Getting to Know My Brain: A Slightly Chaotic, Deeply Helpful Chat with Myself (and ChatGPT)
It didn’t start with a crisis. Just one of those restless nights when you can’t sleep because your mind won’t switch off, pulling at all the tangled bits of thought you didn’t have time for during the day, making you feel heavier even though you’re laying still.
It started after talking with R, a friend whose mind is a mix of data, intuition, and kindness; someone who treats systems like art and sees patterns where others see noise. He mentioned people using AI to revisit their mental health histories, not to diagnose but to find clarity, to see if their old assessments still fit or if something new emerges. I nodded, pretending it wasn’t something I was immediately curious about, but later, alone, I pulled out every assessment I’d ever taken.
I already have the diagnoses: ADHD, combined type, a strong and unequivocal autism diagnosis, a trauma history both complex and deep, that often feels less like a story and more like an ongoing storm mapped inside my nervous system. I’m not after fixes or validation but perspective… something to catch the patterns I’d missed whilst trying to hold it all together.
I gathered all the pieces: ADHD checklists from different years, detailed autism screeners, trauma inventories I barely remembered taking, empathy questionnaires that tried to put feelings into numbers, even that INFP personality test I once laughed off as sentimental nonsense. It was strange, pulling those fragments together, like trying to assemble a picture of myself from scattered puzzle pieces collected over time, each one offering a glimpse but none quite fitting neatly with the others. Some of the labels felt familiar, others foreign, and sitting with them all at once brought a new kind of awareness, a mix of fragmentation and wholeness, a kind of uneasy peace.
What came back wasn’t just insight but pattern. I realised I’d been interpreting my behaviours, masking, crashing, over-functioning, as quirks or personal failings when they’re actually adaptations, predictable, understandable, deeply rooted.
Masking isn’t just a choice or a social performance; it’s a survival mechanism carved out by trauma and years of needing to stay under the radar. It’s the constant balancing act of softening your edges, tuning your voice, mirroring others’ behaviours just enough to feel safe, whilst quietly erasing parts of yourself that might be too loud, too much, or too vulnerable. It’s exhausting in ways that don’t always show: the mental energy spent calculating every word, every gesture, the physical tension that tightens your shoulders and claws at your chest, the slow, creeping loss of who you actually are beneath the layers of adaptation.
Clinically, this masking is closely linked to the brain’s stress response systems. When trauma rewires the nervous system to anticipate threat, the autonomic nervous system often defaults to heightened vigilance, which can lead to sensory overload and hyperawareness of social cues. Masking becomes a way to manage this overload, a method of regulating the sensory and emotional input by controlling external expression. Studies show that prolonged masking can increase anxiety, depression, and contribute to chronic exhaustion as the brain remains in a near-constant state of alert, suppressing natural responses to maintain social acceptability.
It’s a constant state of bracing for impact whilst softening into the background, mirroring the emotions and movements of those around me in a dance that’s both conscious and instinctual. Disappearing into camouflage that feels like invisibility, a kind of erasure, but that paradoxically becomes the only way to survive. This invisibility is isolating; it can feel like a slow erasure of self, a quiet loneliness humming beneath the surface. For example, I often downplay my own needs, shrugging off hunger, fatigue, or discomfort, because drawing attention feels risky, even though those needs are real and urgent. Yet it’s also what keeps me here, what lets me navigate spaces that might otherwise be too volatile or dangerous to enter fully. There’s a tension in that, between losing parts of myself to stay safe, and the deep longing to be seen as I really am.
Stephen Porges’ polyvagal theory offers a framework that finally puts language to what my body has been trying to say all along: that the nervous system doesn’t operate like a simple switch between fight or flight but rather moves through states that include social engagement and shutdown depending on perceived safety. For me, moments of true safety are rare, more often I’m caught in a cycle of hypervigilance, scanning constantly for signs that things might go wrong, adjusting my posture, my tone, even my breathing to try and keep danger at bay. I remember one afternoon when, after a social event that left me utterly drained, I was able to name what was happening in my body: the tightness in my chest, the slowed heart rate, the dull ache behind my eyes, as my nervous system shifting into a shutdown mode, not failure but survival. Understanding this hasn’t erased those moments but it has helped me meet them with less judgment, and sometimes even with a kind of compassion I didn’t think I deserved.
Relationships are harder still. It’s not just about people-pleasing but a constant anticipation of what others might need before they even voice it, a kind of pre-emptive care that feels like walking a tightrope between being indispensable and vanishing inside myself. I adapt, shift, and stretch to fill the spaces I think others will want me to, hoping that being needed will keep abandonment at bay. This pattern wears me thin because beneath what looks like generosity is a trembling fear: the fear that any disappointment, no matter how small, could trigger a slow, quiet loss, a disappearance not with a bang but a fading into invisibility.
Much of this traces back to parentification in childhood, a role forced on me when my mum needed me to be more adult than a child should be. I became the caretaker, the emotional anchor, responsible for smoothing tensions and protecting the fragile peace of the household. That early responsibility wired me to anticipate others’ needs constantly, to believe my worth depended on being reliable and indispensable, often at the cost of my own needs and identity. It’s a paradox to crave connection so deeply whilst building walls to protect against the very thing you want most, and living inside that tension shapes how I move through every relationship I have.
In practice, this looks like noticing when a partner or friend is upset before they say anything, adjusting my mood or plans to make things easier, taking on emotional labour that goes unspoken, and then coming home feeling drained and a little invisible, because my own needs were quietly set aside in the effort to keep the peace. Sometimes it feels like I’m holding us together alone, and the paradox is that I crave closeness whilst constantly erasing parts of myself to maintain it.
Gabor Maté writes about trauma manifesting as hyper-function, the way people who appear the most “together”, the ones who keep everything running smoothly, are often carrying the heaviest, most invisible burdens. It’s a kind of quiet disappearance, vanishing inside whilst holding everything else up. I know this well: juggling a demanding project at work, coordinating family logistics, and somehow still being the go-to person for everyone’s crises. I’d often show up to meetings looking like I’d slept perfectly, whilst inside I was running on empty, counting the minutes until I could crawl home and collapse on the sofa, which I did, frequently, and with zero dignity. The irony is that the calmer I seemed, the more I was expected to keep things together, which made slipping up feel impossible, even when all I wanted was to sneak out unnoticed.
Lisa Feldman Barrett’s research shifts the conversation on emotion from something hardwired and automatic to something fluid and constructed. Rather than fixed biological reactions, emotions are the brain’s best guess at what’s happening inside and around us, piecing together memories, past experiences, and ongoing predictions to shape what we feel in any moment. This process is rooted in the brain’s predictive coding system, a continuous loop where the brain anticipates sensory input and adjusts its expectations based on feedback. When the brain’s predictions don’t match reality, emotions can feel confusing or overwhelming as it recalibrates. For someone with a history of trauma, these predictive models are shaped by past pain and threat, meaning the brain may anticipate danger or distress in situations that are objectively safe. This explains why I sometimes experience panic attacks, moments when my body floods with fear and physical symptoms like rapid heartbeat and dizziness, even though there is no immediate threat. I remember one such episode in a crowded café where suddenly my vision narrowed, my chest tightened, and I struggled to breathe; the space was safe, but my brain was responding to old alarms that still haven’t quite quieted. Knowing these responses are not mistakes but the brain’s adaptive predictions helps me meet myself with more patience and less judgment. It doesn’t erase the challenge but shifts the narrative from “I’m overreacting” to “My brain is doing what it’s learnt to do given my history.”
Executive dysfunction is not about laziness or a failure of willpower. It’s the brain’s response to being overwhelmed, both emotionally and cognitively, a kind of system overload where the circuits that help with prioritising, initiating, and sustaining action get jammed or short-circuited. When emotions spike, whether from anxiety, shame, or sensory overload, the executive functions falter, leaving me stuck in loops of hesitation or distraction. This means that even the smallest tasks can feel impossible, not because I don’t want to do them, but because my brain literally can’t organise the steps to start or finish them. The frustration that comes with this disconnect is brutal, as it often triggers a harsh inner critic that mistakes the neurological reality for personal failure. I keep most things meticulously organised, calendars colour-coded, projects tracked, deadlines met, but there’s always this persistent patch of undone business: piles of clean laundry that never quite make it from the basket to the drawers for days on end. It’s not that I lack the will; it’s that the act of folding and putting away becomes its own hurdle, a small but insistent task that my brain quietly postpones whilst more urgent demands pull me away. This little contradiction reminds me that even at my highest functioning, executive dysfunction lingers in the margins, a subtle friction beneath the polished surface, quietly grounding me in the reality of how my mind works.
Understanding this softens the voice that used to berate me with “Why can’t you just do it?” and replaces it with “What do I need to feel safe enough to start?” which opens space for possibility instead of shutting it down.
What I’m learning is less a checklist and more a daily practice, learning to rest before I collapse, not as a reward but as necessity, honouring the limits of a nervous system that rarely gets to relax; to notice spirals early, the jaw tension, the creeping dread, the inner critic’s voice, and to name them as patterns not failures; to say what I need, awkward and imperfect as it may be, even when part of me fears being too much or not enough; to build systems that actually work for my brain, visual reminders, whiteboards that look like art, buffers of recovery time; to resist the urge to over-explain and accept silence as boundary not withdrawal.
Mostly, I’m learning to stay in process, to live with uncertainty, to accept I’m not broken but wired differently, and that this is enough. I’m not fixing myself. I’m learning to stop fighting myself.
If you find yourself here, in the masking, the crash, the care, the confusion, know you’re not alone. You’re not too much. You’re not broken. You’re learning your shape, making space for the you that doesn’t have to perform to be safe, and that matters more than you realise.
Further Reading and Resources
The Polyvagal Theory by Stephen Porges. Explores the neurobiology of safety, trauma, and social connection.
How Emotions Are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett. Challenges fixed notions of emotion, presenting them as brain-constructed predictions.
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. A seminal work on trauma’s impact on the body and mind.
In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts by Gabor Maté. Examines trauma, addiction, and healing with compassion and insight.
Neurotribes by Steve Silberman. A comprehensive history and understanding of autism spectrum.
Driven to Distraction by Edward M. Hallowell and John J. Ratey. A classic book on understanding ADHD in adults.
Lost Connections by Johann Hari. Investigates the roots of depression and anxiety beyond medication.
Quiet by Susan Cain. Explores the power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking.
Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS) v1.1. Official screening tool for adult ADHD, UK NHS hosted resource.
Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ) Test by Simon Baron-Cohen. Online self-assessment hosted by UK University.
Complex PTSD Resource by NHS. Information, screening, and treatment resources for C-PTSD.
Please Understand Me II by David Keirsey. An in-depth exploration of personality types based on Myers-Briggs theory.