103. orbiting

It hit me this year that something like eighty percent of my coaching clients over the past decade would likely fall into a category modern western culture calls “neurodivergent.” 

I’d been tracking the common denominator for years, but not making much meaning of it. It was only after my own choice to seek out and receive a diagnosis of ADHD in summer 2024 (at age 38) that I saw with more clarity (that 20/20 hindsight) that it was actually a much larger percentage than I’d previously thought. 

There’s a term for why this happens - for all the word nerds out there like me. The frequency illusion (also known as the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon) is a cognitive bias in which a person notices a specific concept, word, or product more frequently after recently becoming aware of it. 

Illusion here just refers to the fact that the seemingly sudden appearance of more of a certain phenomenon - in this case, neurocomplexity in my client base (credit to Lindsey Mackereth LPCC for this term) - wasn’t necessarily growing by leaps and bounds. On the contrary, it had always been there, but for the first time, I was seeing it clearly, because it was mirroring in myriad ways my own internal experience. 

This idea of neurocomplexity has overlap with neurodivergence. It speaks to the operating systems of people who have been diagnosed, self-diagnosed, or would likely be assessed as having some combination of giftedness, ADHD, Autism, and /or AuDhd traits. 

Even the word divergence assumes some kind of baseline, right? Some kind of ‘norm.’ The default which is diverged from is referred to as ‘neurotypical,’ as if that’s actually a thing. Hold on, I’m not saying this to minimize the validity of the neurodivergent / neurocomplex experience - not at all - but rather to see if we can expand in greater dimensionality from the idea that there is a ‘spectrum’ of cognitive, emotional, sensory and energetic function which runs like a train track between Weirdoville and Normal Junction. 

When I look at what is shared amongst my clients (and most of my dearest friends, honestly) in terms of qualities, it’s something like this: exceptional intelligence, exquisite sensitivity, expansive creativity, and a supersensory energetic field.

It’s more than just being ‘highly sensitive,’ though that phrase often feels true to many of us / them. It’s that sensitivity combined with internal processing systems that early on in life were shaped and molded by the overculture in ways that taught them to override the resource demands of their unique system, for the sake of performing, producing, and extracting from their gifting - so they could deliver it to a burning world that demanded it in exchange for approval and inclusion. 

Let me rein this in a bit and make it personal. I’ve been thinking about the facet of my ADHD experience which leads me to endless study, learning, and growth - enabling me to become a specialist in multiple fields. When I hear about this from clients it's something like, "Why the fuck can't I just stick with one thing? Why can't I be consistent?"

I get it. I emphatize. I resonate. And... hear me out.

ADHD brains activate, produce dopamine, get jazzed up for the pleasure of pursuit, with competition, novelty, scarcity, and interest.

Yes, I am interested. I am interested in many different things, and if I’m not interested in something, I have literally zero motivation (read: empty dopamine tank) to engage with it. My special interests, in no particular order, include astrology, spirituality and the sacred, magical and esoteric traditions, mushrooms, roses, plant spirits, patriarchal conditioning and internalized misogyny (aka why TF women and queer folks are taught to hate themselves), etymology, writing, yoga, literature, painting, rainbows, applied biochemistry (how the body system works), various psychologies (depth, liberation, transpersonal, eco), and co-creating consciousness. 

There’s probably more, but we need to keep the plot moving here. 

Adding a layer: I’ve carried a lot of shame over the years about the way I tend to move in and out of friendships with ease. At times, people I love deeply have told me I hurt their feelings because I didn’t tend the relationship between us with the frequency and consistency of connection that they would like to experience (or that they needed to feel loved). Cue shame spiral, and the sense that I’m a shitty friend. As my work and interests have shifted, I’ve formed what are to me, real, valuable, and meaningful friendships in various spheres, but these connections only re-emerge in my awareness when I’m circling back into orbit with that area of interest. 

My brain is engaged with what’s in front of me (unless I’m thinking about something, or having an imaginary conversation, or what’s in front of me somehow involves spatial awareness, in which case my brain is, umm… elsewhere, I suppose). Perhaps a better way to put it is that my operating system is a beautiful, wild, lush, fertile, endless wild space, with not just rabbit trails but the trails of every kind of creature you could imagine, each leading to a fascinating new realm of enchantment and possibility. I follow the one that I’m on, trusting that it will lead me where I am meant to go, trusting that where I am meant to go is wherever I am in the process… and in doing that, I leave a trail of things behind me. 

Projects. Passions. People. Socks. Keys. Sunglasses. Cups (so many fucking cups). Text messages. Emails. Plants that need to be watered. You get the idea (probably, or you don’t, in which case, just regard me with fascination as you behold the mystery).

Anyway, I landed today on a concept that stopped me cold on my rabbit trail, arrested my laser-focused when not totally wandering attention, and warmed my heart. 

Orbiting. 

For many ADHD folks (and perhaps others living in their unique neurocomplex experience), orbiting is part of our natural rhythm. It’s cyclical, non-linear, but balanced according to its own internal intelligence - following the light of one’s own relationship to the ego / inner sun which illuminates our interests and calls us forward. 

The hyperfocus of our present moment, or the beat of the drum only we can hear, moves us in an energetic elliptic that doesn’t align with modernity and its emphasis on linear trajectories, consistency, or the capitalist patriarchal tendency to base standards efficiency, productivity and 'normality' on the masculine androgen cycle. There’s a queerness in these beautiful brains which resists and rejects binaries, even as we may stretch ourselves towards them with intensely practiced all-or-nothing thinking. 

What’s out of sight is out of mind as we follow curiosity toward the next horizon of exploration, of joyous, intense, challenging, powerful, exhausting, exhilarating dopamine flooding. I never know where it’s going to come from. When the taxes were due yesterday, it could be the laundry I’ve ignored for six weeks. If I’m running late for the dentist, it’s likely the smudge marks on the wall that I suddenly see as entirely intolerable, so I spend ten more minutes frantically washing them before departing. 

Here’s the beauty, though… 

Each orbit, whether it’s the laps around my house while cleaning which make no sense to my husband, or the rotation of courses of study that spiral in unending procession through my field of awareness, or the drifting between beloved kin with the fluidity of unanchored seaweed moving through ocean currents, or the subtle rhythmic pulse of my own fluctuations between brilliant creativity and mild burnout… is just that - an orbit. 

Not a departure. Certainly not an abandonment, Just the innately intelligent dance of my being as it moves, floats, charges, ambles or strides with great purpose toward the next true love.

I am still here, beloved. I am always here, just orbiting.   

Might I leave us with the poetic curiosity of Rainer Maria Rilke? He mused on this subject with grace. This one always speaks to my heart. Enjoy, and if it (or this post) moves you, feel welcome to flow in your orbit towards my inbox and share how you're doing. I love to hear - it - that is, YOU, are one of my special interests. 

I Live My Life In Growing Orbits

by Rainer Maria Rilke

I live my life in growing orbits

which move out over the things of the world.

Perhaps I can never achieve the last,

but that will be my attempt.

I am circling around God, around the ancient tower,

and I have been circling for a thousand years,

and I still don’t know if I am a falcon, or a storm,

or a great song.

(Translated by Robert Bly)