This three-part blog series explores neurodivergent experience through an ecological lens inspired by David Gray-Hammond’s Ecosystemic Model — following pathways of deep attention, moments of burnout and disruption, and the possibilities of recovery and re-assembly.
Drawing on ideas of monotropism, Deleuzean ideas of rhizomatic becoming and relational care, the series considers how Autistic and ADHD lives are shaped not only by internal differences but by the environments and systems we move within.
Together, these pieces invite a shift away from deficit models toward an understanding of attention, wellbeing and belonging as relational and collective processes and the need to neuroqueer and re-build our worlds.
Part 2: When the Ecology Fractures: Monotropism and Autistic Burnout
Part 3: Autistic Burnout Recovery as Ecological Re-assembly
Neuroqueer pathways of attention, care, and becoming
Many neurodivergent people describe their lives through images of connection. Threads of interest, networks of support, underground support systems (often on-line) that quietly sustain our survival.
Two concepts have emerged for myself over the past few years: the rhizome and the mycelial network.
They may appear similar, both spread sideways, both resist hierarchy, both form connections beyond visible structures.
Yet they may help us understand different dimensions of neurodivergent life.
A useful way to hold this is:
- Rhizome helps us understand how attention moves and meaning forms.
- Mycelium helps us understand how care flows and survival becomes possible.
Monotropism — the tendency for attention to flow deeply into a smaller number of interests — offers an important bridge between these ideas.
Monotropic attention as rhizomatic movement
Monotropism describes how Autistic and ADHD people’s attention is often organised through depth, intensity, and sustained engagement. Rather than spreading evenly across many demands, attention may gather into tunnels of focus that feel meaningful, regulating, and absorbing.
These tunnels do not move in straight lines. They branch, loop, spiral, pause, and reconnect. One interest may lead unexpectedly to another. Knowledge and experiences grow sideways rather than step by step.
This pattern resembles rhizomatic movement.
Learning may begin with a fascination with trains, sensory stimuli, animals, and gradually extends into wider networks of understanding. Identity may also emerge through these pathways, shaped by sensory experience, relationships, and environment rather than fixed developmental stages.
For many Autistic people, rhizomatic attention develops in liminal spaces — between belonging and exclusion, coping and exhaustion, visibility and misunderstanding. Living on these thresholds requires ongoing negotiation of energy and safety, shaping how attention flows and where connection and knowledge become possible.
Rhizomatic becoming is therefore not just a creative exploration, it is also navigation.
It is an adaptation within systems that may not recognise or support monotropic ways of being.
Mycelial care and the ecology of regulation
Rhizomes can help us understand how our attention moves, mycelial networks can help us understand how life can be sustained and become more-than, so we can thrive.
In nature, underground, fungal systems connect organisms through shared pathways of nourishment and communication. Resources move toward areas of stress and these signals travel so that survival emerges collectively.
Neurodivergent wellbeing often unfolds in similar relational ways.
Support may come through:
- shared knowledge within community
- sensory-friendly neurodivergent informed environments
- flexible pacing and recovery time
- everyday acts of relational care (See: Minor Gestures, Erin Manning)
Distress and burnout are not individual signs of failure. They often arise between people and environments structured around narrow neuronormative perceptions and expectations of productivity, attentional resourcing, and behaviour.
As Manning suggests, small relational actions such as checking in, allowing rest, and respecting communication differences all accumulate over time. These “minor gestures” form survival infrastructures that enable people to continue participating in the world.
Mycelial thinking and processing remind us that regulation is rarely solitary; it is ecological.
Re-worlding through monotropic pathways
When our Autistic/ ADHD monotropic attention is supported rather than suppressed, new possibilities can emerge. Learning experiences can shift from compliance-driven to interest-led. Work can follow rhythms of deep focus rather than constant multitasking and overwhelm. Communities can form around shared meaning rather than normative expectations.
Re-worlding begins in the margins and liminal spaces where alternative forms of knowledge and belonging are already being created like Neurohub Community and Stimpunks. These spaces allow people to connect without having to become “less weird” or more productive to be valued.
Rhizomatic pathways open new worlds by allowing divergence.
Mycelial infrastructures sustain those worlds by enabling care.
Together, they help us move from survival toward collective flourishing.
Ethodiversity and more-than-human belonging
Ethodiversity (Tarragnat) invites recognition of the many valid ways to sense, regulate, and participate in life. Humans are not separate from ecological systems but deeply entangled within them.
For many neurodivergent people, relationships with environments — light, sound, movement, animals, landscapes — are central to our wellbeing. Regulation may occur through connection with water, trees, textures, or different rhythms and flows. These are not luxuries but essential forms of co-existence and participation in shared ecosystems.
From this perspective:
- attention is ecological
- identity is relational
- care is collective
- difference is generative
Neurodivergent experience becomes part of a wider diversity of life’s ways of being.
Toward neuroqueer ecologies of becoming
Rhizomes remind us that there is no single correct pathway through learning or identity. Mycelium reminds us that there is no solitary pathway to survival. Monotropism shows how deep attention can create new routes through meaning and connection.
Together, these ideas invite movement toward worlds shaped by curiosity, interdependence, and collective care. Re-worlding does not begin with large structural change alone. It begins in everyday practices, such as following interests, building supportive relationships, co-regulation, parallel play, body doubling work and creating sensory-affirming spaces, and sharing knowledge across communities. All of the Neurodivergent Love Languages are relevant and important.
Neuroqueer ecologies are already forming. They grow through attention, care, and shared imagination.
See Part 2: When the Ecology Fractures: Monotropism and Autistic Burnout
See Part 3: Burnout Recovery as Ecological Re-Assembly
Find out more:
Chapman, R. (2023). Empire of normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism. Pluto Press (UK).
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press.
Deligny, F. (2013). The Arachnean and other texts. Univocal.
Edgar, H. (2026). The autistic rhizome: Community, liminal spaces & belonging. https://autisticrealms.com/the-autistic-rhizome-community-liminal-spaces-belonging/
Gray-Hammond, D. (2025). Mental health as an ecosystemic process. NeuroHub Community.
https://neurohubcommunity.org/2025/12/21/mental-health-ecosystemic-model
hooks, b. (1984). Feminist theory: From margin to center (Chap. 2). South End Press.
Lorde, A. (1977). The transformation of silence into language and action. In Sister outsider: Essays and speeches (pp. 40–44). Crossing Press.
Manning, E. (2016). The minor gesture. Duke University Press.
Milton, D. E. M. (2013). ‘Clumps’: An autistic reterritorialisation of the rhizome.
Sins Invalid https://sinsinvalid.org
Tarragnat, O. (2025). What is ethodiversity? https://ombretarragnat.com/2025/02/25/what-is-ethodiversity/
Walker, N. (2021). Neuroqueer heresies: Notes on the neurodiversity paradigm, autistic empowerment, and postnormal possibilities. Autonomous Press.