There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes with being neurodivergent in a world that wasn’t built for you. It’s not just tiredness. It’s the bone-deep depletion of a nervous system that has been working overtime for decades. A nervous system that has been masking, adapting, and white-knuckling its way through the world.
If you’re like me, late-diagnosed AuDHD, while navigating the hormonal chaos of perimenopause or menopause, you may have spent so long in survival mode that you’ve forgotten what it feels like to be light. To laugh until your stomach hurts. To feel genuine, uncomplicated joy.
And here’s what nobody tells you: that forgetting isn’t a personality flaw. It’s a neurological consequence.
When survival mode becomes the default
The neurodivergent nervous system is exquisitely sensitive. Our threat-detection systems are often running at a higher baseline than those of neurotypical people. Picking up on social nuance, sensory input, potential failure, and unspoken expectations in ways that can feel relentless.
Add in decades of masking (performing “normal” before we even knew we were performing), the executive dysfunction tax of managing daily life, and the emotional dysregulation that nobody warned us about, and you have a nervous system that has essentially learned: the world is hard, stay vigilant.
Then perimenopause walks in the door
Fluctuating estrogen and progesterone don’t just bring hot flashes. They directly impact dopamine and serotonin systems…the very neurotransmitters that ADHD and autistic brains already process differently. The emotional regulation that we’d quietly developed as coping skills can start to feel shaky. Anxiety ramps up. Sensory sensitivities shift. Sleep, that great restorer, becomes elusive.
It can feel like the ground has moved under your feet right when you thought you were finally finding your footing.
In the midst of all of this, joy isn’t something we lose because we’re ungrateful or not trying hard enough. We lose it because our nervous systems are simply too overwhelmed to access it.
What joy actually does for a dysregulated nervous system
This is where it gets interesting…and hopeful.
Laughter and genuine joy aren’t frivolous. They’re not a reward you earn after you’ve handled all the hard stuff. They are, in a very real neurological sense, medicine.
When we laugh, really laugh, the surprised, unguarded kind, our bodies release a cocktail of feel-good neurochemicals: dopamine, serotonin, endorphins. For a neurodivergent brain that often struggles with dopamine regulation, this isn’t a small thing. This is the nervous system getting a hit of exactly what it’s been depleted of.
Laughter also activates the parasympathetic nervous system, the “rest and digest” branch that counters the chronic fight-or-flight so many of us live in. It physically lowers cortisol levels. It reduces the physiological markers of stress. In other words, it does in minutes what we’ve been trying to achieve through elaborate self-care routines.
There’s more. For autistic people, especially, shared laughter is a powerful form of social connection that doesn’t require the same exhausting translation work as many social interactions. It’s spontaneous. It’s embodied. It bypasses the analytical layer and just happens. That moment of laughing together with someone is a window of genuine, unmasked connection. And those moments matter enormously for nervous systems that often feel lonely even in a crowd.
Why we abandon joy (and why it’s not our fault)
Here’s the thing about neurodivergent girls and women: we are often socialized out of our own joy very early.
We learn that our enthusiasm is “too much.” That our particular brand of funny is “weird.” That the things that light us up, the deep dives, the unusual interests, the unfiltered delight in something no one else seems to find remarkable, are social liabilities rather than gifts.
So we learn to contain ourselves. We learn to monitor our laughter, moderate our excitement, and perform a more palatable version of enthusiasm. We become so practiced at managing how we appear that we lose access to how we feel.
Masking doesn’t just hide us from others. Over time, it hides us from ourselves.
By the time many of us receive a late diagnosis, often in our 30s, 40s, or 50s, we may be sitting in a therapist’s office or reading a book and realizing: I haven’t actually felt like myself in a very long time. I’m not even sure I know what “myself” feels like anymore.
The grief of that recognition is real. And so is the possibility that lies on the other side of it.
Reclaiming joy as a neurodivergent woman
Reconnecting to laughter and joy after years of dysregulation and masking isn’t as simple as “just have more fun.” Our nervous systems need to learn that joy is safe.
That might sound strange, but it’s true. When the nervous system has been in chronic stress, positive emotional states can actually feel threatening — activating anxiety rather than pleasure. Joy can feel precarious, like something that will be taken away. Laughter can feel exposed, vulnerable.
So we come back to it gently, the same way you’d coax a scared animal.
Start with low-stakes delight
Not “experiences” or “memories.” Just small, private moments of pleasure that don’t require performing happiness for anyone. The TV show that makes you snort-laugh alone on the couch at midnight. The absurd meme. The animal video. These count. They are training your nervous system to recognize joy as safe again.
Follow your specific joy, not the template
Neurodivergent joy is often very particular. It might not look like what wellness culture sells. It might be a hyperfocus spiral on something niche and delightful. It might be making the same terrible joke with your best friend for the fifteenth time. It might be the specific pleasure of a well-organized spreadsheet or a perfectly calibrated playlist. Honor the texture of your joy, not the Instagram version.
Let yourself be witnessed in it
One of the most healing things is finding people, even just one person, in whose presence you don’t have to manage your delight. People who laugh with you, not at you. People who find the same things funny. Those who don’t make you feel like you are “too much”. For neurodivergent people, this kind of connection is not a luxury; it’s a lifeline.
Notice the masking pattern around joy specifically. Many of us mask our positive emotions as much as our negative ones. We downplay excitement. We muffle laughter. We quickly follow genuine delight with self-deprecating commentary to take the edge off it. Start to notice when you do this. You don’t have to stop overnight — just notice. Awareness is the first crack in the wall.
Consider what has historically brought you joy. Before the weight of everything. Before the diagnoses and the perimenopause and the decades of figuring it out. What did younger you love without apology? What was funny to her? What lit her up? She’s still in there, and she’s been waiting.
The Radical part
Here’s what I want you to understand: for a neurodivergent woman who has spent her life being told she is too much and not enough simultaneously, choosing joy is an act of resistance.
It is a refusal to accept that survival mode is the only mode available to you.
It is saying: my nervous system deserves more than just getting through the day.
It is recognizing that the same sensitivity that makes the hard stuff so hard is also the thing that makes joy, when you can access it, so vivid and complete and real.
We feel deeply. That is a fact about us. For too long, that has mostly meant feeling the difficult things deeply. But it also means that when we laugh, we really laugh. When something delights us, we feel it in our whole bodies. When we are genuinely, unguardedly happy, even for a moment, it is not a small thing.
That capacity is not gone. It has been waiting, underneath the exhaustion and the vigilance and the years of masking, for you to come back to it.
You are allowed to be joyful.
Not because you’ve earned it. Not because you’ve finally gotten it all figured out. Not because you’ve resolved the perimenopause symptoms or mastered the executive dysfunction or found the perfect medication dosage.
Right now. In the middle of it all.
Your nervous system doesn’t just need to survive. It needs to remember what it feels like to be alive.
