Guest Post by Dr. Haniya Jamshed Khan
I’m excited to introduce today’s guest blogger, Dr. Haniya Jamshed Khan, a dentist and maxillofacial surgeon with a passion for neurodivergency. In this post, she opens up about her own neurodivergency and shares her journey through dentistry and life. Enjoy her perspective, and feel free to engage in the comments!
When I was in prep class (a preparatory school year before formal schooling, if that’s still a thing), my teacher once drew a spaceship with an astronaut looking outside the circular window with long hair and a smiley face longer than any smiley face I made in my life, on my test and pointed at it, saying,
This is you. Because I know you love the planets and stars.
She told me I would be big someday, and though I didn’t quite understand what she meant at the time, those words stayed with me.
Fast forward twenty years—I was sitting on the front door stairs of my grandma’s home while she examined my palm as if it held secrets to the universe. A poet, former politician, radio presenter, and a doctor specializing in gynecology, my grandmother had seen it all. She looked at my hands and said,
“You are definitely going to be like me. I see you going abroad and achieving things bigger than yourself.”
Usually, I don’t believe in this palmistry woo-hoo but when someone like her makes a prophecy, you take it seriously.
While my friends were obsessing over the latest Barbie doll or a typical Pakistani drama on Pakistan Television, I was far more captivated by space and the cosmos (still am, to be honest). But as I grew older, my curiosity shifted to something just as infinite and mysterious—the human brain. Maybe it was because, by the fifth grade, I started noticing that my experiences, thoughts, and reactions felt… different.
By ninth grade, I began to truly fear my mind because I knew it worked differently. My peers didn’t cry when their parents left them on the first day of school, nor did they spiral into existential dread or feelings of utter worthlessness when things went wrong.
Meanwhile, I was catastrophizing like a drama queen on a Shakespearean stage. To be or not to be? More like not to be at all.
It wasn’t until after dental school that I was diagnosed with AuDHD (Autism and ADHD). At first, I dismissed it—Nah, no way. I’m too high-functioning for that. The media had fed me a stereotype that didn’t match my reality.
“Stereotypical white person. Eyes down to the ground, shouting, throwing tantrums.”
That wasn’t me. I had mastered eye contact, albeit awkwardly, and had figured out ways to escape when noises and people overwhelmed me.
Clearly, my psychiatrist was mistaken, or worse, my online therapy session was a scam. But as I sat alone in a new country, trying to rebuild my life, I realized—he was right. While my classmates thrived in clinics, I found solace in my cozy room, playing Dungeons & Dragons or nerding out over theoretical neuroscience. Dentistry was supposed to be my calling, but my passions seemed to be playing a cosmic game of hide-and-seek.
I aced theoretical discussions but struggled with hands-on clinical work. My peers were exhilarated by clinics; I found comfort in textbooks and character sheets. The more I forced myself to love dentistry, the more I felt like I was drifting further away from it.
To be fair, I never set out to be a dentist. I wanted to be a surgeon. But to be a maxillofacial surgeon, I had to first cross this vast, scary lake called Dental School.
Easy peasy, right? Wrong.
“You’re destined for great things,” people told me. So why did I feel like an imposter? Why did every step forward feel like an uphill battle?
By the time I hit dental school, my anxiety was at an all-time high. Clinics were my battlefield, and I felt like a soldier without armor. I remember one particular night before an internship when I had to perform a simple tooth filling. I couldn’t stop crying because my brain bombarded me with worst-case scenarios. Even as I picked up the filling material, my mind raced through What-Ifs City at a million miles per hour.
My instructor’s eyes bore into me, assessing. My classmates moved with confidence, while I drowned in self-doubt. The weight of perfectionism pressed down on me so hard that I switched to autopilot. I completed the task but learned nothing from it. I don’t even remember what I was doing until my friend nudged me, letting me know it was her turn.
That moment summed up my struggle—wanting to excel but being paralyzed by fear.
Looking back, my struggles didn’t start in dental school. As an army kid, I was constantly yanked from one school to another, forced to restart my social life like a glitchy video game character. My classmates adapted; I cried, overwhelmed by the sheer chaos of change. No one understood my need to control everything—my obsession with predicting outcomes, my deep fear of the unknown.
That fear followed me into adulthood.
Clinics became my battlefield, and anxiety was my greatest enemy. The night before every clinical session in third year, panic attacks became my twisted bedtime routine. My brain screamed: What if I mess up? What if I’m not good enough? What if my hands shake? (Yes, my overthinking was that dramatic.)
And the worst part? I knew these thoughts were irrational. But that didn’t stop them from feeling real.
Despite it all, I learned to push forward. Overthinking never protected me from failure—it only delayed progress. So I made a pact with my brain:
Do the thing now. You can cry about it later.
This became my mantra. And guess what? It worked. I remember using it right before applying for a scholarship in the UK for a dental program and before interviewing for a major digital ed-tech company. My hands shook, my mind screamed at me to run, but I whispered, Do the thing now, panic later.
I pushed through. I did better than expected. Those moments solidified my trust in this mindset—fear would always be there, but so would my ability to push through it.
Another game-changer was brain-dumping, but not in the traditional sense. I hated rereading old journal entries (too much secondhand embarrassment), so I invented Brain Dump 2.0—venting on paper but attaching actionable steps. No more wallowing. Every failure became a lesson.
Above all, I held onto faith—faith in Allah and faith in my own stubbornness. Trust in Allah kept me grounded when anxiety tried to sweep me away. Even when things felt like a disaster, faith reminded me that everything had a purpose. Every panic attack, every setback—it was all part of the bigger picture.
Plus, I’m incredibly stubborn (a trait my dad loves to hate). “You should’ve been a lawyer,” he says. Well, maybe. But this stubbornness keeps me pushing forward.
Today, as a neurodivergent former dentist and year 2 maxillofacial surgeon, I still battle anxiety and overthinking. But I’ve learned to analyze them, process them without guilt, and navigate them. I don’t have to control everything—I just have to try. If things go well, great! If not, I pivot. There are always multiple paths to any destination.
To anyone feeling the same way: You are not alone. Trust yourself, take the leap, and have faith that you’ll find your way—just like I am still finding mine.
Because guess what? Ya girl is still going—just like that little astronaut my teacher drew all those years ago, still reaching for the stars, still floating through the cosmos of life, figuring things out one orbit at a time.
Haniya Jamshed Khan
Thank you so much for this lovely article, Haniya, I really appreciate you sharing your story, and I’m sure this article will help many others out there in the world.
Christina
This is for you my sweet pea. Take care
Regards
Jamshed Mukhtar
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
By Robert Frost
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Robert Froast
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