Short Stuff: Neurodiversity

Different brains aren't broken brains. They're just running on an operating system the world wasn't built to support. So this week I'm talking about why neurodivergence and mental health are more tangled together than most people realise, and what that actually means for the people carrying it.

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neurodiversity 0:00

Hey, happy Friday to you. It's short stuff day today, but I think you'll find this a useful episode. I've been talking a fair bit on the Patreon podcast lately about neurodiversity, and I wanted to bring the slice of it over here too, because honestly, I think it's relevant to everybody, whether or not you think of yourself as neurodivergent. So what do we even mean by it? So neurodiversity is basically the idea that human brains don't all work the same way, and that this variation is natural rather than being some kind of fault. So it's an umbrella term that covers things like ADHD, autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia, and a few other things. Different brains wired differently. Not wrong, just different. And it's a lot more common than people think. Best estimates put it at somewhere around one in seven people in the uk. So when people say, you almost certainly know someone who's neurodivergent, it is not an exaggeration. The numbers basically guarantee it. Now here's the bit I think really matters. The neurodivergent brain itself isn't a mental health problem. Being autistic isn't a mental health problem. Having ADHD isn't a mental health problem. But the experience of having one of these brains in a world that's almost entirely built around the most common way of thinking, that experience absolutely can become one. And that distinction matters. 'cause if we blur it, we end up trying to fix the wrong thing. And it's worth saying these brains weren't always a problem. Our brains as a species haven't changed that much in a couple of hundred thousand years and we didn't evolve as individuals. We evolved as groups and a group of early humans needed some people whose brains were drawn to risk and novelty, wandering further than everyone else trying the thing that nobody else would try. It needed people who could lock onto one task for hours without losing focus. And it needed the pattern spotters, the ones who noticed things were changing before anyone else clocked it. None of that was a problem back then. These different brains all had a job. It's only once we built classrooms and open plan offices with this very narrow idea of what paying attention looks like that these brains started to look like a fault. I think of it a bit like this. If you're six foot four, that's just how high you are, isn't it? Your height isn't a problem, but if every doorway in the world is built for someone who's five foot 10, your height is gonna cause you grief every single day. You're gonna bump your head. You're gonna learn to hunch, you'll start dreading new buildings 'cause you don't know the ceiling height. And after years of that, you might start feeling pretty rubbish about yourself. Not because being tall is bad because the environment keeps telling you that you don't quite fit. That's why a lot of neurodivergent people end up doing something called masking, which is hiding or suppressing those traits to try and appear more well, typical. To avoid being judged or excluded. And it's exhausting, properly exhausting. 'cause it's constant. It's a real time social performance. Watching everyone else, working out what's expected. Doing that instead of what comes naturally. All day, every day for years. And a lot of people don't even realise they're doing it anymore, especially if they've been doing it since childhood until they completely burn out. So I think the first thing is just understanding the connection. If you've spent years thinking your anxiety is a character flaw and you come to understand that actually a lot of it is this accumulated weight of masking and not quite fitting in, that's a different story and a different story opens up different possibilities. The second is permission, where you can get it, to take the mask off sometimes. Not everywhere. I know that's not always realistic or feels safe, but finding even a few spaces where you don't have to perform lets the nervous system actually rest and a nervous system that gets to rest now and then is a lot less likely to tip into anxiety or depression. I go into a lot more of this on the full episode over on Patreon, including the sort of late diagnosis side of things, which is a whole conversation in itself, particularly for women who get missed for decades. So if any of this has struck a chord or you just fancy more of this sort of thing every week, that's where I am over on Patreon. Anyway, that's your five minutes. Have a great weekend. I'll catch you next time. See ya.