Saying it again and again

That thing about being Neurodivergent in a Neurotypical World

I really do value consistency in others. Those whose energy and responses are predictable. Who look similar from meeting to meeting, whose hair and style rarely changes (I have prosopagnosia, which means I struggle to remember faces).

However, to my own disappointment, I am not as consistent as I would like myself. I chameleon into different environments and people. Caffeine, hormones, energy levels, busyness, the moods of others, the weather and a hundred other things impact my internal and external weather.

No wonder I’ve found comfort in Buddhist classes which, if I were to summarise, consist of teachings saying “EVERYTHING CHANGES PEOPLE. DEAL WITH IT. KINDLY” in a myriad of ways.

In the past couple of months I’ve been significantly busier than usual because of doing events for my two new poetry books. One of the books was planned, the other was a commission and so has coincided with the other.  I used to be this busy all the time, before the pandemic. My baseline is now very different. It is much gentler. In this time of busy, I’ve remembered what it is to have very little time to process an event before moving onto the next one.

Many of them are very intense events. I’m drawn to those. The ADHD part of me. Needing all that dopamine. Performing my poems and talking to an audience. Hearing afterwards how they have been impacted by my words. Recently more people have been saying that they don’t get to hear their neurodivergent experiences reflected elsewhere and certainly not positively. I love to hear that my work is doing something useful.

Sometimes afterwards I have felt hypocritical. When I’m aimlessly sitting in my flat and my brain is too fogged to concentrate on something and too restless to rest. I think “Shouldn’t I have cracked this by now? This overwhelm. Shouldn’t I have efficient self-soothing, re-spooning strategies? If I’m some sort of example?”. It’s funny the brain worms that can climb in. I don’t really think I’m presenting myself as an example. But as very much a work in progress. Maybe the fact that there are still relatively few of us out there talking about being neurodivergent outside of the pathologising medical model does make me want to show what it’s like to have “cracked it” nonetheless. Even without wanting to tip over into the “Super Powers” narrative of neurodivergence which is just as damaging as the “Broken” narrative. Like most of us, I am muddling through. Sometimes effectively and sometimes not.

That’s why any space which allows us to know “It’s not just me” is so powerful. Again, I’ve been having some lovely feedback recently about the podcast I host with Nic King (Click via the link just there- but it’s available on all the usual platforms). Very much people saying it makes them feel less alone. When we started it, I didn’t know how many conversations we’d be able to have. I thought maybe we’d cover some big topics and run out. But we keep adding to the list. And it’s often the little topics that connect with people. How you choose where to sit in a theatre. Ordering your coffee. Literally everything can be seen and done through a neurodiversity lens - but often that’s not the lens the other people around us are looking with. The podcast will be going out weekly on Thursdays from now on and we’ve had a proper photo taken together and come up with a tagline which reflects the tone of it (Though I realise it will make some sense to British listeners who will understand it to mean “Down to earth and upbeat” but may not translate beyond that; “Two Northern lasses talking Neurodivergence”).

There was a bit of irony to the day of our photo shoot because it was in the offices of the lovely social media company who produce it. I’d had a weekend of two gigs and running a writing workshop, several journeys, many people and some stress. Now I was in an office of six people talking at once and a radio playing in the background. Luckily there were two office dogs who I made a fuss of and who became my temporary Emotional and Sensory Regulation Dogs. But what I most needed that particular week was to lie down in a darkened room and not do anything. It took me several days to do that- and then it did have the miraculous effect of restoring me for a while.

Like the Buddhist classes which need to reiterate over and over again: “BE NICE, NOTHING LASTS” to people who need to hear it again and again, I suppose I’ll need to hear and say “You’re Neurodivergent in a Neurotypical World and that’s okay” over and over again too. And that’s alright. I’ll keep doing it here too, for whoever else needs to hear.