Michelle: Mark, I read a wild statistic preparing for this. At least 20% of the population is considered neurodivergent. That's one in five people. Mark: Whoa. One in five. And honestly, for most of my life, I just thought the other four were just better at... adulting. You know? Like they got a secret instruction manual at birth that my copy was missing. Michelle: (Laughs) That is exactly the feeling Jenara Nerenberg taps into in her book, Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World That Wasn't Designed for You. What's so powerful is that Nerenberg isn't just a journalist; she's writing from experience. She was a Harvard and Berkeley-educated writer who was told for years her struggles were just 'anxiety,' only to discover later in life that she was autistic and had ADHD. Mark: So she's living the problem she's writing about. That changes everything. It’s not just theory. Michelle: Exactly. That personal journey is what gives the book its fire. And it starts with a concept that I think will hit home for so many people: the idea of masking.

Mark: Masking. I feel like I have a 'work' version of myself and a 'home' version. Is that what we're talking about? Like putting on a different hat? Michelle: It's deeper than that. Nerenberg describes masking as consciously or unconsciously hiding your true self to fit in. It's especially prevalent among women, who are often socialized from a young age to be agreeable, to not make waves. And the book uses this chilling term for the consequence of extreme masking: 'virtual suicide.' Mark: Hold on, 'virtual suicide'? That's an incredibly strong phrase. What does that mean? Michelle: It’s the idea that you can spend so much energy performing a version of 'normal' that you completely lose touch with your authentic self. Your true personality, your needs, your desires... they effectively die, buried under the mask. You're left feeling empty, anxious, depressed, but you can't even articulate why because you don't know who 'you' are anymore. Mark: That is haunting. It’s like being a ghost in your own life. Michelle: Precisely. And Nerenberg has this incredibly poignant story from her own life that kicks off the book. After years as a successful journalist in Asia, she moved back to California and felt completely overwhelmed and out of sync. She was just spinning her wheels, full of anxiety. One day, her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter just looked at her and said, "Mom, you’re just running around and around and around!" Mark: Wow. Out of the mouths of babes. A toddler calls out the existential crisis. Michelle: It was a wake-up call. That simple, innocent observation made her realize the depth of her own internal chaos. It was the beginning of her journey to understand that what she was experiencing wasn't a personal failing, but a mismatch between her neurodivergent brain and the world she was trying to force it into. Mark: This is so relatable, but I have to ask about something I saw in the reader reviews. The book has been widely praised, but some critics point out that it seems to focus on high-achieving, often privileged women like the author. Does this experience of masking and misdiagnosis apply to everyone? Michelle: That's a fair and important critique, and the book does lean on examples from a specific demographic. But Nerenberg argues the underlying mechanism is universal, even if the specifics change. She points to the long, dark history of how women's experiences have been dismissed. Think about the old diagnosis of 'female hysteria.' Mark: Right, the catch-all for any woman who was too emotional, too opinionated, too... anything. Michelle: Exactly. For centuries, any deviation from a quiet, submissive norm was pathologized. A woman's legitimate physical or emotional pain was written off as a moral or psychological failing of her gender. Nerenberg connects this historical pattern to the modern-day dismissal of women's sensory experiences. A young girl who is overwhelmed by noise or bright lights isn't assessed for a sensory processing issue; she’s just told, "Oh, she’s just sensitive. That’s how girls are." Mark: Huh. So that phrase, 'just sensitive,' is a modern form of 'hysteria.' It’s a way to dismiss the experience without having to understand it. Michelle: It's a way to enforce conformity. And that pressure to conform, to mask the sensitivity, is what leads to that 'virtual suicide.' It's a quiet epidemic of women who feel like they're failing at life, when in reality, they're just running a completely different operating system.

Michelle: And that sensitivity, that different operating system, is the perfect bridge to our next point. Because what Nerenberg argues is that these 'disorders'—ADHD, Autism, even just being a 'Highly Sensitive Person'—are fundamentally about a different sensory reality. Mark: Okay, this is where I need some help. ADHD, Autism, HSP... I hear these terms, but they feel like totally separate things in my mind. One is about focus, one is about social skills, one is about feelings. What's the connection? Michelle: The connection is the nervous system. The book leans heavily on the work of psychologist Elaine Aron, who coined the term 'Highly Sensitive Person,' or HSP. An HSP isn't just emotionally sensitive; their brain literally processes all stimuli—sights, sounds, emotions, information—more deeply. What might be background noise to you could be a symphony of overwhelming data to an HSP. Nerenberg argues this deep processing is a core feature across many neurodivergent profiles. Mark: So it’s not just about getting your feelings hurt easily. It’s about your brain’s processing depth being set to 'maximum' by default. Michelle: Exactly. And this is where the lines between diagnoses begin to blur in a fascinating way. The book tells the story of a woman named CC Hart, a massage therapist. For her entire life, she experienced the world differently. If she saw a child fall and scrape their knee, she would feel a literal shock of electricity run up her body. Mark: Wait, what? She would feel it? Michelle: Yes. She didn't know other people didn't experience that; it was just her normal. In her forties, a client mentioned a rare neurological trait called synesthesia, where senses get crossed. For Hart, it was a specific kind called mirror-touch synesthesia, where you feel the physical sensations you see happening to others. Mark: That's incredible. It sounds like a superpower and a curse all at once. Michelle: It is. But here's where it gets really interesting. Hart also suspected she was on the autism spectrum and was later diagnosed with ADHD. Her story perfectly illustrates the book's point: these aren't neat, separate boxes. They are a complex, interwoven tapestry of sensory experience. Mark: I see. So it's less like having separate conditions and more like having the volume, color, and texture dials of your brain turned up to eleven, and they're all bleeding into each other? Michelle: That's a perfect analogy. Her synesthesia is an extreme example of heightened sensory input. Her ADHD might relate to how she regulates her focus amidst that constant flood of data. Her autistic traits might be about how she navigates social situations when her internal world is so intensely different from everyone else's. Nerenberg uses stories like Hart's to reframe these conditions away from a list of deficits and towards a more holistic understanding of a person's unique sensory 'umwelt'—their perceptual world. Mark: That word, 'umwelt,' is powerful. It implies that there isn't one objective reality we all live in. We're all experiencing our own version, and for neurodivergent people, that version can be radically different. Michelle: Radically. And the book argues that society, for the most part, is built only for one specific 'umwelt,' one that values sensory dullness and linear processing. Everyone else is left feeling like a tourist in their own life, trying to read a map written in a foreign language.

Michelle: And if your dials are all at eleven, you can't just walk into a standard office or home designed for people whose dials are at a three. You have to consciously design your world. This is the book's hopeful, practical turn. Mark: This is what I want to hear. It's one thing to understand the problem, but what do you actually do? How do you build this world for yourself? Michelle: It starts with what Nerenberg calls creating a "sensory-compatible lifestyle." It’s about moving from self-criticism to self-awareness. Instead of thinking, "Why am I so lazy and unproductive today?" you ask, "What in my environment is draining my battery?" Maybe it's the fluorescent lights in your office. Maybe it's the constant chatter. Maybe it's the scratchy tag on your shirt. Mark: It sounds so simple, but we're trained to just power through that stuff. To ignore it. Michelle: We are. But for a divergent mind, that's like trying to run a marathon with a rock in your shoe. You can do it for a while, but eventually, you'll break down. The book shares the fantastic story of Margaux Joffe, an executive at Yahoo. She was diagnosed with ADHD at 29 and realized she needed to work differently. Mark: How do you even start that conversation at a massive company like Yahoo? Michelle: She was strategic. She spent a year proving her value, and then she went to her boss and disclosed her ADHD. But she didn't just ask for accommodations for herself. She proposed launching a neurodiversity Employee Resource Group, or ERG, for the whole company. Mark: That’s brilliant. She turned her personal need into a company-wide asset. Michelle: It was a game-changer. The ERG became a safe space for hundreds of employees to share their stories. And they started advocating for what the book calls "temperament rights." They made recommendations to leadership about creating different kinds of workspaces—quiet zones, collaborative hubs, spaces with different lighting. They weren't asking for special treatment; they were asking for options that would allow everyone to do their best work. Mark: I love that idea of 'temperament rights.' It reframes it from asking for a special favor to claiming a basic need. It's like needing glasses to see—it's just an accommodation to function at your best. It's not a weakness. Michelle: Exactly. And this applies at home, too. The book tells the story of a couple, Denise, who is autistic, and her boyfriend Tim, who has ADHD. They describe their relationship as "filling in the blanks for each other." Tim's ADHD brain helps him navigate social chaos that would overwhelm Denise, while Denise's autistic mind brings a structure and focus that helps ground Tim. They built a shared life that honors their differences instead of trying to erase them. Mark: It sounds like the core principle is radical acceptance, first of yourself, and then demanding it from the world around you, whether that's your partner or your CEO. Michelle: That's it. It’s about stopping the fight against your own brain and starting to build a life that actually fits it.

Michelle: And that's the ultimate shift in perspective the book offers. For so long, we've been trying to 'fix' the person, to medicate or train them into a neurotypical mold. Nerenberg argues we should have been fixing the environment. The problem isn't the divergent mind; it's the world that wasn't designed for it. Mark: It makes you wonder, how many brilliant ideas have we lost because the person with the idea couldn't survive the open-plan office or the rigid 9-to-5 schedule? How much art, science, and innovation has been left on the table because we only built a stadium for one type of player? Michelle: An immeasurable amount. And Nerenberg's call to action is actually very simple and personal. It starts with self-education. Start by understanding your own sensory needs. What drains you? What energizes you? Don't dismiss that feeling of exhaustion after a trip to the grocery store as a personality quirk. Treat it as data. Mark: Data about your own operating system. Michelle: Exactly. That's the first step to building a world that fits you, not the other way around. It’s about giving yourself permission to have needs and to meet them. Mark: I love that. And for our listeners, we're curious: what's one small change you've made to your environment—noise-canceling headphones, a different lightbulb, a five-minute break every hour—that made a huge difference? Let us know on our socials. We'd love to hear your stories. Michelle: This is Aibrary, signing off.