What is currently missing from the neurodiversity movement

There is a dark undercurrent within the booming neurodiversity and mental health market in general and that is a reluctance to accept that some people do not want to move away from their pain or they want to do it on their own terms. This essay intends to demonstrate how the messaging within the neurodiversity movement from publishers and advocates might not appeal to the neurodivergent, as it lacks any real attempt to understand and communicate their pain.

Two of the biggest book publishers that openly publish neurodivergent books, Jessica Kingsley and Neurodiversity Press are solely involved in positive narratives, stories of acceptance and overcoming, and guides to living as neurodivergent. The message, therefore, is about change and transition to an ideal created by other people. Adults, particularly those who were late diagnosed, will have spent time reflecting on pain and grievances experienced throughout their entire life (Lupindo et al., 2023). This is personal to them, these experiences have shaped who they have become, and so literature that is asking them to accept an ideal that was based on somebody else’s experience might not appeal to them; from a business perspective, this is isolating a key section of the market. However, negative narratives and aversive experiences might be of greater appeal because they do not claim there is something better and do not beggar the need to change – in other words, there is an honesty to them and they are more relatable. There is power in knowing that other people have had similar experiences, which leads to solidarity and community (think the ‘Me too’ movement).

The neurodiversity movement has gained enough of a foothold now that businesses that have historically been reluctant to recruit and promote the neurodiverse (Austin & Pisano, 2017) are now willing to use its language (Krzeminska et al., 2019), there is now a flourishing market for memoir and self-help from neurodiverse perspectives, and neurodiverse influencers (whether neurodiverse or not) can eke out a living. The neurodiversity dollar has become lucrative, which on the one hand means there is more neurodiversity messaging to more people, but on the other hand this type of messaging will have to be protected to assure profitability.

This means the common messaging is likely to remain the same. Stories about a person’s life struggle and how they overcame adversity will be extremely popular. Messages about perceptual differences between the neurodiverse and neurotypical can be played for both education and comedic effect. Days can be put aside to flaunt colored ribbons and donuts can be brought into the office. 5Ks can raise money for the cause. In fact, marketing is often intimately related to hope (MacInnis & Chun, 2007) All of this is good for business without really having to do anything that genuinely addresses the grievances of the neurodivergent (there is no attempt to understand or empathize with personal pain and no mention of plans to design a new business model to address neurodivergent ways of working).

As with all social movements, messaging about systemic change or requests to understand or acknowledge a person’s pain will not last long within popular messaging. These things cannot be marketed and will not result in an immediate profit, in fact they will cause an immediate loss. Systemic change to address the root cause of neurodiverse suffering would require new business models and ways of working that permit the neurodiverse to work in ways that assist them. Experiencing the pain of others through an empathic response is by its nature a willful act of feeling bad, which conflicts with the do-gooding nature of the cause. This means the neurodiversity movement runs the risk of being relegated to a banal industry that allows a handful of individuals to turn a profit.

The level of understanding and education required for legitimate change often proves too much and there is no money to be made in trying, and so we are left with the same sometimes humorous sometimes educational, but always censored and saccharine messaging.

This can be problematic if there is intent within the messaging to share advice, as what we tend to find is advice with no understanding. In the context of strangers meeting, and one person reading a brief description of the other’s issues, there is not enough information to then proceed with advice or a solution. Neurodivergent people have often stated time and time again that they feel misunderstood (Beck et al., 2024; Pavlopoulou et al., 2025; Banks et al., 2024) Without knowing a person or the series of events that led to the description of the problem, advice should not be forthcoming unless asked. There is a cost to offering advice when the topic is as personal as somebody’s life, and the cost is investing time and understanding on a 1:1 basis. If issues are shared by somebody for the first time, there is a strong possibility the person is looking for recognition and solidarity instead. Offering advice in this context could insult the intentions of the person sharing their issues.

If we do not want to feel the pain of others and we want to offer our advice with no understanding (things that are currently fostered by popular neurodiversity messaging), how can we ever really understand the pain of the neurodivergent?

Our willingness to understand the pain of others remains a crucial question within our collective morality. This is not a comfortable place to be. Depression and anxiety are contagious (Abdelhadi et al., 2025; Joiner & Katz, 1999; Huang et al., 2024). One reason that we should all take a moment to celebrate good therapists is that they have opened themselves up to endure the pain of others despite the mental and emotional challenge. Advice and help come with a toll; if you want to provide them, you need to put the work and time in first, in much the same way that parents of young children are loathe to take advice from people who have no children. However, the answer is simple. Instead of offering advice, offer understanding and solidarity.

The pain of others can be remarkably complex.

If a person has endured a life of pain and suffering, in all the myriads of ways that those things are possible, it will have shaped who they are, how they think, and how they respond to others in the present (Schwaller & Fitzgerald, 2014). When observing pain and suffering in others there can be a well-intentioned drive to try to help and try to lessen their experience of these negative emotions. If the person is experiencing immediate threats to their survival and are openly pleading for help, a response is perhaps obvious – help them to get away from danger. But if there is no immediate threat but they have a long and complicated history of negative experience, a lot more time and effort is required to get to know the person (and only if they want to get to know you).

For the person who has endured a life of pain and suffering, even if they are trying to minimize those experiences in the present, so much of what they know about life and living has been learned through their painful experience. A study in the UK that used data collected over 40 years found that those diagnosed with an internalizing disorder (anxiety or depression) in adolescence had an odds ratio of 9.5 times more likely to have a mental disorder in adulthood compared to those adolescents with no internalizing disorder (Colman et al., 2007). Pain stays with them and becomes a part of their pathology.

This can ironically cause a repetition of pain and suffering because those things form a strong part of what the person knows about themselves (Bowins, 2010). In addition, it is not uncommon for humans when developing a familiarity with their circumstances to create schemas, plans for enduring adversity and coping mechanisms, to function during such times. This means that if pain and suffering are common, the schemas and ways of dealing with life will have been heavily informed by the pain and suffering (Riso et al., 2006).

However, it doesn’t stop there. Pain shapes us. It trains us. And we end up in a relationship with it (we use attention and emotion to modulate our pain: Coghill et al., 1999). If our pain defines us, it is conceivable that we might not know who we are without it. Pain then becomes instrumental in how we see and maintain ourselves. This phenomenon has been well documented throughout history when exploring sadomasochism. The necessity for pain is achieved either by inflicting or receiving pain with others or inflicting it on oneself. The relationship a person has with pain should be of concern to any therapist, especially if there is the possibility of violence against others or themselves, but a person’s relationship to their pain need not be tied to violence.

A life with (at least) periodic depression and questions of self-worth are also likely to encourage questions about individual existence (as the person sees themselves an ill-fit for the world) and thoughts of death. These thoughts do not have to be planning suicide or suicidal ideation, but thought experiments to discover their worth in life. Thoughts of death quickly become metaphor for absence of friends, family, or meaningful relationships; it can also symbolize the person’s failure (to themselves) of trying to “fit in” or function in society. As these thoughts persist, thoughts about death could become a key part of coping mechanisms. For example, the neurodivergent often experience sensory overload (Strömberg et al., 2022), which can lead to burnout, and the extended need for sensory deprivation and solitude. To retreat to a quiet and dark place to rest mirrors the act of dying; living, by contrast, can be seen as the toleration of sensory input. If death has already been a common thought, pairing it with the need for rest due to its similarities will start to welcome more of these death-related thoughts. Resting from burnout is strongly welcomed by the neurodivergent and so thoughts of death become associated with good feeling. This does not necessarily mean they want to die or commit homicidal behavior, rather there is the interest in the macabre, such as enjoying vampire-themed stories, celebrating Halloween, or coping with anxiety by watching horror movies. There is also the embrace of goth culture, by the neurodivergent (Whalen, 2024) and goth metanarratives explore themes of loss, absence, and marginalization, and a common notion within goth culture is to romanticize the idea of becoming a supernatural being isolated from a fearful society, which treats them as a monster (van Elferen & Weinstock, 2015). Whether it is intentional or coincidental, goth culture, then, takes the negative experiences of the neurodivergent and thoughts about death and funnels them into a community with group acceptance.

Ironically, thoughts of death then help the person to live.

Understanding and explaining this complexity about neurodiversity is currently not addressed in neurodivergent literature or books and is certainly not acknowledged in company messaging.  

Neurodivergent people deserve better from groups claiming to represent them. Adult neurodivergent fiction that showcased neurodivergent thought processes through narrative would both educate and entertain. Detailed explanations of coping mechanisms to deal with a difficult world would be enlightening, even if it did make readers squeamish. Yes, there are success stories, but neurodiversity through poor mental health and no support systems also destroys people. These messages are just as important.

Publishers and neurodiversity advocates that claim to care about the people they represent need to make greater efforts to get to know, understand, and communicate the pain of the neurodiverse. If they did this, the personal depth of the neurodivergent would help to give them a more diverse catalogue, expand their market, and help the neurodivergent to feel better represented.   

References

Abdelhadi, I. A., Mohammed, O. A., Babikir, S. K., Bedri, E. A. M. A., & Abdelhadi, A. A. (2025). Is mental health contagious? Depression, anxiety, stress and burnout among Mental health professionals in Sudan. BMC psychiatry, 25(1), 148.

Austin, R. D., & Pisano, G. P. (2017). Neurodiversity as a competitive advantage. Harvard Business Review, 95(3), 96-103.

Banks, A. L., Mainess, K. J., Javaherian, H., & Natsuaki, M. N. (2024). “Very Misunderstood”: Self-Perceived Social Communication Experiences of Autistic Young Adults. Youth, 4(4), 1628-1646.

Bowins, B. (2010). Repetitive maladaptive behavior: Beyond repetition compulsion. The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 70(3), 282-298.

Beck, K. B., MacKenzie, K. T., Kumar, T., Breitenfeldt, K. E., Chang, J. C., Conner, C. M., ... & Mazefsky, C. A. (2024). “The world’s really not set up for the neurodivergent person”: Understanding emotion dysregulation from the perspective of autistic adults. Autism in Adulthood.

Coghill, R. C., Sang, C. N., Maisog, J. M., & Iadarola, M. J. (1999). Pain intensity processing within the human brain: a bilateral, distributed mechanism. Journal of neurophysiology, 82(4), 1934-1943.

Colman, I., Wadsworth, M. E., Croudace, T. J., & Jones, P. B. (2007). Forty-year psychiatric outcomes following assessment for internalizing disorder in adolescence. American Journal of Psychiatry, 164(1), 126-133.

Huang, C. W., Hu, T., Zheng, H., Wu, Y. L., Li, J. M., Wang, Y. M., ... & Jiang, C. L. (2024). Contagion of depression: a double-edged sword. Translational Psychiatry, 14(1), 396.

Joiner Jr, T. E., & Katz, J. (1999). Contagion of depressive symptoms and mood: Meta-analytic review and explanations from cognitive, behavioral, and interpersonal viewpoints. Clinical psychology: Science and practice, 6(2), 149.

Krzeminska, A., Austin, R. D., Bruyère, S. M., & Hedley, D. (2019). The advantages and challenges of neurodiversity employment in organizations. Journal of Management & Organization, 25(4), 453-463.

Lupindo, B. M., Maw, A., & Shabalala, N. (2023). Late diagnosis of autism: Exploring experiences of males diagnosed with autism in adulthood. Current Psychology, 42(28), 24181-24197.

MacInnis, D. J., & Chun, H. E. (2007). Understanding hope and its implications for consumer behavior: I hope, therefore I consume. Foundations and Trends® in Marketing, 1(2), 97-189.

Pavlopoulou, G., Chandler, S., Lukito, S., Kakoulidou, M., Jackson, I., Ly, E., ... & Wilson, A. (2025). Upsetting experiences in the lives of neurodivergent young people: A qualitative analysis of accounts of adolescents diagnosed with attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder and/or autism. JCPP Advances, e70038.

Riso, L. P., Froman, S. E., Raouf, M., Gable, P., Maddux, R. E., Turini-Santorelli, N., ... & Cherry, M. (2006). The long-term stability of early maladaptive schemas. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 30(4), 515-529.

Schwaller, F., & Fitzgerald, M. (2014). The consequences of pain in early life: Injury‐induced plasticity in developing pain pathways. European journal of neuroscience, 39(3), 344-352.

Strömberg, M., Liman, L., Bang, P., & Igelström, K. (2022). Experiences of sensory overload and communication barriers by autistic adults in health care settings. Autism in Adulthood, 4(1), 66-75.

Van Elferen, I., & Weinstock, J. A. (2015). Goth music: From sound to subculture. Routledge.

Whalen, K. M. (2024). Goth subculture, neurodivergence, and the dark power of changeling narratives. In Heavy Metal and Disability (pp. 162-178). Intellect.

Seeking a mental health diagnosis in your 40s

To be diagnosed later in life with something that has been with you since childhood is a strange feeling.

I was always the kid with asthma, meaning I had bright and shiny inhalers in my pocket. Other kids would recognize that that was my difference, but I got used to it, and assumed as a young child that was the only medical condition that would ever define me. The novelty of having inhalers soon wore off, however, and I was left annoyed that all having asthma really meant was putting restrictions on me that other kids didn’t have to endure. Many years later, because I’m a special kind of idiot, I was determined to smoke to reclaim some autonomy and put my finger up at the world for always telling me what to do.

The teens also saw the arrival of a new nemesis.

Cystic acne. I never knew the name for this at the time, only the mortifying feeling of waking up with massive painful swellings on my face or chest and knowing that it would draw attention to me in public spaces and I was going to be stuck with these swellings for at least a few weeks (which is about a year in teenager time).

Fortunately, as I stepped boldly but naively into adulthood, the severity of my asthma decreased, and the acne, slowly but surely decided not to come back. But there was something else there that refused to budge.

Depression, anxiety, and meltdowns from being sensorily overwhelmed had been there since my early teens and seemed to be getting worse. I naturally assumed they were a part of adolescence and it never occurred to me that the difficulties I was having in school were due to (at least one) mental health challenge. The extreme fatigue, the problems I had focusing, the need for solitude and sensory deprivation, and how rooms full of other students and teachers always felt too much. I came to believe that I just sucked at life and it didn’t matter how hard I tried, things just never seemed to get better.

My first year in college was one of the lowest of my life.

I would find myself awake at 3am in such agony at my own existence. Nothing I seemed to do mattered and it seemed to be well beyond my own ability to fix myself. It might have been a sign of the times, but it never even occurred to me that I might have mental health issues. I hated what I was studying, I hated that I could not seem to connect with anyone, I hated myself for feeling the suffocating depression that I was convinced clung to me like a wet blanket precisely because I was too useless to rescue myself.

Eventually, my experiences at college did come to my aid.

I took it upon myself to change subjects and I fell in love with the act of learning. There is always something to learn and learning itself is an act of transition, giving you more and more access to conceptual worlds that previously would have remained boring and unengaging. I decided to learn to write and moved into a more essay-oriented field, and I now got to read about so many amazing people that influenced the world in unique and captivating ways. Finally, learning and seeking new experiences picked me up and gave me a fighting chance.

Fast forward through a history of many jobs, neglected responsibilities, a lengthened stay in academia, and an accumulating arsenal of coping mechanisms and I arrived in my forties, committed to a diagnostic evaluation for ADHD.

Anyone who has been through this will appreciate the irony of this assessment. You are asked about your ability to sit still, focus, and complete lengthy but boring administrative tasks, while it is incumbent upon you to sit still, focus, and complete a lengthy but boring administrative task. Indeed, the required activity and not the actual assessment itself feels like the actual test.

Still, the task was completed, I was interviewed by a charming psychologist, and a week later a report confirmed what I had perhaps known all along. Yet there is a peace in no longer needing to doubt myself. The “off button” I crave for overactive thoughts could at least now be applied to understanding this facet of my mental health. The explanatory power of a mental health diagnosis is also profound. I have numerous memories of difficult or painful times, which I had not been able to understand. There are times I could not understand why I felt so bad or why certain people had become inexplicably annoyed or angry with me.

Before I was diagnosed, it was common for me to use certain metaphors to describe my experience. For example, when I felt overwhelmed, it felt like my mind had been unrolled and stuck on a spike. Or after a busy meeting with quite a few attendants, it felt like my mind was a smoldering ash heap. The acts of reading and writing have always been soothing for me, because working through sentences makes me feel like my mind is being stitched back together. This next metaphor is a bit labored, but nonetheless true – joining a meeting, asserting myself into the conversation and recruiting my voice to contribute feels like running from the back of an aircraft hangar while I’m tethered to a piece of bungee cord trying to get out through the main door to join the storm outside.

If you have not been diagnosed, and describing your life using these kinds of metaphors has been common, it may very well be something to pursue.

Under the light of my diagnosis, these memories have now started to lose their sting and even though moving forward is not always easy, I at least can do it with greater understanding.

If you’d like to sign up for more writing, you can do so below. Always free. E-mail addresses will always remain confidential.

Psychopaths are neurodivergent too

For many years now, neurodiversity has characteristically recognized those with autism, ADHD, bipolar, Tourette’s Syndrome, synesthesia etc. as being neurodiverse. There does appear to be some understanding that to be considered neurodiverse is not in itself a diagnosis and the term neurodiverse simply means that the person’s way of thinking and behaving (existing) is different to what is currently considered as normal (neurotypical). These are rules that have been created to justify the existence of a social movement to help improve the lives of people who traditionally have been seen as mentally disordered.

Current support and literature about neurodiversity focuses on the struggles of the neurodiverse, and in some cases their caregivers, and advocates for more understanding or provides ideas about how to exist in a world that does not seem compatible with the neurodivergent. There are stories of struggles and how they have been overcome, or in some cases, how they have not. There is resource and there is sympathy, things that would not be present without the neurodiversity movement.

However, this means that anyone who would traditionally be seen as mentally disordered can stake a claim to be neurodivergent. And it is a worthwhile claim to stake because the movement has progressed enough that the neurodiverse now have community and recognition in ways that they did not have before.

The modern study of psychopathy goes back to the early 20th century, when it was studied by Hervey Cleckley, and his thoughts and findings were published in The Mask of Sanity. Coming into to the late 1980s, Robert Hare began an exhaustive behavioral analysis of psychopathy and devised the Psychopathy Checklist, which became the gold standard for diagnosing psychopathy. This list, which was purely devised from understanding and observing behavior, was then used in neuroscience (notability by Adrian Raine), and it was discovered that those the list determined to be psychopathic, also seem to have significant differences in various brain structure and function.

Therefore, a psychopath’s way of thinking and behaving (existing) is different to what is currently considered as normal (neurotypical). They are neurodiverse.

The Song of the Rubik’s Cube

There are millions of unsolved Rubik’s Cubes in the world today.

Sitting in boxes and bags, on shelves, in cupboards, and all with each side sharing segments of the same color. And that isn’t to mention the off brand cubes or the other 3D shapes: the pyramids, the dodecagons and the irregular cubes.

I have no idea how many people in history have solved a Rubik’s Cube, and I am still a little unclear about how messed up it has to be in the first place before you can start the puzzle with honesty, but I imagine the fate is mostly the same – the sides destined to never be of uniform color again, and the very sight of it a reminder of lost time, frustration and blind rage.

Statistically speaking, to solve a Rubik’s Cube cannot be too far removed from having the ability to un-fry an egg or standing on a riverbank and watching the river flow uphill. Yet even with these odds, the market is there because everyone knows that to solve a Rubik’s Cube is a demonstration of intellectual savvy and flexibility, or even genius.

The lust after solving the puzzle is what keeps this market energized even with such an abysmal return on investment. To sell a Rubik’s Cube is to sell a pocket of hope, much like a ticket down at the dog track – but a Rubik’s Cube is for life, not just for Christmas. An unsolved Rubik’s Cube occupies the same amount of space as a solved one.

I presume there are some people in the world that can begin a conversation with, “I solved a Rubik’s Cube once.” But what does that tell us about them? Should we infer that it would be advantageous to enter into some sort of friendship with them? It doesn’t appear to carry the same weight as, “Would you like me to clear out that large briar patch in your garden for you?” or, “I’ll have a word with the mayor and see if he’ll give you permission to raise goats.”

The metaphors that come from millions of unsolved Rubik’s Cubes are harrowing. A Cube on a shelf for five years, ten years, fifty years, unsolved, and destined for a yard sale or landfill. You cannot help but anthropomorphize the Cube and feel sad that it was brutally messed up and nobody was able to solve it. There is an entire population or nation of these Cubes, all disfigured by humans in their search for fame and glory. If the will of the Rubik’s Cube to be whole again was a song, it would deafen us with its sorrow.

There are more Cubes showing uniform color on all sides that were made that way, than were solved. They were made perfect for the very purpose of abuse. To be twisted until each face is no longer recognizable. And on the event of being solved, perhaps they are kept as trophies of luck and/or skill, but human curiosity quickly disfigures and abandons them again.

An unsolved Rubik’s Cube is a constant reminder of failure and then rejection; it wears its shame on its face. The Cube is not permitted to metamorphose, evolve, or rehabilitate, an unsolved Cube in all probability will remain an unsolved Cube, spurned by time and human optimism.

So, the next time you find yourself playing with a Rubik’s Cube, if you’re not crying, then you’re doing it wrong.

The Disintegration of Email

I don't know if it's a reflection of my AuDHD or my age, but I remember when my email inbox used to be a place of interest; now it's just a giant toilet.

When did people switch from emailing to you, to emailing at you? The sender used to have a degree of etiquette and put thought into how the message was relevant to you, now the recipient seems to be accountable for extrapolating meaning from these word salads.

The same thing happened with physical, snail mail. The majority (and sometimes the only) mail received is stuff the recipient didn’t want or didn’t ask to receive, and yet it is still incumbent upon them to empty the mailbox every few days so that more murdered trees can be put in there addressed to the recipient “or the current resident.”

And texting and phone calls seem to be going the same way.

This steady abasement of communication channels is actually important, because the more annoying they become, the more the recipient is trained to ignore them (which kind of defeats the purpose).

Let's go back to cave walls and start again.

The rise, and frankly odd popularity of making informational videos from home

There is something fundamentally weird about a person who sits down before their phone to make a teaching video for complete strangers.

Traditionally, the acts of teaching and learning usually occur within groups. The Ancient Greek philosophers were known to stroll around with their students, engaged in dialogue as a means of sharing ideas and facilitating thinking. At least one member of the group probably had more experience and took on the responsibility of guiding the conversation where they thought it needed to go. As the years rolled by we formalized classrooms, decided who could be in them, and this became a primary method for education. In parallel, it was decided that not all learning should be a discussion, and so some classrooms took on the standard lecture format where rote facts and boredom became the norm. The interesting thing about the lecture format is that it does not care or care to be troubled by what the students think.

The environments where this learning took place, if the learning was considered effective, gained notoriety, and thus society saw the arrival of schools, colleges, and universities, and along with it, traditions, ranking systems, and site-based legends.

The digital age has somewhat eroded the need for set physical environments and telecommunications equipment is now used in abundance to send information to the recipients in completely different locations. There are online meetings for discussion and the lecture format can either be delivered through a meeting platform or simply recorded and accessed later. The jury is still out on whether a shared physical learning environment is necessary for learning. Does it matter if the smell of chalk or dry erasers is not infused with the deodorant and skin care products of tormented students attempting to understand why the Grapes of Wrath is important?

The digital age also allowed for the mass proliferation of marketed teachings. Esteemed experts could be filmed casually walking around on a stage with a slideshow visible on a screen at the back, and the image of a contemporary and cutting edge lecture was complete. This borrows from what the market knows about learning environments – traditional images of school and university classrooms, thus lending it some legitimacy. There is a kind of assumed truth by environment, helping to keep an audience engaged, but also permitting the expert, personality dependent, to pass off a healthy dose of opinion as fact. The completion of these talks is also marketed as some kind of trophy or career milestone, allowing the expert or their affiliated institution to promote themselves, gaining more perceived legitimacy and credibility.

The mass sharing of informational and instructional videos has gone a step further and done away with imagery traditionally associated with school. Given the success and the circulation of these videos, the imagery clearly isn’t needed, neither is the acknowledgement of any credentials. This means that the market for information has evolved and for a younger audience where the imagery of traditional classrooms does not mean anything, different tactics are needed to keep their attention and gain their trust.

Much to the surprise of my Gen X-come-Millennial sensibilities, this means pontificating to strangers from the once private location of your car or home is the preferred environment. Perhaps allowing viewers to see around the periphery of your visage to take in your living quarters invites a level of trust, which bleeds over into the perceived quality of the message? If you can see where a person eats and sleeps and no doubt does other things, maybe their perceived humanity translates to a level of honesty? Yet, even given the intense informality of the setting and the tonal sincerity of the voice, the direction of communication is still one way, but the audience perhaps feels that they could talk to this person if they wanted to under other circumstances, and that’s all that matters? Relatability has become the desired method to take our information and thus gain our truths.

I am sure it is a product of my generation, but I have always felt that one’s private life is special. You interact with the public sphere of life, but then you have your private refuge to recharge in a pressure-free environment. To sacrifice the private in order to gain trust, followers, disciples, etc. just seems sad. However, maybe it does follow a logical progression that social media and telecommunications dissolves what privacy we do have, in addition to it becoming harder and harder for the younger generations to own their own private property in the first place. This makes it easy to sacrifice any they do have.

So here we are. Listening to people mixing their pain with their understanding of life, and sharing it with us from rooms that were initially designed to provide them with privacy while fulfilling basic human needs.

How relatable.

Newspaper Opinion and Criticism

I’ve been fortunate to land a few opinion pieces in various media. One of the joys of being neurodivergent is that you’re quickly asking “what the hell?” of everything!

Facebook isn’t fun anymore

Seattle Times 02/11/2022

The Intrusion of Autocorrect and Auto Responses

Sheffield Star, 02/04/2025

Why the absence of healthy sex verbs in the English language?

The Opinion Pages, 01/02/2025

Now is the perfect time for men to watch more women’s sport

Sheffield Star, 12/09/2024

 Putting a Value on It

Sheffield Star, 06/23/2024

A Contemporary Critique of the British Monarchy

Z Network, 09/12/2023

Polishing the Giant Peach

Sheffield Star, 02/18/2023

Gardeners’ World and its Problem With Wealth

Sheffield Star, 12/10/2022

New Blame the Amygdala Site

After trying out a number of different platforms, and then quite frankly falling behind with life and technology, I have decided to just run my own website. I write both fiction and nonfiction, usually about mental health issues. Many moons ago, much of my writing was about psychopathy and serial killers, which I will still post about. Now, I’d like to share a range of writing and ideas, mostly for the sake of entertainment, but every now and again I will tackle something critical.

I am neurodivergent and a lot of my writing will touch on the struggles I have personally endured. I believe neurodiversity to be a complex topic and we are currently seeing an explosion of neurodivergent culture appear through social and mass media. Like any movement, there will always be disagreement around terminology and what the realistic outcome of the movement might be. These discussions are important and everyone is entitled to their pain and the right to share their experience peacefully with others.

I do think that conditions like ADHD and autism have been radically underdiagnosed and I think we are only really scratching the surface on what neural diversity means between every single individual. I don’t advocate for any particular therapy, only to be informed and learn to think and act for yourself.

I’m far more interested in creating, seeing, and sharing neurodivergent art and writing, because that shit is sexy as hell.