This essay is a lot to digest and I may actually lack the words to describe how significant of an impact it's having. There's a sense of gratitude for verbalizing this subject with such accuracy and a deepening sadness as to the degree to which I recognize my experience within it. Ultimately it sheds light on the validity of the depths of interpretation. Recognizes the challenge for healing and creates community understanding where I'd always felt outside that possibility. So, yes, ALL the emotions is what's happening. My apologies if this was received as nonsensical.
You’re making perfect sense, Doreen. Thank you for reading and commenting in such a sincere, open-hearted way. Deeply appreciate all that you’ve written here. I wrote this aiming for greater community awareness and hope that it opens more pathways for healing.
This is quite possibly the most powerful essay I’ve ever read on my experience. It touched on so many known but unspoken truths. When you spoke about grief though, I felt, instead a rising anger. I understand that grief and sadness are underneath that anger but that anger first is good and right and skipping it may be another insult for some of us. Thank you for this 🫶
Thank you for reading and commenting, James. I appreciate everything you’ve written here. Yes, how important anger is. It feels good, right, healthy to me. I recall being furious - privately - for an entire year. It fueled what I needed to do to face a large institution, seeking restoration in the form of an apology and the assurance that systemic change had been implemented to avoid other’s future suffering. Grief came much later.
I am not sure this will be coherent, but I always felt cPTSD was not the full picture. You named it here and I reacted with a breathless sob so deep as the memory of 13 year old me knew the moment my father took my hand for himself that it was the deepest wrong. I have carried deep disgust and rage most of my life. It is why betrayal of any kind hits me the hardest. I know what it is to stand there in terror and betrayal and no way out.
I’m so so sorry to hear this, Michelle. It makes sense - your deep disgust and rage. This is the deepest wrong and when there’s no way out it’s devastating on every level of existence. No wonder betrayal hits you the hardest. Thank you for commenting with such openness and sincerity. I hope this essay promotes more community-orientated pathways for healing rather than it falling on individuals like yourself. My heart goes out to you.
What I will keep is not exacly the discussion of neurodivergenc, but the distinction between injury and violation. There is a difference between suffering because life is difficult and suffering because something one knows should not have happened was nevertheless required, tolerated, or normalized. The phrase "conflict between conscience and survival" feels particularly important. Many people emerge from institutions, families, workplaces, and even entire cultures carrying exhaustion they struggle to explain because the injury was not simply what happened to them, but what they had to become in order to remain inside the system. I was also struck by the observation that the absence of accountability can become a secondary injury. We often speak about healing as though it were entirely an individual responsibility, while paying far less attention to the conditions that made the wound necessary in the first place.
It’s not just because of the bad guy in my past-or that one employer-or that family member. It’s the pattern that keeps returning. The feeling that the world doesn’t work how it should. There is a need to make it right -but I can’t make more than a dent in the world without coming home with more dents in myself.
How much neurodivergent/Autistic burnout is just a moral burnout? A midlife existential and health crisis?
I wish I could stop hoping and looking for ethical workplaces or systems.
I wish I could accommodate problematic people and institutions long enough to make meaningful changes…without it taking a huge toll and changing my posture in life.
I wish speaking out meant something real or if I analyzed long and hard enough-I could find the magic words and approach.
I wish playing the hero and taking the high road didn’t leave me with punishing experiences and setbacks.
I wish I could be optimistic but it feels like that would mean walking through life with one eye half open at this point.
I wish I could talk to people authentically without me being too much when I talk about issues I care about-
if I can’t fix it- can I at least express the concern to people without alienating myself?
This is such a poignant comment, and I suspect many people reading it will recognise themselves in your words. What stands out to me is that you're describing grief. Grief that people, workplaces, institutions, and systems so often fail to live up to the values they claim to hold. Grief that caring deeply doesn't guarantee change. Grief that speaking truth does not always lead to being heard.
I wonder how much neurodivergent burnout is indeed a form of moral burnout. Not simply sensory exhaustion or social exhaustion, but the cumulative weight of repeatedly encountering misalignment between what is and what could be. We seem exquisitely sensitive to hypocrisy, injustice, inefficiency, and unnecessary suffering. The challenge is that once we see these patterns, it becomes very difficult to unsee them.
What I hear beneath your words is the painful tension between wanting to remain open-hearted and wanting to protect yourself from further disappointment. That isn't an easy place to stand. The difficulty is that not everyone has the capacity, interest, or readiness to engage with the concerns that matter most to you. Finding the people who can stay in those conversations without dismissing, defending, or withdrawing can feel rare, but they do exist.
Your comment reminds me that some of the deepest wounds are caused by caring deeply in a world that often seems unable – or unwilling – to care in the same way. That's a lonely burden to carry. Thank you for putting words to it so beautifully.
Thankfully we have other neurodivergents, who do understand our thinking patterns. Find your community, cultivate more neurodivergent friendships. This has helped me a lot and takes the edge off a bit, when navigating the atypical world.
Yes. The pattern. It's everywhere. Manipulation, deceit, demands for performative interaction. It's slowly killing me and I know it and I tell people and they either don't believe me or they make frowny faces and tell me they're sorry. There is no way out.
Thank you very much for reading and commenting, Kathleen. Appreciate all that you’ve written here. It’s so true how deep moral injury goes and, yes, so disruptive to one’s sense of self.
This is my ENTIRE LIFE, from childhood to the present day, expressed down to the finest detail. Thank you for mining the vocabulary that describes my experience, and that of (I'd imagine) all "The Gifteds".
Thank you for reading and commenting, Dana. So sorry that moral injury has been your entire life but also glad you feel seen. This wounding is so deeply distressing and so destabilising. My heart goes out to you.
Thank you Lily, my moral injury was inflicted by the education system, as a student and then as an educator working with minority groups. I experienced what you have explained here, and thank you, your essay has helped me see clearly the connections between the complexities. Your point about witnessing really resonates. There’s so much more here, l will need to revisit. Thank you 🙏🏼
You’re very welcome, Simone. Thank you so much for reading and commenting. I’m glad you found resonances in this essay and feel seen. Great to hear from you.
Yes, my whole career as a teacher was marred by constant internal conflict over being told to do things that were not developmentally appropriate for children, by witnessing and experiencing the difficulty in obtaining the right supports for children with special needs, and by never trusting the school administration because I knew their agenda was not "...what's best for children." I took an early retirement. I saw, from an early age, the unfairness in many things in life and felt deeply about things I saw that weren't "right": homelessness, poverty, war, loneliness, bullying, ad infinitum. Thank you for explaining my experience. I consider myself in recovery mode at age 63, and it's wonderful to feel more comfortable in my skin most of the time. Let's keep telling the truth.
Thank you very much for reading and commenting, Carol. Greatly appreciate all you've written here, especially related to your work with children with special needs. I appreciate how deeply we feel unfairness in so many areas of life. All the very best with your recovery. Yes, let's keep telling the truth.
Hi Carol, thanks for sharing your story with the education factory, as I like to call it. I worked mainly with refugee and asylum seeking adolescents and the fallout of racism embedded in the system and broader community. I found the University culture even worse, just a magnification of the crux of the issues. I took early retirement as well, and at 60, feel as you do. Have a great day.
Thank you for commenting here, Simone. I've had friends and family members in the university culture – it's been bone crushingly awful – and it's one of the reasons why I wrote this essay.
Thank you, probably why l could feel your essay so strongly in my body. University culture is so toxic, as is the Education Union, funny about that! I couldn’t compromise myself in ways they expected re attracting research grants etc. Thank you for threading it all together in this essay. 🙏❤️🩹💖
You're very welcome, Simone. Yes, you definitely felt the underlying cadences of my essay. It's very "close to home" for both of us. I've directly experienced moral injury in the hospital system - long story - and spent a year in near-breakdown after the experience and then years after that to find my feet again. So I deeply appreciate the need to recover and retire early from toxic cultures. Thank you for your kind, thoughtful comments.
Thank you Lily. Yes, I can imagine that the health system suffers the same political fate as education. I have a young (36 year old cousin) undertaking her PhD in the area of government policy re improving public housing, I am concerned for her as she tries to balance the demands of striving to work in academia, to make a difference — as we did. I listen best I can, to pick up where the culture is undermining her sense of self, and try to respond in ways that support her to meet her aspirations. Try to come at it from a broad perspective, without tainting it with my own experience. Not always easy.
Thank you very much, j.e. Yes, I also hope more will understand this deeply destabilising experience. Not enough is written about it. Greatly appreciate you for reading, commenting and sharing this essay.
I can’t find the words for how much reading this means to me right now. At a time when I’m trying to heal from a pattern of experiencing exactly this in multiple settings and suffering from grief and disillusionment because of it, your insights here are extremely validating. I feel seen and hopeful that I’m not as alone in this as it seems. Thank you so much!
Thank you very much for letting me know this, @PinkMoon78 I’m so sorry to hear you’ve experienced moral injury in multiple settings. There’s much suffering, grief and disillusionment that results from this complex wounding. I’m glad you found the insights in this essay validating. You’re not alone and there is hope. May you continue to find ways to feel supported and understood. Warmly, Lil
Amazing article and so very helpful to me. Yes it’s the damage to self from self doubts and constant inner questioning. There will never be the acknowledgement that I would want from others who in my mind behaved as cowards to the truth and instead gaslighted me. Thanks for this article because just hearing you describe this process is comforting. To be able to read this and say yes that was my experience and I am not crazy for feeling this way helps heal the wounds. Thanks again
So glad to hear this, Erica. Thank you very much for reading and commenting. I appreciate how deep the wounds go and I hope this essay goes some way in feeling witnessed in that pain. You’re not crazy and never were. May you continue to reconnect with your self, trusting your own voice.
Thank you for reading, commenting and sharing this essay, Daisy. I’m so so glad you found resonance here. It’s a subject not talked about enough and those of us who have suffered this wound feel isolated, largely due to a lack of understanding. I hope this essay offers paths to more healing as a community rather than as an individual burden.
Thank you so much for letting me know this, Kim. Always great to hear from you. So glad you found this essay supportive. I’ve been wrestling with it for weeks so I’m extra thrilled by your comment.
This is everything I write about - from inside it as an ER nurse. The naming is so important. I refuse to bypass what I know to be true. I am sure my bosses would like me to be small and compliant, but that’s not happening.
So is high IQ or being “gifted” considered neuro divergent? I’ve read a lot about “highly sensitive persons” it describes me to a T. I’ve always been a very deep thinker and feeler. The moral injury of being a nurse in our current healthcare system (especially during the pandemic) has at times nearly been my undoing. ER in the late 90’s was excruciating, pediatric specialty hospital was rewarding but also very intense, and school nursing just felt all wrong because of how children’s developmental needs were sacrificed for “academic rigor” Then came the pandemic. I was not even “frontline,” (doing telephone triage) but the sheer terror in my callers’ voices was deeply affecting. The very compassion that makes me an excellent nurse is also the thing that makes me so weary; seeing the vast needs and such limited resources in public health
This is such a thoughtful comment, and you've touched on several important questions, Annie. Whether giftedness is considered a form of neurodivergence depends somewhat on who you ask. There isn't universal agreement. Some people view giftedness primarily as high intellectual ability. Others see it as a qualitatively different way of experiencing and processing the world that extends far beyond IQ scores. Many gifted adults recognise themselves in neurodivergent spaces because of shared experiences around intensity, sensitivity, asynchronous development, feeling different, existential questioning, and difficulty fitting into conventional systems.
What stood out to me most, though, was not the question about giftedness. It was your description of nursing. Reading your comment, I found myself thinking that what exhausted you may not simply have been the workload. It may have been the collision between your values and the realities of the systems you worked within. The compassion that made you such a good nurse also meant you couldn’t easily look away from suffering, unmet needs, frightened families, exhausted colleagues, or children whose developmental needs were being sacrificed in service of institutional goals.
Many people can function in imperfect systems by compartmentalising. Others seem unable to do so. They continue to see the human being behind the policy, the patient behind the procedure, the child behind the performance metric. That can be both a gift and a burden.
During the pandemic, telephone triage may not have been frontline in the traditional sense, but it placed you in direct contact with something deeply human: uncertainty, vulnerability, and fear. Sensitive people often absorb more of that emotional atmosphere than they realise.
Whether you identify as gifted, highly sensitive, neurodivergent, or some combination of those, what I hear in your comment is someone whose empathy runs deep. The challenge is that the very qualities that make us effective caregivers can become the source of our exhaustion when there is too much suffering and too few resources.
Thank you for the work you do, and for sharing your experience so openly. I suspect many healthcare professionals reading this will recognise themselves in your words.
This essay is a lot to digest and I may actually lack the words to describe how significant of an impact it's having. There's a sense of gratitude for verbalizing this subject with such accuracy and a deepening sadness as to the degree to which I recognize my experience within it. Ultimately it sheds light on the validity of the depths of interpretation. Recognizes the challenge for healing and creates community understanding where I'd always felt outside that possibility. So, yes, ALL the emotions is what's happening. My apologies if this was received as nonsensical.
You’re making perfect sense, Doreen. Thank you for reading and commenting in such a sincere, open-hearted way. Deeply appreciate all that you’ve written here. I wrote this aiming for greater community awareness and hope that it opens more pathways for healing.
Nope. It makes sense and i totally agree.
This is quite possibly the most powerful essay I’ve ever read on my experience. It touched on so many known but unspoken truths. When you spoke about grief though, I felt, instead a rising anger. I understand that grief and sadness are underneath that anger but that anger first is good and right and skipping it may be another insult for some of us. Thank you for this 🫶
Thank you for reading and commenting, James. I appreciate everything you’ve written here. Yes, how important anger is. It feels good, right, healthy to me. I recall being furious - privately - for an entire year. It fueled what I needed to do to face a large institution, seeking restoration in the form of an apology and the assurance that systemic change had been implemented to avoid other’s future suffering. Grief came much later.
I am not sure this will be coherent, but I always felt cPTSD was not the full picture. You named it here and I reacted with a breathless sob so deep as the memory of 13 year old me knew the moment my father took my hand for himself that it was the deepest wrong. I have carried deep disgust and rage most of my life. It is why betrayal of any kind hits me the hardest. I know what it is to stand there in terror and betrayal and no way out.
I’m so so sorry to hear this, Michelle. It makes sense - your deep disgust and rage. This is the deepest wrong and when there’s no way out it’s devastating on every level of existence. No wonder betrayal hits you the hardest. Thank you for commenting with such openness and sincerity. I hope this essay promotes more community-orientated pathways for healing rather than it falling on individuals like yourself. My heart goes out to you.
What I will keep is not exacly the discussion of neurodivergenc, but the distinction between injury and violation. There is a difference between suffering because life is difficult and suffering because something one knows should not have happened was nevertheless required, tolerated, or normalized. The phrase "conflict between conscience and survival" feels particularly important. Many people emerge from institutions, families, workplaces, and even entire cultures carrying exhaustion they struggle to explain because the injury was not simply what happened to them, but what they had to become in order to remain inside the system. I was also struck by the observation that the absence of accountability can become a secondary injury. We often speak about healing as though it were entirely an individual responsibility, while paying far less attention to the conditions that made the wound necessary in the first place.
Thank you very much for reading and commenting so thoughtfully, Sara. I appreciate everything you’ve written here.
Thank you very much. That matters.
My trust in the world got broken.
It’s not just because of the bad guy in my past-or that one employer-or that family member. It’s the pattern that keeps returning. The feeling that the world doesn’t work how it should. There is a need to make it right -but I can’t make more than a dent in the world without coming home with more dents in myself.
How much neurodivergent/Autistic burnout is just a moral burnout? A midlife existential and health crisis?
I wish I could stop hoping and looking for ethical workplaces or systems.
I wish I could accommodate problematic people and institutions long enough to make meaningful changes…without it taking a huge toll and changing my posture in life.
I wish speaking out meant something real or if I analyzed long and hard enough-I could find the magic words and approach.
I wish playing the hero and taking the high road didn’t leave me with punishing experiences and setbacks.
I wish I could be optimistic but it feels like that would mean walking through life with one eye half open at this point.
I wish I could talk to people authentically without me being too much when I talk about issues I care about-
if I can’t fix it- can I at least express the concern to people without alienating myself?
This is such a poignant comment, and I suspect many people reading it will recognise themselves in your words. What stands out to me is that you're describing grief. Grief that people, workplaces, institutions, and systems so often fail to live up to the values they claim to hold. Grief that caring deeply doesn't guarantee change. Grief that speaking truth does not always lead to being heard.
I wonder how much neurodivergent burnout is indeed a form of moral burnout. Not simply sensory exhaustion or social exhaustion, but the cumulative weight of repeatedly encountering misalignment between what is and what could be. We seem exquisitely sensitive to hypocrisy, injustice, inefficiency, and unnecessary suffering. The challenge is that once we see these patterns, it becomes very difficult to unsee them.
What I hear beneath your words is the painful tension between wanting to remain open-hearted and wanting to protect yourself from further disappointment. That isn't an easy place to stand. The difficulty is that not everyone has the capacity, interest, or readiness to engage with the concerns that matter most to you. Finding the people who can stay in those conversations without dismissing, defending, or withdrawing can feel rare, but they do exist.
Your comment reminds me that some of the deepest wounds are caused by caring deeply in a world that often seems unable – or unwilling – to care in the same way. That's a lonely burden to carry. Thank you for putting words to it so beautifully.
Thank you for taking the time to affirm and reflect on my experience ❤️
You're very welcome. Thank you again for commenting and being part of this community.
Thankfully we have other neurodivergents, who do understand our thinking patterns. Find your community, cultivate more neurodivergent friendships. This has helped me a lot and takes the edge off a bit, when navigating the atypical world.
Yes, this is so true - community and cultivating neurodivergent friends are so supportive to our lives. Thank you for commenting!
Your words are so pure and honest and I feel the same on every point. If it helps at all, please know that you are not alone with wishing.
I definitely recognize myself in your words! Thank you for sharing this experience so articulately and making me feel less alone.
Thank you for reading and commenting. I'm so glad you feel seen and less alone. Great to have you in this community.
Yes. The pattern. It's everywhere. Manipulation, deceit, demands for performative interaction. It's slowly killing me and I know it and I tell people and they either don't believe me or they make frowny faces and tell me they're sorry. There is no way out.
Thank you Lily. This essay really helps me with my sense making. Moral injury is a useful explanatory framework alongside betrayal trauma. Moral
injury is deeper and more disruptive to one’s sense of self. I will sitting with and metabolising your essay.
Thank you very much for reading and commenting, Kathleen. Appreciate all that you’ve written here. It’s so true how deep moral injury goes and, yes, so disruptive to one’s sense of self.
This is my ENTIRE LIFE, from childhood to the present day, expressed down to the finest detail. Thank you for mining the vocabulary that describes my experience, and that of (I'd imagine) all "The Gifteds".
Thank you for reading and commenting, Dana. So sorry that moral injury has been your entire life but also glad you feel seen. This wounding is so deeply distressing and so destabilising. My heart goes out to you.
Thank you Lily, my moral injury was inflicted by the education system, as a student and then as an educator working with minority groups. I experienced what you have explained here, and thank you, your essay has helped me see clearly the connections between the complexities. Your point about witnessing really resonates. There’s so much more here, l will need to revisit. Thank you 🙏🏼
You’re very welcome, Simone. Thank you so much for reading and commenting. I’m glad you found resonances in this essay and feel seen. Great to hear from you.
🙏💖😊
Yes, my whole career as a teacher was marred by constant internal conflict over being told to do things that were not developmentally appropriate for children, by witnessing and experiencing the difficulty in obtaining the right supports for children with special needs, and by never trusting the school administration because I knew their agenda was not "...what's best for children." I took an early retirement. I saw, from an early age, the unfairness in many things in life and felt deeply about things I saw that weren't "right": homelessness, poverty, war, loneliness, bullying, ad infinitum. Thank you for explaining my experience. I consider myself in recovery mode at age 63, and it's wonderful to feel more comfortable in my skin most of the time. Let's keep telling the truth.
Thank you very much for reading and commenting, Carol. Greatly appreciate all you've written here, especially related to your work with children with special needs. I appreciate how deeply we feel unfairness in so many areas of life. All the very best with your recovery. Yes, let's keep telling the truth.
Thank you, l am so glad Veronika stacked this essay, l may not have seen it. 🙏
Hi Carol, thanks for sharing your story with the education factory, as I like to call it. I worked mainly with refugee and asylum seeking adolescents and the fallout of racism embedded in the system and broader community. I found the University culture even worse, just a magnification of the crux of the issues. I took early retirement as well, and at 60, feel as you do. Have a great day.
Thank you for commenting here, Simone. I've had friends and family members in the university culture – it's been bone crushingly awful – and it's one of the reasons why I wrote this essay.
Thank you, probably why l could feel your essay so strongly in my body. University culture is so toxic, as is the Education Union, funny about that! I couldn’t compromise myself in ways they expected re attracting research grants etc. Thank you for threading it all together in this essay. 🙏❤️🩹💖
You're very welcome, Simone. Yes, you definitely felt the underlying cadences of my essay. It's very "close to home" for both of us. I've directly experienced moral injury in the hospital system - long story - and spent a year in near-breakdown after the experience and then years after that to find my feet again. So I deeply appreciate the need to recover and retire early from toxic cultures. Thank you for your kind, thoughtful comments.
Thank you Lily. Yes, I can imagine that the health system suffers the same political fate as education. I have a young (36 year old cousin) undertaking her PhD in the area of government policy re improving public housing, I am concerned for her as she tries to balance the demands of striving to work in academia, to make a difference — as we did. I listen best I can, to pick up where the culture is undermining her sense of self, and try to respond in ways that support her to meet her aspirations. Try to come at it from a broad perspective, without tainting it with my own experience. Not always easy.
So pleased to meet you. Thank you. 🙏
You've done an excellent job of describing moral injury. I hope more will understand it with essays like yours.
Thank you very much, j.e. Yes, I also hope more will understand this deeply destabilising experience. Not enough is written about it. Greatly appreciate you for reading, commenting and sharing this essay.
I can’t find the words for how much reading this means to me right now. At a time when I’m trying to heal from a pattern of experiencing exactly this in multiple settings and suffering from grief and disillusionment because of it, your insights here are extremely validating. I feel seen and hopeful that I’m not as alone in this as it seems. Thank you so much!
Thank you very much for letting me know this, @PinkMoon78 I’m so sorry to hear you’ve experienced moral injury in multiple settings. There’s much suffering, grief and disillusionment that results from this complex wounding. I’m glad you found the insights in this essay validating. You’re not alone and there is hope. May you continue to find ways to feel supported and understood. Warmly, Lil
Amazing article and so very helpful to me. Yes it’s the damage to self from self doubts and constant inner questioning. There will never be the acknowledgement that I would want from others who in my mind behaved as cowards to the truth and instead gaslighted me. Thanks for this article because just hearing you describe this process is comforting. To be able to read this and say yes that was my experience and I am not crazy for feeling this way helps heal the wounds. Thanks again
So glad to hear this, Erica. Thank you very much for reading and commenting. I appreciate how deep the wounds go and I hope this essay goes some way in feeling witnessed in that pain. You’re not crazy and never were. May you continue to reconnect with your self, trusting your own voice.
Lily, this *so powerful* an essay.
Oh my, it had to be written!
Thankyou so much for so eloquently, so succinctly describing the experience.
Forever grateful 🙏🙏
I'm sharing it!
Thank you for reading, commenting and sharing this essay, Daisy. I’m so so glad you found resonance here. It’s a subject not talked about enough and those of us who have suffered this wound feel isolated, largely due to a lack of understanding. I hope this essay offers paths to more healing as a community rather than as an individual burden.
Lily, I love everything you write. And this piece is extra. I will reread many times.
Thank you so much for letting me know this, Kim. Always great to hear from you. So glad you found this essay supportive. I’ve been wrestling with it for weeks so I’m extra thrilled by your comment.
I would love to walk the beach with you and talk. Your thinking consistently resonates with my experiences.
That’s so lovely, Kim. I can see us doing that - I walk on the beach most days. I’ll take you with me tomorrow🌟
This is everything I write about - from inside it as an ER nurse. The naming is so important. I refuse to bypass what I know to be true. I am sure my bosses would like me to be small and compliant, but that’s not happening.
Love this so much! Thanks for your comment here, Lindsay.
This is why I’m estranged from my family of origin. Excellent article.
Thank you for reading and commenting, Kelly. Yes, estrangement makes perfect sense. Going "no contact" is sometimes the only way to move on.
So is high IQ or being “gifted” considered neuro divergent? I’ve read a lot about “highly sensitive persons” it describes me to a T. I’ve always been a very deep thinker and feeler. The moral injury of being a nurse in our current healthcare system (especially during the pandemic) has at times nearly been my undoing. ER in the late 90’s was excruciating, pediatric specialty hospital was rewarding but also very intense, and school nursing just felt all wrong because of how children’s developmental needs were sacrificed for “academic rigor” Then came the pandemic. I was not even “frontline,” (doing telephone triage) but the sheer terror in my callers’ voices was deeply affecting. The very compassion that makes me an excellent nurse is also the thing that makes me so weary; seeing the vast needs and such limited resources in public health
This is such a thoughtful comment, and you've touched on several important questions, Annie. Whether giftedness is considered a form of neurodivergence depends somewhat on who you ask. There isn't universal agreement. Some people view giftedness primarily as high intellectual ability. Others see it as a qualitatively different way of experiencing and processing the world that extends far beyond IQ scores. Many gifted adults recognise themselves in neurodivergent spaces because of shared experiences around intensity, sensitivity, asynchronous development, feeling different, existential questioning, and difficulty fitting into conventional systems.
What stood out to me most, though, was not the question about giftedness. It was your description of nursing. Reading your comment, I found myself thinking that what exhausted you may not simply have been the workload. It may have been the collision between your values and the realities of the systems you worked within. The compassion that made you such a good nurse also meant you couldn’t easily look away from suffering, unmet needs, frightened families, exhausted colleagues, or children whose developmental needs were being sacrificed in service of institutional goals.
Many people can function in imperfect systems by compartmentalising. Others seem unable to do so. They continue to see the human being behind the policy, the patient behind the procedure, the child behind the performance metric. That can be both a gift and a burden.
During the pandemic, telephone triage may not have been frontline in the traditional sense, but it placed you in direct contact with something deeply human: uncertainty, vulnerability, and fear. Sensitive people often absorb more of that emotional atmosphere than they realise.
Whether you identify as gifted, highly sensitive, neurodivergent, or some combination of those, what I hear in your comment is someone whose empathy runs deep. The challenge is that the very qualities that make us effective caregivers can become the source of our exhaustion when there is too much suffering and too few resources.
Thank you for the work you do, and for sharing your experience so openly. I suspect many healthcare professionals reading this will recognise themselves in your words.