How Taking a Compliment Can Change Lives

...When the receiver is ready, that is.

One of the things I decided when I turned 40 is that I would learn how to take a compliment. I’m serious. My neurodivergence makes this simple act a mountain of a task for a few reasons. All of those reasons have nothing to do with the compliment giver or the compliment given. So if I never gave you the response you expected for a compliment that you gave me in the past…it’s not you, it’s me.

***Trigger Warning****

This one got a LOT darker than I intended. But I think it’s needed. Trigger warning for abuse, scarring, and talks of just dealing with some dark sh*t.

Compliments Can Be Painful…I’m Not Kidding.

Something that you all must understand is that the trouble started long ago. Most neurodivergents grew up in survival mode. We lived in spaces that were not comfortable and that did not give us a feeling of safety. Many of us also lived with people who believed that we should be forced to disavow our tendencies in order to be “normal”. Others, ones we saw as “the lucky ones” were ignored and dismissed. They were also allowed to be themselves but were labeled with the monikers of “crazy,” “weird,” or “you know how THAT one is”. This was all very traumatic and left scars in all of us.

Creating a Hideout for the Soul

So, to prevent further scarring, to endure through such traumatic spaces, we constructed barriers between ourselves and the world. We put newspapers on all the windows of our hearts after nailing them shut. The world outside couldn’t scar us anymore if they couldn’t get in. On the outside, these barriers took the form of rage and hostility, violence for some. Others adopted a cold, uncaring demeanor. My crowd, we became people pleasers. If we formed ourselves into everything YOU needed in a sibling, friend, coworker, spouse, teacher, etc., then you would have no reason to hurt us, right?

We were very wrong, but that’s a post for another day. Anyway, the masque of the perfect [insert role here] was also a barrier. We dove deep behind these and so many other coping mechanisms. We found safety in self-deprecating humor, in hugging the walls, and in blending in with the shadows. Anything to hide the real people that we are inside. Too many of us have stories of abuse, so the attention also meant pain. But, they can’t hurt what they can’t see, or so we believed.

The Real Pain of Exposure

When you give us a compliment—a genuine, heartfelt, personal compliment—this means that you were able to see through the barrier to who we really are. Our logic, when the barrier breaks enough to show one good thing, then it’s a matter of time before the scars are exposed. We are worried about you seeing those scars, but the scariest part is having to face those scars on our own. That stuff was traumatic enough the first time around. After years of fermenting in fear, anger, sadness, and darkness, those scarring events are downright nightmarish for a lot of us.

This is the pain of a compliment. Being exposed, having that scar exposed, and then having to deal with something that we are not prepared to. The neurodivergent brain will take a traumatic memory and replay it like an old VCR with the loop function on. Like a TikTok until you swipe up. Once this starts, we can find the loop function to turn it off. And you can swipe all day but that TikTok clip ain’t going nowhere. Oh, and it’s running at full volume, so you can think of nothing else. So were are not talking about remembering a scarring event once. This is the darkest time loop that you could imagine.

How It Works

You come along, a dear friend, proud of me, your long-time buddy for really knocking a work project out of the part.

Friend: “That was a great job in there. You really had them on the edge of their seats”

You: It was nothing. The whole team deserves the praise. We all worked together.

Friend: We couldn’t have done it without you though.

You: Thanks. Where are we getting lunch?

Friend: I mean it. The way your brain works. Nobody else could’ve figured this out like you did. And so fast. You are brilliant.

You: Yeah, thanks. Um, let me know where we are going for lunch. I gotta run to my office real quick.

Friend: It’s like you’re a walking supercomputer…

You: Dude, I get it. Thank you. I’ll be right back. [You flee to go cry in the bathroom stall.]

Saying “thanks” in some way is supposed to end the deluge of praise, but it often does not. This is especially true when one of us really unleashes our brain’s power onto the neurotypicals. They can’t handle it. Meanwhile, we are left regretting the very thing that makes us unique.

The Fallout is Epic and Painful

In this scenario, the praise is like daggers of light beating against that respectability masque until there was an exposure. If they can see how great you are, then it’s a matter of time before the light hits the scars. When those buggers wake up, the workday is basically over. Crying in the bathroom leads to brain fog, maybe even headaches, and nausea.

Yes, we get physical symptoms. Our bodies are freaking the f*ck out! That time your mom made you sit for 3 hours bolt upright in a chair to teach you not to squirm in church, is back. That moment when the entire busload of kids found you gawking at Beast in the X-men comics (yes, I thought the blue man was cute, judge me). The time that the whole school started calling you Urkel because you aced all the tests, didn’t talk much, and needed glasses in the second grade. The time your mom startled you with a smack to the head that hurt and was scary because your hyperfocus didn’t allow you to hear her calling you five times to come in for dinner. [Insert your trauma here.]

That scarring event is now more gnarly, with longer teeth, and much sharper pain. It is worse than we actually remembered and it’s playing in that nightmarish time loop. All of this is from one compliment.

So most of us lash out. We stop the praise in its tracks. If a person can’t take a hint to stop the deluge of compliments, it puts us in survival mode once again. When a neurodivergent goes into survival mode, just batten down the hatches and make sure you have snacks. This is going to take a while to get over. Some of you neurotypicals may lose friends. I don’t make the rules.

I joke but this is real. Let me give you a real-life example.

Story Time:

What Happened Was, He Called Me…Beautiful?!

I have a lot of friends who have been checking in on me lately. I am wading through a major life event that I’ll discuss at a much much later date because kids are involved. Anyway, my squad has COME THROUGH! I get DMs, calls, Zoom kikis (if you don’t know what those are, I am so sorry), and even gifts. My friends are from all over the world and they don't all speak English as a first language. I am used to hearing a word in German, Spanish, or Hindi for example, and translating later to see what it meant.

One such friend called early in my ordeal, just to check-in. I really needed the conversation that day. So I was not paying attention when we signed off the call and he said something in his first language. My brain registered it though. Immediately after I hung up, my usually distracted ADHD brain was sounding a damn alert.

“Um, excuse me! We may have a breach here. I think something was said that may trigger the f*ck out of us later. You need to tend to it NOW.”

I listened to her and looked up the word.

Google Translate: Oooooh, he called you “beautiful,” girl.

My brain: NOOOOOOOOOO! We have a breach. Body, you know what to do.

Me: Let me check first. Maybe it was another word?

I send a text and my friend confirmed the meaning. He was probably thinking NOTHING of it, because why would he? The pending Chernobyl explosion was in my brain, not his. Once confirmed, my brain and body were useless. I couldn’t think or sleep. One word f*cked my shit up for a whole day. Just a day.

I say “just a day” because this is a short span of time compared to the length of some breakdowns neurodivergents experience. It takes some serious therapy to process scars. And I had done years of WORK. I thought I had given them all some care, and was in the process of healing them. But this one remained.

It’s rooted not only in being the kid who was too smart and too weird to understand. I was the darker sister with the 4c coils that were unruly as people thought I was. I wrote about growing up under colorism on my Medium page. It scarred my sister too. Wait until her memoir hits eventually. The other side of colorism has dead grass on it too.

Anyway, I asked too many questions, knew too much, did too much, and was too dark and nappy-headed. When the glasses came, it was over for me. I was a shadow blender until the “people-pleasing” developed. Any attention brought a comparison to my sister, who is my person despite the division in our childhood. Painful reminders that she was the beautiful one.

Suddenly, this word was being applied to me. That scar ripped open, and I spent a night going back over some things that I thought were processed. Fortunately, I learned how to process them on my own. The damage was not bad. I think I joked about it on social media in a vague tweet.

It was more than 12 hours later that I allowed myself to accept the compliment. And then the selfies followed, but I’ll get to that in another post, too.

Accepting Compliments is Not About You, Neurotypical Friend

That is the message here for friends, family, and allies of neurodivergent people. The way in which we accept a comment is our business, not yours. You do not have to process the scars once they are exposed. You don’t have to face the nightmares you thought were boxed, chained, and buried in the subconscious abyss where no one will find them.

I once had a “friend” who complimented me on something I don’t even remember now. But I made a joke, one of those “jokes at my own expense” types of things. She scolded me! Said that she never wanted to hear me downplay myself again. Her rebuke didn’t imbue me with the motivation to “be a better person”. It triggered a scar to open that took a few months of therapy to process. Why? Scolding a person with ADHD about the way they see themselves is often behavior that accompanies abuse when we are kids and/or young adults. She walked away proud that she forced me to love myself, not knowing that she had left me curled on the couch reliving nightmares.

Damn, this post GOT DARK. I am going to add a trigger warning.

Get Therapy. From Somewhere. Don’t Go It Alone.

I don’t recommend that any neurodivergent person process their scars without the aid of a professional. At least have friends you can call who relate to what you are going through.

But you will need therapy. Don’t skip the therapy.  

Until next time…