving. I developed facial tics and rapid hand movements to let off steam. I was blunt and said things that caused adults’ mouths to drop. Sometimes it was funny. Other times, it was upsetting. I have so much to learn, I thought.
I scanned my parents for clues and connection. I’d speak the words my mother was saying at the same time as her, in unison. It drove her crazy with annoyance—and it also scared her. “How do you do know what I’m going to say?” she’d ask, her eyes wide, visibly shaken. I didn’t have an answer. I just yearned to belong. But I saw the look in her face: that mixture of fear and confusion. And those looks stayed with me.
I spent a huge amount of energy as a child trying not to “freak people out”, especially my family. Trying to shrink myself, dampen the weirdness, and seem less intense, less strange.
When I was seven, we moved to a new town and I was the new kid. I didn’t know anyone. Not wanting to upset any of the kids or teachers, I’d live out my inner world by talking to “imaginary” friends on recess; conjuring up creative scenarios, talking to flashes of light in the air that seemed to visit me, and happily playing by myself on the soccer field.
I was called “weird,” “annoying,” and “in my own world.” I learned this was not OK, so I forced myself to socialize. I began mirroring how other children talked to each other, the way they held their hands and bodies, and the topics that interested them.
I started to make friends easily but was often confused about what was expected of me. So I became an over-giver, a chameleon, a pleaser—oozing unconscious neediness. When I developed a bond with someone, I was filled with so much love, I’d invent cute nicknames and voices that expressed my delight every time I saw them. My vocal tics and echolalia were met with eye rolling. “What did I do?” I’d reflexively say, something I’d get very good at asking. I’d searchingly look from one face to the next for cues on what I’d done wrong.
I rarely got the straight answer I sought.
I was awkwardly inhabiting my body, as if wearing this meat suit was somehow foreign and strange. Gym class was torture, and I either dropped or avoided the ballI altogether. I was teased and bullied and often couldn’t figure out exactly what the joke was. But I knew the joke had to do with me.
A Different Sensory Experience
As a child, words and numbers had smells, colors, and feelings. Some tasted sour. Others made my heart leap with joy. These sensory impressions faded in time but never fully disappeared. And time wasn't just something to keep track of – it lived in the space around me. I could see the months of the year arranged in a line, swooping around me, or the days of the week stretched out like a ribbon. Music gave me chills or made me recoil.
Everything was intense. As I tried to cope, I continued to shut down parts of me that were highly intuitive and deeply attuned to what was unseen. I wasn’t able to just preserve the light filled aspects of this sensitivity — so I started muting it all.
“There was a nagging feeling I wasn’t quite doing life ‘right.’ And I wanted to learn.”
Social Struggles & Young Adulthood
Sometimes gravitating toward bullies, and other times people who matched my intensity, I often felt safest in relationships where I worked to keep the peace, even if it cost me clarity, losing myself in the process. So I experienced some explosive friend fallouts in adulthood. In romantic relationships, I stayed too long—putting up with too much or not enough—because I had no idea what I needed or what was required of me as a partner.
As a teen and young adult, I needed more sleep than others. Getting up in the morning and doing all the steps to get out the door, careening into school or work—it took everything out of me. I needed more time to recover from “normal” things: working, buying groceries, navigating relationships, and keeping track of the unspoken rules in each social realm.
There was a nagging feeling I wasn’t quite doing life “right.” And I wanted to get it right.
Acting & Overwhelm
I threw myself into intense interests, mainly involving understanding people and what made them tick. Acting was the perfect vehicle for that. I had a knack for channeling characters, expressing heightened emotion, and metamorphosing into someone else. I won praise, awards, and rave reviews.
But I was constantly overwhelmed and confused about how to hold it all together—work, being a young actor in Los Angeles, relationships, social dynamics. Even parking. (Please, L.A. Parking Enforcement Division, enough with the boot on my car.) I deeply knew I needed more support, but there didn’t seem to be anything “wrong” with me, other than my being odd. After all, I had tested with a fairly high IQ as a preteen and had been accepted into a gifted program, which my exhausted mom discouraged because she didn’t want to pick me up after school.
It was a confusing paradox: some saw me as inspired and talented. Others saw me as flaky and chaotic. Many saw me as all of it.
“You’re smarter than this, Sarah. Why can’t you figure these things out?” my mom would ask, shaking her head over the phone.
“I don’t know,” I’d say. It was true.
Shame became my companion. I took on the identity of the struggling, wacky artist who couldn’t get her shit together.
“Small talk was excruciating. Eye contact gave me too much information about a person. So I’d grab a glass of wine and flit from conversation to conversation—touching down, then taking off again.”
Sensory Flooding & Social Energy
In my twenties, I walked around overstimulated and totally frazzled by life. The way the sun shown in L.A. was too bright, even with sunglasses. Everything was too much. I was a raw nerve.
And the overwhelm didn’t just come from adulting and sensory input. I saw infinite possibilities in every idea, every word, every conversation. As an actor, I could feel a hundred ways a character might respond in a scene. My creativity was exhausting. When meeting someone new, I’d sense a thousand emotional pathways splintering off in every direction. I felt everything at once. Including everything about them.
My childhood suppressions were bursting at the seams.
A stranger walking past me held a flood of information. A creative idea would arrive in a flash. A question as simple as “How are you?” contained so many possible answers that I sometimes went silent—or talked too much. I became known as a loudmouth. Or the life of the party. Sensory seeking, and sensory avoidant, my social life was a chaotic mix.
“You’re such a social butterfly,” my friends would say. But small talk was excruciating. Eye contact gave me too much information about a person. So I’d grab a glass of wine and flit from conversation to conversation—touching down, then taking off again.
“If the #selfcare movement had existed in the 90s, it would have saved me a lot of heartache.”
Chronic Illness & Burnout
The chronic overwhelm took a toll. I had fragile health. As a child, I got sick at least once a month—bronchitis, sinus infections, colds. I lived on antibiotics and used my asthma inhaler daily.
As an adult, getting sick became a deep fear. I couldn’t afford to miss work. I had to get to my waitressing job, keep my relationships going, avoid yet another parking ticket.
If the #selfcare movement had existed in the ’90s, it would have saved me a lot of heartache.
Because I didn’t want to just survive. I wanted to create. Acting — and eventually stand-up comedy — gave me moments of joy and hope. But the life of a struggling artist requires consistency, focus, and stamina. I could only keep up with the multiple demands of my life for a few months at a time before I always crashed. Sometimes those crashes—burnouts, I would later learn—lasted for years.
“I took whatever cocktail of meds I was prescribed. None of it helped.”
Misdiagnosis & Awakening
In my mid-twenties, I thought I’d found the answer:
Ohhh. I’m bipolar II. Okay. That explains it.
I took whatever cocktail of meds I was prescribed. None of it helped. I became lethargic and unwell for over ten years. I’d later learn that misdiagnoses of various DSM labels were often handed out to people like me.
In my thirties, with the help of a kind psychiatrist who suspected I wasn’t bipolar after all, I weaned off of everything and dove into Buddhist meditation. My ability to hyper-focus became my superpower. I touched into my true nature—what the Buddha calls original mind—fairly quickly.
The peace that passeth all understanding.
And a powerful, nondual, awakening unfolded, dissolving the boundaries between self and other, and revealing the seamless field of being that underlies everything. This is what spiritual seekers have sought. And it seemed to crash open my life.
This awakening didn’t arrive quietly. A profound energetic opening began—what some traditions call kundalini—bringing with it waves of clarity, bliss, and intensity. Knots of tension I’d held within began unraveling.
And many of the meditation practices I had been learning up to this point—entering deep absorption states like the jhanas, resting in open awareness, and even Dzogchen-style awareness of awareness—were things I had intuitively done as a child, without any framework or teaching.
Around the same time, sensitivities I’d long buried as a child began to return. I started perceiving subtle layers of reality I had once tucked away: sensing energy, knowing things before they were spoken, and seeing into dimensions not visible to the eye. Intuitive capacities returned in a flood.
It was overwhelming at first, and disorienting.
But it felt like a remembering, not a new acquisition. These aspects of my being had always been there—dormant, quiet, waiting. Now, they were asking to be integrated, not just as curiosities or problems to be managed, but as part of my service and path.
I eventually began to flourish in ways I’d only dreamed of.
I thought: Maybe the secret all along was that I hadn’t been connected to my spiritual essence.
And yes! That was true. But still…something didn’t add up.
Trauma, Healing, and Integration
There were still ways I didn’t quite function like others. Granted, there was no longer the sense that something was inherently “wrong” with me—awakening had dissolved that. I’d seen directly there is no separation between me and what we call God, Source, or Reality itself.
But trauma had emerged. So I spent years somatically unraveling knots.
Was that the secret? Was it all just trauma?
The more I healed, and the more the spiritual realizations became embodied, the more whole I became.
Relationships had more ease to them. Life flowed. My health improved. The monthly colds stopped. My asthma nearly disappeared. Anxiety dissolved. My mind quieted. My heart softened.
“I still needed full ‘monk mode’ days to recover from doing it all. I even considered becoming a Buddhist nun.”
The Mystery That Remained
But my system still got over-saturated. WTF? I still needed large amounts of downtime. I embraced that I was an HSP—a highly sensitive person. I worked with my energy and my needs more compassionately.
Yet I still found social situations draining—even though I could intuitively read the unspoken rules in every environment: the stand-up comedy scene, the spiritual scene, and the so-called muggles in between.
I still needed full “monk mode” days—weekly—to recover from doing it all. I even considered becoming a Buddhist nun. The simplicity. The structure. The spiritual focus. It felt like home.
But I didn’t become a nun. Instead, I softened into deeper self-acceptance.
I stopped needing to know exactly why I was different. Over the years, I released what was expected of me. I made room for my quirks and needs—even when I didn’t fully understand them. I gravitated toward kindred spirits who loved me as I am.
I surrendered the idea of doing it all. And my life became simpler.
“The people who found their way to me, were people like me: highly sensitive, spiritually attuned, empathic, creative, and quirky.”
The Moment of Realization
The secret about me faded.
And the people who found their way to me were people like me: highly sensitive, spiritually attuned, empathic, creative, and quirky. Folks who needed more space than the world allows. People who processed reality in nonlinear, intuitive, deeply feeling ways.
Surrounded by them, I started to feel more… normal.
And I used my intuition and decades of psychological pattern-seeing to help them heal and awaken. Years passed, and I was filled with an underlying sense of peace, regardless of what was being experienced.
Then one night, after a social gathering, I walked through my front door and heard a voice inside say:
“You’re pretty autistic, you know.”
I stopped. My keys hit the floor.
What?
Heat rose to my face—not from shame, but recognition.
Since awakening, I’d become a divining rod for truth. And this felt true.
Questioning the Assumptions
But me? Autistic?
I make friends. I’m empathic. I make eye contact.
Clearly, I knew little about the complexity and fullness of autism—or high-masking women.
That would soon change.
I dove down the rabbit hole!
I took all the online tests. Obsessively read everything I could. I was annoyed when I reached this genuinely stumped on one of the quizzes: “Would you rather go to a party or a library?"
My mind exploded with possibility: Well… what time of day is it? Who’s at the party? Is it quiet or loud? Do I know anyone? I mean maybe the party, but I’ll probably want to head to the library after about an hour.
When I later shared this, several autistic people said, “Yup. Same here. Your response to that question is pretty neurodivergent. How can the answer be so black and white? It depends on an infinite amount of factors!”
But even still, the tests told me I was most likely a Level One Autistic (which was formerly known as Asperger’s).
“The dots connected. It finally made sense. A lifelong confusion had ended.”
The Diagnosis
Self-diagnosis is valid in the autism community. I mean, who else reads three books about adult autism in a week, retakes all the tests ten times, and watches every autistic YouTuber, and sees themselves in it all, if not someone who is actually autistic?
But I wanted to explore getting a diagnosis.
I had been diagnosed as “hyperkinetic” back in the seventies as a wiggly, loud, chaotic child. This diagnosis would become ADD in the DSM by 1980, and eventually become known as ADHD in 1988. When I was given the hyperkinetic label, my parents decided not to medicate me and tried to handle it with diet. The whole problem of “Sarah and her hyperactivity” got some attention for a few months, and then we all just sort of forgot about it. Until years later.
Which is very ADHD of me.
But now, autism? That hit differently. It explained things I didn't even know needed explaining.
So I got a professional diagnosis. And just to be sure, I got a second one that felt more thorough. My ADHD had said, "Let's impulsively get assessed!" And my autism said, “But let's double check the results.”
I was fortunate to receive a scholarship assessment from the Koegel Autism Center which is part of UC Santa Barbara. After hours and hours of assessment, lo and behold:
Autism Level One. Add in the ADHD, and I have a brain that is commonly described as AuDHD.
And I woke up again.
Not to my spirit, like years ago. But to my vessel for spirit. My design. My neural and somatic blueprint.
The dots connected. It finally made sense. All of it.
Understanding Masking
There was still much to learn. Especially about masking.
After all, I had been a “high masking” neurodivergent woman.
And masking doesn’t necessarily mean someone is being “fake”. It means they’ve been adapting. Shifting to learn the rules. Minimizing traits so others won’t worry, or they won’t stand out too much.
Masking is what neurodivergent people do—often unconsciously—to survive in a world not designed for us. Mirroring others. Forcing eye contact. Toning down expression. Suppressing physical stims, which release pent up energy. Overriding the body’s need for rest. Setting life goals that are meant for others, and not necessarily for our soul’s blueprint.
Which includes muting our sensitive, intuitive nature.
All that filtering my fullness? That was masking.
For many of us, masking begins in childhood. A survival strategy. But it becomes so automatic, we lose touch with what we actually feel or need, as well our organic modes of expression. We get so good at seeming “normal” that we don’t even realize how much it costs.
Unmasking—gently, gradually, safely—is a sacred part of the healing and embodiment journey for many neurodivergent folks. It’s about reclaiming our natural rhythm. Our truth. Our space.
Awakening & Unmasking
Spiritual awakening is a kind of unmasking. You’re realize you’re not the “self” you’d taken yourself to be. The veil drops. You see through separation. You remember your true nature as unbounded awareness.
And so unnecessary conditioning—over time—falls away, revealing a more natural way of being. As conditioned humans, this process continues post-awakening until the body drops.
This had already been unfolding for some years. Now, thanks to my diagnosis, these deeper layers of habitual conditioning had found their way up to the surface to be set free.
Since learning about my neurodivergence, I’ve seen just how deeply I’d masked—not from identity, but from necessity. These were behavioral patterns designed to help me function. To keep going, to connect, to be heard. But they weren’t always serving me.
And now I wonder: how much more can I still unmask? What unconscious habits still live in my system that keep me from expressing — and fully living — my authentic wholeness?
I feel a blissful, energetic charge at the thought. My body, ever the divining rod, tells me there’s more.
“There's peace here. Stillness. And a wellspring of gratitude for the path that's brought me home.”
A Name and a Homecoming
Long ago, I stopped racing through life. There’s a stillness here. A grounded aliveness that is both transcendent and immanent. And a wellspring of gratitude for the path that’s brought me home.
To my original nature. And to my human nature.
Unmasking for me involves stepping forward. Being seen. In the fullness of my dimensionality.
My way.
I don’t fit in anywhere. And I no longer need to. There’s a name for how I process life: AuDHD.
And the secret that once lay hidden? It’s no longer a mystery. It’s a map.
It’s a homecoming.
So what’s next? Join me and find out!
A Message for Fellow Travelers
Are you on a similar journey of awakening, unmasking, or discovering your neurodivergent wiring? You’re not crazy. You’re not broken. You’re wired for depth.
Sign up for my newsletter or check out my gatherings and 1:1 sessions for sensitive, intuitive, ND folks. I hope to walk this path with you.
And if you’re wondering if you might be autistic, a great place to start is here.