Rising Rooted

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If you’ve ever found yourself Googling ‘what’s wrong with me’…

Sometimes that belief is explicit. Sometimes it’s woven into years of trying harder, performing better, pushing through. Either way, it often sits underneath burnout, anxiety, shame spirals, or the persistent feeling of being slightly out of sync with the world around you.

I work with many people who identify as neurodivergent. I also work with many who don’t fit neatly into any diagnostic category — too different to feel “typical,” not diagnosable enough to feel legitimate. That in-between space is real, and it deserves language.

Here is what I have come to believe:

Human beings are ecosystems in and of themselves. And we are living inside larger cultural systems, and still larger ecological systems.

When someone feels broken, I do not see a defective individual. I see a complex ecosystem under strain.

Humans as Ecosystems

An ecosystem is not a single trait. It is an interacting network.

Within you there is some basic wiring, sure. There is also: nervous system patterns, attachment histories, coping strategies, values, creative impulses, sensitivities, strengths, wounds, and survival adaptations. These interact constantly. They influence one another.

Then there is the environment: family systems, school systems, workplace culture, productivity expectations, gender norms, pace of modern life, community support (or lack of it).

When we reduce a person to a diagnosis, we risk isolating one part of the ecosystem and calling it the whole story.

Diagnosis can be useful. I am not a diagnosing professional — that is not my role as a psychotherapist. My work is not to assign labels. It is to help people make sense of their lived experience inside or alongside a diagnosis, and to explore strategies that help them feel better given their current symptoms and context.

Diagnostic systems like the DSM can offer language, validation, access to treatment, and community. They can be deeply relieving. I refer to them thoughtfully. But they are maps, not territory.

I’ve written more about my relationship with the DSM — including a systems critique and a lens for understanding diagnosis without pathologizing difference — in a separate post [linked here].

In this practice, we zoom back out to the whole ecosystem.

Symptoms as Messengers

When I say symptoms are messengers, I do not mean we ignore them or let them run wild.

Anxiety hurts. Depression flattens. Obsessive loops exhaust. Emotional intensity can feel destabilizing. Executive dysfunction can make daily life incredibly frustrating.

Relief matters. We absolutely look for ways to make life feel better.

But instead of treating symptoms as enemies to suppress at all costs, we approach them relationally. We ask:

What is this pattern responding to?

What function has it served?

What conditions might be amplifying it?

And then we explore change — gently, strategically, compassionately.

Symptoms often come and go over a lifetime. Healing is not the permanent disappearance of every difficult pattern. It is a shift in relationship. When something resurfaces, you know how to meet it. You recognize it as part of your ecosystem rather than proof that you are broken.

That shift alone ignites your unique ecosystem’s innate drive towards healing and wholeness.

Masking: Survival, Not Failure

Masking is not weakness. It is intelligence.

Masking is what we do to fit into environments that do not feel safe for our full selves. It is different from belonging. Belonging allows your nervous system to soften. Masking requires performance.

I do not believe the goal is to eliminate masks entirely. There are contexts where fitting in is protective and necessary. The question becomes:

Do I know when I’m masking?

And can I take it off somewhere?

Chronic masking — the kind where you never feel able to exhale — often leads to:

• burnout cycles
• anxiety and depression as secondary symptoms
• shame spirals
• overfunctioning or quiet collapse
• hyper-independence or resentment

The hidden cost of being “high functioning” is that your life can begin to feel like a long performance. At some point, something inside you resists.

That resistance is not pathology. It is information.

A Balanced Systems Lens

Therapy has historically been used to help people return to productivity — to get them functioning again inside the same systems that strained them.

That is not how I understand my role.

Part of this work is exploring what is yours to hold and grow — and what may be a systems mismatch.

Western culture privileges speed, output, and compliance. For many neurodivergent or misfit nervous systems, that pace and rigidity create chronic strain. Naming that is not about avoiding responsibility. It is about context.

When we widen the lens from “What’s wrong with me?” to “What conditions am I living in?” we open up more honest choices.

A Somatic Invitation

If you’re recognizing yourself here, pause.

Notice your jaw.

Notice your shoulders.

Notice your breath.

Is there a subtle bracing happening?

Masking often lives in the body as tension — small, constant adjustments to appear acceptable.

See if you can let your shoulders drop just slightly. Let your exhale lengthen naturally.

For a moment, allow your body to set down the mask.

Even a small release matters.

From Fixing to Self-Authorship

There is a powerful shift when the question changes.

Instead of:

How do I fix myself?

We begin asking:

How do I build a life that fits?

That question carries more agency. It reduces shame. It invites creativity.

Self-authorship means becoming the primary author of your story rather than organizing your identity around a label — whether that label came from a diagnostic manual or from cultural expectations.

It means:

• identifying which patterns genuinely hurt and are ready for change
• recognizing which traits are strengths misapplied in the wrong context
• adjusting rhythms, expectations, and environments where possible
• taking responsibility for growth without collapsing into self-blame

I have lived inside diagnostic labels myself. I have experienced both the clarity and the confinement of those categories. Over time, I have grown into a more complex understanding of myself that doesn’t sit neatly inside any box.

That lived experience informs my work. It does not centre it. What centres it is this belief:

Humans are capable of growth. Patterns shift. Identity evolves.

Healing is not becoming more normal. It is becoming more honest.

Therapy as Ecosystem Work

In this practice, we explore your internal ecosystem and the larger systems you inhabit.

We slow conversations down so the body can enter the room. Many misfit or neurodivergent adults have learned to live almost entirely in their heads. Somatic work helps rebuild connection to tension, rest, pacing, hunger, and energy.

We use parts-oriented work to explore inner patterns shaped by shame, pressure, or survival — sometimes playfully, sometimes seriously. Creative approaches, imagination, metaphor, and even art can help loosen rigid narratives and invite curiosity.

We draw from eco-existential reflection to examine inherited stories about who you are supposed to be — and to decide which ones still belong.

Diagnosis can be part of the conversation. It is never the whole conversation.

The goal is not to make you more neurotypical. It is not to return you to your previous level of functioning as quickly as possible.

The goal is to help you understand your ecosystem, reduce unnecessary strain, find meaningful relief, and build a life that aligns more honestly with who you are.

The Ecology of the Misfit

You are not a malfunctioning machine.

You are not a diagnostic code.

You are not a problem to solve.

You are a living ecosystem — adaptive, responsive, complex.

When something in you struggles, it is worth asking:

Is this a flaw?

Or is this an ecosystem asking for different conditions?

There is nothing inherently wrong with the way you are wired.

The work is learning how to live with integrity inside that wiring — reshaping patterns where needed, seeking relief where possible, adjusting environments where you can, and meeting yourself with enough compassion that you no longer have to perform just to survive.

And often, in that process, the traits you once tried to erase reveal themselves as depth, creativity, intensity, devotion, or vision — qualities that were never the enemy to begin with.

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If this spoke to something in you, there are a few paths you can follow from here:

Each door leads somewhere different. It is my hope that all of them lead back to you.

<3 Rachel