MY TRAVEL STATS

Bit of background on me

Hi, I’m Lisa. I am one of those late-diagnosed neurodivergent people. Until my 40s, I labeled myself as “easily distracted” and “shy,” always “running behind schedule”, “not great at keeping my home tidy”, and reactive to sensory issues such as light, movement, and sounds like people chewing, the sound of scraping against ice, or a loud motorbike driving past. Specifically, they send me into a mild rage. I like meeting people but I need a lot alone time to function.

In the past 5 years, awareness and identification of autism and ADHD in adults has grown exponentially. People, in particular women, who have been neurodivergent all along, are now able to identify the cause of the struggles that have impacted relationships, family, work, and “adulting.” This is huge.

Slowly, I began to question my various struggles, learn the language and causes of these cognitive and sensory disorders, and began to suspect ADHD, possibly autism. I was self-diagnosed (valid!) until I was able to get official diagnoses (ADHD in July 2022 and autism in April 2024).

Slowly, I began to question my various struggles, learn the language and causes of these cognitive and sensory disorders, and began to suspect ADHD, possibly autism. I was self-diagnosed (valid!) until I was able to get official diagnoses (ADHD in July 2022 and autism in April 2024).

My love of travel started early

I’ve always loved travel. As a child growing up in the Western United States, we traveled each summer on long car journeys to visit family. One strange thing though: I was always nauseous in the car, and often threw up in the night, but happy otherwise. Looking back, I believe it overstimulation due to the constantly changing environment, being around people all the time, new foods etc, while attempting to read in the car to stave off boredom (which triggered motion sickness), sharing a bed with my sister, and dealing with everyone’s bickering.

As a teen, I dreamed of moving to the East Coast of the USA and exploring Europe to soak up the history. So as a young adult, I moved around a lot. I also traveled to England three times from the US before I moved there, and never looked back…apart from those 2 years in NYC and 2 years in Greater Boston.

More specifically

• It’s not that I have poor attention spans. I am easily distracted when doing something I’m not interested in, but I was also the person staying up until 2am working on my family tree research. Or spending weeks and months researching a cruise vacation: the right cruise line, the right destinations, the right ship (this is hyperfocus!)
• I am shy about approaching groups of people, or making phone calls, but I also love meeting new people, having amazing small group and one-on-one conversations, and hanging out with friends, in controlled doses. I also love spending time by myself and am never bored. I think my ‘shyness’ might also be part of rejection sensitivity dysphoria.
• I was so relieved to learn that mysophonia is an actual identified disorder. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve experienced “fight or flight” … in some instances, it could have led to injury to myself, or worse. And in other instances, the people around me felt bad.