When the Future Feels Like Schrödinger’s Cat
One AuDHD brain’s battle with not knowing what comes next
Kai does not fear change. People keep telling him that he does, but they are wrong. He fears not knowing. To him, that is a different monster.
When he strains to picture the future,
his mind feels blind to the possibilities.
It shows him a cliff that’s sheer instead.
He feels it before he sees it, a tremble in his gut that says, there’s an edge out there and you’re headed for it. Then the picture sharpens: rocks dropping from the edge, one then another. As if by choice. They dare Kai to approach.
No bridge. No guardrail. No help. It is Kai against the world because no one else understands or knows how to help. Nor has he asked for it. His assumptions can be as paralyzing as his AuDHD.
Reality has a way of demanding its rules are Kai’s to savor.
The dread in his belly tightens; he reaches for a rail that is not there.
The edge is getting closer with every step, though Kai’s legs are not moving.
He reaches the edge, toes curled in his shoes like vices, his body caught between a gentle step back and falling forward into what he believes is inevitable. No one tells him how far the drop is, nor what the bottom has in store.
The future is full of surprises. Not the cake and balloons kind, mostly cake, ideally. But alas.
The message Kai hears from reality goes something like,
“Tough tootles about your neurodivergence, kid.
The future is not yours to know. It is a river of possibilities awaiting your step,
shaping the current as it carries you.”
Sure, Kai, and even you, might hit the water in a belly flop instead of a graceful dive. But the first step does not have to resemble the last. Remember that. A fumble is not a photograph.
Right now, the next moment of his life feels like Schrödinger’s cat. Every version of what might happen is sealed inside a box he is not allowed to open yet. His brain acts like it already knows the ending.
The cat is dead.
The message is bad.
The conversation explodes.
He would rather believe in a terrible certainty than sit in the truth that he does not know. That feels powerless, helpless, unsafe.
People talk about flexibility like that is the assignment.
“You just need to be more flexible.”
Inside, it is not about flexibility, not really.
His nervous system has one question:
Am I going to feel safe, or am I about to be
overwhelmed and stuck there?
What he ultimately wants is not for life to stop changing.
He wants some sign that, when it changes, he will not be
swallowed whole, that his body has a way back to calm.
Safety, for Kai, lives in “knowing now.” He wants a script. What will happen, when it happens, how long it lasts, and what he is supposed to do. That is the only thing that really soothes him.
The future cannot give him a heads up.
Time does not email an agenda. So his brain reads the silence as danger,
his chest tightens, and his thoughts start sprinting in circles,
trying to get answers from a box that only opens when it is ready.
On the outside, this looks small. A pause before he answers. A blank stare. A sharp “I can’t” when someone says, “Relax, it will be fine.” Inside, he has already walked to the cliff, felt the drop in his stomach, argued with gravity, fallen into the river, braced for the belly flop, and buried the cat in the box that has not even opened yet.
This concert of catastrophe unfolds in about thirty seconds.
This is what high anxiety around uncertainty looks like inside Kai’s nervous system before a single word leaves his mouth.
If all others see is the hesitation, the shutdown, the stubbornness, the “inflexibility,” they miss the sheer courage it takes for him to take one more step, stay in the room, and let the box open.
Kai takes a breath that feels too shallow and says, out loud,
“Hang on, my brain is spinning. Can you walk me through what happens next?”
Or,
“I want to be here. I need to know the steps so my brain does not sprint off the edge.”
Sometimes he asks for time.
“Give me a minute to catch up. I am not saying no. I am saying I am overwhelmed.”
Sometimes he asks for structure.
“What are we doing, how long will it take, and what do you need from me?”
From the outside, these sound like simple questions. On the inside, they are life rafts. Every sentence he manages to say is a way of reaching for safety instead of drowning in prediction.
For Kai, self-advocacy is not a speech. It is a few shaky words dragged through a throat that would rather shut down. It is choosing to tell the truth about what his nervous system needs, even when the room does not get it.
Everything you just read, from the first flicker of the cliff to the moment he finally speaks, fits into those same thirty seconds.
So when someone like Kai says, “I need a second,” believe them.
You are not watching stubbornness. You are watching a nervous system walk itself back from the edge, one honest request at a time.
Thanks for being you,
Brian
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