Alcohol was regulating her nervous system, and nobody noticed for years.

TL;DR: Laura Summers spent years masking her distress and drinking to quiet a nervous system she didn't understand, until a late autism diagnosis brought her relief and grief at the same time. Her recovery got steadier once she learned to calm her body without chemicals, starting with her breath.

Hi everyone,

Laura Summers said something during this conversation that I think a lot of high performers will recognize in their own bodies. When suppressing your distress becomes second nature, it gets really easy to end up in a bad situation while acting like everything is fine.

Laura is a counselor and meditation teacher who wrote Supernatural Recovery. She's also a woman with autism who wasn't diagnosed until she was already a clinician. Growing up in the '80s, she was the gifted, musical kid, and the adults around her decided she seemed fine. She started using heavy drugs at 14. Between 16 and 19 she lived through ritual abuse and coercive control, and in college she hit her first burnout and started drinking.

What stuck with me is that she didn't realize she was using alcohol to regulate her nervous system. She only knew she felt awful most of the time, and that drinking made her feel almost okay. Then the physical toll of alcohol set in, and everything fell apart.

The mask hides the alarm

Masking is when people with autism or ADHD take on the persona of the people around them to fit in. Laura said a big part of it is hiding distress, keeping it inside even when it's running high. I know a version of this. After getting in enough trouble in third grade with ADHD nobody had named, I started masking too, trying to be perfect and find the systems that worked.

Nobody can help with an alarm they can't hear, and after enough years you stop hearing it yourself. Laura found her own diagnosis while training to give autism evaluations, because clinicians have to take all the tests first. She scored high on every one. There was relief, because all those hours of crying after movies as a child finally made sense. Right alongside it came grief for the protection she never got.

The bridge you control

Part of her book is about calming your nervous system without chemicals, and she starts with breath. She called it a bridge between your mind and your body. It's the one automatic part of the body you have voluntary control over, so you can slow your breath at will even when your heart rate won't listen. Focused breathing like box breathing also gives an anxious brain something to hold onto besides the thought loop.

I've felt this firsthand. During a breath work session here, grief I hadn't made time for came up, for my dog and then my grandfather. Laura pointed out that in Chinese medicine, grief lives in the lungs.

Laura was clear that regulation doesn't have to be mystical. A walk outside or a weighted blanket can change your internal landscape. Even yawning counts, since in somatic experiencing it's a sign the nervous system is starting to let down. The work is finding what fits your body, because what calms one person can dysregulate another.

For anyone who masks well, the drink or the overwork can pass for coping for years. Learning to hear your own alarm again is where recovery starts to hold.

What distress have you gotten so good at hiding that even you've stopped noticing it?

Laura also gets into energy healing and why she quit social media when she got sober in the full conversation with Laura. New episodes drop every week.Mike and I also get into why the church should be sending people out instead of pulling them in, and how the DARE program backfired, in the full conversation. New episodes drop every week.

My Reads of the Week

Autistic masking is tied to past interpersonal trauma

Pepperdine University researchers surveyed 342 autistic adults for a study published in Autism in Adulthood in June 2024. Higher masking was linked to more past interpersonal trauma and more anxiety and depression, and it tracked with lower self-esteem. The authors go as far as questioning therapies that teach autistic people to mask. It lines up with what Laura described: years of hiding distress made it easier to end up in situations that hurt her.

What a late autism or ADHD diagnosis actually changes

In a qualitative study from the University of Nottingham, published in Autism in Adulthood in July 2024, Blandine French and Sarah Cassidy interviewed 13 late-diagnosed adults alongside seven health care professionals. Participants described diagnosis as the key to finally understanding themselves, while also naming the burden of a label and the importance of being ready. Laura's mix of relief and grief fits right inside those findings.

Breathing exercises hold up for anxiety and stress

A University of South Florida systematic review in the Journal of Holistic Nursing, published in August 2024, looked at 19 studies of breathing exercise interventions in adults. Twelve found significant drops in anxiety and nine found significant drops in stress, with no adverse events reported, though the authors call for larger trials. It's the research version of Laura's point that your breath is the one lever on your nervous system you can pull at will.

Wisdom nugget

ADHD is less a focus problem than a dopamine and self-regulation problem, which is why substances can feel like such an efficient fix. Adult ADHD often stays camouflaged for decades behind coping scaffolding, and substance use quietly becomes part of that scaffolding until the consequences pile up. Awkward Recovery's piece on the ADHD and addiction connection makes the case for getting assessed and treating both at once, so recovery fits the brain doing the work. Read more

Hot Takes

Late diagnosis of Autism (YouTube)

the body keeps the score (YouTube)

sometimes you just need a hug (YouTube)

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Thanks for reading,

Rachel

p.s. If this is our first introduction, hi, I’m Rachel, founder and CEO of Atomic Souls Counseling. I’m a Licensed Professional Counselor Supervisor (LPC-S) and a Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor (LCDC). After years in the trenches as a clinician, I discovered that my real passion isn’t just helping clients heal; it’s helping therapists thrive.

I’ve built Atomic Souls into more than a counseling practice; it’s a place where healing and business intelligence meet. I work with therapists, counselors, and practice owners to help them build sustainable, ethical, and profitable practices. Together, we focus on strategy, systems, and the economics of growth the behind-the-scenes work that allows you to keep showing up fully for your clients without burning out.

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