Who is the you? Which is the me? Waitâare there three?
You may find that you see everything one way, just as it is, until one day you question something and have a crisis, and make a big cognitive leap, and then suddenly, there’s another possibility.
You might find that you’re seeing everything a million different ways, completely overwhelmed, until one day, you have to get something done, and you have a crisis, and make a big cognitive leap, and then suddenly, there is only three.
One of you is going to be the me in a conversation with you some time today.
You’ll know, because you will find yourself thinking, âthis personâs thinking is so simplistic,â
or possibly
you will find yourself thinking âthat personâs thinking is so complex.â
Which one will be right?
If we pause, and reflect, and listen, and speak with care, i think you’ll see â(between you and me)â we’re not two, but three.
“Oh, come on Ryk, you’re being so persnickety with language again. Why don’t you just lighten up and hear what we mean, and not worry so much about how we say it?”
Why, thank you for being brave and vulnerable, and for speaking up when you feel the need arise. Here’s the thing: there are a lot, lot, lot of brave and vulnerable people who would speak up just like you did, if they had the language for it. Kids with autism. Neurodivergent kids. Trans kids. Immigrant kids. Kids with trauma. Grieving kids. All kids, really, but especially these kids. Kids whose experience on the inside doesn’t match the words they hear thrown around on the outside.
These kids cannot advocate for themselves, and often asking them to do so results in a painful cascade of expectations that can be paralyzing. Because they want to advocate for themselves. Believe me every part of their nervous system is doing its best to connect in nurturing ways.
If you’ve ever had the experience of “Yes!” upon hearing something expressed in a new way that aligns with your experience, you may be able to recognize the power of language to make one feel connected, in an instant. Like the whole world was waiting for this moment of connection of body, mind, and consciousness. A lot, lot, lot of these kids, our kids, have been waiting for a moment like this for their whole lives.
As we approach the end of Pride month, I recognize that I’ve been awash in a sea of colorful and descriptive language about identity from many angles, and I recognize that so little of it directly connects with my experience. Male is good enough, but only because I’m shy with my self-advocacy around gender. I don’t connect with enby or trans or agender inside, but you know who’s team I’ll be on in a bar fight. I just don’t want to take up all of the oxygen by claiming that space from someone who does feel that “yes” when they hear it.
And I know I’m not straight (damn straight), but bi, gay, queer, aromantic, pansexual (sorry if I left anyone out)ânot quite feeling it on the inside, but definitely who I’m hanging with on the outside. And, not having that big “yes” experience when I hear them, I may seem like I’m not coming when I’m called to advocate or celebrate. It’s not because I don’t want to, but because I don’t always recognize myself.
And ‘othering’ is like that. A lot, lot, lot of people, not just kids, have a big loneliness inside, because as humanity is lining up for it’s various functions, they are not 100% sure about which line is theirs. Maybe they’d rather divide themselves up and be in all the lines. Because they want want want to connect, but the lines of connection are not always clear.
So, in being responsive with my language, I’m being brave and vulnerable, and advocating for that little kid inside who is experiencing life boiling and freezing and rumbling and flowing and ouching and aahhing inside, but hasn’t found the right words to express it. And is waiting waiting waiting waiting endlessly waiting for that moment of “yes.”
Happy Pride Every day is neurodiversity awareness day.
Me: It’s not a condition â it’s a predisposition.
Friend: What is?
My particular nervous system processes my experience through language. I have experiences, and some part of me chews and chews and chews and digests and then out comes a word (this didnât start as a scatological reference, but here we are).
Much of the language around neurodiversity is pathologized. We âhaveâ ADHD, like we âhaveâ the flu. Itâs a condition, like rheumatoid arthritis.
I believe that differences in our sensory processing are just that: differences. Like moods. Or characteristics.
So, being someone who cannot imagine visual imagery, and who has limited fine motor coordination, and who experiences frequent emotional dysregulation (has big feelings), and who is hyperaware of certain sensory environments and hypoaware of others (that all describes me), and in connecting with other people who have similar-but-different experiences, Iâm highly dissatisfied with a lot of the language thatâs out there to describe the traits of people like (yet unlike) me.
It’s Pride month, and on this day, the Supreme Court of the United States voted to allow parents to disenroll their children from classes that include language around LGBTIA+ identity. This is, in effect, re-pathologizing a predisposition (a predisposition is a tendency, a particular personal expression style: so-and-so is predisposed to snarkiness; that dude is predisposed to making puns; this person is predisposed to process their grief through artmaking).
If we don’t have safe language to describe people-as-they-are-predisposed-to-be, then people not only get left out, but they get isolated, shamed, and ‘othered.’ So my ever-chewing brain is always trying to poop out new words to celebrate difference â the collective variation that makes us such a successful species in the first place.
So no, I don’t have a condition, I have a predisposition.
Remember, it was only in 1973 that homosexuality was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and only in 1987 that language around gender dysphoria was removed. So those are the dates that those predispositions were ‘officially depathologized.’ But those actions were not accompanied by a corresponding shift in the language around these predispositions, so they are still existing in the language as if they are ‘conditions,’ (subtly implying that they might eventually go away, like eczema). (Which also describes me, and which comes and goes).
The Supreme Court’s action today is akin to the Catholic Church making heresy of the discussion about heliocentrism in the 17th century. And as someone speaking from the future, I’m telling them: you are idiots who condemn your own people to eternal suffering with your stupid-ass amplification of old-ass outdated viewpoints. F**k y’all.
So yes, depathologize language around difference. Does that answer your question?
Imagine a conversation about a trip to a museum between a person whose instrument of recall includes a detailed cinema projected onto the back of their eyeballs and a person with no access to visual formations at all.
Imagine a conversation about a favorite album between a person who hears symphonies in their inner ear and a person whose sound world is silent until they turn on a switch.
Imagine a conversation about an emotional interpersonal exchange, between a person with no internal monologue, whose descriptions of phenomena are all received and applied, and a person with a vast hum of crafted and iterated dialogue, just beneath the voice.
Imagine a conversation about a trip to the amusement park, between a person whose everyday experience includes frequent aggressive intrusions from textures, temperatures, and smells and a person whose sensory categories are hot, cold, pain, pleasure, and neutral.
We should imagine these conversations, because if we are having conversations, then it’s nearly certain that we are at times speaking across vast and varied sensory processing landscapes in such ways. When you live in a body, it’s easy to think that the world is the world, and everyone has the same sensory frameworkâour different takes on things are just due to our different vantage points and past experiences.
That is just not how it works, sweetie.
I have aphantasiaâthe inability to form internal visual images. If you ask me to visualize an apple, try as I might, eyes open or closed, I have no visual memories to draw from. That being said, I can describe an apple. There is an archetypal apple stored in my body, bringing together the feeling of roundness, the temperature of red, the mass of things that weigh a little less than a pound. I just don’t ‘see’ it.
My visual processing of text is probably due to aphantasia. I experience text as simply a texture on the page until I ‘zoom in’ with my attention. I can only read at the speed at which I could read aloud, as I experience the parsing through my audio and speech mechanisms. I’m not actually moving my lips or throat, but there is a ‘feeling’ that there is activity going on in my speech processing area just beneath the realm of sound production. If I recall something I’ve read, I am actually recalling the conversation I had with the page.
I was talking with someone recently about how we process communication on social media platforms. They were describing how they get overwhelmed very quickly because they feel bombarded by all of the information. I realized that, because I have to zoom in and slow down to parse the text, I stay in the texture realm until I make a judgement that something is worth the high-energy-consumption activity of reading. I’m not so troubled by ads, because they are visually obvious most of the time and I just scroll past them in blur mode. I probably miss a lot this way, but maybe that’s a good thing.
So, while some would call aphantasia a ‘sensory processing deficit,’ it’s also a superpower in certain contexts.
This should not be controversial.
We know through an artist like Stevie Wonder, who is blind, that blindness gives him access to a whole other level of sensory awareness that most sighted people don’t have access to (remember him catching the mic stand?).
Another characteristic of the aphantasiac (cue Flashdance music) is that we tend to be verbose and we rely on our semantic and conceptual memory. So it’s the conversations that are happening in my mental processing that result in my working things out and expressing them through complex symbolic languageâi.e. I express myself through metaphoric and logical language constructions, which in some contexts is a highly valued skill, and it’s ‘because’ of a supposed deficit in my visual processing. Say that five times fast.
Aphantasia, or other sensory blindnesses, are only deficits in the context of comparison to a standard model of competence or awarenessâthe standard model human is expected to have equal sensory aptitude in all of the recognized senses within a certain median range. Anything else is called a deficit. Even though the blindness aspect of processing often results in an increased awareness of non-visual sensory stimuli, our language and cognitive culture will dwell on the deficit.
Disclaimer: I’m going to do a lot of editorializing. This essay is a personal reflection, and so being is only a description of my experience of my senses, and my experience of the differences in expression that I notice when having conversations. If you recognize yourself, and feel yourself represented here in a negative light, don’t let it offend youâwiden your view.
So, if you’re still with me, I’m going to introduce the idea (actually the phenomenon, because if you’ve experienced it, it’s not just an ideaâit’s the law) of neurotypical bias. And, because I’m going through a period of heightened awareness of this, due to my recent diagnosis, I’m going to hold it up as a bugaboo which is at the root of all of society’s problems. I will only be half kidding. Because yeah guys, this is a problem. But it’s a problem that we all can counter with our powers of self-awareness. It’s one of the few of society’s power dynamics that we can actually change by changing our own perspective. And that is powerful.
Ok, lots of chauvinism and stereotyping to come, so hold on.
Our culture positions neurotypical traits as ‘typical’, and deviations from those traits as ‘divergent,’ or statistical anomalies. In my experience, the person or institutional culture that characterizes the neurotypical processing style is more prone to see the deficits in another’s processing style than the advantages that arise from that deficit. It’s not a balanced view. But it is very prevalent, and influences systems of power in various social spaces.
It’s the kind of view that identifies with the better expressions of their own nature while pointing out the negative aspects of those they consider different or ‘other,’ and at the same time claiming the positive aspects of wider cultural expression as their own.
Let’s go back to my own experience. Given that my neurotype is prone to loquacious constructions that draw from logical and conceptual memory processing, my questions and expressions have a certain character. I’m drawing from the information that is made available to me by my wiring and chemistry. Here are a few responses that I am very familiar with:
You’re overthinking it
That’s very creative (with a certain condescending tone)
I don’t understand where you’re coming from. You’re obviously confused
Hmm (silence)
Yet, from my experience, I can have a similar conversation with a person who is sympathetic to my neurotype, and who maybe has an overlapping set of experiences, and they will give very different responses:
I’ve been trying to think of how to articulate that, and you hit it on the head
You’ve given me a lot to think about (with no condescending tone)
Dude! Right?
Let’s come back to this
Here’s the thing: It’s usually the neurotypical response described above that is given by a person in a position of power or authority, relative to mine (in my experience). The second set of responses are more characteristic of people who I would consider peers, or people who actually want to move the conversation forward, rather than codify it.
Here’s my loquacious logical conceptual projection onto the situation. In some way, the neurotypical sensory apparatus, or psyche, recognizes that it is in a kind of middle ground. It recognizes the overlap with others who may be deficient in some ways, yet super-proficient in others. In the giant Venn diagram of sensory awareness, it recognizes its place in the middle. No problem here, as this is just the way of all phenomena.
For whatever reasonâcultural power dynamics, human cognitive bias, economic securityâfrom this center of the Venn diagram, the people and organizations of people who inhabit this sensory space, tend to think that their way, their view, their socio-cultural position, is the right one, and that somehow, a healthy culture is one that reflects exactly its perspective, values, and solutions. In terms of power dynamics, (and I’m describing socio-cultural power, economic power, intellectual power), rather than functioning as a facilitator or hub, a space of connection and intersection, the representative individuals and social organizational units that inhabit this space tend to demand conformity from those that surround them.
And yes, this is a big problem. This intersectional space that could potentially have our backs and bring us together is instead demanding fealty and tribute. Think of a series of overlapping circles. There are forces that are working to include the wider circles. And there are forces that are working to narrow to exclude to wider circles. Neurotypical bias works like this. In demanding conformity, it excludes a big range of color on the spectrum, where it could be operating in a space of great creativity and accommodation, being at the center of the circle regardless of how wide it grows.
So, neurotypical bias is the kind of view that forces those in ‘divergent’ intersectional spaces to conform to their views and values, rather than widening the narrativeârecognizing the privilege of their position and acting to amplify those who intersect with them, making the space bigger for everyone. Do you follow? Have you ever experienced being on either side of this narrative in a workplace? In your home? In some other social space?
Just use my own example of how my perceived deficits result in a certain way of contextualizing the world. Using this idea of ‘people who process visual memory differently tend to express their experience loquaciously through logical and conceptual constructions, rather than literal ones.’ Who might be observed to fall into this category? Shakespeare? Dogen? Whitman? (dare I say it, Jesus?, for you listening in the back). I’m not trying to elevate myself to this realm of cultural relevance, but am just making a straightforward connection, vis-a-vis sensory processing.
If you’ve ever heard a phrase like “if Jesus were alive today, you would reject him,” that rejection would likely be because of neurotypical bias.
And as I listen carefully in the spaces I move through, I so often hear examples of when a wide worldview is condensed and reduced by someone inhabiting that center space, and then that reduction is sold back as reality to a person who actually understands the wider original. Which leads to another thing I notice â that people whose perceptions exist outside of that statistical center space tend to be more open and accommodating (perhaps because they understand the difficulty in changing some people’s minds), while those in the middle tend to be more rigid and attached to their view.
So chew on and consider this, as you try to make sense of the sensory world, and consider how your sense of your senses intersects with the sensory expressions of those you are in conversation with. Consider whether our sensory gaps represent a division, or a widening of, your shared expereience. Are you advocating for a conception you hold that, being the only one you are aware of, makes good sense? If so, you are likely protecting a neurotypical bias. Are you trying to share a part of your experience that is complex and nuanced, using the words that come to mind, knowing that you are doing reality an injustice, but doing your best anyway? You might be widening the world.
And what if we take this even further â that, rather than the typical/divergent binary construction, each of our perspectives could be represented as coordinates in a vast 3-dimensional network, and that, being connected, we actually need one another, depend on one another, nourish one another.
Treading the middle way, don’t be attached to the middle way. Understanding neurotypical bias, widen the narrative, rather than demanding conformity.