Women, Neurodiversity, and the Church: Uncovering the Origins of Our Masks
by Anna Christine Seiple
How does our social environment play a role in conditioning women to suppress their full selves? Anna Christine Seiple explores the way women subconsciously conform to the expectations of others — particularly in faith communities.
“Is this why my life has been so hard?”
Her eyes welled up with tears, reaching out to mine. I took a deep breath. Her question didn’t only reach out to my therapist-brain, but also toward a tender space inside that could resonate with her pain. And it wasn’t the first time I had been asked this question.
For a couple of years, I had slowly been learning about neurodiversity,* gradually realizing that I fit into categories labeled as neurodivergent. I thought this personal exploration was entirely separate from my work, but client after client initiated conversations about their similar explorations that were spontaneously happening in tandem with my own. In one week alone, over the course of three days of sessions, I had five clients — entirely unprompted by me — bring some version of these questions to their session: Am I neurodivergent? And is this why my life has been so hard?
I felt heavy, seeing their fatigue match mine. I instinctively knew the exhaustion of masking without even trying, of masking without even realizing you are masking — the process of suppressing how you are naturally wired to conform to what’s seen by others as acceptable, normal, or typical. (If the concept of masking is new, see my previous article about masking). I felt the weight of their grief and vulnerability next to my own, knowing how disorienting it was to look back on life and see things through a different perspective with this new lens — a lens that was both liberating and crushing. To explore the larger landscape of neurodiversity both opened me to new depths of understanding and unlocked a new kind of heartache.
In my own research and learning, alongside with my clients’ questions, I couldn’t help but wonder: Why are we just now learning how easily neurodivergent girls and women can fly under the radar, even from their own selves? And why are so many still not believed when they ask questions about whether they fit in neurodivergent categories to a friend, family member, or professional?
I started to have a sneaking suspicion that one of the reasons has to do with the far-reaching and fundamental ways that we as women subconsciously learn to mask to conform to the expectations of others — at school, with family, at church, with friends — whether we’re a young child, entering our career, a new mom, or experiencing menopause. And so, since navigating life as girls and women includes subconscious masking to deal with the endless implicit and explicit norms of how we should function, it’s unsurprising that in cases of neurodivergence, girls and women would already have the subconscious muscle memory developed to mask their neurodivergence as well — subconscious muscle memory that can even be learned by witnessing the masking of another.
We inevitably encounter people and spaces that expect women to show up in the world within certain boundaries, specifying the norms we’re supposed to live according to in order to be acceptable or welcomed. And whether we like it or not, this can shape a subconscious muscle memory in us, like a form of fawning — an innate survival strategy that helps keep us safe when something in our body is aware of unsafe power dynamics.** As we look across the course of history, this fawning can feel like a legacy that’s been passed down across centuries and generations that we never asked to inherit, a legacy that takes over in our very lives before we have a say in the matter.
Alongside nonreligious cultural norms from teachers, family, and friends that I was expected to conform to across my life, I can’t think of any place that has prescribed more specific and rigid expectations for my existence as a woman than faith communities. Reflecting with friends on similar experiences, I’ve started to realize that women who have spent time in Christian spaces often have an additional layer of masking muscle memory.
Now, it’s likely impossible to draw exact boundaries around masking from different sources: masking that is pressed on by societal pressure, masking that is driven by shame in faith communities, or masking that is related to neurodiversity. In all these cases, however, the muscle memory that we develop to navigate relationships and the world around us can work in concert together, helping us to connect with others and function around others who don’t always welcome the most raw versions of ourselves.
As I share these reflections, it’s important to say that I’m not trying to play a comparison game where women, and Christian women, have to mask more than anyone else. Instead, I’m simply curious to explore the unique ways that women in Christian spaces learn to mask, the ways this gets embedded in our muscle memory, and how this might intersect with neurodiversity. I can’t help but wonder: Might it make it all the trickier to disentangle the muscle memory of our masking when more than one influence has prompted us to conform to the expectations of others? What might it be like if more of us knew that there were others asking the same questions, crying out from the same frustrated grief and exhaustion? And if we found each other there, what kind of new norms might we be able to create together?
As I tend to do, rather than trying to leave you with answers that I certainly don’t have, I’d love to instead leave you with reflections to continue to chew on some curiosity with me. If you’d like, join me in taking some time to consider the following prompt. You might take a walk as you ponder these questions, and/or spend time journaling or drawing out what these questions prompt within.
Are there ways that I resonate with developing a muscle memory of how I interact with others in order to be more socially accepted with family, friends, at work, or in faith communities?
How familiar am I with the terms neurodivergence and neurodiversity? What’s the picture that pops in my mind when I read these words?
How would I respond if someone told me they thought they were neurodivergent, and my external experience of this person didn’t seem to match what they were trying to communicate with me?
As you explore what simmers beneath the surface with these curiosities, I wish I could sit down with a cup of tea or enjoy a walk and a chat with you. My hope is that these words will spur on safe and constructive conversations that might open new ways of connecting with how we’re most naturally wired, both for individuals and communities.
For further exploration: If you would like to explore more about neurodiversity in girls and adult women, see Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World That Wasn’t Designed for You by Jenara Nerenberg
* The terms neurodivergence and neurodiversity have to do with the ways that our brains and bodies are wired. Neurodivergence refers to a variance from what’s viewed as neurotypical. While this term is often associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), ADHD, and dyslexia, there are a number of other populations that also fall within the umbrella of neurodivergence. Because of the different neurodivergent categories a person might fall into, along with variations in how neurodivergent categories might present in a person’s life, people who have been labeled as, and/or identify as, neurodivergent will often have distinct and unique experiences. Neurodiversity refers to the wide range of how all of our brains and bodies are wired, regardless of which categories (neurodivergent or neurotypical) a person might be described as and/or identify as, similar to the term biodiversity, which includes a variety of life. For more information about how these terms are understood in the medical community, see this Cleveland Clinic article.
** The concept of fawning as a survival response was introduced by Pete Walker in his book, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving: A Guide and Map for Recovering from Childhood Trauma.
Read the first article in this series for more on women, neurodivergence, and masking.
Photo by Олег Мороз on Unsplash
Anna Christine is a licensed counselor, researcher, and author. She loves cultivating healing spaces that honor the entirety of our embodied beings. She holds two master’s degrees, one in clinical mental health counseling and a second in biblical studies, and has served in a spiritual formation fellowship. She is adjunct faculty at Johnson University in Knoxville, Tennessee and is currently working on a PhD at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. Her writing, along with free integrative resources, can be found on acseiple.com.