03/02/2026
It happened. Yesterday at training, someone asked for the first time about the meaning of my nonverbal awareness shirt.
It took me a long time to make the decision to wear it. I went through all the stages of accepting my diagnosis, shame, impostor syndrome. But the final drop that brought me to the peak of anxiety, which became impossible to endure, leading to insomnia and many other related difficulties, put an end to this acceptance.
The chronic shame that has accompanied me my whole life for being “different” and the burning resentment that everyone I meet interprets it in their own way, outweighed everything. It consumed me. It slowly began to destroy me. I no longer had the strength to fight it, ignore it, or overcome it through masking.
I was driving home after yet another failure, when I was again exhausted, when I didn’t catch a single social cue, when I smiled where it was inappropriate, when again I couldn’t force my face into the “right” emotion, couldn’t look people in the eyes, when more than two people simply turned around and walked away to avoid continuing an awkward small talk with me. The burning shame was choking me from inside, the lump in my throat rose so high that once again, like the last time in school, I couldn’t hold back my tears in public…
And then I mentally turned to God with a question, even though it had never crossed my mind before, I was just trying to struggle and swim without searching for reasons… I asked, “Why does this happen to me over and over again? Why are these situations sent to me?” Instantly I flew past the answer, not even a second passed before the thought finished itself: “Path.”
“This is your path.”
The lump in my throat immediately receded, I wiped my tears as if someone had handed me a small stick I could grab onto, and I stopped sinking. My thinking process started again, I had an idea to hold onto and develop. I had a key again, a method I hadn’t tried yet to cope once more.
If you have a path, then you need to accept it and walk it, with all the data you have in your hands, and perhaps you will arrive somewhere.
And I understood that I can’t and don’t want to live like this anymore. If I accept myself and the data with which I live, then I should not betray myself and mask them. It’s useless anyway. It already cost me my health. So I must be myself. So people have the right to know who I am. I developed a need to explain myself…
But not by bluntly telling everyone every time my strange traits show up again. The very idea of that method felt unpleasant to me, including all the consequences, even the prejudices that I’m just trying to attract attention.
I needed a soft, quiet, unobtrusive way. And then the idea of a shirt came to mind. At that time, I already wore a badge on my backpack, which turned out to be completely useless, no one ever reads that text, for it to happen, all the stars have to align. I searched the entire internet for the right shirt, everything was wrong. Too loud, too big of a font, too vague of phrases. I somehow found three shirts, but when the delivery arrived, I realized again that I couldn’t wear them… The tone, the size, the interpretation, everything was wrong… Too intrusive, too loud, too much, too much, too much… This is not the energy I want to carry when explaining my neurodivergence. I realized I didn’t like any shirt with text on the chest. And why on the chest anyway? If it’s on the back, you’ll always read it. And you receive information about the person. And it doesn’t obligate you to anything, it’s a gentle nonverbal announcement behind the back. As a neurodivergent person, I would never stare at someone’s chest and read their shirt during a conversation, it feels tactless to me. I conducted my own informal survey and got confirmation that text on the back is rarely read compared to text on the front.
The first thing I did was cut apart all the shirts that arrived in the mail and start placing the text pieces onto my new blank shirt. It still wasn’t right. Something was missing again. And then I gave up and stitched the final version as it was… I checked once more how it looked on my back… and, confused, I decided to take that step. I wore it to the dentist. When I came home, I felt terrible. No, definitely not, it wasn’t right.
The next day I ripped everything apart again, and the process started over. I decided to remove everything unnecessary and leave only one concise and most informative message, the name of my diagnosis. I chose the smallest one I had, white on a black background, not so small that it couldn’t be read from a distance, but not so big that the font would feel loud. But the text still irritated me on the shirt, as if it was shouting, “Look at me!” And I realized it wasn’t about the text itself, but about the fact that it stood alone. That’s why it “shouts”, it grabs all the attention. To soften it, I needed to divide the attention, add something that would take part of it away.
So I did what I do best, I expressed everything through an image instead of a thousand words. The concept came instantly, and with it relief, as always when I pour my emotions into a drawing.
In hyperfocus, time with the tablet flew by like a single moment, and suddenly I was creating my first vinyl sticker. It was exactly what I needed, subtle, without slogans, but powerful. The design invites you to look and decode it, the meaning exists both in the text and in the image.
That’s how I see my restless brain. And its advantages, understood only by those who are like me.
I tried wearing the shirt in public. The feelings were indescribable. This was it, what I needed, how I wanted to bring awareness to people. Without negativity, without a call to action, without blunt statements, a soft invitation to learn anonymously, if you read it, great, if you don’t, that’s fine, and I will never know unless you take that step.
It was interesting to observe the effect of one shirt on my state. Most of the anxiety disappeared. If I made “awkward” mistakes again, I no longer worried, there were plenty of people around, maybe someone read the text on my back and understood why I seemed “strange” and why “something is off” and why I don’t look people in the eyes. Now I had a constant explanation for myself, a silent unobtrusive explanation that works for me and supports me.
Today I continue working on my mental well-being. I continue, drop by drop, accepting myself. I have light days when even I feel like an ordinary cheerful, easygoing person. I have heavy days when life once again shows how hard it is to be neurodivergent and how you will never be like everyone else. On those days, I try to accept it again, I go into darkness and silence to recharge my social battery, I avoid eye contact, wear earplugs, avoid people as much as possible, and do not force my facial muscles to perform. On those days, I wear my nonverbal shirt again and stop suffocating myself with shame. Because I have Autism Level 1 support, and because it is as much a part of me as my eyes, hands, legs, hair, and skin color, something that I should not be ashamed of.
Today I run a supportive Instagram blog with humor and honest information, Neuroberrie, about neurodivergence, and I create shirts under the same brand that are sold worldwide.
We are changing reality through acceptance, visibility, and the right to speak about ourselves openly.
The world should know who we are.
That we are different.
And that being this way is ALSO normal.
Picture: The autistic teacher
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