Neurodivergence, Hypnosis and Protecting the Heart
Being a neurodivergent person in a neurotypical world often feels like being observed through a distorted lens. On the one hand, labels and diagnoses can be useful. They provide a framework, language to describe our inner experience, and even open the door to communities of support. But the same labels can also become traps when the ego clings to them too tightly. If you begin to identify solely with the diagnosis, it can harden into identity. The label becomes the definition, rather than a pointer toward knowledge and understanding.
Hypnosis offers a perspective that helps explain why this happens. Dr. David Spiegel of Stanford, one of the most well-respected hypnotherapists alive today, defines hypnosis as a state of highly focused attention where the brain can become more flexible, less dominated by rigid patterns. In these states, the superego’s grip softens, and the mind can reframe the narratives it has held onto. Milton Erickson, considered the father of modern hypnotherapy, often said the unconscious mind knows more than we consciously realize and that our symptoms are not enemies but expressions of deeper needs. Charles Tebbetts, another pioneer, wrote about hypnosis as a way of bypassing limiting conscious resistance to uncover inner truths. All three suggest, in different ways, that identity is malleable. The subconscious mind, through trance, can be reminded that there are always choices.
When we understand that, labels lose their stranglehold. They remain useful markers, but they stop being prisons. The danger is not in diagnosis itself the danger is when the ego fuses with it, saying “this is who I am” instead of “this is a map that helps me navigate.” The subconscious thrives on repetition, and repeated stories of limitation can turn into deeply ingrained beliefs. The work of hypnosis is to introduce space. To open the possibility that what feels like identity may just be conditioning.
But the environment matters. A neurodivergent person raised in a supportive family may live with their difference as one feature of a complex self, honored and understood. That same person, placed in a toxic family system, may find their traits magnified, pathologized, or turned into scapegoats for the family’s dysfunction. In those dynamics, the one struggling is often made out to be “the problem,” while the matriarch or patriarch avoids their own accountability by framing it as a personal failure or shame. The child becomes the symptom-bearer for the family’s unresolved pain.
This is why one of the most important practices for neurodivergent people is protecting the heart. In environments that constantly reopen old wounds, healing is nearly impossible. Sometimes the only way forward is distance whether through no contact, temporary withdrawal, or building a plan to leave. Even the act of planning provides the nervous system with hope. It tells the self: this is not forever, there is another way. And it’s worth naming clearly no support is better than false support. Pretend allies who undermine while claiming to help are more damaging than silence. Healing often begins the moment you stop letting others write your script and begin protecting the sacredness of your own heart.
Hypnosis cannot erase difference. That is not its purpose. What it can do is create the mental flexibility to question narratives, loosen the grip of rigid identity, and reclaim agency over how you see yourself. In trance, we learn to interrupt loops to notice the story, the emotion, the belief, and remember that awareness itself can change the pattern. For neurodivergent people, that awareness is freedom: freedom from family systems that scapegoat, from cultural conditioning that stigmatizes, and from inner voices that repeat someone else’s judgments.
In the end, diagnosis can serve us best when it is held lightly a guide, not a prison. And hypnosis can serve us best when it is used not to fix what was never broken, but to remind us of the wholeness that has always been there. Protecting your heart, reclaiming your narrative, and learning to see conditioning for what it is these are not just survival strategies. They are pathways to living fully in a world that often misunderstands difference.
