{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Something Shiny: ADHD!","title":"The Corners You Learned to Hide (and the Systems That Taught You To)","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":1410,"description":"There’s a particular kind of tired that seeps past your muscles—it settles in your body memory. The kind that comes from years spent reshaping yourself around other people’s comfort. If you’ve ever been told your joy was too big, your voice too loud, your questions too many—this conversation might feel like exhaling.\nIn this episode of Something Shiny: ADHD, therapist Grace Gautier joins Isabelle Richards and David Kessler for a deeply human conversation about what it means to hide your corners to stay connected. Grace, a trans woman who works closely with trans and neurodivergent communities, puts language to something so many of us have felt but couldn’t name: carceral logic—that cultural instinct to isolate or correct those who struggle, instead of shifting the environment to support them.\nWe talk about what happens when systems teach us to monitor ourselves before anyone else can. How masking gets confused for maturity. How survival strategies get mislabeled as flaws. And why returning to connection—not perfection—is the real work of healing.\nWe explore:\nThe overlap between neurodivergent and trans lived experiences\nWhy we learn to tuck away the most beautiful, vital parts of ourselves\nThe difference between being managed and being met\nHow community becomes the repair\nDavid brings in the metaphor of the uncarved block—this tender image of a version of you untouched by the sanding-down of social expectation. Grace recognizes herself immediately. She traces how her sensory overwhelm, emotional intensity, and clutter-as-memory weren’t signs of dysfunction—they were adaptations. Signals. Ways of being.\nGrace also shares the ache of her father’s deportation and the clarity that arrived when she was finally diagnosed with ADHD later in life. Suddenly, things made sense. She didn’t need to try harder—she needed support that didn’t punish her nervous system.\nBy the end of this conversation, you'll realize the parts you were taught to hide were actually never flaws to...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/Z5oo5dUJtRg1dVvtKIZLx7oln9E4pT6ZxDge5G2XRxA/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9zaG93/LzIyNDkyLzE2MjUz/NDA2NjgtYXJ0d29y/ay5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}