Freedom expressed: joy, movement and the colours of my mind

Guest contributor, Remie Colledge, shares a beautiful insight into her lived experience of embracing and expressing her authentic Neurodivergent self.

‘You seem more Autistic’ or ‘more ADHD’ since your diagnosis. I’ve heard this said to me and I know others hear similar comments too. This article is a lived experience reflection, a compassionate exploration of why I might sometimes ‘appear’ different since my Autism and ADHD diagnoses. I’m sharing what it feels like to finally externalise years of hidden energy and unmask long-suppressed parts of who I am. My mind has always been alive with energetic thoughts, flying in all directions. My head is constantly overflowing with colours, my mind shimmers across the spectrum. 

 As I write this, my head is swaying and bouncing along with the rhythm of thoughts. My freedom and creativity are sparked by flows of physical movement.  

Let me take you to another moment. 

Recently, I had the longest sighting to date of one of my passionate interests, the iridescent turquoise blue and bright orange kingfisher. It captivated my attention, as I watched it dart from tree branch to branch. Joy surged through my whole body. The sudden excitement felt fizzy and uncontainable, automatically spilling out into leaps and glittery movements I couldn’t hold back. 

It is in these moments of complete immersion, when my mind and body sync, that I feel alive and connected. I notice how much movement, rhythm, and flow help me not just express joy, but also self-regulate.  

“My mind has always been alive with energetic thoughts, flying in all direction.”

Now let’s shift back to my day-to-day life. 

Amongst my metaphorical backpack of regulation strategies, is music. When I notice dysregulation creeping in, I put on my headphones, enter immersive listening mode, and let my body flow to the beat. This is one of my ways of enabling my body to release the emotions I struggle to articulate. The sounds turn into waves of colours that soothe, comfort, and ground me. My body moves freely. 

But it hasn’t always been this way. Let us travel back in time, before I knew I was an Autistic ADHDer. 

I was the child who sat on my hands in lessons and assemblies, with that same energetic mind and natural tendency to feel deeply, but with no outlet for expression. The child bursting to say an inappropriate word out loud in the silence. Constantly holding myself so still, so tightly, the tension mounted. 

As I inhaled the rules, expectations, and norms around me, I constantly moulded myself to fit in. Listening, watching, observing, thinking, and adapting the way I communicated, moved and responded. Over and over again. It was exhausting. My childhood and teenage years blur into memories of trapped energy, confusion, and disorientation.

I would ask myself, is everyone else experiencing the same tension and chaos inside? The same sense of difference and disconnection? With no way of describing my internal world, with no answers to these questions, I concluded it was me, that I was flawed. Yet, I was described as ‘academic’ and ‘well-behaved’, the result of adhering perfectly to school rules. Internally, however, I was disintegrating, falling into mental health struggles and the grips of anorexia.

“...in safe and Neurodivergent-affirming environments, yes, I now flap, stim and shimmer like the colours in my mind.”

My present-day experience is profoundly different to all those years before I discovered who I always was, and before I began on the journey of learning how I think, sense, process, and communicate differently.  

It is important for me to acknowledge that I do not always feel safe to unmask or express my stims. Increasingly, I can express myself fully, sometimes partially, but there are still times I hide and suppress. It is often environment dependent, and sometimes I consciously choose to mask. And whilst I recognise that that is okay, the old tension and pain can resurface.

However, making sense of my experiences has helped me understand what I need, and that stims and the freedom to move is essential to my Neurodivergent wellbeing. It was equally important to be careful and guided by professionals about movement in the context of recovering from anorexia. However, the more nourished I became, the more I could gently use movement as self-expression and rebuild trust in my own body.

So, to the outside world, in safe and Neurodivergent-affirming environments, yes, I now flap, stim and shimmer like the colours in my mind. These movements and stims do not mean I have become ‘more Autistic’ or ‘more ADHD’. 

It is my freedom expressed. It is knowing and embracing that I am Neurodivergent, not flawed. It is my mind and body becoming more in sync, as physical expression becomes a release. And in that release, decades of tension slowly unwinds.