Spiritual Direction for Neurodivergent People: The Gift of Being Known

Nothing is more important, for if we find our true self, we find God, and if we find God, we find our most authentic self. – The Gift of Being Yourself, by David Benner

The night before I began my training as a spiritual director, I sat alone at a table in a cosy Greek restaurant in the middle of London after travelling by train from our little town in Wales, and read those words. And I thought, yes. Yes to the deep longing I had carried my whole life to know God, and the long and winding journey that I was on to truly know my authentic self. As a late-diagnosed AuDHD woman who had spent a lifetime never quite feeling like I was able to see myself clearly, it wasn't until I began working with my own spiritual director that I discovered the gift of being seen and accepted wholly as I am, the parts of me I share easily, and the parts that remain in shadow, even to me. All was welcomed.

Prior to this, I strived for years to "go deeper" with God and felt I was on an endless journey to better know myself, but never quite feeling fully held by Love, or able to understand who I am as easily as others seemed to be able to understand themselves. I'd tried journalling, solitary prayer, long walks turning a question over and over. And still, there were parts of myself that stayed hidden from me, not because I wasn't looking hard enough, but because some things can't be found through looking alone. Some things only surface when another person is in the room, waiting with you, bearing witness to what you haven't yet found words for.

In the above quote, Benner isn't talking about the self readily shared at a dinner party … name, job, a few interests or well-worn stories that feel safe to share at a surface level. He means something further in, the self that exists underneath all the managing. Most of us have got remarkably good at managed vulnerability, controlling how we come across, even to ourselves. We know which thoughts to follow and which to quickly set down before they go anywhere. We've built a version of ourselves that's easier to live with, less complicated to present, and sometimes it can become difficult to remember that this persona isn’t our true self.

This isn't usually dishonesty. It's self-protection, built up over years, often for good reason. But it means that by the time most people come looking for their true self, they're not just searching for something hidden. They're searching for something they've actively, carefully buried.

For many neurodivergent people, this managing has a specific name: masking. Psychologists use this term to refer to a situation in which neurodivergent people learn to conceal or camouflage their natural responses to the world. This is reinforced across one’s life in learning which responses read as acceptable and which reactions to suppress. We eventually work out the version of ourselves that is palatable for other people whose nervous systems work differently from ours. Masking isn't dishonesty: it's survival, built from a lifetime of navigating spaces that weren't designed to hold us as we actually are. The cost is the very one Benner is naming: our true self becomes harder and harder to locate the longer it stays hidden. In a related way, we can get so comfortable producing a version of the Divine that fits neatly into this narrative, that authentic Love can feel out of reach, like trying to grab hold of running water.

Spiritual direction for neurodivergent people

The self underneath all that managing rarely surfaces through more private effort, no matter how sincere. We were created for community, to know and be known by others. Spiritual direction has given me a space to be witnessed by someone that I don’t need to manage anything for. I can simply turn up as I am, with whatever is present for me that day.

A spiritual director's role, in part, is to need nothing from us. Not our best self, not our most articulate thoughts, not our spiritual progress. When someone is genuinely unbothered by our mess, that can helpfully disrupt our efforts to produce a version of ourselves worth their attention. And in that unclenching, the self that's been buried under years of careful management may finally find room to surface, not because the director found it, but because in being welcomed just as we are, we receive the gentle invitation to stop hiding from ourselves.

For those of us who have spent a lifetime masking, that unclenching will likely be disorienting at first. There's no requirement to time our words correctly or perform the right amount of eye contact, and no one minding what our bodies do while we think. A good director isn't tracking whether we're being appropriately spiritual any more than whether we're being appropriately neurotypical. They're simply there, willing to meet whatever shows up, all of you fully embraced. For many of us, that kind of space is rare enough to feel like its own small miracle.

After reading this, you wouldn’t be alone in wondering, what then is it that sets spiritual direction apart from a good conversation with a wise friend, or even from therapy at its best? Spiritual accompaniment is unique in that it was never meant to be two people in a room trying to understand one another. From the very beginning of this practice there has been an acknowledgment that a third presence is there too – Love, Spirit, God, whatever word holds that reality for you – and that both directee and director are listening, as best they can, for what that Presence is doing in the conversation, not just for what is passing between the two of them.

Holding this reality shifts what a director is for. A spiritual director isn't trying to be the one who finally understands you, as much as that might feel like relief in itself. They are listening alongside you, noticing when a question lands differently than either of you expected, or when the room goes still in a way that carries an extra weight with it. Those movements, the ones that seem to arrive from somewhere beyond the conversation, are held with curiosity and openness to explore with sensitivity, compassion and care.

Benner’s quote points to a process that is larger than self-discovery. And within the spiritual direction relationship, I believe that by allowing ourselves to be deeply known by another person, without having to perform or earn it, we receive a small, human-sized glimpse of what it might be to be fully known by God. The relief of being seen clearly, without flinching and without having to translate ourselves first, may be a first encounter with the gift Benner is naming.

This is why the three presences matter so much. If it were only ever two people in the room, a directee slowly learning to trust a director, that would still be good work. But because a third Presence is being listened for throughout, the director's witness becomes a doorway rather than a destination. We aren't meant to stay known only by them. We're invited to let that experience open us toward more deeply knowing the One who knew us fully, unmasked self and all, long before we walked into the room.

Perhaps this is the unique gift spiritual direction offers, not a technique for self-improvement, nor even simply skilled and compassionate listening, but a relationship held within three presences. This is a relationship where we are slowly helped to notice what Love has been trying to show us about ourselves all along: that we were created with the utmost care and delight, and that we are deeply, wholly, irrevocably loved by the One who made us. For those of us who have spent years learning how to be acceptable rather than how to be known, spiritual direction may be one of the few places built for the opposite. It is a place for you to continue to come home to yourself more fully, and to be met there by the open arms of Love.

If this resonated with you, we'd love to stay in touch. You can join our newsletter for reflections like this one, or come along to The Reset, our free monthly online gathering. And if you'd like to explore this further, we'd welcome you to look into our one-to-one and group spiritual direction offerings.