{"id":458,"date":"2025-07-21T19:41:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T02:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/?p=458"},"modified":"2025-07-21T20:56:56","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T03:56:56","slug":"neurodiversity-journey-recognition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/21\/neurodiversity-journey-recognition\/","title":{"rendered":"neurodiversity journey: recognition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Now that I am coming to understand my own neurodivergence, from the inside, (my punch card is getting full! It’s pretty clear I have autistic traits, in addition to ADHD, aphantasia, and proprioception hyposensitivity. Hurray!), I understand some of my differences as gifts. My inner blindness reroutes my visual processing through my language system\u2013words are literally my way of visualizing. So whereas someone who visualizes might just enjoy the picture in their mind, I must make words, and I must share them for my inner world to become real. And although I do not have access to visual memory, I have a strong inner sense of space: I can feel inside myself places I’ve been, and tell you about the contents of those spaces\u2013so if I point, and you can’t see what I’m pointing at, I’m pointing at something inside of myself, relative to my position in that space. I can smell these spaces, and tell you about those smells, and my reaction to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share my language, from within the heart of my sensory and cognitive differences, exactly because<\/em> people like RFKjr are spreading a dangerous lie: that autism is a disease, it is on the rise, and that it can be cured. And by association, because there is no magic data point that defines autism specifically and definitively (we are instead compiling lists of “tendencies” and comparing them lists of “norms”) people with other sensory and cognitive differences are in danger of being subjected to this cure as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imagine: we could be living in a world free of Beethovens, free of VanGoghs, free of Newtons and Robin Williamses, free of Dogens and Temple Grandins and Einsteins, free of Soyen Shakus and Ryokans and Yayoi Kusamas, free of Greta Thunbergs and Hannah Gadsbys and Emily Dickinsons, free of Darwins and Joyces and Yeatses and Wittgensteins and Hans Christian Andersens and Susan Boyles and Blaise Pascals and Darryl Hannahs. Free of quirky-but-gifted people who connect directly with those they love, and are all around us, and always have been.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Humanity is not a collection of individuals: no individual ever did anything\u2013we are a social species who has been so successful because we are so varied and so cooperative. People with sensory and cognitive differences are not diseased. In the vast, collective human body, we are specialists. Sometimes our specialties have us engaged in processing experience in ways that make us seem hard to understand and asocial, when in fact we are solving problems others are not even aware exist. Our affect appears flat because our nervous systems are wired for something else besides satisfying others’ need for affirmation through tone and facial expressions\u2013we are wired to respond to a different set of impulses. We are the ones whose acute hearing warns the community of danger; we are the obsessives who figure out how to get nourishment out of a plant that is toxic until it is beaten and soaked and rinsed and soaked and mixed with ashes and soaked and rinsed and dried and cooked; we are the ones who create new language for the inner world of those who cannot speak, and in doing so make them human, acceptable, and hopefully valued in the community of humanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hopefully you’ll connect with some of this language\u2013it will remind you of something you already know. Hopefully you recognize that a world free of autistic traits would be a dismal place indeed. Hopefully some of this language will land with you, and hopefully you will spread it\u2013it is open source and free to use, and it was created by observing you in action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks for listening. Having heard, warn the community of danger, in all of the ways you know how.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

May all beings recognize their true nature. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every day is neurodiversity awareness day. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that I am coming to understand my own neurodivergence, from the inside, (my punch card is getting full! It’s pretty clear I have autistic traits, in addition to ADHD, aphantasia, and proprioception hyposensitivity. Hurray!), I understand some of my differences as gifts. My inner blindness reroutes my visual processing through my language system\u2013words are … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[29,27,28,8,14,26,15,9,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chronicle","category-didactics","category-ethos","category-literature","category-neurodiversity","category-personal-narrative","category-politics","category-reflection","category-zen"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paor1p-7o","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":563,"url":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/11\/how-do-i-love-thee-sonnet-43-by-elizabeth-barrett-browning-1806-1861\/","url_meta":{"origin":458,"position":0},"title":"How Do I Love Thee? 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They are not trying to be difficult--they are just working with the operating system they were born with. Making peace with the world involves a certain cognitive load, as the brain struggles to create new pathways to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "chronicle"","block_context":{"text":"chronicle","link":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/category\/chronicle\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":308,"url":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/03\/neurodiverse-teams\/","url_meta":{"origin":458,"position":3},"title":"Neurodiverse Teams","author":"Ryk Groetchen","date":"June 3, 2025","format":"aside","excerpt":"See folks, I'm not just making this stuff up. Neurodiverse teams are significantly better at solving complex problems than neurotypical ones. I'm convinced that we evolved together because we actually need each other. A co-emergent strategy that has, for better or worse, made us very prolific as a species. I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "neurodiversity"","block_context":{"text":"neurodiversity","link":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/category\/neurodiversity\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":438,"url":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/29\/waiting-for-yes\/","url_meta":{"origin":458,"position":4},"title":"Waiting for yes","author":"Ryk Groetchen","date":"June 29, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"\"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.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "chronicle"","block_context":{"text":"chronicle","link":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/category\/chronicle\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/img_0336-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/img_0336-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/img_0336-1.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/img_0336-1.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/img_0336-1.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":486,"url":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/26\/framing-is-everything\/","url_meta":{"origin":458,"position":5},"title":"framing is everything","author":"Ryk Groetchen","date":"July 26, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Neurodiversity is the new (different! better!) cognitive frame. Astrology, Enneagram, Meyers-Briggs, Chinese medicine, naturopathy, homeopathy: having passed through these modalities, none of them made me feel seen in the ways that they were implemented by the particular practitioners who applied them to me. 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