On high sensitivity, trauma, and neurodiversity – and what it means for who you are

I am a deeply feeling person. That may sound self-evident, but it is only in recent years that I have truly begun to understand what that means—and what it has cost me.

In Terug naar jezelf (Back to yourself) by Michaéla Schippers, Michelle Shanti, and Alexander van Walraven, the authors introduce a distinction that deeply resonated with me. Some people experience connection as a genuine meeting between two human beings—something that emerges through attunement, openness, and mutual presence. Others experience connection primarily as a means to an end: something that creates direction, advantage, or status. Two fundamentally different inner worlds. Two fundamentally different ways of making sense of relationships.

For years, I couldn’t understand why I felt so lost in certain relationships. Why I kept giving while the other person approached the relationship strategically. Why I constantly adapted and wondered what I was doing wrong. What this book describes so clearly—and what I have come to recognize throughout my own healing journey—is that this is not a matter of weakness. It is a psychological asymmetry. Two people may use the same words, yet speak entirely different emotional languages.

High sensitivity, trauma, and neurodiversity: a complex interplay

I recognize myself as a highly sensitive person. My nervous system processes sensory, emotional, and cognitive stimuli more deeply than average. High sensitivity is a temperament trait that colours everything: how I experience the world, how intuitively I perceive others, and how quickly I become overwhelmed.

At the same time, I am recovering from complex trauma resulting from relationships marked by narcissistic abuse. Alongside—or perhaps intertwined with—that, I recognize neurodivergent patterns in myself: the way I process information, my need for structure, and the fact that I sometimes interpret social signals differently from what others intend.

These three aspects are not simply coincidental. They reinforce one another.

High sensitivity lowers the threshold for traumatic experiences. What others may brush off tends to leave a much deeper imprint on me.

Narcissistic abuse often affects highly sensitive people more profoundly because they genuinely seek authentic connection. They sense the relational asymmetry long before they can put words to it.

Neurodiversity makes recovery more complex because boundaries, self-image, and social communication are already processed differently. What may feel intuitive to others is something I sometimes need to learn consciously.

Yet there is another side to this story. That same sensitivity—the ability to be fully present and to perceive what lies beneath the surface—is precisely what enables me to do the work I do.

Working from lived experience

In my holistic practice, and in my work with Suïcide Preventie Centrum (Suicide Prevention Centre), I regularly meet people whose struggles involve a combination that is still insufficiently recognised within mainstream mental healthcare: neurodiversity, complex trauma, and suicidality.

This is an especially vulnerable intersection.

People living within this triangle are frequently diagnosed late—or misdiagnosed altogether. Their symptoms—sensory overload, emotional dysregulation, concentration difficulties, and social challenges—may resemble ADHD, autism, PTSD, or depression. In many cases, elements of all of these are present, yet none of the diagnoses alone fully captures their lived experience.

They are at increased risk of suicide—not necessarily because they want to die, but because the pain of chronic suffering and lifelong misunderstanding eventually becomes unbearable. They have spent their lives feeling different. They learned to adapt, to minimise themselves, and simply to survive. Then, when they finally seek help, they are often overlooked once again.

Standard crisis intervention protocols are frequently insufficient because their way of processing, communicating, and assigning meaning to relationships differs fundamentally from what those protocols assume.

What Terug naar jezelf adds

The distinction Schippers, Shanti, and Van Walraven make between a relationally oriented inner world and an instrumentally oriented inner world is also immensely valuable in crisis work.

Because what I repeatedly see is this: the people who find their way to me are almost always deeply feeling individuals. For decades they have experienced relationships as genuine encounters, only to find themselves repeatedly hurt by people—or systems—that viewed relationships primarily as instruments. That leaves profound scars.

Understanding why you became entangled—not as a moral judgment, but as a psychological explanation—is often the beginning of genuine freedom.

The question shifts from “What is wrong with me?” to “What kind of relational logic was operating here—and what is my own?”

The personal as a professional foundation

I do not draw a strict line between who I am and how I work, because my lived experience is one of my most valuable professional tools.

I know what it feels like to lose yourself in a relationship that slowly drains you. I know what it is like to keep functioning while inwardly falling apart. I know how confusing it is when high sensitivity, trauma, and neurodiversity become intertwined and no one offers a framework that reflects all of those layers at once.

That lived understanding—combined with knowledge, evidence-informed methods, and professional practice—allows me to be present in ways that extend beyond technique alone.

For me, Terug naar jezelf affirms what I have witnessed both in my professional work and in my own healing journey: returning to yourself begins with understanding who you are—your inner world, your way of making sense of life, and your way of connecting with others. And although that journey home can be painful, it is perhaps the most meaningful journey a person can ever undertake.

This article is based on both personal lived experience and professional practice, and is inspired in part by Terug naar jezelf by Michaéla Schippers, Michelle Shanti, and Alexander van Walraven.