Carrie Connects | Saturday, June 20, 2026 | Men’s Mental Health Month and Pride Month Most people spend their whole lives building a performance. Coach Lee Hopkins spent his perfecting one, and then realized it never actually fooled anyone. On Saturday’s episode of Carrie Connects, Coach Lee Hopkins, a social connections coach for AuDHD and neurodivergent professionals and the founder of Patterns Of Possibility LLC and the Social Connection Summit, said something that landed in the room like a stone dropped in still water. Looking back, I do not think any of it worked. I was found out all the time. He was talking about the years he spent hiding to fit in. The small talk he forced. The questions he asked that came out too deep and too soon. The drinking at bars because that is what television told him people do to make friends. He thought he was getting away with it. He was not. And the loneliest part was believing the performance was working for everyone else and failing only for him. Hiding Was the Whole Story When Coach Carrie asked him what he wanted to talk about, his answer was simple and brave: how hiding to fit in has left him lonely. It is a rare thing to hear a man say out loud, and he did not soften it. He described hiding so many parts of himself so other people would like him. He named it directly on air, saying that even in this conversation he would be hiding if he did not share that he is a transgender man. He talked about being one of only two Black people in his corporate department, about masking at work, about being interested in art and reading while the culture around him expected something else entirely. It is very scary. So that is why you do not hear many people saying it. People are living that truth for themselves right now. The Discovery That Turned His World Upside Down Coach Lee was late-identified as autistic, and he is careful with his language about it. He describes himself as self-identified rather than formally diagnosed, and he treats that as an experience in itself. When the understanding came, it reframed his whole past. Suddenly the years of not knowing what to say in the office, of not caring about the small talk everyone else seemed to manage, of feeling like he could not connect on that level, all made sense. He said he appreciates the depth of a real conversation more than any small talk, and that this too is something he discovered about being autistic. Why the Coping Did Not Work He was honest that the coping mechanisms he built never delivered what he wanted. The forced small talk did not get him invited anywhere. The questions meant to build connection came across as invasive, and he could not see it happening. Even therapy, which he values, taught him about his own feelings but never taught him how to start a conversation, how to end one, or where to go to find people worth connecting with. And the drinking, the karaoke, the bars, all of it came from a script he absorbed from every show he ever watched about how people make friends. It did not work. When he tried to talk about something real, the people around him could not meet him there. He walked away feeling like he was the problem. Everybody else in the bar had a great connection. It was just me. Everybody else at work had a great connection with their coworkers. It was just me. Where the Shame Comes From Coach Carrie asked him where that shame begins. His answer was direct: it does not start with us. Somebody taught us to be ashamed. Somebody handed us the cookie cutter mold, the vision of college and the job and the relationship and the house and the two and a half kids and the dog and the white picket fence. And when you cannot make that vision fit, you are left believing you got the same message everyone else got and somehow messed it up. He named the lie underneath it plainly: I am different, and I am broken because I am different. His way through it was to lean in, to use therapy to unpack the shame and guilt and embarrassment, and then to take that new sense of self out into the world. I am going to have compassion for the past self who did not know these things. And I am going to love the new person I am. Find Your People This is where his story turns. His phrase is find your people. Not be more social. Not just anyone. Your people. Being in the wrong room, he said, is draining, because you spend all your energy performing and you get nothing back. As someone with autism and ADHD, he knows exactly how much energy goes into processing a room and ruminating over a conversation afterward. His advice for finding the right room is refreshingly concrete: do something completely different. Do not just switch to a new bar. Go to a comedy club, take a class, go for a walk, sit in a coffee shop and watch people. When you put yourself somewhere new and let your authentic self show up, the right people come to you. He also prepared people for what happens when they do show up as themselves. You get one of three reactions. Some people will say where have you been, we have been waiting for you. Some will simply pass you by, and that is fine, you are just not their flavor. And some will be upset with you for being yourself. He calls the skill of telling them apart discernment, and it is the thing that lets you know who is for you and who is not. Three Identities, One Person, Every Room June is both Men’s Mental Health Month and Pride Month, and Coach Lee lives at the intersection of both as an autistic transgender man. He admitted that for a long time he struggled with celebrations of any single identity, with Black history, with Pride, with neurodivergence, because he felt he had to fit neatly into one box for each and he never quite did. His resolution was to stop choosing. He brings all of his identity into every space. He described going out for Juneteenth in a shirt that read autism, just a different frequency, and being welcomed, dapped up, and drawn into real conversation by his community. That is the whole point of the Social Connection Summit, the place where those intersections meet. If you are really living your authentic self, there is no need to hide under just one identity. If you are all of it, your people will love you. What He Wants You to Hear Coach Carrie asked what he would say to someone who keeps telling everyone they are fine while hiding a part of who they are. His answer was tender and practical. Come out when you are ready, on your own time. Saying it out loud to another person is hard, harder than thinking it, because once you say it you have to live with having said it. So he offered tools. Journal it. If writing is hard, record a video of yourself saying your truth out loud, or leave yourself voice notes. The point is to get it out of your head and make it real. And above everything, he was clear about one thing. Please remember that your safety is number one. There is no shame in keeping yourself safe. Watch the Full Episode This article is a summary. The full conversation goes deeper, including a powerful exchange with a viewer about what exclusion really feels like, Coach Lee’s thoughts on listening as an art most people never learn, and his take on meeting people in person versus virtually. Watch the full episode on Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Substack, Twitch, and Instagram. Search Carrie Connects or find the replay on any platform where the show airs live every Saturday at 2 PM CST. If someone in your life has been hiding to fit in, share this with them. It might be the permission they have been waiting for. Connect with Coach Lee Hopkins 🛜 🌐 Website: patternsofpossibility.com 💼 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/coachleehopkins 🤝🏾 Social Connections Summit: socialconnectionssummit.com Coach Carrie Willis | Gr8Finances | A Clarity From The Heart Production Confusion is expensive. Clarity pays for life. Coach Carrie Willis | Gr8Finances | gr8finances.com Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. Get full access to Clarity from the Heart™ at gr8finances.substack.com/subscribe
