This is the plain language version about the origins of Neuroqueer Theory, where it comes from, what it means as an adjective, a verb and an identity, how it relates to neurodiversity, and what neuroqueering looks like for us. The longer, version is in my essay Neuroqueering from the In-Between. The free Neuroqueer Starter Pack by myself and David Gray-Hammond is available at the end of this blog.
Neuroqueer describes the act, and the result, of stepping outside the performance of a “normal” mind. Nick Walker, who coined the term with Athena Lynn Michaels-Dillon and Remi Yergeau, defines neuroqueering as intentionally freeing yourself from the culturally ingrained and enforced performance of neuronormativity. It is a verb first (to neuroqueer), an adjective second (a neuroqueer practice, a neuroqueer learning space) and an identity for those who want one.
Where the word comes from
Neuroqueer grew out of the neurodiversity movement and queer theory in the late 2000s, and reached a wide readership through Nick Walker’s 2021 book Neuroqueer Heresies. The parallel with queer is deliberate. Queer theory showed that gender and sexuality are performances that society enforces and that people can refuse; neuroqueer theory says the same about neurotypicality. Nobody is born performing “normal” attention, movement, emotion and speech; we are trained into it, and some of us can never quite manage it however hard we try.
Neuronormativity: the thing being queered
Neuronormativity is the set of norms, standards and expectations that treat one way of thinking, feeling, moving and communicating as the right way, and everything else as deficit, disorder or bad behaviour. It lives in classrooms that reward sitting still and eye contact, in workplaces that prize multitasking, in clinics that measure us against a neurotypical baseline, and in our own heads, where it becomes masking and internalised ableism. Neuroqueering is the practice of noticing those demands and declining them, deliberately and on purpose.
What neuroqueering looks like
Unmasking. Letting your face, voice, body and interests do what they naturally do, instead of monitoring them for other people’s comfort.
Stimming freely. Rocking, flapping, humming, fidgeting and pacing as the embodied sensory language they are, not as behaviour to be extinguished.
Following monotropic attention. Going deep into what pulls you, living in monotropic time, and treating flow as rest rather than as a distraction from “real” work.
Refusing the deficit story. Describing yourself in your own words, with community concepts like glimmers, pebbling and spoons, rather than in the language of symptoms.
Making neuroqueer spaces. Classrooms, communities and gatherings designed around difference, such as the Neuroqueer Learning Spaces project with Stimpunks and the cave, campfire and watering hole of Cavendish Space.
Becoming. Treating your neurodivergence not as a fixed category but as something that keeps unfolding, which is where the rhizomes, liminal spaces and Deleuze that run through this site come in.
Who can be neuroqueer?
Anyone who neuroqueers. Walker is explicit that the word is not reserved for people who are both neurodivergent and queer, although many of us are both, and the overlap is not a coincidence: Autistic people are several times more likely to be LGBTQIA+, and both experiences involve refusing to perform a self that does not fit. A neurotypical person who deliberately loosens their own performance of normality is neuroqueering too. What the word does not describe is a diagnosis, a symptom, or anything a professional can confer or withhold.
Neuroqueer, neurodivergent, neurodiverse: the differences
Neurodiversity is the fact of human minds differing, and the paradigm that treats that as natural rather than pathological.
Neurodivergent describes a person whose mind diverges from the dominant norm, whether they do anything about it or not. (What does neurodivergent mean?)
Neuroqueer is active: it is what you do with the divergence, and the refusal of the norm itself.
Why it matters
Because the alternative is a lifetime of masking, and masking is one of the main roads into Autistic burnout. Neuroqueer theory gives language to what many late-identified Autistic and ADHD people arrive at on their own: that the problem was never the mind, but the performance demanded of it. It also changes what support means. If distress emerges between people, environments and systems, then that is where the work is: in the classroom, the family, the community, not in correcting the individual. That is the idea at the heart of Re-Storying Autism, and of this site.
Questions people ask
Is neuroqueer the same as being neurodivergent and queer?
No, though many neuroqueer people are both. Neuroqueer is about the practice of refusing neuronormativity; you can be neurodivergent and queer without ever neuroqueering, and you can neuroqueer without being either.
Is neuroqueer an identity or a verb?
Both. Nick Walker’s own ordering is verb first: neuroqueering is something you do. People who do it a great deal, or who have come to understand themselves through it, often take it as an identity as well.
Who coined the term?
Nick Walker, together with Athena Lynn Michaels-Dillon and M. Remi Yergeau, around 2008; Walker’s essays and the 2021 book Neuroqueer Heresies set out the theory in full.
How is neuroqueer theory used in education?
As a frame for designing learning spaces around difference instead of compliance: freedom of embodiment, communication in every form, interest-led deep attention, and spaces to move between. See Neuroqueer Learning Spaces.
Key Words, the More Realms glossary of neuroqueer theory and philosophy
Nick Walker, Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities (Autonomous Press, 2021), and neuroqueer.com
Download the free Neuroqueer Theory Starter Pack I wrote with David Gray-Hammond
If you would like to take these ideas further, my courses, books and resources live on Autistic Realms. Everything in the shop is pay what you can, and many resources are free.
Content note: brief mention of psychosis, psychiatric labelling and eugenics.
Key words
Autistic rhizome: Autistic community imagined as a rhizome, a root system with no centre that spreads in every direction, where any point can connect to any other (Gray-Hammond & Edgar, inspired by Deleuze & Guattari, 1987).
Ethodiverse: from ethodiversity, short for “ethological diversity”. The natural variation in behavioural and existential styles within and across species, in human and non-human animals alike. It includes neurodiversity but reaches beyond the brain and beyond the human (Tarragnat, 2025).
Existential diversity: the idea that people differ in how they experience existence itself, and that these differences are natural variation, not distance from a “normal” centre (Gray-Hammond & Edgar, forthcoming).
Mycelial network of care: care modelled on fungal mycelium, the underground threads that connect plants and share resources between them (Sheldrake, 2020 & Edgar, 2026a). Support that flows through many connections rather than from one central source.
Monotropism: a theory of attention in which attention pools into fewer channels at a time and runs deep and intense in them, rather than spreading thinly across many (Murray et al., 2005).
Neuronormative: treating one typical way of thinking, perceiving and relating as the standard everyone is measured against (Walker, 2021).
Symphrenia: “connected bodymind”. A way of experiencing the world in which connections are felt with unusual monotropic depth and intensity, sometimes more than a person can hold. Symphrenic is an identity people can only choose for themselves (Gray-Hammond & Edgar, 2026).
W. B. Yeats wrote “The Second Coming” in January 1919, as the world seemed to be falling apart: the First World War was barely over, revolution was sweeping Russia, Ireland was edging towards war, and his wife, George, was pregnant and seriously ill with influenza. The poem draws on his theory of “gyres”, spirals of history turning in two-thousand-year cycles, and imagines one age ending as a “rough beast” slouches towards Bethlehem (Yeats, 1920/1989).
For Yeats, a centre that cannot hold means catastrophe: order fails and “mere anarchy” follows. I want to read the line against that grain, through my own personal experience of burnout and madness.
The widening gyre
The poem begins: Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer. Yeats hears loss of control, I feel something familiar connected to my mental health. Symphrenia describes perception that spirals outward, taking in connections others do not perceive, sometimes more than a person can hold (Gray-Hammond & Edgar, 2026). From the centre, a falcon that far out looks lost, but it is still flying, listening to the wind, to other birds, to currents the falconer cannot feel. So I wonder: who is the falconer? Why should the falcon only ever hear one voice, and why should the human voice be the one that matters?
Whose centre?
In mental health spaces in our society, the centre defaults to neuronormative expectations: which connections count as reasonable, and whose accounts are believed. Fricker (2007) calls the lack of shared language to make your own experience intelligible hermeneutical injustice. Existential diversity, a concept David Gray-Hammond and I are exploring in our Wider Existence series, treats differences in how people experience existence as ethodiverse variation rather than distance from a fixed point (Gray-Hammond & Edgar, forthcoming; Tarragnat, 2025). Read this way, a centre that cannot hold is not only collapse, a centre too narrow for the range of human and non-human existence is always going to give way, we need a wider way of existing together.
Who gets pushed to the edges and liminal spaces is not random it is governed by power and privelege. Yeats spent decades seeking connections beyond the visible: séances, symbols, a Spiritus Mundi of shared images, a cosmology built from automatic writing. As a celebrated Protestant Anglo-Irish man, he was read as a visionary. Similar experiences, described by a poor woman, a colonised person, or a Black man in a mid-century American psychiatric ward, were far more likely to be read as symptoms (Crenshaw, 1989; Metzl, 2009). I cannot call Yeats symphrenic; only a person can claim that for themselves, but his poem shows how much depends on who is speaking, who is believed, and why and intersectionality and social privilege shapes all of this especially maybe in Western developed countries.
Perhaps as a way to control the ever-widening gyre, Yeats’s fear of disorder later drew him towards authoritarian politics and eugenic ideas (Yeats, 1939). It may have been a longing for the centre to hold him, to accept him. He longed for a society to control whoever does not fit it, which could arguably have included people like himself.
The rough beast
When the centre gives way inside me, the ground seems to fall away, literally fall, like I am spiralling down beyond the human world. It often feels as though I can’t quite hold on and reality is slipping away yet I am always some how held on by a few threads enabling me to work and function like this in some capacity. Unlike David, I have never had a full on psychotic episode, yet I am always feeling between worlds, seeing, hearing and perceiving things others say are not real or that I am just imagining. I have had to find new ways of grounding and regulating. For me, what helps has never been a firmer centre. It has not been the neuronormative route of social skills programmes, or learning to reason my thoughts and visions and voices away. Some people find those approaches helpful, and that is their choice to make, but my thoughts and visions don’t go away, they are a part of me and they also bring me joy and creative ways of being that I love.
So I am learning to lean in. I now centre myself in a community with no centre, what David and I call the Autistic rhizome (2025). It is an ever-shifting space of kinship, rest and sensory safety. It holds people who can embrace chaotic, Mad, symphrenic ways of being without judging, stigmatising or trying to change us, while still supporting the hard reality of living this way.
Perhaps Yeats’s rough beast is not the monster after all, perhaps it is what a centre calls monstrous when it meets something it cannot hold. We do not need the centre to hold. We need something that holds without one: a rhizomatic web, a mycelial network of care rather than a wheel.
References
Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1), 139–167.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (B. Massumi, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press.
Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford University Press.
Metzl, J. M. (2009). The protest psychosis: How schizophrenia became a Black disease. Beacon Press.
Murray, D., Lesser, M., & Lawson, W. (2005). Attention, monotropism and the diagnostic criteria for autism. Autism, 9(2), 139–156. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361305051398
Sheldrake, M. (2020). Entangled life: How fungi make our worlds, change our minds and shape our futures. The Bodley Head.
Walker, N. (2021). Neuroqueer heresies. Autonomous Press.
Yeats, W. B. (1939). On the boiler. Cuala Press.
Yeats, W. B. (1989). The second coming. In R. J. Finneran (Ed.), The collected poems of W. B. Yeats. Macmillan. (Original work published 1920)
Find out more:
Read more at The Wider Existence
This post is part of an ongoing exploration of symphrenia and existential diversity with David Gray-Hammond. To read our first essay, Symphrenia, and follow the series as it grows, visit The Wider Existence: https://www.thewiderexistence.co.uk/. If something here speaks to you, or misses something important, we would be glad to hear from you there.
If you would like to take these ideas further, my courses, books and resources live on Autistic Realms. Everything in the shop is pay what you can, and many resources are free.
More Realms · Autistic Realms Helen Edgar July 2026
“It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths.” — Audre Lorde (1984, p. 112), The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House
In Old English, wyrd meant fate, but not necessarily the fixed, predetermined fate the word often suggests today. It is formed from the verb weorþan, meaning “to come to pass” or “to become” (Stone, 2022). Fate was imagined as something unfolding, something still happening, still being made. The same Germanic root that gives us wyrd also gives us weorþ, the ancestor of modern English “worth.” The words share a common origin and a connection between becoming and value that has echoed throughout the history of the word ‘weird’.
In Norse tradition, storytellers kept this idea alive through the image of a well beneath the World Tree, where the story tells us about the three keepers of fate — Urð, Verðandi, and Skuld — who were said to draw water from the well each day and pour it over the tree’s roots to keep it from decay, while also carving staves that set the courses of gods’ and mortals’ lives. Popular retellings often describe them as representing the past, present, and future, but their names suggest something more nuanced than a simple division of time to me.
Verðandi comes from verða, “to happen” or “to become,” the present participle of the same verb from which wyrd ultimately derives. Urð refers to “that which has come to pass,” while Skuld means “that which is owed” or “that which is due” (Stone, 2022; 1066 A Medieval Mosaic, n.d.). Together, they don’t just describe a timeline but an unfolding of what has become, what is becoming, and what follows from the lives we have lived. I read this as suggesting that being wyrd is about a life continually taking shape through living, changing, and becoming, always in process, never settled, always the potential to be ‘weird’ and deviate from norms.
The word wyrd remained in English over the years, and by the time Shakespeare wrote Macbeth, drawing on Holinshed’s Chronicles (1587), the Keepers of Fate had become the three Weird Sisters, whom Holinshed himself called the “goddesses of destinie” (Wikipedia, 2026b). Interestingly, the First Folio never actually uses the word “weird”, it uses the words “weyward” or “weyard” throughout. Whether that’s a printer’s slip for “weird,” or Shakespeare’s own choice of a different word “wayward,” meaning self-willed or contrary, is still debated by scholars. The “weird” we know today was fixed in place by an eighteenth-century editor, Lewis Theobald, in 1733, drawing the play back toward Holinshed’s own language (Bek-Pedersen, 2022).
From there, weird gradually shifted from its older meaning of fate and destiny towards the uncanny, the supernatural, and eventually the everyday sense of “odd” or “strange” that many associate with the word weird today – those of us who don’t quite fit in. However, that familiar meaning of the word weird only became widespread in the early nineteenth century (Wikipedia, 2026a). For most of its history, weird referred not to eccentricity but to fate, a meaning rooted in the older verb “to become.”
Weird Pride marks something many of us experience as both identity and resistance: a refusal to apologise for existing outside narrow ideas of normality. Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and disabled people are often labelled weird simply because we differ from what society expects.
Weird Pride Day, held each year on 4 March, seeks to reclaim that word, to name whatever others have decided is “weird” about us and refuse to treat it as something shameful. I am writing this today in July as everyday is a Weird Pride day!
Which brings us to the word “normal” itself, because “normal,” from what I have read so far, seems to be a much younger, much less innocent idea than that of wyrd. During the nineteenth century, statisticians such as Adolphe Quetelet, and later Francis Galton, applied the bell curve (see image above) to human populations as a way of describing natural variation in physical traits like height and weight, and, later, intelligence and ability. What began as a way of describing variation gradually became a way of judging people, with the statistical average recast as the ideal and differences from it increasingly understood as deviations, not normal.
This interpretive leap was a historical choice, made by particular people in a particular moment, and it continues to shape our lives. Robert Chapman’s Empire of Normality (2023) traces this history beyond statistics alone, arguing that the modern idea of the “normal” mind emerged within industrial capitalism, where human bodies and minds were measured against standards of productivity. Neurodivergent liberation, therefore, has to navigate not only prejudice but the economic systems that produced those standards in the first place (Chapman, 2023). What stands out to me is that the origins of weirdness and weird stretch back well over a thousand years, while the idea of “normal,” which so often defines who belongs in society today, is barely two centuries old. Somewhere along the way, worth got redefined as fitting in, while being different stopped being something we valued at all.
Audre Lorde wrote about survival among women, specifically, women whose race, sexuality, and class had been erased by a feminist movement that claimed to speak for all of us (Lorde, 1984). She wasn’t writing about neurology or disability, but I think her work is relevant here. All differences in culture, race, gender, neurology, disability, or any other way of being were never the problem in our society. The problem has always been treating some differences as if they mattered less than others. Belonging begins when our differences are recognised, valued, and welcomed, not despite them; differences are what belonging is built from.
For people who have spent a lifetime being told their weirdness is the problem, this is more than semantics; it is about valuing people as humans, supporting their needs, accepting and showing an interest in their weird ways of being, valuing the weirdness and creativity people may have rather than trying to fix or other them further.
Long before weird came to mean “doesn’t fit,” it was connected to wyrd: becoming, unfolding, a life still being woven. Weirdness, in its oldest sense, is not about being broken or being someone strange who doesn’t fit into society. It is about being curious, creative, unfinished, still growing, still becoming, thinking and acting in ways that see the world a little differently, and finding wonder in that rather than shame. There is no “normal” waiting to be discovered or worked towards, because every idea of “normal” has been made by people, in particular places and times, often by those with more power and privilege for the benefits of productivity in today’s society (Murray, F., Weird Pride Day: Weird vs. Normal).
Belonging isn’t something we can create alone. It grows in communities that recognise, value, and welcome difference and weirdness instead of trying to erase them. We need communities where culture, race, gender, neurology, disability, and every other different or weird way of being is understood not as a barrier to belonging, but as what belonging is built and created from.
I think this is what wyrd actually means, human worth that was never about being static, never about being plotted somewhere along someone else’s bell curve, but about always moving, always still taking shape.
Let’s embrace our wyrd, weirdness, and everyone else’s too.
If you would like to take these ideas further, my courses, books and resources live on Autistic Realms. Everything in the shop is pay what you can, and many resources are free.
Helen Edgar – Autistic Realms / More Realms June 2026
“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”
— Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person (1961)
“Becoming is not imitating or identifying with something. It is producing a zone of proximity, of indiscernibility.”
— Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus (1987)
You may know the feeling of being in a room and not being truly seen. You may be present, being spoken to by people who seem genuinely friendly towards you, yet you feel you are not truly being met. It is like the person next to you or across from you is responding to their idea of who they think you are rather than to who you actually are. There are norms and social conventions that people may feel they have to keep, and that can impact genuine presence and connection.
For many Autistic and neurodivergent people, this is not an occasional frustration but an often felt, sustained condition of our daily life. Over time, this teaches us that it is not safe to bring our whole authentic self into the room. You may suppress stimming, be hyper-aware of your body language and even how you communicate. You may find that you are constantly translating yourself into someone you hope will be more legible, more palatable, more aligned with the norms that were never designed around your experience. Masking, in this sense, is not a choice so much as a trauma response, a learned adaptation to a world that has made authenticity costly.
This piece draws together three threads of my recent thinking that I have been exploring: the humanistic psychology of Carl Rogers, the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, and Damian Milton’s Double Empathy Problem — extended through my own Double Empathy Extreme Problem (DEEP) – Dynamic, Embodied, Ecological, and Politicalframework. I am also drawing on a recent paper by philosopher Kris Goffin (2026) that reframes the question of Autistic injustice in ways I find really helpful. Together, I think they can help us explore what the conditions for genuine belonging might actually be, so we can be supported in environments that value a process of ongoing becoming and neuroqueering.
Conditions of worth
Rogers began from a radical premise in the 1950’s: that people are not fundamentally broken, deficient, or in need of correction, but that they carry within them an innate drive toward growth and becoming more fully themselves. This is what he called the actualising tendency (Rogers, 1957). He thought of it as something like a seed’s instinct toward light: persistent, directional and always pressing toward expression. Growth cannot be destroyed, but it can be buried, become distorted and hard to surface.
What buries or distorts growth are what Rogers named conditions of worth (1959). These are the internalised messages, absorbed most powerfully in childhood, that love and acceptance are contingent on meeting certain conditions: being quieter, being less intense, doing whatever it takes to be accepted. These messages don’t usually come from a place of cruelty; they often come from concern, from guidance, from the reasonable expectations of people who themselves learned to perform belonging within the same system, such as parents, carers and teachers. However well-meant, their cumulative effect is to redirect the energy of genuine growth into the labour of self-management, into performing a version of the self that will be found acceptable, rather than becoming the self that is actually there. For neurodivergent people, this is not incidental but structural. The conditions placed on us are shaped by a world that measures worth against neuronormative standards from the outset.
For Autistic and AuDHD people, conditions of worth are not only relational but cultural and systemic. They are embedded in our education systems, healthcare settings, and workplaces; in every context that measures human value against the standards of neuronormativity. The message neurodivergent people often face in therapy or counselling is that the authentic self requires editing before it can be brought into a relationship with others, even when that therapy may be classed as person-centred as we are still living in the system that causes us harm.
Rogers believed that three relational conditions could begin to dismantle those blocks. The first is empathy, which he defined as the capacity “to sense the client’s private world as if it were your own, but without ever losing the ‘as if’ quality” (Rogers, 1957, p. 99) — presence without projection, attunement without merger. The second is congruence: authentic presence rather than performed warmth, which matters because many of us with heightened sensitivity to interpersonal nuance can sense the gap between what is presented and what is real, often more acutely than others might expect. The third is unconditional positive regard, which Rogers described as meaning “there are no conditions of acceptance, no feeling of ‘I like you only if you are thus and so’” (1957, p. 98) — being valued as you are, now, without needing to perform or justify yourself first.
When these conditions are genuinely present, something can shift. The energy previously devoted to self-protection becomes available for something else. The actualising tendency can begin to move again, and that movement can be quietly transformative.
However, I am wondering whether Rogers’ theory has a limit when it comes to meeting the needs of neurodivergent people in a world still dominated by neuronormativity. Rogers himself acknowledged that the therapeutic relationship is not a special case, but rather “a heightening of the constructive qualities which often exist in part in other relationships, and an extension through time of qualities which in other relationships tend at best to be momentary” (1957, p. 101). In other words, Rogers understood his practice as working within the existing relational world, extending and deepening what is already there. When the session ends, the person returns to the same schools, workplaces, and social structures that created the conditions of worth in the first place that led them to counselling. Rogers offers healing within the system, but he does not provide tools to examine or dismantle the systems that cause harm.
This is where I find myself reaching towards Erin Manning (2016), who offers a different register of thinking about relation and difference that attends to what she calls the “minor gesture.” The minor gesture, although it may pass almost unperceived, transforms the field of relations. For Manning, the minor is a force that challenges received wisdom and common sense — what she calls “the major” — by offering potentially unlimited experiential variations that suggest alternative forms of being, knowing, and doing. Crucially, this framework directly challenges the ways in which the neuronormative image of being human devalues alternative ways of being moved by and moving through the world which may be especially relevant to Autistic people who perceive the world differently.
Rogers asks what conditions within a relationship might allow a person to grow, Manning extends this by asking what small, acts and orientations might begin to shift the normative field itself. These are not competing frameworks so much as operating at different scales. Rogers is working at the depth of the relational encounter, and Manning is also attending to the texture and politics of the world in which the encounter is embedded. Together, they suggest that healing and belonging are not only interior processes, but are also shaped by whether the world around us leaves room for us to exist in our difference.
If a person leaves the therapy room and returns to a school that still rewards masking, a workplace that still pathologises their way of communicating, a healthcare system that still measures them against a neurotypical body, then Rogers’ conditions of worth are simply regenerated. Becoming, within Rogers’ framework, remains possible only within the structures that already exist; there is only growth in the space the system allows.
This is where Manning (2016) may become a useful companion to Rogers. Where Rogers works at the depth of the relational encounter, Manning attends to the texture of the world that the encounter is embedded within. The minor gesture, although it may pass almost unperceived, transforms the field of relations, and it is in those small acts that some of the most important work can happen. For example, a teacher may restructure a task so that a student does not have to make eye contact to demonstrate understanding. A colleague who names in a team meeting that there are multiple valid ways of communicating, such as written or verbal, without making it about any one person. These are not grand systemic interventions; they do not dismantle the neuronormative ableist school or workplace, but the minor gesture introduces variation and genuine inclusion into experiences that would otherwise remain fixed or captured by norms, and that variation, however small, can be the difference between a person being able to remain themselves or once again contracting into a version of their self that the system will accept which can have severe impacts upon wellbeing.
Rogers gives us the conditions for healing within a relationship, whereas Manning reminds us that a relationship is never only between two people, it is always also between a person and the world they live in and must return to as well.
Creating New Maps
This is where the work of philosophers Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Autistic scholar Nick Walker’s neuroqueer theory can expand this discussion, as they point toward something Rogers’ framework doesn’t quite reach. Their works lead us not just to a space where you are allowed to become who you already are, but one that holds becoming itself as ongoing, never a fixed destination to arrive at. Where Rogers offers room to grow within existing conditions, in line with Manning, both Deleuze and Walker ask what it might mean to stop treating any version of the self as final, and what it could mean to build spaces that hold change itself as safe, rather than safety as something found only once change is finished.
For Deleuze and Guattari (1987), social structures operate by carving grooves into the world and into us. I am using “grooves” as my own (hopefully!) accessible way into their concept of striated space: space that is measured, ordered, and directional, like the fixed threads of a woven fabric or the furrows of a ploughed field.
The word “grooves” feels important to me because it captures something embodied and cumulative, the sense that these structures do not only organise the world around us but wear pathways into us over time. What Walker (2021) calls neuronormativity is precisely this kind of deep striation, a system of assumptions often insisting there is one correct “normal” way to think, feel, communicate, and inhabit a human life. The problem, Deleuze and Guattari understood, is not just that the grooves constrain our movement, it is that the grooves are presented as natural, as simply the shape of reality and how society is, rather than as a constructed map that serves only particular interests, privileges some people over others, and erases the rest of us, with those most marginalised often left with no voice or support at the edges of society.
Rogers’ conditions of worth are themselves a kind of striation, grooves handed down to us before we were old enough to question them. From infancy, many of us were rewarded for playing, eating, talking, and moving in the expected ways, and those rewards became internalised as if we had drawn the lines ourselves. This is how ableism enters so quietly: not always as a rule imposed from outside, but as a shape we learn to become, often unaware that we have been masking throughout our lives — until burnout or a mental health crisis arrives and we can no longer sustain it. Rogers’ answer is to offer warmer, more accepting conditions, but still within that same tracing. It is perhaps a kinder version of the same map, rather than a genuinely different one.
Deleuze asks for something more radical, not a gentler, warmer copy of an existing outline, but a different map entirely, made in movement, drawn from where you actually are rather than where the tracing says you should be. This is not an abstract philosophical point; I think it is a deeply political one. The poet and theorist Audre Lorde reached a parallel conclusion, that the tools a structure provides can only ever renovate it from within, never dismantle it. In her essay “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” (Lorde, 1984), she argued that real belonging cannot be built from the instruments of the very structure it is trying to escape. It needs new tools, and a new starting point that never belonged to that structure in the first place.
Walker’s neuroqueer theory draws on Lorde’s insight, queer theory, and disability studies to make a related point: that the rules around what counts as “normal” thinking and those around what counts as “normal” gender are intertwined at the root. Walker goes further than simply critiquing the system. Inspired by Lorde, Walker does not call for destruction but for transformation, as David Gray-Hammond and I explored in our Neuroqueer Learning Spaces webinar with Stimpunks (Edgar, 2024), Walker’s position is that we should “queer the system, queer the tools and create new tools” (Walker, cited in Edgar, 2024).
Neuroqueering is not a tearing down; as I noted in that same webinar, “to neuroqueer is to transform, not destroy”. This feels important in a therapeutic context, too. The goal is not to abandon everything Rogers offered, but to queer it: to ask what new tools, what new language, what new relational conditions might be possible if we start from neurodivergent experience rather than mapping it onto frameworks built without us in mind.
Deleuze called this kind of departure a line of flight: a movement toward something that does not yet have a name within the existing system, because that system was never built to describe it. Rogers helps us become our best selves within the system we already have. Deleuze, Manning, Walker, and Lorde, arriving from very different places, all point toward something more: that we can find our way forward together, building our own ways of becoming, with our own language to describe what we actually experience. And it is then, perhaps, that we can become our true selves, and finally feel a sense of belonging.
The Gaps Between Us
This is where Damian Milton’s Double Empathy Problem (2012) becomes important. For a long time, the difficulty Autistic people experience in social interaction was located inside us, framed as deficit, as a failure of empathy, as something in need of fixing. However, Milton’s work reframes this entirely. Misunderstanding between everyone, including Autistic and non-Autistic people, goes both ways: each finds it genuinely difficult to read the other, because each is experiencing and communicating from a fundamentally different starting point. The problem is never inside one person; it lives in the gap between two people, and I think that changes everything about how we think about connection, belonging, and what good, affirming support actually looks like.
I have built on Milton’s theory with my own framework, DEEP — the Dynamic, Embodied, Ecological, and Political model of the Double Empathy Problem (Edgar, 2024). The gap Milton identifies isn’t just a one-off communication mix-up. It is felt throughout the whole bodymind, shaped by our nervous systems and sensory differences, and by the layered weight of intersectional difference. It is ecological too, shaped by the environments and communities around us, and it is political as it is tied to ableism and to every system that treats neuronormativity as the default, measuring everyone else against it and finding them lacking.
That gap wears people down; it leaves us chronically misread, exhausted from the constant work of translating ourselves, and slowly eroded from a steady sense of who we are. It is a significant factor in Autistic burnout, and it cannot be fixed by individual effort alone; it needs something structural. We need a change in the systems themselves, not just in us.
Affective Injustice
Philosopher Kris Goffin’s (2026) recent paper, “Autistic injustice as affective injustice: the double empathy problem is not about empathy,” pushes this further. Even framing the Double Empathy Problem as a two-way empathy gap, still locates the problem within individual psychology. Goffin argues that the real injustice is structural, and resonates to the political dimension of my DEEP framework.
What Goffin calls the emotional regime is a set of unspoken rules about how emotions should be expressed, which feelings count as appropriate, and whose emotional experience is taken seriously. Autistic ways of being — stimming, directness, sensory overwhelm, intensity — are routinely measured against these rules and found wanting: treated as irrational, excessive, or in need of suppression. This is not a failure of empathy on anyone’s part, it is the structural sidelining of Autistic emotional life by a culture that has never had to question its own assumptions, because those with power and privilege have always set the bar, without Autistic people having a voice.
Goffin names this affective injustice; it shifts the conversation from what is wrong with us as neurodivergent people to what is wrong with the system doing the measuring. Once we see the system as the problem, we can begin to make changes and queer the system. The emotional regime Goffin describes is not a neutral backdrop, it is actively constructed, historically maintained, and capable of being challenged.
Robert Chapman’s (2023) Empire of Normality helps us understand how we got here, Chapman traces how the very concept of the “normal” brain is not a natural fact but a product of capitalism, a system that transformed human minds and bodies into units of productivity, and measured everything that deviated from that standard as a deficit. The emotional regime Goffin identifies did not emerge from nowhere; it was built, and built to serve particular interests: to privilege those whose minds and bodies fitted the productivity model, and to pathologise, silence, and render invisible those of us who did not. Which means the question is no longer just about how we can help neurodivergent people cope better, but something more fundamental. We can start to consider who gets to decide what counts as normal in the first place, and what it would mean to dismantle that power and redistribute it.
To create real belonging, we need to sit with that question and ask whether normality is even a coherent concept, or simply a reflection of whose experience has historically been centred and whose has been erased. That question needs to be asked in classrooms, workplaces, therapy rooms, and healthcare settings alike. Autistic emotional life should not be something managed or judged against neuronormative standards.
Empathy, understood this way, is not simply a psychological capacity or a therapeutic skill. It is also a political commitment — the active refusal to allow one group’s emotional norms to function as the invisible, unquestioned measure of what it means to be fully human. And that, perhaps, is where Rogers’ vision and the neurodivergent rights movement meet: in the shared insistence that every person deserves to be met as they actually are, not as the system wishes they were.
A Space for Becoming and Belonging
This blog began with a question folded inside its title: what does it really mean to be met across difference — in our empathy, in our becoming, in our belonging? Rogers gave us a language for that meeting. Deleuze, Manning, Walker, Lorde, Milton, Goffin, and Chapman showed us why that meeting so rarely happens, and what it would take to make it possible not just in a therapy room, but in the world itself and for the infinite ways we can become and keep becoming.
So what would it actually take to build a space where that is possible?
Real change happens at multiple levels simultaneously, in the therapy room, in the classroom, in the workplace, in our families, in policy, in research, in the language we use, and in the minor gestures and choices about whose comfort we centre and whose we ask to wait. It is slow, often exhausting work, particularly for those of us who are neurodivergent and doing that work while also living inside the systems we are trying to change.
However, within the Stimpunks community, we are already queering the map, already building the spaces, the language, and the relational conditions that the thinkers in this blog have pointed toward. Cavendish Space, developed collaboratively by myself, Ryan Boren, and the Stimpunks Foundation team as part of our Neuroqueer Learning Spaces project, is a living example of what becoming and belonging can look like when they are built from neurodivergent experience outward.
Cavendish Space is a framework for designing environments around three kinds of space rooted in how human beings have always learned and connected.
The cave offers solitude, deep rest, and self-directed focus — space to go inward without apology. The campfire holds intimate shared meaning, storytelling, and connection in smaller, safer circles. The watering hole opens into energised, open community — the kind of space where ideas move freely and unexpected connections happen.
These are not accommodations bolted onto the edges of a space built for someone else. They are the space’s whole reason for being, shaped from the start around how neurodivergent people actually move, rest, connect, regulate, and think.
In Cavendish Space, every way of being belongs. The cave is held as carefully as the campfire. Stimming, directness, sensory sensitivity, the deep pull of monotropic focus, these are not quirks to be managed at the margins or quietly discouraged when others find them uncomfortable. They are exactly what the space was built to welcome. This is what Rogers’ unconditional positive regard looks like when it stops being confined to a single therapeutic hour and becomes the architecture of a whole environment and a new way of being for an entire community, when empathy, becoming, and belonging are no longer aspirations but the actual shape of the space itself.
Structural injustice, affective injustice, and the empire of normality Chapman describes require political change at a scale that no single framework can deliver alone. However, Cavendish Space offers something valuable that large-scale theory sometimes cannot: proof at a human scale that something different is already possible. Lorde told us that the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house, and so we have built new ones.
Our small community of neurodivergent, disabled, and multiply marginalised people, holding between us many intersecting experiences of being othered, misread, and pushed to the edges, has created tools, languages, and spaces that were never handed to us, because they could not have been. They had to be built from the inside, from our own experience, in community with each other. When spaces are built from those experiences outward, people do not have to shrink themselves to belong. They arrive, and they are already home. This is not a utopian dream waiting for the right political conditions; we are already a living space, supported by interdependence and mutual aid, showing that it is possible to build something genuinely new, starting not from the centre of what has always been considered normal, but from the rich, complex, irreplaceable edges.
We began with the feeling of being in a room, not truly seen. A world where empathy is practised as a political commitment, where becoming is understood as a collective right, and where belonging is built from the edges inward, from our experiences, our languages, our tools, and our communities. Not a kinder version of the old world. The beginning of a genuinely different one. As the Cavendish Space framework reminds us, most environments are not built for us; schools, workplaces, and public spaces are designed for a norm that excludes neurodivergent and disabled people by default.
Cavendish Space is our offering; it names what we need and gives us a framework for building it, wherever we are, with whatever we have. Where you can walk into the room and feel, perhaps for the first time, that you belong here — and that from that belonging, your own possibilities and your own ways of becoming can begin to unfold.
Goffin, K. (2026). Autistic injustice as affective injustice: The double empathy problem is not about empathy. Philosophical Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2026.2651512
Lorde, A. (1984). Sister outsider: Essays and speeches. Crossing Press.
Manning, E. (2016). The minor gesture. Duke University Press.
Milton, D. E. M. (2012). On the ontological status of autism: The double empathy problem. Disability & Society, 27(6), 883–887.
Rogers, C. R. (1957). The necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 21(2), 95–103.
Rogers, C. R. (1959). A theory of therapy, personality, and interpersonal relationships. In S. Koch (Ed.), Psychology: A study of a science (Vol. 3, pp. 184–256). McGraw-Hill.
Rogers, C. R. (1961). On becoming a person: A therapist’s view of psychotherapy. Houghton Mifflin.
Walker, N. (2021). Neuroqueer heresies: Notes on the neurodiversity paradigm, Autistic empowerment, and postnormal possibilities. Autonomous Press.
Yergeau, M. R. (2018). Authoring autism: On rhetoric and neurological queerness. Duke University Press.
If you would like to take these ideas further, my courses, books and resources live on Autistic Realms. Everything in the shop is pay what you can, and many resources are free.
Helen Edgar — Autistic Realms | More Realms | June 2026
Spaces In-Between
I recently looked at the night sky, I was outside and cold, the sheer number of stars, the ones I could see and the knowledge of the ones I could not, shifted something in me that I did not have a word for at the time. It felt like an opening, a feeling of being very small and very connected at the same time, of the distance between me and the universe suddenly becoming less certain, of living in the in-between space. What I was experiencing is called awe, I also know, looking back, that awe may be one of the most distinctly Autistic experiences to feel.
This piece is about feelings of awe and wonder, my own Autistic ADHD experiences, and about the map I have tried to represent of my inner life using the language of the cosmos. It is called My Monotropic Galaxy: A Constellation of My Autistic Self. It is a deep-field image of space, overlaid with constellation lines, accompanied by an index of 20 named features of some of my monotropic experiences. Some of these constellations I have lived in for decades, others I have only recently been able to name. All of them are in relationship with each other, always in motion, always becoming something the map and myself has not yet caught up with.
Before I guide you through my galaxy of monotropic experiences, I will explain a bit about the theory of monotropism and why I feel it is so important for my own sense of self-identity as an Autistic ADHD person.
What Is Monotropism?
Monotropism is an attentional theory of autism developed by Autistic researchers Dinah Murray, Mike Lesser, and Wenn Lawson (2005). It describes how many Autistic people tend to have their attention drawn more strongly to fewer things at any given time, going deep rather than wide, concentrating rather than spreading their focus. Rather than framing this as a deficit — an inability to multitask or shift attention — monotropism understands it as a distinct attentional style with its own strengths and difficulties.
Discovering the theory of monotropism for the first time felt like being handed a map of a place I had always lived in but had never been able to describe. I was identified as Autistic and ADHD in my forties, while my children were also going through their own assessments. What followed was a long process of re-sense-making, a re-storying that went back through my entire life, understanding finally why things had been the way they had been, and finally being able to begin to understand my own neurodivergent identity a little bit better.
Awe and Wonder as a Way of Knowing
Let me return to the night sky and think about what awe actually is and why it may be especially relevant for monotropic people. Helen De Cruz (2024), in her book Wonderstruck: How Wonder and Awe Shape the Way We Think, describes wonder as a form of epistemic opening, a way of relating to knowledge and how we have come to know things. The epistemic opening is the moment when the way we know expands; it is more than just a feeling. When we encounter something that is genuinely awe-inspiring, the usual categories we use to make sense of the world temporarily loosen. It is as if you are maybe seeing or sensing something for the first time; you may notice things you had previously learned to filter out. For De Cruz, wonder is not just a happy side effect of seeing something beautiful; it is a cognitive and moral orientation. It is how we stay genuinely curious about a world we might otherwise let ourselves assume we already understand, or are taught to ignore, as it doesn’t fit into how people expect us to perceive and respond.
When I read De Cruz’s book in 2024, something in me recognised what she was describing at a really deep level. It was the most inspiring book I have read for many years. I took part in a brilliant reading group hosted by The Philosopher 1923, where we explored Helen De Cruz’s work in depth. In the final week, we were lucky to be joined by Helen herself, and I remember discussing Nick Walker’s neuroqueer theory (2021) and the projects I was developing with Stimpunks, particularly the ways her ideas resonated with and helped shape our thinking. These conversations had a lasting impact, influencing our Neuroqueer Learning Spaces project, helping to evolve the vision behind Cavendish Space, and continuing to inform much of my current writing and emerging ideas around the theory of monotropism.
Awe and Flow
When I am pulled fully into something that has truly captured my attention, not just my mind, but my whole body and nervous system is immersed. What opens is not simply focus; it is that first-ness quality of perception De Cruz describes, the sense of seeing and feeling something for the first time, even if I have encountered it a hundred times before. New connections become visible, and the boundaries between things soften. It feels like my nervous system, so often braced against a world not designed for me, can finally exhale in the in-between spaces as new connections form and I feel literally awe-some.
Keltner and Haidt (2003) describe awe as arising when we encounter something vast that challenges our existing mental structures, something that does not fit the categories we already hold, and that invites us to expand our ways of being rather than retreat or fold inwards. Awe can be humbling and expansive at the same time; it opens up possibilities.
I feel this resonates with what it feels like for me to be in monotropic flow. My self does not disappear, nor does it become more rigid or narrow; instead, it feels as though I open up, my whole bodymind becomes more porous. The boundary between me and what I am attending to becomes less fixed; I am both in the flow, and the flow is in me. The distance between those two things collapses and unfolds in a way that feels like both loss and arrival, and it can feel deeply liberating and joyful (and sometimes deeply troubling and anxiety-provoking!).
For many Autistic people, these experiences are undervalued, even stigmatised or shamed as we grow up. We are told to concentrate on what the teacher is saying, to focus on what our family and friends think really matters, and slowly, our own ways of perceiving the world are flattened as we learn to mask and stop trusting ourselves. The things we find awe-inspiring are treated as having no value: the joy of looking closely at a mushroom or an insect may be met with being told to hurry up and rejoin the group; the wonder of feeling the sea against your toes in the sand may be met with being told to just get in and swim and stop fussing.
This quality of experience, this awe and wonder, is represented by the Stellar Current at the heart of my galaxy: the deep flow state through which my whole system comes into coherence, and I move with the current of what matters most. It feels fitting that this current carries me toward a phrase that has become foundational to how I think about the Autistic community and a sense of belonging.
Love You Down to Your Star Stuff
The phrase Love You Down To Your Star Stuff grew out of collaborative work with Ryan Boren and Stimpunks Foundation (Boren & Stimpunks Foundation, 2026). It reaches back to something Carl Sagan observed: that the atoms in our bodies were forged in the interiors of stars that lived and died long before our sun existed. We are, quite literally, made of star stuff.
To love someone down to their star stuff is to locate love for their core way of being. Love is not conditional on performance, legibility, or being the kind of person the world finds easy to translate. Love should not be dependent on meeting neuronormative expectations, masking well enough or being productive enough or social enough. To love someone down to their star stuff is to love their way of being continuous with the universe and their authentic self.
Much of the lived experience of being Autistic for many people is weighed down by what I have called the Dark Matter Field in my galaxy. This is the heavy darkness of neuronormativity, reflected in the accumulated weight we carry around of a world that does not meet our needs, and does not love us down to our star stuff. The Dark Matter Field is everything that is harmful in our systems, behaviourism, ableism, racism and more. As Autistic people, we are constantly being measured against a map that was not ours.
The Double Empathy Problem (Milton, 2012) highlights the mutual misunderstanding between people with very different experiences, where the gap of this map is often framed as ours to close; this sits at the heart of the Dark Matter Field’s weight. Decades of masking, so thoroughly embedded in me that I genuinely did not know for most of my life where the mask ended and where I began, meant I was always accommodating others to try to meet expectations.
Love You Down to Your Star Stuff is a different orientation entirely. It is the foundation of what I believe the constellation of the neurodivergent community is reaching toward. The Mycelial Stars — underground networks of care and interdependence. The Rhizome Array — the non-hierarchical community that creates something together that none of us could make alone. The Companion Stars — those who do not need me to perform. The Sanctuary Stars — where I do not have to translate myself. All of these are expressions of what it means to love someone for who they actually are and are part of the galaxy that many neurodivergent people may recognise or relate to.
The Implicate Order and the Autistic Bodymind
A concept from quantum physics has really inspired my thinking recently, helping me articulate my inner self and conceptualise my Galaxy of Monotropic Experiences. Physicist David Bohm (1980) proposed that beneath the explicate order, the world of distinct objects and separate events we can see and measure, there exists a deeper dimension he called the implicate order. In the implicate order, nothing is truly separate; everything is enfolded into everything else. What appears distinct at the surface is always an unfolding of something that, at a deeper level, was always entangled.
I am thinking about the implicate order through the lens of monotropism and flow theory. The surface of a river looks like separate ripples and currents, each one seeming to rise, curl, and vanish on its own, but beneath the surface, the water is continuous; there is no ripple that exists apart from the river. What appears as individual movement is always part of a larger, deeper pattern, momentarily folding into visibility before folding back into the whole.
This is something of what monotropic flow feels like to me from the inside. The attention tunnel is the explicate order: a single ripple, distinct and absorbing, everything else falling away from view, but the depth beneath it, the coherence, the sense that this particular focus is connected to everything I have ever cared about, is the implicate order surfacing, slowly emerging and connecting with other thoughts. The interest that pulled me in is and was never really separate from the rest of me; it only looks that way from above the waterline or from what others may perceive. When I am in flow, I am not narrowing myself down to one thing and losing everything else; it is more like I am going deeper beneath the surface ripples to the place where it was all one current to begin with, to where I feel whole.
This may be part of why monotropic flow can feel like both loss and arrival at once; the “loss” is the disappearance of the surface separations of events and experiences outside the attention tunnel, the distinct sense of me here and the world being there. The “arrival” is perhaps the recognition of what was really underneath all along, the boundary was an explicate-order appearance, and the implicate order beneath it was entangled the whole time. When I am in flow, I can feel that oneness and vastness at the same time creating a sense of awe.
The world tends to perceive Autistic people through the explicate order, through what is behaviourally visible, measurable, categorisable. But what drives and shapes and sustains Autistic experience is largely implicate, the enfolded pattern of sensory processing, attentional depth, emotional layering, temporal fluidity, and relational intensity that does not show at the surface, or shows in ways that are consistently misread by others.
When I am in a deep monotropic flow, I am living in the implicate order. Thoughts do not arrive in sequence; they arrive already feeling more like a constellation, in relationship with each other, already folded into a larger pattern I can sense before I can articulate it. This is the Tunnelling Nebula in my galaxy — the way monotropic attention goes deep rather than wide, concentrating and transforming everything it connects to, always making more connections beneath the surface. It is around this Emergence Point that ideas and connections surface, when something is finally ready, arriving in its own time. It is at this Emergence Point that things finally start to make a bit more sense, at least to me and enable me to keep moving and keep becoming.
Bohm’s framework has also helped me understand burnout being the result of what I have called the Dark Matter Field. The Supernova Remnant in my galaxy is like a new way of becoming that emerges after burnout, remnants of my old self entangled in new ways of being.
Burnout is not simply tiredness; it is what happens when the implicate order is violently disrupted and when the continuous process of unfolding is interrupted by sustained demand to operate exclusively in the explicate: to spread thin rather than deepen, to switch and fragment and present surface after surface with no return to the enfolded whole – it is flooded with the Dark Matter Field. Each significant burnout has remade me into a new version of myself; something changes at my core, and it gives rise to new constellations. The supernova scatters what I was, how I thought and my previous ways of being; in a way, it reforms me into an ongoing cycle of becoming.
Rhizomes and the Non-Hierarchical Mind
Alongside Bohm, the philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the psychoanalyst Félix Guattari offered me another framework that helped me name something I had always experienced but could not clearly articulate in the past.
In A Thousand Plateaus (1987), they introduce the concept of the rhizome. A tree has a single trunk, its roots descend from a fixed point, and branches grow outward in a discernible hierarchy. Everything can be traced back to a central point; a rhizome is completely different. If we think of how grass spreads, or how mycelium moves through soil, more laterally, reaching out in every direction at once, with no fixed origin, no central authority, no privileged direction of growth, it may feel relatable to the experience of being Autistic. A rhizome connects with anything it encounters, it can be broken at any point and begin again from that node. It has no archive in the traditional sense, but it is dense with the traces of everything it has connected to and possibilities of what may form in the future.
This is pretty much how I feel my mind works. I have spent much of my life feeling different and not understanding my own thought processes, my non-linear associations, the omnidirectional leaps, the way a thought about a star might become a thought about mutual aid that might become a thought about penguins, and all of it feels necessary and connected, even if the connections are only fully felt inside me. It makes relationships hard, it makes communicating harder, always seeing that look of confusion on people’s faces as they think ‘what is she on about’ as there may be no obvious link to others, unless they know me really well!
The Rhizome Array in my galaxy represents the Autistic community itself. It is non-hierarchical, constantly connecting, forming new nodes, creating something together that none of us could make alone. As David Gray-Hammond and I have written about extensively there is no centre for the Autistic Rhizome and our community. There is no single way in; people can connect, join and communicate in their own way. The mycelial network metaphor runs alongside this: Mycelial Stars represent the underground networks of care that sustain us, growing toward each other in ways that do not follow a straight line or a hierarchy, representing the community of mutual aid that often sustains life for disabled and neurodivergent people.
Both frameworks, Bohm’s implicate order and Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizome, have helped me understand that the way my monotropic bodymind works has its own pattern, its own constellation, its own way of reaching toward others and toward the world and how the world works with me and in me.
The Constellation Index
What follows is an index of twenty constellations in my Monotropic Galaxy. These are not separate entries in a list; they are interdependent, entangled and always in relationship with each other and with everything around them. They are always in motion and always in flow.
Find what resonates with you from this, some of these constellations may feel immediately familiar, and others may not be part of your galaxy at all. This map is just my own constellation in a universe of infinite possible configurations of ways of Autistic being. You may find it sparks the beginnings of creating your own map or drawing your own constellation or galaxy.
1. Dark Matter Field is the weight of neuronormativity before I had words for it.
2. Supernova Remnant is burnout — the kind that arises when my monotropic attention is asked to spread attention thin, to split, to switch constantly and to mask. Each significant burnout has remade me and formed new constellations.
3. Stellar Current is the heart of my galaxy — the deep, flow states of being monotropic. When I am truly in flow, my whole bodymind system exhales and time dissolves. I am completely, wholly present, regulated and feel alive. I move with the current.
4. Tunnelling Nebula — monotropic attention goes deep rather than wide; it concentrates and transforms everything it connects to, always making more connections.
5. Warren Constellation are my rabbit holes of research. They reflect the joy of following a question, of feeling awe and wonder, and always expanding and reaching out.
6. Mycelial Stars represent the underground networks of connection that sustain the neurodivergent community of Autistic researchers, advocates, writers, families, and educators. It is our community network of care and interdependence, all growing toward each other in ways that don’t follow a straight line or a hierarchy. The foundation of mutual aid, care and well-being.
7. Pebbling Cluster is how I show love. Inspired by the way penguins offer pebbles to those they care for, this is my Neurodivergent Love Locution. Offering small glimmers, such as a twig I found or a meme or song I share as a way to say ‘I thought of you, I care’.
8. Clustering Cascade is my infodumping. The deep need to share my interests and passions, at considerable length and in detail, with those I feel safe with and to engage with others who want to share their joy.
9. Rhizome Array is the Autistic community itself — non-hierarchical, constantly connecting with other people and forming new communities and nodes. Creating something together that none of us could make alone.
10. Sanctuary Stars are the places, practices, and people where I do not have to translate myself or mask; it is where I feel safe and can simply be and know I will be accepted for who I am to regulate and communicate in my own ways.
11. Vortex Stars are the intensity of deep absorption I feel as a monotropic person. That pull into a single channel of interest that is so total it feels like a gravitational field.
12. Time Drift is my Autistic experience of time as non-linear, layered, fluid and felt. Where past and present merge into each other, and my lived time feels closer to superposition than sequence.
13. Companion Stars are the people who orbit close, who understand penguin pebbling, and the Neurodivergent Love Locutions. Those who don’t need me to perform and who just ‘get it’.
14. Gravity Well represents my monotropic looping and ruminating mind. Thoughts that circle and return, that find their way back to the same point regardless of how many times I try to leave them. It represents Autistic inertia and a feeling of being stuck.
15. Friction Field is the relentless exhaustion of having needs the world was not designed to meet, and of having to advocate for them, over and over, in systems not built with Autistic people in mind.
16. Signal Fade is the anxiety that rises when something or someone I care about moves outside my attention tunnel, the panic of object impermanence, the fear that what is out of sight may simply be gone.
17. Aurora Borealis is the joy and wonder of being Autistic — the profound aliveness that comes with deep engagement in sensory experiences. The way the world and my whole bodymind can suddenly blaze with meaning and feel beauty when I am fully with something that matters to me.
18. Limerence Nebula is the intensity of falling deeply into a connection with a person, a totality that can feel overwhelming and all-consuming.
19. Tidal Stars represent the porousness between myself, the environment I am in and the wider cosmos. The sense that my edges are less fixed than the world tends to assume. My pull towards nature, towards water, towards things that are ancient. A feeling of returning to something that was always within me.
20. Emergence Point is what surfaces from the liminal depths of my monotropic bodymind when something is finally ready to surface. It is the crest of an invisible process, trusted rather than forced, arriving in its own time, on its own terms. I am always being in a process of becoming.
Always Becoming
Our own Milky Way contains hundreds of billions of stars, and most have no name, only coordinates, or nothing at all. My own constellation feels similar, as some of my stars may dim; others may brighten, and they all have their own way of processing time. Some are still finding their way through the dark toward the light, still connecting with other stars, still discovering what they illuminate. The map I have created will never be finished, as it really only captures a moment in time, as it is always transforming, it is alive.
The Autistic rhizome keeps spreading, the implicate order keeps unfolding and the constellations keep reaching toward each other, forming new nodes, new patterns, new ways of knowing that none of us could arrive at alone. What lives beyond my twenty constellations is the infinity of Autistic ways of being, every way of knowing, sensing, connecting, and belonging that has not yet found its name, its language, its place in any map.
You may recognise some of these constellations as your own and others may not be part of your galaxy at all. We are each a unique configuration of matter, patterns and attention; we each have a particular way of being continuous with a cosmos that has been becoming itself for longer than we can even perceive.
We are not like the cosmos. We are continuous with it. In the infinite space beyond every map we have ever made, the phrase from our collaborative work at Stimpunks holds everything together: Love You Down to Your Star Stuff (Boren & Stimpunks Foundation, 2026). Every star belongs, every constellation has its place and every way of being Autistic is woven into the fabric of what this community is and is always becoming.
We are not fixed points.
We are in flux.
In flow.
In everything.
Enfolded.
Unfolded.
Alive.
References
Bohm, D. (1980). Wholeness and the implicate order. Routledge.
Murray, D., Lesser, M., & Lawson, W. (2005). Attention, monotropism and the diagnostic criteria for autism. Autism, 9(2), 139–156. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1362361305051398
Walker, N. (2021). Neuroqueer heresies: Notes on the neurodiversity paradigm, autistic empowerment, and postnormal possibilities. Autonomous Press.
Invitation
I am delighted to share that I have a chapter in an upcoming book called UNIQUE. UNIQUE invites neurodivergent contributors to map themselves: their qualities, strengths, struggles, deep interests, and challenges, all held together as a constellation.
My chapter centres on my Monotropic Galaxy — the constellation map of my Autistic self, and this blog is an edited and expanded version of my forthcoming chapter submission. My own constellation is a small offering among many in what I hope will be a rich, diverse, and deeply affirming collection of neurodivergent people’s inner worlds and experiences.
The book is still open for contributions.
If you are neurodivergent — whether formally diagnosed or self-identifying — you are warmly invited to contribute your own constellation. No artistic skill is needed. No particular way of writing. Just your own unique map of who you are. The project is intentionally moving away from deficit narratives and toward something that reflects the full richness of neurodivergent experience and identity.
Contributors need to be over 18. If you’re interested to find out more, Mark and Lisa would love to hear from you at book@vicarious-traumatisation.com.
Courses, books and resources
If you would like to take these ideas further, my courses, books and resources live on Autistic Realms. Everything in the shop is pay what you can, and many resources are free.
“Objects do not come first and then differ; rather, objects emerge out of more fundamental processes of differentiation.”
This feels like a statement about identity, about what we actually are. It felt, in a way I am still working through, like a description of something I have always known from the inside, without ever quite having the language for it. It helps explain how I feel that I am not a fixed, bounded thing moving through the world, but that I emerge, in and through my relationships and encounters with everything around me.
This piece is my attempt to think that through. As always, this is exploratory, I am definitely not a physicist, and I am not making literal claims about quantum mechanics applying directly to human experience, as I really don’t know enough! However, I do think physics can offer us resonant frameworks, ways of thinking that help us articulate things that neuronormative language has never quite been able to hold, and it may help understand and explain some ways of being Autistic or otherwise neurodivergent.
What quantum physics may be actually saying
Webster’s article draws on the work of physicist Carlo Rovelli, who developed what is called Relational Quantum Mechanics (RQM). The basic idea is that at the quantum level, particles do not have fixed, independent properties. A particle’s properties only become real in relation to another system. There is no such thing as an absolute, standalone description of a quantum object that holds true for all observers in all contexts. In other words, what something is depends on what it is in relation to.
Rovelli explains that the world of quantum mechanics is not a world of objects, it is a world of events, and events are always interactions between systems. Reality, at its most fundamental, is not a collection of separate things with built-in properties, it is a vast, shimmering web of relations.
Webster goes even further, drawing on the philosopher Gilles Deleuze to argue that this is not just a strange quirk of the quantum scale, it is actually how reality works at every level. Deleuze argued that difference and relation come first. The apparently stable, separate things we perceive — objects, individuals, identities — emerge out of relational processes, not the other way around. As Webster puts it: “Objects do not come first and then differ; rather, objects emerge out of more fundamental processes of differentiation.” Deleuze saw this as a model for how reality works at every level — not objects first, then relations, but relations first, and then eventually what we recognise as objects.
In my ongoing reading of Deleuze and Guattari over the past few years, it feels like things are starting to connect in a strange way……something is starting to make a bit more sense, folds unfolding and nodes of the rhizome and constellations are beginning to connect a bit more in relation to my Autistic identity and relations with others……
Why this matters for how Autistic people have been understood
One of the things Webster observes is that even our philosophical and logical language cannot easily hold a relational worldview. Our logic is built to describe objects and their properties. If relations come first, that language actively gets in the way, so we need different frameworks, different vocabularies, to say what is actually true and also how we feel.
Many of us, as Autistic people, may recognise this difficulty as the neuronormative-dominated language and society we have all grown up in, with its emphasis on fixed traits, stable categories, and measurable deficits has never quite been able to hold what our experience actually is or feels like. As I explored in Living in Layers, my reality is layered, non-linear, and sensorily permeable in ways that the majority of the world seems to fail to recognise or understand. It feels like the language we have is so limited, and just keeps breaking up against us.
This is why I am so passionate about our Stimpunks glossary, created by the neurodivergent and disabled community — we have to create our own vocabulary to survive, as it just isn’t there in the world we currently live in. As Audre Lorde’s and bell hooks’ work reinforces, language is a vital tool for survival, self-revelation, and political action – ‘language is a place of struggle‘.
The frameworks built to describe and assess Autistic people are rooted in exactly the kind of object-thinking that Webster is critiquing. They ask people, what properties does this person contain? What is inside this individual that differs from the norm? How do we measure, categorise, and if possible remediate, fix or change the object so they fit into society?
Damian Milton’s (2012) Double Empathy Problem helped my understanding of this gap of difference over a decade ago. The double empathy problem helps explain that the misunderstanding so often attributed to Autistic people is not located inside one person, it lives between people, in the quality and texture of the encounter, the shared or unshared frameworks two people bring into contact with each other through their lived experiences. In my longer piece The Double Empathy Problem is DEEP (Double Empathy Extreme Problem – Dynamic, Embodied, Ecological, and Political), I explore how this operates not just between individuals but at social, cultural, and structural systemic levels.
The “problem,” in other words, is a relational property. It is not something carried in the Autistic person’s neurology like a stone in a pocket. It emerges, as all relations do, in the encounter itself, in the liminal spaces. In the gap between two different ways of sensing the world, two different attentional rhythms, two different histories of what communication has felt like and meant.
I have spent a long time feeling like the problem, as I think many of us may have as Autistic people. I find something genuinely moving in the idea that physics is pointing towards the same conclusion that disabled activists and Autistic-led researchers have been making for decades. The difficulties we encounter are ecological as David Gray-Hammond has been writing about in their Ecosystemic Model, which we have expanded on in our Re-Storying Autism course and book.
What needs to change is not the person but the conditions of relation. Rovelli might put it a little differently, saying that properties only become real in relation to another system. There is no absolute, observer-independent description of a person that tells the whole truth about themselves. What we are is always, in part, a function of what and who we are in relation to each other and our environment.
This connects to the work of Ombre Tarragnat (2025) on ethodiversity. Ethodiversity (short for ethological diversity), is a concept that moves neurodiversity thinking beyond the brain and into the wider ecological and relational field. Rather than focusing only on neurological difference, ethodiversity attends to the full range of behavioural and existential styles: the different ways that humans and other animals move through, sense, and inhabit their worlds. Tarragnat describes it as encompassing not just biology but inter- and intraspecific relationality, the ways our differences are always already entangled with the environments and relationships we are embedded in.
What I find so useful here is that ethodiversity frames difference as fundamentally ecological and relational rather than as a property contained within an individual. The parallel Tarragnat draws with biodiversity makes sense to me as just like biodiversity is a property of an ecosystem, (something that emerges from how species relate to each other and their habitat), ethodiversity is a property of a relational field. You cannot understand anything by studying one organism in isolation.
Tarragnat also introduces the concept of ethonormativity, the often unspoken rules that govern which ways of being, behaving, and relating are acceptable or expected in a given context. Ethonormativity, like neuronormativity, is not located inside the person. It is a property of the relational and social environment, a set of conditions that certain bodyminds move through with ease, and that others may find exhausting, painful, or simply impossible to meet. When we think of diversity in this way, the difficulty and barriers Autistic, otherwise neurodivergent or disabled people face are not their personal divergence, it is the narrowness of what the relational field is prepared to hold.
A Pause……
This piece is pretty wordy, and I am aware that when we talk about Autistic and neurodivergent experience in these kinds of registers, we can end up — without meaning to — centring the voices that the world already knows how to value. I want to gently push back against that, including in my own writing.
The ideas here belong to all of us, and relation has to come first. These are not ideas that matter more or less depending on how someone communicates, moves, or exists in the world. I have been thinking and writing a lot lately about how neuro-affirming practice is not a framework or a checklist — it is a way of being. It is about being genuinely present with people, as they are, in the relational field we share. That means all of us, including, and I would say especially, people with profound and multiple learning and intellectual disabilities, whose ways of being in relation are so often the most misread, the most unseen, and the most undervalued by the systems built around them.
I spent twenty years as a SEND teacher, and some of the richest, most meaningful things I have come to understand about what genuine relation looks and feels like, what it means to truly be with someone, came from my time in class. Relation and safety was the foundation of everything. A shift in breathing, a change in muscle tone, a turn toward a familiar voice or a sound. These weren’t lesser forms of connection, just different ones, asking something different of the people around them to connect with them. Asking us to slow down, to pay attention differently, to stop waiting for communication that looks like ours before we decide someone is worth relating to. This is the embodied DEEP dimension of the Double Empathy Problem — Dynamic, Embodied, Ecological, and Political — the reminder that relation happens in and through bodies, breath, and shared presence, long before it happens in words. It is a way of being with each other, across the full and beautiful range of how we all exist with one another and with our environment.
Tarragnat’s ideas about ethonormativity does its most violent work on those whose ways of being are furthest from what any normative system recognises as meaningful communication or social participation. The relational field that needs to change is not only the one around verbally articulate Autistic people, but it is also every environment that has decided in advance what counts as a person worth relating to, with those most marginalised always being pushed further away instead of centring them.
This is why, if we return to Rovelli, the question is never just about asking “what is this person like?”, it is also always about “what kind of relational field are we creating together, and whose ways of being does that field make possible?”
Philosopher and physicist Karen Barad (2007) calls this intra-action, which is a bit different from inter-action. Interaction assumes two separate, already-formed things that then come into contact. Intra-action suggests something more radical, that the things themselves, the identities, the properties, the selves, are produced through the meeting. We do not arrive fully formed and then enter into relation, we are, in part, constituted by the relations we are held within and have always been a part of. Barad also draws on quantum physics to make this argument, which is why it sits so naturally alongside Rovelli’s, as both point toward a world where relation is everything.
Erin Manning (2016) develops something similar when she writes about Autistic experience and what she calls the minor gesture, the ways of moving, attending, and relating that do not register within dominant frameworks, but that are doing real, significant, world-making work nonetheless. For Manning, Autistic ways of being are not failed attempts at neurotypical relation, they are different modes of intrarelation, of being constituted in and through a world that is always already more-than-individual.*
This is why I find the word intradependent useful alongside the more familiar interdependent. Interdependence acknowledges that we need each other and intradependence goes further as it suggests that we are, in some fundamental sense, made of each other, that the boundaries between self and relation, between individual and environment, are more porous and more dynamic than the frameworks built around us have ever allowed us to embrace.
What becomes possible when we think relationally
We are all interdependent and intradependent and Webster helps highlight that this is precisely why Deleuze matters. Deleuze offers what Webster calls “the metaphysics science needs”, a different conceptual vocabulary, one built for difference, flow, and becoming rather than for fixed objects and their properties. I think this may also be part of the metaphysics that neurodiversity needs, an ever-expanding neuroqueer framework that begins with relation rather than with the individual as an isolated, assessable unit.
If identity emerges from relations rather than residing inside individuals, then support cannot be about fixing a person in isolation. It has to be about transforming the relational conditions — the environment, the encounter, the quality and structure of connection itself. The sensory climate of a space, the pacing, the temporality and texture of relating and forming connections and relationships. Whether a community can hold someone’s particular way of attending to the world without requiring them to translate themselves into something more legible, more manageable, more like the expected norm, and whether the people building those spaces are genuinely asking whose ways of being they are designed around, and whose they are still leaving out.
This is what I see at work in the best neurodiversity-affirming spaces I am fortunate to be part of — the CASY group, the Stimpunks community, NeuroHub Community and Thriving Autistic. These aren’t spaces that take a person as an object to be supported, assessed, and adjusted, but co-created spaces that understand themselves as relational fields. They are communities that consider what those fields need to become, so that different kinds of bodyminds can genuinely flourish within them. Spaces that hold the full range of experiences, from the most academically articulate to those whose presence, joy, pain and relation express themselves entirely outside of neuronormative language as sensory beings. Everyone has equal worth and we are all dependent on each other to not only survive, but thrive and create meaningful lives together.
In We Are Star Stuff, which I am continuing to develop collaboratively with Ryan Boren at Stimpunks, we wrote about being literally made of elements forged in dying stars: about the deep, physical reality of our connection to the cosmos and to each other. Relational quantum mechanics takes this even further, not just that we are made of the same stuff, but that what we are, at the most fundamental level of reality, is constituted by our relations with each other and our environments. There is no isolated self beneath the web of connection, there is only what emerges in, through and in the spaces between every encounter.
We are not broken objects. We are relations, all of us still becoming. And I think (and I hope) that sitting with some of these thoughts might help change everything about how we understand, support, and truly be with each other.
Cordero-Rivera, A. (2017). Behavioral diversity (ethodiversity): A neglected level in the study of biodiversity. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 5, art. 7. https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2017.00007
Deleuze, G. (1994). Difference and repetition (P. Patton, Trans.). Columbia University Press. (Original work published 1968)
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (B. Massumi, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press. (Original work published 1980)
Walker, N. (2021). Neuroqueer heresies. Autonomous Press.
Webster, G. (2024). The metaphysics science needs: Deleuze’s naturalism. European Journal of Philosophy, 32(3), 820–846. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.12909
If you would like to take these ideas further, my courses, books and resources live on Autistic Realms. Everything in the shop is pay what you can, and many resources are free.
We introduce NeuroHub Community’s ecological approach to community and wellbeing through philosophical concepts grounded in practical application.
When I first started thinking about ecological metaphors for neurodivergent experience, I kept returning to two thoughts: the underground fungal web of mycelium, and the sideways-spreading, rootless rhizome.
At first glance they can seem interchangeable as they both resist hierarchy, they both spread without a centre and they both connect things that might appear separate on the surface.
The more time I spent with these thoughts and through discussions with Neurohub Community and Stimpunks, the more I realised they are doing quite different things, and that difference matters for how we understand Autistic and neurodivergent life, community, and identity.
Mycelium helps us understand how care flows and survival becomes possible.
Rhizome helps us understand how a person grows, learns, and becomes.
Mycelium: A Network of Care and Mutual Sustenance
Mycelium is the vast underground fungal web that connects trees and plants across a forest ecosystem. It’s sometimes called the “wood wide web” and what makes it such a valuable metaphor for care is not just how it looks, but how it actually functions.
Mycelial networks redistribute resources — carbon, water, nutrients — from stronger nodes toward more vulnerable ones (Simard, 2021). Older, established trees send sugars through the network to seedlings growing in shade, where they cannot yet photosynthesize enough to sustain themselves. The network actively compensates for inequality of access, it notices where something is struggling and it responds.
There is no central command, there is no king or ruling tree that rules all the others and send out orders, no hierarchy issuing instructions about who receives what. Care flows through relationships and proximity, quietly and continuously, largely beneath the surface.
I think this maps powerfully onto disability justice frameworks and neurodiversity communities. Mia Mingus’s concept of interdependence and access intimacy (2022) is about the understanding that we all need care and we all have something to offer, it resonates deeply with mycelial logic. Care, in this framing, is not charity flowing downward from those who have the power to those who lack power. It is a web of mutual interdependent sustenance in which everyone is both receiver and contributor at different times and in different ways.
For Autistic community specifically, the mycelium metaphor holds to me because it values depth of connection over breadth. It recognises that the health of the whole of our community depends on the health of each node, each person — including, and perhaps especially, the most vulnerable. It is a model of community that does not ask anyone to need less, perform more, or earn their place in the network, everyone is accepted as they are.
Distress and burnout, from this perspective, are not signs of individual failure. They are signals moving through a system — signs that the network needs to respond, that resources need to be redistributed, that care needs to flow more evenly.
Rhizome: Person-Centred Becoming and Non-Linear Growth
Where mycelium is a metaphor for community and care, I am now moving towards the idea of the rhizome being more of a metaphor for personhood and becoming.
Deleuze and Guattari (1987) introduced the rhizome as a philosophical concept in their work One Thousand Plateaus — drawn from plants like ginger or couch grass that grow horizontally, without a single root or trunk, branching in multiple directions simultaneously, without a fixed origin or a predetermined destination.
This stands in contrast to what they called the arborescent, or tree-like, model that David Gray-Hammond discusses in our podcast — the familiar image of a trunk (a normative baseline) from which branches spread outward (deviations, differences, deficits measured against that centre). The tree model underpins so much of how neurodivergent people have been previously and in many ways are still understood — as branching away from a correct developmental path, as requiring intervention to redirect growth back toward the trunk. The rhizome refuses this entirely.
The rhizome has no correct path and no normal sequence, there is no centre from which deviation is measured. You can enter it at any point and it connects anything to anything. It is about multiplicity and becoming rather than arriving at a fixed, finished identity – which all resonate with me and reflect how our online neurodivergent communities evolve and support each other.
Thinking of the Autistic rhizome in this way does not position any person as a deficient version of something else. Walker’s neuroqueer framework (Walker, 2021) draws on this kind of thinking, that neurodivergent people are not branching away from normal; we are differently rooted, growing differently, becoming differently, and that difference is not a problem to be corrected.
For monotropic people, where your attention flows deeply into fewer, more absorbing channels (Murray, Lesser & Lawson, 2005), the rhizome maps onto how interests and understanding and interdependent flow actually develop. It doesn’t develop through a linear framework moving from step to step, but through deep lateral (often omnidirectional) connections: one fascination, interest, shared story or struggle opening unexpectedly into another, knowledge spiralling and looping, meaning accumulating in ways that don’t follow prescribed paths.
Rhizomatic becoming may look like chaos but it is a different kind of order and reflects the Chaotic Self David Gray-Hammond has written about extensively.
The mycelium describes our community: how we hold and sustain each other across difference, how care flows laterally rather than downward, how no one person’s thriving is separate from everyone else’s.
The rhizome describes the person: that each individual body and mind is not a deficient version of a normative type, but a genuine multiplicity in process of becoming — with its own valid logic, its own valid direction, its ownvalid pace.
Neither metaphor asks anyone to be fixed or cured, nor positions difference as a deficit and both resist the idea that there is one correct form that life, learning, or identity should take.
Through our onoging discussions I think they are useful to point us towards a different kind of world, it enables a reworlding that isn’t built not on compliance and normalisation, but on care, curiosity, and the recognition that neurodivergent ways of being are not deviations from life, but expressions of it.
Rhizomatic pathways open new worlds by allowing divergence.
Mycelial infrastructures sustain those worlds by enabling care.
Murray, D., Lesser, M., & Lawson, W. (2005). Attention, monotropism and the diagnostic criteria for autism. Autism, 9(2), 139–156. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15857859/
If you would like to take these ideas further, my courses, books and resources live on Autistic Realms. Everything in the shop is pay what you can, and many resources are free.
Today is World Quantum Day. The date itself carries meaning: April 14th is a reference to 4.14, the rounded first digits of Planck’s constant, a precise measure of energy and time that governs how reality behaves at its most fundamental level. Quantum physics tells us that particles can exist in multiple states at once, that reality at its most fundamental level is not fixed, singular, or predictable in the ways we were taught to expect.
I am not a physicist by any means (!), but I have spent my whole life as an Autistic ADHD person living something that feels, may be able to be better explained by quantum physics than any textbook or psychology book about Autism. What follows is my attempt to use the language of physics as metaphor and resonance – not a literal claim, to describe what neuronormative frameworks about Autistic experiences have never quite been able to hold for me.
I have never experienced life as a single, stable or consistent reality. People talk about “being present” as though there is one shared world everyone occupies in the same way, with the same attentional depth, the same clarity, the same sensory experiences, and the same time perception. For me, my presence has never been singular; my reality is layered, permeable, and sensorily multidimensional. Memories, dreams, and the present moment all overlap and bleed into one another. ( I wrote more about dreams and exploring threshold consciousness, temporal ecology, and the porous boundaries between dreaming and waking in my blog about hypnagogic and hypnagogic experiences.)
I am realising I am constantly navigating worlds that coexist rather than worlds that take turns or operate in any linear, easily explained way that even the most neuro-affirming of Autistic spaces seem not to quite get all the time.
There are thin surface layers where language, rules, and social expectations dominate, brittle spaces that take enormous effort for me to maintain, even more so as I’ve grown older and more aware of my own needs. This is more than just masking at a surface social level to fit in, it goes far deeper and is more expansive. I have spent most of my life translating myself into legible, acceptable versions, until I found spaces like the CASY Physics Group, where other people seem to just get it too, where I do not have to translate at all and where all these weird experiences are beginning to make a bit more sense as I learn from and listen to others.
Beneath that surface of masking is what I can only describe as caverns and rivers of thought, ideas, and feelings, flowing like underground water, finding their own paths. Sometimes that current sweeps me into deep burnout, sometimes I can ride it, working prolifically, losing track of sleep entirely, pulled into a tunnel of meaning that feels more real than anything on the surface.
In quantum terms, this feels like it is may be closer to superposition, a holding of multiple states, multiple layers of reality being simultaneously open. The problem I have begun to realise is not just being neurodivergent, it is being in a world calibrated to expect only one state at a time – often based on neuronormative values and perceptions.
Holotropism and Neuroholographic Ways of Being
My understanding of these experiences became clearer when I encountered two ideas that finally gave me the language to describe my ways of being. The first is monotropism, the theory that many Autistic and ADHD people channel attention deeply into a single tunnel of interest at a time (Murray et al., 2005). I recognise this in myself and have written about monotropism extensively on my Autistic Realms website and also support Fergus Murray with Monotropism.org. However, Hendl H Mirra’s (2023) concept of holotropism expanded this considerably, describing something that feels closer to the actual space and time I live in.
Holotropism describes a way of being in which sensory gates are wide open, where self and world do not have sharp edges, and where experience is not additive — this thing, then that thing — but multiplicative: intensely rich, layered, and sometimes overwhelming all at once. In this framing, monotropism is not the root of our being but a salve, a way the holotropic mind protects itself, flooding one pathway to quiet the noise of all the others. I often find myself entering or seeking deep flow when the fullness of my openness becomes too much, as a way to help balance my bodymind. Being holotropic is not something I switch into occasionally, it is who I am, when I am safe enough to be myself.
“Neuro-Holographic” is an emergent idea that our group has embraced. Neuro-Holographic, as a concept here, refers to the idea that every small bit of energy and information, whether an atom or the universe, reflects every other part of itself in a seamless and meaningful way.
This has led to the awareness that, despite common misconceptions, we are very much empathetically connected to the things around us. Because our sensing mechanisms are super sensitive and often synesthetic (cross-sensing — for example, tasting colors or seeing sound) we often feel a part of the things around us. We don’t tend to see in hierarchies, but rather in “holograms,” as described. Always looking for connecting patterns in an overwhelming ocean of sensory, emotional, and energetic information, our relational culture focuses on how things go together and function. Because of these innate talents, insights, and a tendency toward invention, out of the box thinking, and an enthusiasm for combining patterns, autistic/Neuro-Holographic people have been responsible for many important developments in the larger cultures in which they find themselves. Being extraordinarily sensitive and seeing things in new ways is foundational to autistic culture.
The hologram draws on David Bohm’s implicate order, the idea that beneath observable reality lies a deeper enfolded order from which visible patterns emerge (Bohm, 1980). This is contested within some physics discussions and is not mainstream quantum theory. I am not claiming that quantum mechanics literally explains Autistic cognition, I am suggesting that this language describes my lived experience in ways that other frameworks never have. For those of us whose bodyminds work this way, finding that language is not a small thing; it can be life-changing and an opportunity to connect with others.
A hologram has a remarkable property: if you break it into pieces, each fragment still contains the whole image, not a portion of it, but the entire picture, seen from a different angle. The smaller the fragment, the less resolution it holds, but the whole is still there. This is how I feel my mind works, where a single sensation, such as a tone of voice, a shift in relational energy, or the light through my window, can activate entire networks of memory, imagery, emotion, and meaning simultaneously. When my thinking seems to wander off in all directions, it is not getting lost, even if that is how it can appear to others, it is doing what a hologram does, where every fragment still holds the whole picture and every thought connects back to everything else, to a greater or lesser degree. It can be exhausting to live like this at times, but it is also where my most creative ideas and sensory experiences happen, with connections and ideas spiralling up that surprise even me, that don’t make immediate sense until I have had time to sit with them and let them settle into something new.
Quantum Physics and Being Autistic
In quantum physics, a particle in superposition holds multiple possibilities at once — fluid, open, unforced — until something forces it to collapse into a single fixed state. When I first encountered this idea, something in me recognised it, not as a scientific concept I was learning (although I have tried!), but more as a description of something I had been living my whole life without having the words for.
When I am safe, I feel I am in superposition, and I am able to move between two natural rhythms: deep absorption and flow, that bright tunnel where the world narrows to what matters most and a quieter open awareness, where everything settles and connects without effort.
Collapse happens when the world demands linearity: one pace, one channel, one way of being, when I am always on someone else’s time and terms and expectations. When collapse is sustained long enough, it becomes burnout, which is not just exhaustion in the neuronormative sense, but something closer to what I would describe as a dimensional compression, where I am being forced into a single layer until all the others become inaccessible.
Recovery from burnout, for me, is not just about rest; it is about having enough unstructured time for flow and safety to slowly unfold back into the full dimensionality of who I am and find my bearings in whatever new configuration of self and world has emerged in the meantime. It is kind of like being a living portal where the door just closes off sometimes, and I need to find ways to re-open the door to discover whatever new ways of being await.
CASY Autistic Physics Community
Things have begun to shift since I found the CASY Community, where our Autistic ways of knowing and being are all unconditionally accepted. Dawn Prince-Hughes has described CASY gatherings as places “where dense, three-dimensional planes mesh with synesthetic and holographic perceptions”. It felt like Dawn and others were finally naming my internal geography. Our CASY Declaration states that, “there is no separation of mind in a conscious, holographic system — that the Autistic universe is more than the sum of its parts”.
This is what we and other member of CASY are calling Autistic Physics: the understanding that Autistic ways of being is not a broken version of neuronormativity but an entirely different relationship with reality. Liam McDermott’s research names this structurally, arguing that neuronormativity silently governs what counts as scientific knowledge, and that the rigidity of neurotypical-normative learning actively disables those of us who create knowledge non-normatively (McDermott, 2023).
Embracing Neuroholographic Ways of Being
World Quantum Day celebrates the fact that reality, at its most fundamental level, does not behave the way we may have been taught to expect. Particles hold multiple truths simultaneously, and connection happens across distances and time frames that conventional and neuronormative logic would say should make it impossible.
In the CASY Physics group, we have been sitting with these ideas in our online community, and we are finding that when we as Autistic and neurodivergent people share how we actually experience the world, through conversation, writing, art, and all the layered, neuroholographic ways we naturally think and express ourselves, something becomes visible that no outside account of us could ever quite reach. We share synchronicities, different temporalities, and so many experiences that many people find hard to empathise with or understand.
Living in layers has always been how I move through the world, holographically, relationally, in ways that neuronormative frameworks were never built to hold. What I have found in the CASY Physics group is that I am far from alone in this. When people who experience reality in many different and unique ways come together and share their experiences in their own language (through words, text or other creative media), on their own terms, something opens up that no outside account of Autistic people can ever quite reach. The universe, it turns out, works in ways that may feel rather familiar to those of us who have always lived this way, and finding each other, it turns out, is part of how the picture becomes whole and make a bit more sense.
Author’s note: This piece is written from my own Autistic experience. Autistic lives span an enormous range, this is just my perspective.
Murray D, Lesser M, Lawson W. Attention, monotropism and the diagnostic criteria for autism. Autism. 2005 May;9(2):139-56. doi: 10.1177/1362361305051398. PMID: 15857859. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15857859/
If you would like to take these ideas further, my courses, books and resources live on Autistic Realms. Everything in the shop is pay what you can, and many resources are free.
This journey begins with curiosity, and with transformation.
Over the past few years, the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari has become profoundly important to me. I am not a Deleuzian scholar and have no formal academic background in philosophy at all – the aim of this project is very much focused on community learning and expanding conversations.
Through cycles of debilitating Autistic burnout, I found myself searching for language that could help me make sense of experiences that felt difficult to articulate — deep attentional flow, sensory intensity, nonlinear thinking, moments of rupture, the slow processes of recovery and new ways of becoming.
Burnout, Deterritorialisation, and New Patterns of Becoming
Concepts such as the rhizome, multiplicity, body without organs, planes of immanence, assemblage, and deterritorialisation, explored in works including A Thousand Plateaus, Anti-Oedipus, and later reflections such as What Is Philosophy? began to resonate with my lived experience as an Autistic and ADHD (AuDHD) person. My monotropic attention often feels like it moves through constellation-like interconnected tunnels of intensity rather than along a single stable path. My cycles of burnout feel like a sudden loss of territory, a destabilisation of the structures that once enabled my participation in the world. In this sense, burnout sometimes resembled a form of deterritorialisation: a disorientation that disrupted familiar rhythms while opening uncertain possibilities for forming new connections. Recovery does not mean returning to a fixed state, but gradually composing different patterns of relation, energy, and belonging.
Encountering Deleuze and Guattari’s work offered me ways of understanding these experiences not as personal failure, but as part of dynamic relational processes within the wider ecosystems I am part of. Their philosophy is helping me think differently about identity, learning, exhaustion, creativity, and the environments we inhabit. It is opening up a space to understand neurodivergent experience as movement, transformation, and ongoing becoming rather than as a deficit or fragmentation of a whole.
Rhizomatic Thinking and Nonlinear Understanding
At times, reading their work has felt disorienting, yet also strangely and comfortingly familiar. The nonlinear textures of their writing, moving through plateaus, building connections, going through the tides of intensities, and shifting conceptual landscapes, echo ways of thinking that many neurodivergent people may also recognise.
Ideas do not always unfold in a straight line; instead, they branch, loop, and return, forming clusters of attention and moments of unexpected resonance. In this sense, philosophical engagement can feel rhizomatic: thoughts emerging in multiple directions, forming nodes of meaning that connect across time, experience, and environment.
Rather than progressing step by step toward a single conclusion, understanding develops through community movement — through following lines of curiosity, pausing at plateaus of insight, and allowing connections to form gradually. Philosophy, for me, is therefore not only something to be interpreted, it is also something to be experimented with, inhabited, and lived through with repeated encounters with ideas, places, bodies, and other people. In this way, thinking becomes relational and ecological, shaped by the networks we are part of and the intensities that draw our attention.
Neuroqueering Philosophy
This project can therefore be understood as an act of neuroqueering philosophy and our ways of being in the world.
Drawing inspiration from the work of neuroqueer theorist Nick Walker, neuroqueering involves approaching established concepts, systems and ways of being in ways that challenge normative assumptions about knowledge, cognition, identity, and relational life. In this sense, neuroqueering is not only about representation, it is also a practice of becoming, an active reworking of how we think, connect, and how we can re-create meaning together against neuronormativity and conformity.
A Rhizomatic Community Project
This community project — Neuroqueering Deleuze: Rhizomes of Becoming— grows from this ongoing process of engagement and constant iteration, finding and creating difference through repetition.
It is envisioned as a slow, collaborative exploration of philosophical ideas based primarily on Deleuze and Guattari, through neurodivergent lived experience, creative reflection, and relational dialogue. Philosophy does not only take place within academic institutions, it also unfolds in everyday life, through deep interests, sensory experiences, professional work, parenting journeys, community relationships, ecological awareness, and the rhythms of burnout and renewal that so often shape neurodivergent lives.
The project itself is intentionally rhizomatic. Anchor posts from different people may introduce themes or conceptual entry points, but participants are invited to respond in ways that feel meaningful to them — dipping in and out as attention, energy, and curiosity shift. Engagement does not need to be linear or continuous; it may follow rhythms of monotropic flow, periods of rest, or moments of pause and return – there is no expectation in how you take part if this interests you. I am really just hoping to develop my own deeper understanding and connect with others who are also interested in exploring this.
Contributions may take many forms: reflective essays, creative writing, visual work, dialogue, field notes, or theoretical experimentation. At times, there may be intense activity and connection; at other times, the project may enter quieter phases of reflection or renewal. These pauses ill not be seen as interruptions but part of the process itself, moments in which new insights gather, relationships deepen, and different possibilities for thought begin to emerge.
Over time, the project may come to resemble an evolving assemblage, a multiplicity of voices, perspectives, and lines of thought intersecting, diverging, and forming new connections. Rather than building toward a single conclusion (as I have no idea where this will lead!), the process itself becomes generative: a collective practice of rhizomatic thinking, sensing and becoming together.
Practices such as linking to one another’s work, acknowledging influences, tagging shared themes, and responding across social media platforms are therefore not only practical but philosophical. Through shared hashtags — such as #NeuroqueeringDeleuze, #RhizomesOfBecoming, #NeuroqueerPhilosophy, and other evolving conceptual markers people can help form a visible network of ideas: a living rhizome of thought that evolves.
These small acts of citation, iteration, responding, and relational engagement enable ideas to travel, intersect, and transform across different spaces and communities. In this way, the project becomes more than a collection of individual reflections. It becomes an ongoing process of collective becoming, shaped through collaboration, dialogue, and the emergence of new nodes of thinking together.
Philosophical Lineages and Expanding Connections
While this project begins with the collaborative philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, which I am personally very interested in learning more about, it also recognises that their work emerges from a wider philosophical lineage. Thinkers such as Baruch Spinoza, Henri Bergson, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz shaped Deleuze’s explorations of affect, duration, multiplicity, and relational existence. As the project develops, we may move across a wide variety of philosophical and sociological spaces, tracing connections between historical ideas, contemporary neurodivergent theories, and emerging forms of post-human thought and More-Than Neurodiversity.
This work is shaped not only by academic theory but also by us as members of the neurodivergent community. Through our lived experience, and by shared practices of reflection and care, it can grow through our neuroqueer writing, creative work, and grassroots spaces such as Stimpunks.
I would like to draw attention to those who are currently influential in my own work, including Nick Walker, Robert Chapman, Julia Lee Barclay-Morton, David Grey-Hammond, Ryan Boren, and more recently Liam Ren.
Post-humanist and new materialist perspectives also inform the project’s emphasis on relational ontology, movement, and ecological entanglement. The work of Karen Barad, Erin Manning, Brian Massumi, Donna Haraway, and Rosi Braidotti may offer ways of understanding knowledge as something that is produced through relationships, between bodies, environments, and material conditions rather than as abstract theory alone. I have found Ombre Tarragnat’s concept of ethodiversity truly inspiring as it further expands this view, reminding us that diverse ways of perceiving, behaving, and relating are part of broader patterns of life beyond the human.
Together, I hope these influences and others will help shape a project that understands philosophy through a neuroqueer lens as an unfolding project across communities, experiences, and environments, through collective processes of thinking, sensing, creating, and becoming.
An Ongoing Process of Becoming
This is a long-term journey. Ideas may return, shift, and deepen over months or years, I have no final destination. Only plateaus, places to pause, notice connections, and continue thinking and creating together.
If these ideas resonate with you, I would like to invite you to take part. By sharing reflections, linking to one another’s work, and forming new connections, we can collectively expand this rhizome of thought, adding new nodes, pathways, and neuroqueer possibilities for becoming together.
Let the rhizome keep expanding!
References and Further Exploration
This project grows through dialogue with a wide range of thinkers, writers, and community spaces. The following resources offer starting points for exploring neuroqueer theory, neurodiversity scholarship, post-human philosophy, and related conceptual work that may inspire you.
Please do reach out to add to this evolving list!
Neuroqueer and Neurodiversity Thought
Ryan Boren — Neurodiversity advocacy, inclusive pedagogy, and neuroqueer learning environments. Stimpunks https://stimpunks.org/
Robert Chapman — Critical neurodiversity studies, philosophy, and social justice perspectives on mental difference. https://criticalneurodiversity.com
Helen Edgar — Autistic Realms Neurodivergent lived experience, monotropism theory, autistic burnout, relational wellbeing, and practical neuro-affirming resources for families, educators, and professionals. https://autisticrealms.com
Helen Edgar — More Realms Creative neuroqueer writing, philosophical exploration, and posthuman ecological thought, with experimental reflections on identity, temporality, and relational becoming. https://morerealms.com
David Gray-Hammond — Neurodivergent community building, neuroqueering practice, and collaborative learning spaces. NeuroHub Community https://neurohubcommunity.org/
Julia Lee Barclay-Morton — Creative neurodivergent writing, Autistic identity, embodied healing practices, and reflections on burnout, difference, and artistic process. Their platform The Unadapted Ones explores neurodiversity through memoir, theatre, and relational approaches to wellbeing and creativity. https://www.theunadaptedones.com/
Erin Manning — Movement, relationality, and process philosophy, with a focus on creative and embodied practices. http://erinmovement.com/
Brian Massumi – Philosopher of affect, movement, and relational process, whose work develops and extends Deleuzian thought and the emergent, more-than-conscious dimensions of perception and social life. https://brianmassumi.substack.com/about
Ombre Tarragnat — Ethodiversity, ecological neurodiversity thought, and more-than-human approaches to difference. https://www.ombretarragnat.com/
Some philosophical Currents Shaping Deleuzian Becoming……..
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari — Collaborative philosophy exploring multiplicity, becoming, assemblage, and rhizomatic thought. Key texts include Anti-Oedipus, A Thousand Plateaus, and What Is Philosophy?
Henri Bergson — Duration, movement, and intuition. Bergson’s concept of durée (lived time) and his emphasis on creativity and process strongly influenced Deleuze’s explorations of temporality, change, and nonlinear experience.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz — Multiplicity, perspective, and the fold. Leibniz’s philosophy of relational perception and his metaphysics of monads informed Deleuze’s later work on subjectivity, complexity, and The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque.
Friedrich Nietzsche — Becoming, difference, and creative transformation. Nietzsche’s critique of fixed identity and his emphasis on the creation of values shaped Deleuze’s philosophy of affirmation, transformation, and difference.
Baruch Spinoza — Immanence, affect, and relational ethics. Spinoza’s understanding of bodies as defined by their capacities to affect and be affected profoundly influenced Deleuze’s thinking about immanence, becoming, and ethical ways of living.
This project is not a fixed map but an evolving terrain. You are warmly invited to explore blogs and other creative work, follow lines of curiosity, and contribute your own reflections. Through shared experimentation, dialogue, and connection, the rhizome will continue to grow — forming new nodes of thought and new possibilities for becoming together.
Courses, books and resources
If you would like to take these ideas further, my courses, books and resources live on Autistic Realms. Everything in the shop is pay what you can, and many resources are free.
From More-Than Neurodiversity to Ethodiversity: Sensory Climates, Monotropic Flow and Watery-Becomings (an exploration!)
I have been thinking about what it means to live as an Autistic person with a bodymind in a world organised around neuronormativity, speed, noise, and constant transition in often overwhelming environments.
This article explores how Autistic burnout and regulation can be understood as relational ecological reorganisations of monotropic attention with the wider environment, rather than solely individual neurological difficulties.
Drawing on Nick Walker’s neuroqueer theory alongside Ombre Tarragnat’s concepts of Autistic weather-bodies and ethodiversity, Astrida Neimanis’s account of watery embodiment, and Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of the Body without Organs, this article reframes Autistic ways of being as forms of relational reorganisation rather than individual deficit.
This essay is exploratory and reflects an ongoing process of neuroqueering how my own attention, well-being, and belonging are understood. May be some of it will resonate with you?
Rethinking Neurodivergence in Neuronormative Societies
Autistic experience shows that well-being does not arise only from what happens within an individual. It develops through ongoing relationships between bodyminds, relationships, environments, and social expectations. Attention, sensory regulation, emotional rhythms, and energy flow are shaped through everyday encounters with the worlds we inhabit. When these relationships become strained or misaligned, experiences of burnout and fragmentation can occur.
Neuroqueer (Walker, 2021) and posthuman perspectives invite us to understand neurodivergence as shaped not only by individual neurology but also by sensory environments, social structures, technological systems, and political conditions.
A more-than-neurodiversity approach moves beyond helping individuals adapt to existing systems. Instead, it asks how those systems themselves might be re-organised to support diverse ways of sensing, attending, communicating, and relating.
These relational processes are not abstract. They are organised through school timetables, digital infrastructures of constant connectivity, and socio-political economic systems that prioritise speed and productivity. Such conditions shape how attention can move, how bodies regulate, and whose rhythms of participation are recognised as viable.
In societies organised around neuronormative values, difference only becomes visible through comparison with dominant norms. Neurodivergent individuals may therefore experience pressure to suppress sensory needs, split our natural monotropic attentional flow, or mask ways of being in order to remain socially legible. While these strategies can enable participation and may foster greater acceptance, the sustained effort required to maintain them can lead to exhaustion and burnout. Experiences such as meltdown, shutdown, and declining mental or physical health can be understood not just as individual difficulties, but as relational signals that our everyday environments and ways of being have become too intense, unpredictable, or unsustainable and that change is needed.
This article suggests that what Deleuze and Guattari call becoming a Body without Organs may help us understand Autistic experience as an ongoing neuroqueer ecological process. Through this lens, bodyminds are continually reorganising in response to changing relational climates. Drawing on Tarragnat’s ideas of Autistic weather-bodies and ethodiversity, Neimanis’s writing on watery embodiment, and Walker’s neuroqueer theory, I am reflecting on my own lived Autistic experience to explore how neurodivergent ways of sensing and relating can open new possibilities for ecological belonging and more liveable worlds.
Beyond the Brain: The Limits of “Neuro” Framing
While the language of neurodiversity has played a crucial role in reframing neurological variation as a natural and valuable aspect of human diversity, I think the growing emphasis on “neuro” as a primary explanatory framework also raises important questions. All humans have nervous systems and unique sensory and attentional patterns, all of which are shaped by our experiences and intersecting identities. When difference is understood mainly, or only through what are seen as brain-based (neurological) and diagnostic models, then understandings of divergence can become narrowed to recognised clinical categories, while the wider relational, cultural, political, and ecological conditions shaping experience remain less visible. This is not to deny the reality of neurological difference and being innately Autistic, but to argue that such difference is always lived through relational, cultural, and ecological conditions.
Neurodivergence may not always be a fixed identity or solely a neurological state of being. It can also emerge through different ways of sensing, relating, resisting, or reorganising participation in environments. For some, becoming neurodivergent becomes a conscious process of neuroqueering dominant expectations around productivity, communication, or emotional regulation. In this sense, divergence is not always bounded or stable, and it may not always be inherently positive. It can involve vulnerability, exclusion, uncertainty, and ongoing negotiation with social norms, the spaces we engage with, and the direction our neurodivergence leads us towards.
When divergence is measured primarily against socially constructed standards of independence, efficiency, social fluency, and normative regulation, important dimensions of human variation can be overlooked. Expanding the conversation beyond strictly neurological framings allows neurodivergence to be understood as emerging from interactions among the infinite experiences of different bodyminds shaped by intersectionality, environments, and also the systems of power we live within.
More-than-neurodiversity perspectives, including Ombre Tarragnat’s concept of ethodiversity (2025), further challenge hierarchical and human-centric assumptions about how difference is organised and valued. Instead of locating divergence solely within individual brains, these approaches understand embodiment as relational and ecological, a continual process of becoming shaped by sensory climates, technological infrastructures, social systems, and ecological conditions, it looks at our relations within a multi-species context, our way of being with the wider planet and all that it contains.
Exploring Autistic experience through ecological metaphors such as weather, water, and Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the Body without Organs offers one way of shining a light on how our bodyminds may reorganise themselves in response to shifting relational environments. These frameworks help widen the discussion from individual adaptation to collective transformation, opening the possibility of reimagining more liveable relational worlds.
Autistic Weather-Bodies: Sensory Climates and Masking
Ombre Tarragnat’s (2024) idea of the Autistic weather-body helps us understand how our experiences are shaped by the climates we live within. They suggest that our bodyminds are always responding to a “total climate” , not only the physical weather around us, but also biodiverse, sensory environments, social expectations, technologies, and socio-political conditions we live within.
These relational climates are not only social or human-centred; they are multispecies and more-than-human. Living beings, ecological communities, and so-called non-living forces such as air quality, light, temperature fluctuations, water, and seasonal rhythms all shape how bodyminds feel, focus, regulate, and relate. These dynamic conditions also respond to our presence and actions. Together, they influence the ecological possibilities through which different forms of life — human and non-human — can endure, adapt, and flourish. From this perspective, neurodivergent experience emerges within more-than-human ecologies rather than solely within and between humans, everything and everyone is connected!
For many Autistic people, changes in atmosphere are felt very directly and intensely; our bodies are perhaps more porous. Lighting, noise, other sensory input, unpredictability, digital pressures, and interpersonal tension and relationships can all influence our attention, energy, and capacity to regulate, and we may not always have control over this.
These shifts are not always dramatic; sometimes they are more subtle, a rising sense of pressure and anxixety in a crowded room, a flicker of fluorescent light that begins to feel painful, or even the bodily awareness of a storm approaching. I know that for me, changes in the weather can trigger migraines before the rain even arrives. These experiences remind us that our bodyminds are not sealed off from the world; we are not just humans in the world. We are continually sensing, adjusting, responding, adapting and connecting with the world.
Thinking about Autistic bodyminds as weather-bodies moves my thinking away from asking how people need to become more ‘resilient’ to change, trauma and ruptures of flow states. Instead, it invites us to consider how the climates of our everyday lives might become more liveable and flow more steadily and smoothly. We can consider what schools would feel like if they were organised around sensory comfort and intrinsically motivated attention tunnels of engagement rather than speed and constant transition? How might workplaces change if regulation and recovery were understood as necessary rhythms rather than signs of weakness?
Tarragnat also writes about how we actually weather environments too. All humans try to adapt, this may be more intense for Autistic people and a trauma response to the very climate we live in. We may sometimes mask or suppress our sensory needs when having a meal out with friends, push through our exhaustion to meet a deadline at work, or fragment our attention in order to try to stay socially acceptable and communicate in a busy cafe. Over time, this kind of acclimatisation can erode our sense of coherence, identity and well-being. Burnout, meltdowns or shutdowns may follow, often with severe mental health implications as we try to survive and function, and this pressure accumulates. These experiences are not personal failures; they are signals that our current relational climates have become too difficult to inhabit.
Like water, our Autistic weather-bodies are also fluid; our experiences move and change like atmospheric patterns. To deepen this ecological way of thinking, I think it could be helpful and interesting to turn to the watery metaphors of embodiment such as that proposed by Neimanis (2017). If weather shapes how we feel and function and how we may be weather-bodies, water also helps us understand how well our bodyminds can actually manage attention, emotion, and energy flow. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the plants and biodiversity around us and the ecosystems that grow within our world are all vital to our well-being and deeply entangled in a connected flow.
Understanding Autistic experience through these ecological metaphors may help us recognise that wellbeing is always relational. It depends not only on what happens inside our bodyminds, but on the climates and currents we all move within.
Watery Bodies: Monotropic Attention and Relational Flow
Posthuman feminist thinker Astrida Neimanis (2017) describes human beings as bodies of water, shaped by the flows that move through and around us. Water is not only something we drink, cook with, or wash in. It circulates through our blood and tissues, regulates temperature through sweat and breath, and connects us to wider ecological systems such as weather patterns, infrastructures, rivers, oceans and cycles in nature.
From this perspective, embodiment is not sealed within the skin. Bodies are permeable, porous, sponge-like, relational, and continuously responding to the environments they inhabit. We are not separate from the oceanic and atmospheric systems that sustain life. In a very real material sense, we are entangled with them, shaped by their rhythms, movements, and transformations. Our sensory and nervous systems are always responding and adapting to maintain a stable flow amid the different currents and energies around us.
For many Autistic people, whose perception often foregrounds sensory detail and pattern, this account of embodiment may resonate with lived experiences of permeability, intensity, and environmental attunement.
Monotropic attention, characterised by deep engagement with particular interests or sensory environments (Murray et al., 2005), can be imagined as a current that gathers depth and direction over time. When attention can move steadily toward meaningful activity, it may support learning, regulation, creativity, and a sense of coherence within the wider flow and environment a person is within.
However, many relational environments are organised in ways that disrupt rather than support these attentional currents. Educational settings often require rapid transitions between subjects, noisy corridors, and constant social negotiation. Workplaces often demand multitasking, immediate responses to digital communication, and participation in unpredictable meetings. Everyday life may involve sensory overload from traffic, crowds, bright lighting, smells, or competing demands at home and with our own health. These conditions can create what might be described as turbulent relational climates, in which the flow of attention is repeatedly interrupted and ruptured, leaving us without a safe anchor.
These turbulent relational climates are often produced and intensified through socio-political, economic, and technological systems that fragment attention and accelerate temporal demands. For example, constant news alerts on your phone may create a background sense of urgency or threat, pulling your attention and flow away from embodied rhythms and present-moment regulation. Algorithm-driven social media feeds, rapid email expectations at work, and productivity-monitoring apps can pressure people to respond immediately, compressing time and narrowing opportunities for rest or deep flow with our passions.
Economic precarity, shift work, and unstable housing conditions can further disrupt sensory and emotional regulation by creating unpredictability in daily routines and environments. Public transport delays, overcrowded urban spaces, and exposure to noise or poor air quality may also contribute to cumulative sensory load. At a broader level, climate-related events such as heatwaves, flooding, or seasonal disruption can reshape how people move, gather, and feel safe, while also affecting multispecies habitats and ecological stability.
Together, these forces create relational climates that are not only socially produced but materially and technologically mediated, shaping how bodyminds attend, connect, recover, and sustain participation in everyday life – which may all be felt more acutely if you are Autistic. Understanding burnout in this way highlights how neurodivergent distress is frequently structured by socio-political and material conditions rather than individual deficit.
From a hydrological perspective, responses such as overwhelm, shutdown, or withdrawal can be understood as the body adjusting to this turbulence. Just as rivers alter course when encountering obstacles, drought, or flooding, Autistic individuals may narrow their focus, find cracks and crevices to retreat into quieter spaces, or seek familiar routines in order to restore coherence and regain a smoother less distressing flow state, so our systems don’t get flooded or caught up in a storm. These adjustments are often misinterpreted as avoidance, lack of resilience, or disengagement. Yet they can represent adaptive attempts to conserve energy and re-establish sustainable regulatory pathways and streams of flow.
This shift from individual responsibility toward relational transformation raises a deeper philosophical question: how do bodyminds reorganise when familiar structures of engagement become unsustainable? Rather than understanding burnout as a breakdown, they may be read as processes of reorganisation. To explore this possibility, I am turning to Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the Body without Organs, which offers a way of thinking about how new patterns of regulation, relation, and participation can emerge.
Body without Organs: Autistic Becoming
I find Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of the Body without Organs (BwO) helpful for thinking about how Autistic bodyminds may reorganise when everyday demands become overwhelming or unsustainable. The BwO does not refer to a literal physical state (!). Instead, it describes shifts in how attention, sensory experience, movement, and participation are organised and can become re-organised.
From my own experience, these shifts often become most noticeable during periods of burnout or intense overwhelm. At these times, familiar ways of focusing, communicating, or keeping up with daily life can begin to break down. For example, I might find that replying to messages or emails — tasks that once felt manageable — suddenly requires an enormous amount of energy, or that following conversations in busy environments becomes confusing and exhausting. Even simple routines such as preparing meals, travelling on public transport, or switching between tasks can feel disorientating, as if my attention is no longer able to stretch in the ways it once did.
It can feel as though the usual pathways for engaging with the world are no longer available. However, these moments are not only about loss or collapse. There can also be times when new ways of regulating and relating start to emerge as attentional resources redistribute in order to survive. For instance, I may begin to rely more on sensory anchors such as quiet spaces, repetitive movement, or focused creative interests. Communication might shift toward slower, more intentional exchanges, or toward written rather than spoken interaction. Daily life can reorganise around fewer but more meaningful connections and activities, allowing energy to be conserved and gradually restored. In this way, burnout can sometimes open space for different rhythms of participation and new forms of relational attunement to develop.
Reorganisation does not only happen in moments of crisis. It often unfolds through small, everyday neuroqueer choices. This might look like staying with a deep interest long after others have moved on, pacing or rocking to steady sensory overwhelm, wearing noise-cancelling headphones in busy spaces, or choosing solitude after social interaction in order to recover. Some Autistic people reshape their days so that activities happen in a predictable sequence, or protect uninterrupted stretches of time where attention can settle and flow.
What Deleuze and Guattari call deterritorialisation can be felt here as a soft loosening of pressure, a step away from expectations to respond quickly, multitask constantly, or socialise in prescribed ways. As these pressures ease, different rhythms of living and participating can begin to take shape for others too and the ripples of change begin to take effect.
Many Autistic people recognise these processes in small but significant adjustments to how they move through the world. Erin Manning (2016) describes such shifts as “minor gestures” — subtle changes that reshape how we sense, focus, and relate within particular environments. This might involve rhythmic movement to steady sensory overwhelm, withdrawing into a meaningful interest after prolonged interaction, or becoming absorbed in creative or repetitive activity. These gestures can be understood as the mechanisms through which reorganisation happens. They are ways of actively redistributing sensory and emotional intensity, recalibrating attention, and gradually re-establishing a sense of coherence. Although often misunderstood as avoidance or dysfunction, such practices can help Autistic individuals re-climatise to demanding relational atmospheres and sustain participation over time.here.
As these processes are relational, they are shaped by the environments in which we live. Sensory-friendly spaces, predictable routines, flexible expectations, and collective care can make a significant difference. From this perspective, well-being is not something individuals achieve alone; it emerges collectively through interdependence with environments (beyond the human), that recognise and support diverse ways of focusing, recovering, and connecting.
For many Autistic people, reorganising routines and spaces becomes an intentional way of reducing neuronormative pressure. Creating sensory refuges, protecting uninterrupted time for deep focus, limiting unnecessary task-switching, or prioritising interest-led learning and creativity can support more sustainable engagement. These are not simply personal coping strategies. They are ways of experimenting with how attention, energy, and participation might be structured differently.
Neurodivergent becoming can therefore be understood as an ongoing neuroqueering process of adjustment and transformation, shaped by the continuous redistribution of attention, energy, and sensory intensity. Periods of immersion, withdrawal, or re-focusing are not simply signs that something has gone wrong. They may indicate that bodyminds are reorganising in response to pressures that exceed sustainable limits.
When these processes are recognised and supported, they can open pathways towards more liveable ways of being, not only for Autistic people, but within the wider relational ecologies we all share. In this sense, becoming a Body without Organs is not a final state but a dynamic practice: a way to loosen restrictive normative expectations, experiment with new rhythms of participation, and contribute to the gradual reshaping of environments so that diverse forms of attention, regulation, and connection can co-exist and keep transforming and flowing.
From Neurodiversity to Ethodiversity: Ecological Multiplicity
When Autistic reorganisations of attention and sensory When experiences of sensory intensity or overwhelm are understood as relational and ecological processes, rather than simply individual coping challenges, our perspective begins to widen. Instead of seeing regulation as something a person must manage alone, we can recognise how environments, relationships, technologies, and broader living systems all shape how attention, emotion, and energy flow.
From this viewpoint, neurodiversity is no longer only about differences between human brains. It becomes part of a wider story about how many forms of life sense, respond, adapt, and find ways to remain in the world. Ideas such as becoming a Body without Organs can be read as an invitation to notice these shifting patterns of connection and regulation, and to recognise the importance of ethodiversity (Tarragnat, 2025), or the diversity of ways living beings experience and engage with their environments.
Expanding neurodiversity toward the concept of ethodiversity strengthens this ecological understanding. Ombre Tarragnat (2025) uses this term to highlight how different perceptual styles, emotional intensities, and attention patterns contribute to the resilience of relational systems, including ecosystems and multispecies communities. For example, Autistic sensory attunement may make environmental pressures more noticeable such as persistent background noise, polluted air, or the stress of extreme weather changes.
Ethodiversity does not just build on neurodiversity by recognising additional forms of human difference. Instead, it draws attention to the diversity of ways living beings perceive, move, and participate in shared environments, as well as the impact of non-living things. From this perspective, neurodivergence can be understood as one expression of a wider ecological multiplicity of attentional rhythms, sensory attunements, and relational styles that help sustain more liveable worlds.
Understanding and embracing ethodiversity means creating relational systems that can support different rhythms of participation, perception, rest, and recovery. This includes recognising that people, other species, and environments do not all move, sense, or respond in the same ways or at the same pace. Designing spaces, communities, and policies with this diversity in mind becomes part of a wider ethics of planetary care.
When we value diverse forms of embodiment and ways of relating to the world, we also begin to recognise how closely human wellbeing is connected to ecological wellbeing. Sustaining multiplicity across cognitive, cultural, biological, and ecological domains is therefore not only a matter of social inclusion. It is also a condition for collective survival. For example, if water systems become polluted, this affects the health of entire ecosystems, and human communities are not separate from these impacts. In this way, caring for diversity in how life exists and adapts is part of caring for the future of the planet as a whole.
Cultivating Liveable Worlds: A Neuroqueer Ecological Future
Autistic experience highlights how wellbeing emerges through ongoing relationships between bodyminds, environments, and social expectations. Sensory overwhelm, burnout, fragmentation, and withdrawal can therefore be understood not simply as individual difficulties, but as signals that relational climates have become too intense, unpredictable, or unsustainable.
Thinking with concepts such as Autistic weather-bodies, watery embodiment, and the Body without Organs helps us recognise how bodyminds continually adapt and reorganise in response to these conditions. Practices of regulation such as retreating into focused flow, seeking quieter environments, experimenting with new rhythms of engagement, or stimming can be understood as efforts to restore coherence and sustain participation. Neuroqueering involves both resisting dominant expectations and actively reshaping environments to support different temporalities and sensory needs.
The concepts of Cavendish Space and Neuroqueer Learning Spaces, which I have been working on with Stimpunks, offer practical examples of how relational ecologies might be redesigned. By prioritising sensory accessibility, slower rhythms of participation, interest-led engagement, and collective care, these approaches shift the focus away from expecting Autistic individuals to adapt to rigid systems. Instead, they explore how environments themselves can become more responsive and sustaining.
Cultivating liveable relational worlds requires more than individual accommodation. It calls for collective transformation, reshaping educational, social, technological, and ecological systems so that diverse rhythms of sensing, regulating, and belonging can genuinely flourish. Supporting diverse modes of becoming is not only about inclusion within existing structures, but about reimagining those structures altogether.
Extending neurodiversity toward the broader horizon of ethodiversity invites recognition that multiplicity across perceptual styles, cultural practices, and environmental relationships contributes to more liveable shared futures. Practices that support sensory regulation, slower temporal rhythms, and sustainable participation may also align with wider movements toward ecological care and multispecies coexistence.
From this perspective, becoming what Deleuze and Guattari describe as a Body without Organs can be understood as an ongoing neuroqueer process of reorganisation. It involves loosening restrictive normative expectations, redistributing attention and energy, and experimenting with and queering new ways of participating and being in our relational worlds. Perhaps neuroqueering attention and sensory life is not only about Autistic survival, but about learning new ways of living together within the fragile ecologies we all share?
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press.
Manning, E. (2016). The minor gesture. Duke University Press.
Murray, D., Lesser, M., & Lawson, W. (2005). Attention, monotropism and the diagnostic criteria for autism. Autism, 9(2), 139–156.
Neimanis, A. (2017). Bodies of water: Posthuman feminist phenomenology. Bloomsbury.
Tarragnat, O. (2024). The personal is climatic: Autistic weather-bodies and posthuman feminism between weathering and (dis)acclimatisation. Sextant: Revue de recherche interdisciplinaire sur le genre et la sexualité, (41).
Tarragnat, O. (2025). Biodiversity, neurodiversity, ethodiversity: Towards a more-than-human and more-than-neurological turn in neurodiversity studies. TRACE Journal for Human-Animal Studies.
Walker, N. (2021). Neuroqueer heresies. Autonomous Press.
Yergeau, M. (2018). Authoring autism: On rhetoric and neurological queerness. Duke University Press.
If you would like to take these ideas further, my courses, books and resources live on Autistic Realms. Everything in the shop is pay what you can, and many resources are free.
Autistic community can function as a living ecology of support, growing rhizomes and mycelium networks of care through shared recognition, co-regulation and mutual understanding. Within education, healthcare and labour systems that often disrupt neurodivergent flow and safety, these relational networks help sustain belonging, support burnout recovery and create new possibilities for engagement and participation. Drawing on monotropism, masking research and neurodivergent design approaches developed through Stimpunks, this article explores how our collective Autistic spaces nurture survival, resistance and transformative futures.
The Autistic Rhizome
The Autistic community is often spoken about as a source of friendship and peer support – a place to find people who just ‘get it’ and accept us for who we really are in all of our weird and wonderful ways of being. Yet for myself and perhaps others, it also functions as something far more foundational, a relational ecology that enables actual survival within systems not designed for our ways of thinking, sensing, and being.
Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) concept of the rhizome offers a powerful lens for understanding this. Rhizomes grow laterally rather than hierarchically. They form networks of connection that adapt to changing environments and they persist even after rupture. In many ways, the Autistic community develops in similar ways, through shared flow states, shared recognition, and collective resistance to structures that fragment our attention and belonging.
This matters because our dominant systems, particularly education, healthcare, and capitalist labour structures, often operate through neuronormative assumptions about productivity, communication, and independence and ways of being which leads many of us into chronic burnout.
Education, Attention, and the Cost of Neuroconformity
Educational systems frequently prioritise standardised pacing, neuroconformity, and measurable outcomes over relational safety and cognitive and sensory diversity. For monotropic people (Murray et al., 2005), such environments can be profoundly destabilising. Constant transitions, sensory overload, and social performance demands can disrupt flow and contribute to experiences of masking, suppressing our need for sensory regulation, increasing anxiety and often leading to disengagement or exclusion.
Research on Autistic inertia highlights how difficulties with task initiation or switching are often misunderstood as defiance or lack of motivation (Buckle et al., 2021) rather than a redistribution of monotropic attentional resources. When these misunderstandings are embedded within institutions and systems, people may internalise deficit narratives or experience harmful interventions in order to try and fix or shape Autistic people into fitting into the neuronormative world. Trauma then accumulates over time, shaping later experiences of participation and safety and can lead to burnout and mental health difficulties.
Autistic community spaces (online and in person) can provide alternative ecologies for learning and care. where the neurodivergent love languages and the importance of interest-led exploration, flexible pacing, and co-regulation allow attention to stabilise and flow more evenly and a sense of belonging can emerge where we can be our authentic selves.
Healthcare, Misattunement, and Epistemic Injustice
Healthcare systems also frequently struggle to recognise Autistic communication styles, sensory realities, and embodied knowledge. The double empathy problem (Milton, 2012) highlights how misunderstandings between neurotypes can shape diagnostic processes, treatment decisions, and therapeutic relationships. Autistic people may find their experiences dismissed, pathologised, or translated into frameworks that prioritise normalisation over wellbeing.
Such interactions can contribute to epistemic injustice — the marginalisation of individuals as credible knowers of their own lives. When healthcare encounters become sites of misattunement rather than support, relational safety is undermined. This may delay help-seeking or intensify distress.
Within Autistic community, shared narratives can restore legitimacy to lived experience. Collective knowledge and sharing stories offer alternative pathways for understanding burnout, coping, sensory regulation, and recovery.
Capitalism, Masking, and Burnout
Our labour structures and workplaces often reward speed, multitasking, social performance, and uninterrupted productivity. For many Autistic people, sustaining participation in such environments requires masking — suppressing natural behaviours or attentional rhythms to meet normative expectations (Hull et al., 2020; Mantzalas et al., 2022).
Over time, sustained masking combined with environmental mismatch can contribute to Autistic burnout (Raymaker et al., 2020). Burnout may involve loss of functional capacity, withdrawal from work or education, and profound exhaustion as all of our monotropic attentional resources go into survival mode. Framing these outcomes solely as failures of individual resilience obscures their structural roots. – it is a socio-political and ecosystemic problem.
Autistic community can act as a counter-space to these pressures. Rhizomatic networks of mutual aid, shared stories, advocacy, and shared pacing enable individuals to explore alternative participation models. Some may pursue interest-led work, flexible schedules, or collaborative creative projects. These movements can be understood as Deleuzian lines of flight — pathways through which individuals move away from restrictive assemblages and experiment with new ways of living (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987).
Safety as Relational Infrastructure
Across education, healthcare, and employment, a common thread seems to emerge that safety is not only physical or psychological. It is sensory, attentional, relational, and political.
Safety involves being able to focus without constant interruption. It involves communicating without fear of misinterpretation. It involves participating without masking core aspects of identity.
The Autistic community often provides conditions for such safety through shared norms, slower rhythms, and recognition of diverse sensory and regulatory needs. Co-regulation and inter-dependence become possible when individuals do not need to defend their ways of being. Over time, these relational environments within the rhizome can support recovery from burnout and trauma.
From Resistance to Re-Designing Mycelial Networks of Care
Through collaborative work with Stimpunks, I have been involved in developing pattern language resources that articulate recurring neurodivergent experiences and their environmental contexts (Stimpunks, 2026a). These patterns form the basis for practical design “recipes” aimed at reshaping institutions and systems to support diverse cognitive and sensory ways of being (Stimpunks, 2026b, 2026c).
This work signals a move beyond simple neuro-affirming accommodation toward deeper neuroqueer transformation. It suggests a shift from approaches that seek only to make existing neuronormative systems slightly more tolerable, toward practices that fundamentally question how those systems are organised and whose ways of being they prioritise. Neuro-affirming accommodation can be important and often necessary in the short term, helping to reduce immediate barriers or harms. However, when accommodation is framed as the endpoint rather than part of a broader process of change, it risks leaving intact the underlying assumptions about productivity, communication, independence, and pacing that continue to destabilise Autistic attention, sensory regulation, and relational safety.
Neuroqueer transformation invites a more expansive reimagining. It asks what might happen if environments were not simply adjusted around the margins, but re-designed from the ground up to recognise diverse cognitive rhythms, sensory experiences, and ways of participating. This involves moving from reactive support toward proactive design, creating spaces where deep focus, flexible transitions, alternative communication styles, and interdependence are not treated as deviations to be managed, but as integral aspects of collective life. In this sense, neurodivergent design becomes both a practical and a political project: a process of reshaping institutions so that they can accommodate multiple modes of attention, embodiment, and relationality without requiring individuals to mask or fragment themselves to belong.
Rather than asking Autistic individuals to constantly adjust to environments that disrupt attention, safety, and well-being, neurodivergent design aims to reshape systems to support different ways of sensing, communicating, and participating. The knowledge that grows within rhizomatic Autistic communities plays an important role in this work. Through shared recognition, mutual aid, and collaborative experimentation, these communities generate situated understandings of burnout, regulation, pacing, and connection. Such knowledge does not remain purely theoretical; it informs new educational practices, healthcare approaches, creative collaborations, and models of participation that are more equitable and sustainable.
In this way, neuroqueer transformation is not only about resisting harmful structures, but also about cultivating alternative futures. It emerges through the gradual expansion of relational networks that support belonging, creativity, and recovery. As these rhizomatic forms of community continue to grow and adapt, they contribute to the ongoing redesign of social worlds, opening possibilities for ways of living together that honour neurodivergent difference as generative rather than problematic.
Expanding the Mycelial Network of Care: Rhizomatic Belonging and Collective Futures
Understanding Autistic community as rhizomatic reveals that belonging is not a fixed destination but an ongoing relational process. It emerges through shared attention, mutual recognition, and the gradual weaving of safer spaces within systems that often disrupt flow and participation. In this sense, community is not simply something we find; it is something we can actually grow together and shape for our diverse needs.
When burnout, trauma, or systemic exclusion make participation difficult, networks of care within Autistic communities can help us find new ways to stay connected and sustain ourselves. We re-root together, supporting one another and forming new points and nodes of connection within the wider rhizome. These journeys are rarely straightforward; they often involve slowing down, adjusting communication, and experimenting with ways of living that move beyond neuronormative expectations.
Deleuze and Guattari (1987) describe this kind of movement as creating lines of flight, moments when people begin to move toward new possibilities and build different forms of support, creativity, and meaning. In many ways, this is what we are doing through spaces such as Neurohub Community and through collaborative work with Stimpunks: actively creating and living within alternative networks of belonging.
Expanding the mycelial network of care therefore becomes both a personal and collective practice. Each conversation that validates lived experience, each redesign of an educational space, each act of co-regulation within community contributes to strengthening these underground systems of connection. Through collaborative work such as the development of neurodivergent pattern languages and design approaches (Stimpunks, 2026), Autistic people are actively reshaping the environments and structures that have always required us to adapt or “fit in.” This work reflects an ongoing process of transformation. Neuroqueering our ways of being, and our relationships with others and with the environments we inhabit. This becomes a continual practice of reimagining participation, safety, and belonging.
These networks enable forms of engagement and participation grounded in safety rather than performance, in interdependence rather than isolation. They support new imaginaries of play, work, rest, learning, and socialising where our diverse ways of being are not merely accommodated but genuinely recognised as generative and transformational. Rhizomatic community creates a sense of belonging that becomes a form of re-world-building — expanding the possibilities for how our Autistic or otherwise neurodivergent lives can unfold.
Like mycelium sustaining forest ecosystems, these relational infrastructures often remain unseen by dominant neuronormative systems and are dismissed as meaningless. Yet they continue to grow, adapt, and nourish. We continue to grow as a community, even after rupture, new connections emerge. Through expanding networks of care, Autistic communities are not only surviving within existing structures but we are also gradually transforming them.
Autistic Rhizomes and Mycelial Infrastructures of Collective Care: How the Autistic Community Is Already Changing the World
The Autistic rhizome does not stop at the boundaries of the present and the here and now. It continues to grow through expanding mycelium networks of care, relational systems that spread quietly yet persistently beneath the surface of dominant neuronormative structures. These networks are not only symbolic of future possibility; they are already being lived, practiced, and cultivated in some community spaces today. Through shared recognition, co-regulation, mutual aid, and collaborative creativity and solidarity sessions, Autistic people are actively generating new conditions for safety, participation, and belonging.
This transformation is not in some distant horizon or unattainable future. It is unfolding now within spaces such as Neurohub Community and Stimpunks, where neurodivergent design approaches, pattern language resources, and collective learning, story sharing and support are reshaping how we understand care and what participation and engagement really look like. Within these rhizomatic spaces, knowledge and care move laterally rather than hierarchically. People reconnect after rupture, re-root after burnout, and experiment with new rhythms of engagement that honour our diverse communication, attentional and sensory needs.
Autistic mycelium networks of care function as living infrastructures of change. They nourish us while simultaneously influencing wider systems, always creating new nodes on the rhizome, new points to engage or disengage, demonstrating that alternative ways of organising education, healthcare, work, and community life are both necessary and possible. By growing together through shared experience and relational trust, these networks challenge deficit and neuronormative-dominated narratives and open pathways toward more equitable and sustainable neuroqueer futures.
The Autistic rhizome reaches forward and outwards, not only through imagination, but through action. Each moment of co-regulation, each redesign of an environment, each collaborative act of resistance, and each shared story, meme, or gif can contribute to an ongoing process of collective re-world-building.
I feel deeply grateful to be part of this transformation alongside communities such as Stimpunks and David Gray-Hammond’s Neurohub Community — spaces where the expansion of Autistic rhizomes and mycelium networks of care is not just envisioned, but really lived and enabling me to survive….. may be beginning to thrive……
References
Botha, M., Dibb, B., & Frost, D. M. (2022). Autism is me: An investigation of how autistic individuals make sense of autism and stigma. Disability & Society. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2022.2031829
Buckle, K. L., Leadbitter, K., Buckle, C., Ellis, C., & Dekker, M. (2021). “No way out except from external intervention”: First-hand accounts of autistic inertia. Autism, 25(8), 2473–2484. https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613211018185
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press.
Hull, L., Petrides, K. V., Allison, C., Smith, P., Baron-Cohen, S., Lai, M.-C., & Mandy, W. (2020). “Putting on my best normal”: Social camouflaging in adults with autism spectrum conditions. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 50, 2519–2534. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-019-03934-5
Mantzalas, J., Richdale, A. L., Adikari, A., Lowe, J., & Dissanayake, C. (2022). What is autistic burnout? A thematic analysis. Autism in Adulthood, 4(1), 52–63. https://doi.org/10.1089/aut.2021.0021
Murray, D., Lesser, M., & Lawson, W. (2005). Attention, monotropism and the diagnostic criteria for autism. Autism, 9(2), 139–156. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361305051398
Pearson, A., & Rose, K. (2021). A conceptual analysis of autistic masking: Understanding the narrative of stigma and the illusion of choice. Autism in Adulthood, 3(1), 52–60. https://doi.org/10.1089/aut.2020.0043
Raymaker, D. M., Teo, A. R., Steckler, N. A., Lentz, B., Scharer, M., Delos Santos, A., Kapp, S. K., Hunter, M., Joyce, A., & Nicolaidis, C. (2020). “Having all of your internal resources exhausted beyond measure”: Defining autistic burnout. Autism in Adulthood, 2(2), 132–143. https://doi.org/10.1089/aut.2019.0079
If you would like to take these ideas further, my courses, books and resources live on Autistic Realms. Everything in the shop is pay what you can, and many resources are free.
Burnout can feel like the ground of our very experience and existence has shifted or collapsed. Pathways of attention that once felt sustaining become blocked or fragile. Environments that were manageable begin to overwhelm. Relationships may require more energy than feels possible.
Recovery is not about returning to who we were before burnout. For many Autistic and ADHD people, it becomes a process of re-assembling life differently, rebuilding the ecological conditions and relationships that allow our attention, identity and belonging to reform into a new shape.
Monotropism and the return of attentional flow
Monotropism reminds us that deep attention is not just about hyper-focus and special interests. It is a way of organising our entire bodyminds and ways we experience the world; structuring time, anchoring identity and supporting regulation.
At some point during a period of burnout, you may find that you can slowly reconnect with interests and little things that bring glimmers of joy to your day. Reading about a long-held fascination for short periods, returning to creative or sensory activities without pressure to produce anything. Walking familiar routes that provide predictability, stim watching and stim listening to things that help you get into a flow state. Sorting, collecting, or organising objects and sensory tools may all help restore coherence and get the flow flowing again.
These acts may appear small from the outside, yet they allow what may feel like broken and fragmented experiences to gather again.
As attentional flow returns, you may notice the fog slowly shifting, slightly clearer thinking, reduced anxiety, renewed motivation, and greater emotional and sensory stability. Recovery is not about forcing productivity, but about restoring ecological continuity and flow of attention.
Rhizomatic becoming after burnout
Deleuze and Guattari describe the rhizome as a model of growth without a single origin or direction.
I see my own neurodivergent life unfold in this way, branching through interests, looping across time, and forming connections that do not follow normative developmental pathways or socially expected ways of being.
Burnout can disrupt these rhizomatic processes, blocking the flows that sustain becoming. Recovery involves reopening movement and flow. It may mean allowing new pathways to emerge rather than attempting to restore previous ones.
In this sense, recovery is not a return. It is a continuation of becoming, but under different ecological conditions.
Mycelial care and interdependence
Recovery rarely happens in isolation. Disability justice perspectives emphasise that wellbeing emerges through interdependence, not independence.
Neurodivergent communities often form mycelial networks of support, distributed systems of care that include practical help, shared knowledge, advocacy and emotional attunement.
These networks reduce the pressure to mask or perform. They create environments where different rhythms of participation and communication are possible and where our energy levels are supported rather than judged.
Through such relational infrastructures, survival becomes collective and more sustainable.
Relational fields and minor gestures
Erin Manning’s work helps us understand recovery as a shift within relational fields, the dynamic interplay of body, environment, affect and movement.
Large changes are not always necessary to begin healing. Recovery often unfolds through minor gestures:
protecting time for deep focus and stimming
reducing sensory demands and engaging in sensory flow
slowing daily rhythms
Connecting with trusted people who really ‘get you’
creating spaces for rest and other forms of communication and engagement
These small adjustments can reopen possibilities for movement and engagement.
Intra-action and ecological repair
From a posthuman perspective, experience is never purely individual. Karen Barad describes life as emerging through intra-action, the entanglement of bodies, environments, technologies and social structures.
Burnout signals that these entanglements have become unsustainable. Recovery therefore involves ecological repair: reshaping environments, renegotiating expectations and rebuilding trust between body and world.
This might involve sensory redesign, flexible participation, or alternative ways of organising work and education.
Re-assembly and re-worlding
As attentional pathways reconnect and care networks strengthen, our identity itself may shift and begin to reform.
Values may move toward sustainability, mutual aid and sensory safety. Participation in education or work may look different from before. Recovery from burnout is not about becoming who we once were. It is about becoming who we can be within more supportive ecologies.
In this sense, burnout can function as both rupture and opening within the liminal spaces where we live. It reveals the limits of existing systems while inviting the creation of new ones.
Re-assembly, is part of the broader work of re-worlding, cultivating neuroqueer environments in which diverse ways of sensing, thinking and relating can flourish.
Rhizomes remind us that there are many pathways of becoming. Mycelial networks remind us that no pathway is walked alone. Recovery begins where attention, care and possibility meet so we can re-world together and thrive in our own ways.
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.
If you would like to take these ideas further, my courses, books and resources live on Autistic Realms. Everything in the shop is pay what you can, and many resources are free.
In my previous blog, we explored how monotropic attention can create deep rhizomatic pathways of learning and belonging, and how mycelial networks of care help sustain neurodivergent lives.
But what happens when these pathways become blocked? What happens when the networks that once supported us begin to strain or collapse? Or we don’t have the support networks there to begin with?
Many Autistic people describe burnout not only as exhaustion, but as a more fundamental disruption, a loss of flow, safety, and connection, a seismic shift that transforms our entire way of being.
Burnout is not simply “doing too much.” It can feel like the ground of our known experience itself has shifted and fallen through the cracks.
Burnout as a fracture in relational life
Burnout often unfolds gradually, and the buildup may go unnoticed for some of us; we may suddenly find ourselves in the depths, drowning. Attention may become harder to sustain. Sensory tolerance may narrow, social interaction and communication may feel increasingly effortful. Activities that once brought joy may feel distant or even unreachable.
The body may signal distress through meltdowns, shutdowns, pain, disruptions in sleep and eating patterns, or even difficulty initiating movement beyond wanting to curl up under a weight blanket in bed.
Time can feel slowed, fragmented, or just utterly overwhelming and confusing as it isn’t lining up with the neuronormative expectations of the world around us. These experiences are not isolated symptoms. They are signs that the flow between body, attention, our relationships, and the wider environment is under strain.
Rather than viewing burnout as a personal deficit, it can be understood as a fracture within a wider relational ecology.
When environments demand constant masking, rapid task-switching, or sensory endurance, the deep attentional flows that support our ability to engage in life can begin to fracture.
The disruption of monotropic flow
For many Autistic/ ADHD people, interests are more than hobbies. They are passions that provide structure, regulation, identity, and meaning. Burnout may involve losing access to these sustaining pathways and flow states.
A person who once found comfort in researching Tudor history, coding, drawing, gaming, building collections, or walking familiar woodland routes may suddenly feel unable to engage. Attention slips away, motivation may feel brittle, and even small tasks can require more effort and capacity than we actually have available.
This disruption can feel frightening and disorientating. Without stable attentional anchors, the world may become unpredictable and difficult to navigate. Burnout is therefore not only physical or emotional fatigue. It can be experienced as a collapse in the ecology of attention. We need to re-map and re-world our lives to navigate through burnout.
Social and sensory worlds under pressure
Burnout is socio-political and also emerges within overwhelming sensory contexts of the very spaces we need to live in to exist – our homes, education and work place settings and even in healthcare, the very places that are meant to understand and support us.
Open-plan noisy offices, bright, busy classrooms, bureaucratic systems, and performance-driven cultures can create chronic friction with our neurdivergent monotropic flow states. Over time, the effort required to adapt may exceed our available energy.
Masking, consciously or unconsciously adjusting behaviour and communication to meet normative expectations, can intensify this strain.
The cost is often cumulative and can run deep.
Many people describe reaching a point where:
communication becomes difficult
noise, scents, lights, certain textures and even previously safe food may feel physically painful or overwhelming
decision-making may slow down in a fog
everyday routines and exectutive functioning tasks may feel too overwhelming
trust in our environments and relationships with others can begin to diminish
These are not signs of personal weakness. They are signals that the relational conditions and environments supporting us have become unsustainable. Things need to change for us to survive.
Neuroqueer politics of burnout
Understanding Autistic or neurodivergent burnout in ecological terms shifts responsibility away from individuals and toward systems.
Speed, productivity, and independence are often treated as neutral values. In reality, they reflect specific cultural priorities that privilege certain cognitive styles while marginalising others.
Neuroqueer perspectives invite us to question these assumptions. They ask:
Who defines what counts as functioning?
Who has the power to say what rest should look like?
Whose attentional rhythms are recognised as valid?
What forms of participation and engagement with the world are made possible or impossible?
Autistic burnout can be read as both a social, political, and personal phenomenon. It exposes the limits of environments organised around normativity.
Recognising this does not remove the pain of burnout, but it may help to reduce shame and open space for collective change.
Toward ecological re-assembly
If burnout represents fracture, our recovery is not just restoration of previous capacity; it is often a process of re-assembling life differently.
This may begin with small shifts:
lowering demands
re-establishing sensory safety
reconnecting with trusted people
returning gently to meaningful interests or finding new glimmer of joy
allowing time to move, communicate and experience the world at a slower pace
These changes can feel minor, yet they may help re-imagine and re-build the conditions and environments that allow attention and participation to re-emerge.
Recovery is rarely linear. It unfolds through experimentation, adaptation, and relational support.
In this sense, burnout can become a liminal threshold, not only of loss, but of potential transformation to new ways of being and relating.
If you would like to take these ideas further, my courses, books and resources live on Autistic Realms. Everything in the shop is pay what you can, and many resources are free.
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.
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.
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.
If you would like to take these ideas further, my courses, books and resources live on Autistic Realms. Everything in the shop is pay what you can, and many resources are free.
With thanks to Nick Walker and Andrew Reichart for their recent conversations with me. This piece is independent of their work, and Nick has not read this blog prior to publication. My understanding of the neuronormative paradigm and its implications might differ from theirs. Andrew has helped me understand that the normative paradigm is what drives and enforces neuronormativity and systemic injustice. It is only by critiquing and dismantling this that we can expose the harm and move forward. Nick will write more about the neuronormative paradigm in their upcoming Neuroqueer Theory Anthology, in which I will have two chapters (one of which I co-authored with Ryan Boren, Stimpunks, who also kindly provided editing feedback for this blog).
In a recent webinar workshop Neurodiversity 101: You Are Not Broken (19th Sept, 2025), Andrew Reichart used a term conceptualised by Nick Walker that instantly resonated with me: the neuronormative paradigm. It was one of those lightbulb moments that brought immediate clarity; it gave a name to something I had felt and tried to articulate for years but had never had the words for. Through exploring the neuronormative paradigm, I hope to bring some clarity to why it matters to name the systems that harm, so we can start to see how deeply neuronormativity is woven through our schools, workplaces, healthcare settings, and even our shared ideas of what it means to be human.
Walker has been using the term neuronormative paradigm in their work since the publication of Neuroqueer Heresies (2021) as a replacement for the term pathology paradigm, which they have since said they “regret ever introducing, because it’s too easily misinterpreted and some of the misinterpretations have caused considerable harm”. With permission from Nick Walker (Walker, 2025, personal communication), I am exploring this concept and its relevance to understanding how society and systems define what is considered “normal”, especially here in the UK, US and other Western cultural landscapes.
The term neuronormative paradigm builds on and moves beyond Nick Walker’s earlier concept of the pathology paradigm. According to Walker (2021), “The pathology paradigm starts from the assumption that significant divergences from dominant sociocultural norms of cognition and embodiment represent some form of deficit, defect, or pathology. In other words, the pathology paradigm divides the spectrum of human cognitive/embodied performance into “normal” and “other than normal,” with “normal” implicitly privileged as the superior and desirable state..” It describes a view in which neurological differences, such as being Autistic, ADHD, or otherwise neurodivergent are medicalised and seen as deficits, disorders, or abnormalities that need to be corrected or cured. It locates the problem within the individual, assuming there is one “right” or “normal” kind of brain and behaviour.
The neuronormative paradigm, creates and enforces the social, cultural, and political systems that uphold the very ideas of normality. It sees neurodivergent people as broken or deficient. Us having the concept “the neuronormative paradigm, helps us name and challenge the power structures and systems that determine who is valued and who is pathologised. It enables us to challenge the foundations of a society that privileges certain ways of thinking, being, and communicating while marginalising others. This shift reframes the issue as the problem not being within neurodivergent people, but within the systems that define and uphold “normality” itself. By having a term for this, we can critique it, expose the harm, shift our thinking and move towards the neurodiversity paradigm.
The neuronormative and neurodiversity paradigms offer fundamentally different worldviews; one demands uniformity, while the other celebrates diversity. Language is powerful and can help make things visible. Until we can see how neuronormative domination has shaped our lives, we cannot dismantle the structures that bind us and move towards the neurodiversity paradigm, where all bodyminds (Dychtwald, K, 1977) are recognised as vital to the living ecology of human diversity.
What is the neuronormative paradigm?
The neuronormative paradigm creates and enforces the social, cultural, and political systems that assume there is one “right” way to be, one “correct” way to think, feel, sense, and move through the world. It privileges particular ways of learning, knowing, sensing, communicating and even resting and regulating while dismissing neurodivergent forms of being. Within this framework, neurodivergence is often treated as a problem to be corrected rather than as a meaningful expression of being human.
Neuronormativityrefers to the dominant system of norms and practices in society that not only define but also enforce how attention should function, how senses should be regulated, how emotions should be expressed, and how we should act within society. These hierarchies produce profound epistemic injustice, positioning neurodivergent people as unreliable narrators of our own lives. Its power intersects with systems of ageism, racism, classism, sexism, ableism, and colonialism, reinforcing structures that determine who is dismissed or erased. Within the neuronormative paradigm, value is measured through capitalist notions of productivity and conformity, while other ways of being and relating are devalued and pathologised, leaving us disabled by the very environments we live in.
By contrast, theneurodiversity paradigm views neurological differences as a natural and valuable form of human diversity, part of the broader spectrum of biodiversity and cultural diversity. It sees Autistic, ADHD, and otherwise neurodivergent ways of being as integral to the richness of human experience, not deviations from it. From the perspective of the neurodiversity paradigm, our value is reframed through an ecological and relational lens, one that honours dignity, identity, inter-dependence and embraces the richness of all ways of being rather than being valued purely for adhering to neuronormative expectations for capitalist gain. This shift also opens space for neuroqueering(Walker, 2021) and invites us to imagine new possibilities for how minds, bodies, and relationships can form, embracing the potential to be in a constant state of becoming and transformation, both personally and collectively, as we rebuild society.
Moving between paradigms
To move meaningfully towards the neurodiversity paradigm, we must first understand, critique, resist and dismantle the neuronormative paradigm. Until we do this, we risk remaining stuck, with many people speaking the neurodiversity-lite language of inclusion while reproducing the same hierarchies of neuronormativity that cause harm. Recognising the dominance of neuronormativity enables us to name the pressures of minority stress (Botha and Frost, 2018) not as personal failings, but as social injustices. Once we recognise this, we can begin to rebuild environments and systems where everyone can live in their wonderfully diverse ways, and we can all get the support we need to thrive.
Where Neuronormativity Shows Up: Examples of communication and attention
Within the framework of the neuronormative paradigm, spoken language, eye contact, and small talk are generally treated as the “right” and expected ways to connect and communicate. An Autistic person who communicates differently, those who use AAC, are nonspeaking, or express themselves differently, may be seen as lacking social skills, or even be seen as less competent and less intelligent than they really are.
“When the rights of abled people take precedence over those of disabled people, our great shame is evident, and we must not consider ourselves a modern, progressive society.”
Sabrina Guerra (2022)
Guerra’s words remind us that when society only favours certain forms of expression as valid language, it silences and can dehumanise those whose voices emerge differently. Her experiences of being presumed less capable, infantilised, and excluded expose the harm of the neuronormative paradigm in action.
When systems are built around verbal, cognitive, and behavioural conformity, it harms everyone. People with complex and higher support needs, or with profound and multiple learning disabilities, are too often left out of this picture altogether and even more deeply marginalised. They are often denied autonomy, agency, and meaningful participation in decisions about their own lives. For these individuals, the weight of neuronormative domination can fall even more heavily.
Neuronormativity doesn’t only dictate how we should communicate; it also defines how we are expected to pay attention, manage our sensory systems, regulate and use our bodies. Our ways of resting, recharging, stimming, and seeking sensory comfort are often misinterpreted as pointless or disruptive rather than recognised as natural forms of self-regulation that carry great meaning and support our wellbeing.
An Autistic or ADHD child who becomes deeply immersed in a single topic or sensory interest is often labelled as inattentive, obsessive, or even defiant. Within the neurodiversity paradigm, such focus could be recognised as a form ofmonotropic flow and could be better understood through the theory of Monotropism (Murray et al., 2005 & Heasman et al., 2024). These authentic ways of being are often pathologised within neuronormative systems. Instead, they need to be reframed and supported as valid ways of being, through neuro-affirming adjustments to both the environment and the ways our relationships are formed and evolve.
When we reframe neurodivergence within the neurodiversity paradigm, communication is understood as diverse, relational, and embodied. This perspective enables us to embrace authentically neurodivergent love locutions such as infodumping, penguin pebbling, and supportive relational strategies likebody doublingand parallel play. It validates Autistic and otherwise neurodivergent people’s natural ways of connecting, through shared interests, flow, repetition, sensory attunement, movement, silence and interdependence as authentic and deeply meaningful. However, even as we begin to recognise these authentic and relational forms of communication, they still continue to exist within systems governed and dominated by neuronormative standards and expectations.
Neuronormative Dominantion
Neuronormative dominationis the measure through which human competence, compliance, rest, productivity, and even belonging are judged. This doesn’t just shape how difference is perceived; it also determines who gets to belong and thrive and who gains access to care. Those whose bodyminds align most closely with neuronormative ideals are generally rewarded with social status, employment, and safety, while those who diverge are more likely to experience poverty, exclusion, institutional harm and also greater health concerns. Neuronormativity can be seen to be reinforcing the existing hierarchies of class, race, gender, and disability as it embeds inequality deep within our economic and social systems.
Schools reward those who can sit still and divide their attention to focus on work, often in busy and overwhelming environments. Workplaces generally value multitasking, tolerance of sensory overload, and social compliance. Healthcare systems privilege people who can articulate distress in what is deemed as acceptable and expected ways, often dismissing how alexithymia and interoception may affect neurodivergent people. They rarely consider the overlapping needs of those who are multiply neurodivergent and also have additional physical, health or learning needs.
For those of us whose bodyminds work differently, the systems we have are not neutral. They are constantly reminding us that we are too much, too little, too fast, too slow, too sensitive, too emotional, or not enough or sometimes just ‘not right’! It leaves us marginalised not because of how our bodyminds function, but because the world has been built around such a narrow idea of what a “functional” or “normal” person should be like. There is no room for different ways of being without the risk of being stigmatised or it affecting our well-being. This is why our neurodivergent community is so important, it provides that space and sense of belonging where we can feel safer with other people who just ‘get it’ (Botha, Dibbs & Frost, 2022).
Minority Stress and Systemic Harm
The minority stress model, extended to include Autistic people’s experiences by Botha & Frost (2018), helps explain why neurodivergent people experience disproportionately high rates of anxiety, depression, burnout and death by suicide (Moseley et al., 2025). Minority stress arises when people from marginalised groups face chronic prejudice, discrimination and a lack of safety. For Autistic and otherwise neurodivergent people, this stress is sustained by the systems that uphold neuronormativity itself.
As Milton (2012) describes in his concept of theDouble Empathy Problem, these challenges are not rooted in a lack of social or emotional understanding within Autistic people, but in a mutual misattunement between differently embodied communicative worlds and lived experiences. The problem lies in the cultural expectation that neuro-normative modes of relating and communicating are the best.
In my own work, I have argued that this problem isDEEP ( Double Empathy Extreme Problem; Dynamic, Embodied, Ecological, and Political) (Edgar, 2023). It operates through the power dynamics of whose communication counts, whose distress and ways of expressing joy is recognised (Wassell, 2025), and who is deemed acceptable. When neurodivergent people are constantly required to translate ourselves for neuronormative comfort, we carry a chronic social and sensory load that erodes our well-being and leaves us in burnout.
Living in a world that continually questions, corrects, or punishes our natural ways of thinking and sensing creates both external stressors (exclusion, stigma, systemic barriers) and internal ones (masking, self-doubt, hypervigilance). For multiply marginalised people, those who are also racialised, queer, economically excluded, or otherwise disabled, the value placed on neuronormativity compounds existing systems of oppression, further amplifying harm. Burnout, isolation, and masking are not intrinsic parts of being neurodivergent (Pearson and Rose, 2021); they happen when our ways of being come up against a neuronormative world that doesn’t understand or make space for our needs and constantly tries to ‘fix’ us, or worse just exclude us.
Empire of Normality
InEmpire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism (2023), Autistic philosopher and researcher Robert Chapman traces how the idea of a “normal” person emerged alongside industrial capitalism. Chapman argues that normality is not neutral; it’s a tool of economic and political control.
Under capitalism, the ideal person is someone who works predictably, productively, and efficiently. Education and healthcare settings, as well as workplaces, have always rewarded people who align with this model and marginalised those who don’t. Chapman demonstrates how this empire of normality continues to govern our institutions, where people prioritise compliance over creativity, speed over sustainability, and uniformity over humanity. As Chapman notes, normality serves as a biopolitical tool, disciplining populations to conform to capitalist ideals.
Neuronormative domination thrives in Capitalist societies; however, the consequences for many neurodivergent people mean we may be left trapped in “stuck states”, exhausted, feeling fragmented and in perpetual burnout. The effects of the neuronormative paradigm are costing lives. Sadly, Autistic people have been found to have up to an eightfold increased risk of death by suicide compared to non-Autistic people (Brown et al., 2024) and up to 66% have experienced suicidal thoughts. There are 2,025 Autistic people and people with a learning disability currently in mental health hospitals in England, and of these 72% are identified as Autistic. These should not be inevitable consequences of being different; it shows how the system is failing to meet our needs.
Dismantling the neuronormative paradigm: Enabling everyone to thrive
As awareness of neurodiversity grows, the language of neuro-affirming practice has become more common. Yet this shift can sometimes be superficial and many people and organisations may sound progressive whilst they are still operating within neuronormative frameworks that prioritise conformity over authenticity and compliance over genuine inclusion. It can be difficult to know who to trust when words of acceptance are used to mask practices that continue to pathologise or control. These “neurodiversity-lite” approaches soften deficit language and adopt inclusive terms without creating the structural change needed to support real neurodivergent flourishing.
Dismantling the neuronormative paradigm means recognising neurodiversity-lite and calling it out, resisting the deep cultural and political systems that define human worth and behaviourist practices that seek to control the ways we use our bodies and restrict our potential. We need to unlearn and restory the narrative that only values and rewards us through compliance, productivity, and proximity to a myth of normality. Actively rejecting the neuronormative paradigm means accepting that there is no single, universal norm, no one right way to be. We need to reimagine and redefine our notions of value, ability, and worth, as well as what it truly means to be human, beyond the confines of neuronormativity.
When we begin to unlearn these patterns, we can create space for a living ecology of bodyminds, an interdependent, intertwined web of diverse ways of communicating, sensing, moving, thinking, and relating that have always existed beyond the limits of a supposed normality. We need to build spaces where difference is not seen as a deviation but a vital part of a collective whole.
Dismantling the neuronormative paradigm and embracing the neurodiversity paradigm means moving from correction to connection, from conformity to reciprocity. It invites us to expand our bodyminds, to neuroqueer ourselves and our societies, to subvert the assumptions of normality and open new ways of being, knowing, and belonging. To neuroqueer is to live in ways that resist neuronormativity and enable us to reclaim autonomy, agency and creativity. It isn’t just about inclusion; it’s about liberation. It’s about cultivating a society where everyone can grow and flourish together.
By naming the systems that harm, we can embrace neurodiversity, transform our systems and rebuild our worlds so that everyone can thrive.
Heasman, B., Williams, G. L., Charura, D., Hamilton, L. G., Milton, D., & Murray, F. (2024). Towards autistic flow theory: A non-pathologising conceptual approach.Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 54(4), 469-497. https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.12427
Murray D, Lesser M, Lawson W. Attention, monotropism and the diagnostic criteria for autism. Autism. 2005 May;9(2):139-56. doi: 10.1177/1362361305051398. PMID: 15857859. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15857859/
Moseley RL, Hedley D, Gamble-Turner JM, Uljarević M, Bury SM, Shields GS, Trollor JN, Stokes MA, Slavich GM. Lifetime stressor exposure is related to suicidality in autistic adults: A multinational study. Autism. 2025 May;29(5):1184-1208. doi: 10.1177/13623613241299872. Epub 2024 Dec 10. PMID: 39655441; PMCID: PMC12038079. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39655441/
Pearson A, Rose K. A Conceptual Analysis of Autistic Masking: Understanding the Narrative of Stigma and the Illusion of Choice. Autism Adulthood. 2021 Mar 1;3(1):52-60. doi: 10.1089/aut.2020.0043. Epub 2021 Mar 18. PMID: 36601266; PMCID: PMC8992880.https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36601266/Walker, N. (2014). Neurodiversity: Some basic terms & definitions. Neuroqueer. https://neuroqueer.com/neurodiversity-terms-and-definitions/
Walker, N. (2021). Neuroqueer heresies: Notes on the neurodiversity paradigm, autism, and cognitive liberty. Autonomous Press.
Walker, N. (19th Sept, 2025). Personal communication with Helen Edgar re: Neuronormative Paradigm.
Jacobsen, K. (2025). “I had this fear that as an autistic person, they would take me less seriously”: Trans autistic experiences of epistemic (in)justice in gender-affirming care. International Journal of Transgender Health, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/26895269.2025.2566190
Catala, A., Faucher, L. & Poirier, P. Autism, epistemic injustice, and epistemic disablement: a relational account of epistemic agency. Synthese199, 9013–9039 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03192-7
Zaks, Z. (2025). Moving to a neurodiversity-affirming paradigm in the support system: Autistic professionals As paradigm change. Neurodiversity, 3. https://doi.org/10.1177/27546330241294138 (Original work published 2025)
Annamma, S. A., Connor, D., & Ferri, B. (2012). Dis/ability critical race studies (DisCrit): theorizing at the intersections of race and dis/ability. Race Ethnicity and Education, 16(1), 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2012.730511
Marya, R., & Patel, R. (2022). Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice. Penguin Press.
Bruno, G., Lindblom, A., Tupou, J., Kewene, F., Waisman, T., & Magiati, I. (2025). Decolonizing autism research: Integrating Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and doing. Autism, 29(11), 2637-2643. https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613251382398 (Original work published 2025)
Bruno, G. (2024). Decolonizing Autism: An Exploration into the Experiences of First Nations People in Canada. In University of Alberta Library. https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-k592-zc85
Bruno, G. (2023) Indigenous Perspective On Building Inclusive Autism Practices (presentation)
oJhansson, Anna M. (2025) “The Intersectionality of Indigenous and Neurodivergent Identities in American Indian Education,” Access*: Interdisciplinary Journal of Student Research and Scholarship: Vol. 9: Iss. 1, Article 7. Available at: https://digitalcommons.tacoma.uw.edu/access/vol9/iss1/7
If you would like to take these ideas further, my courses, books and resources live on Autistic Realms. Everything in the shop is pay what you can, and many resources are free.
From Pathology to Possibility: Reclaiming Our Stories
Autistic people have been spoken about, written over, and pathologised for far too long. Our lives have been turned into case studies, symptoms, behaviours, and ‘outcomes’. We have been flattened, squashed into diagnostic criteria, and dissected through checklists and things like social skills programmes built around what we are perceived as lacking. These narratives have been written about us, but not for us in a helpful way, and certainly not with or by us.
The Practice of Unknowing: Reimagine Knowledge
It is Autistic Pride month, and I have been inspired by the idea of ‘unknowing’ in David Jackson-Perry’s new paper, which was released last week, ‘Unknowing in Practice: The Promise of Discomfort, Failure and Uncertainty in Neurodiversity Studies’ (2025). Jackson-Perry writes, ‘The practice of unknowing I am thinking of is not a state or a thing, not a noun, like ignorance, but decidedly a verb, an orientation, an ambition to stay with the discomfort, to re-imagine and embrace failure as holding creative potential, to sit with uncertainty‘. Academics and professionals need to ask, ‘How might we put the verb ‘to unknow’ into practice?’.
To feel proud as Autistic people, we need academia and systems to create space for neurodivergent community voices to be heard, recognised and valued so our stories can be validated. We need more accessible resources so non-academic people can weave in and benefit from the good neuro-affirmative research that is out there. We need different modes of communication and storying to be accessible and taken seriously.
Community Concepts and Crediting Lived Experience
Research is only of benefit if it helps those it is intended for and is put into practice (such as discovering the value of the Double Empathy Problem (Milton, 2012) and the theory of monotropism (Murray et al., 2005). A good example is Crompton et al.’s (2025) recent research about information transfer within and between autistic and non-autistic people, where various formats were provided to make their work more accessible by creating a short video. We need more space for neurodivergent researchers to work and for non-academic theories and ideas that have been evolved by advocates and through communities to be taken seriously and credited, for example, Tanya Adkin’s concept of AuDHD burnout and Meerkat Mode (2023).
Restorying is about listening, believing and creating new and openly accessible ways to share information and experiences. It is about unlearning the old stories written about us without our consent and voices. It is about refusing the scripts that reduce our sensory worlds to dysfunction, our deep monotropic interests to obsessions and invalidating our ways of communicating differently. Restorying is about rejecting frameworks that only see Autistic people through what we are not, how we lack, what we should be and instead it allows our community language and different ways of expressing ideas to be valued and validated.
Restorying as Resistance
To restory is to reorient towards our authentic selves, our communities, our ways of experiencing, sensing, knowing and sharing. Restorying is a political and embodied act of resistance and can be seen as a way of neuroqueering (Walker, 2021) and resisting neuronormative domination. As Jackson-Perry writes, “looking outside the academy to engage with and cite work produced by neurodivergent lay-people, advocates and scholars publishing outside academic journals holds considerable potential to unknow, or to re-story, with advantages to both ethics and knowledge production.”
I am not in academia; I am a former early years and primary school teacher based in the UK. I am a late-identified monotropic AuDHDer with a multiply neurodivergent family. I set up Autistic Realms as a way to advocate for neurodivergent children who are so often misunderstood and experiencing barriers to education and burnout. As a former SEND teacher with my training rooted in behaviourism, I have had to unlearn everything I knew about Autism, I have had to sit in the unknowing and am still trying to find ways to relearn and rewrite my own personal and professional narrative.
I am slowly rewriting my story and making sense of years of misunderstandings, mislabeling and the consequential layers of internalised ableism due to the suppression of my authentic needs and masking. I have had to battle through repeated burnouts and have got stuck in the scary unknown space of trying to work out my identity and what being Autistic may mean for me. With the support of the communities I am now part of through sharing stories with others, I am beginning to find comfort and validation and slowly starting to make sense of things and reconnect.
Jackson-Perry’s paper explores how embracing unknowing, discomfort, perceived failure, and uncertainty can radically reshape neurodiversity studies and academia, giving space for non-academics to have a voice and reshape the narrative. I don’t think this is limited to academia; embracing ‘unknowing’ is a much-needed practice in education, health care, and workplace settings, as well as for individuals to reflect upon in their own lives. We all need to unlearn how Autism has been told to us, we need to allow time and space for unknowing to happen and learn from each other.
Reorienting Towards Authentic Autistic Ways of Knowing
Everyone has a story worth listening to, Jackson-Perry argues that ethical engagement with neurodivergent experience requires a shift toward humility, relationality, and co-produced knowledge. We are all interdependent and part of the broader ecology of life. To have one story placed on a higher pedestal than another makes no sense and reinforces ableism and hierarchy. It further silences so many neurodivergent and disabled people who do not have the privilege to enter academia; it continues the cycle of Autism research being done ‘on’ and ‘about’ people and not with people and very rarely by Autistic people, although it does feel like things are really starting to change for the better – hurrah!
As Grace, Nind, de Haas, and Hope (2024) argue inExpanding Possibilities for Inclusive Research, we must radically rethink what actually counts as knowledge and what counts as a valuable story or piece of research. Their work, which centers on the experiences of people with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities, demonstrates that genuine inclusion requires not just inviting marginalised people into pre-existing research frameworks but transformingthose frameworks entirely. Their paper calls for a decolonisation of research, a move away from hierarchical, ‘expert-driven’ knowledge production towards collaborative, sensory, and relational forms of doing research WITH people. We need to create more space for Autistic people to carry out research. For those with PMLD we need to be involving them in our research and working with them as researchers too. There is opportunity for everyone to play a part in the restorying of Autism and research, but to do that we need to really tune in and listen to ourselves and those we are with, not just to words, but to responses and felt experiences, however they may be expressed. We need to lean into the unknown space of ‘what if’, ‘may be’, ‘perhaps’ and explore together.
Restorying Through Community and Connection
Restorying is not just about reclaiming the narrative; it is about reclaiming the conditions under which knowledge is made and valued, going beyond academia and university based research. It means refusing research that extracts from us while treating us as unknowable and unworthy. We need to honour Autistic knowledge as it exists in our community, such as in online chat forums and in ways expressed outside of verbal language—in art, music and bodily responses, especially for those with profound and multiple disabilities and those from other marginalised intersections of community and the non-speaking community.
Jackson-Perry and Grace et al. (2024) collectively urge a reorientation from knowing about people to being with people, from capturing data to cultivating relationships, from seeking certainty to sitting with ambiguity and uncertainty and possibilities, this needs trust. This is the epistemic ground of neurodiversity justice, and it happens when we trust each other as co-authors to create and share moments of Autistic joy, infodumping and penguin pebbling. It happens in the making of new resources such as the Map of Monotropic Experiences which I have created with Stimpunks community; it emerges in the care we extend through slowness, body doubling and parallel play. It happens in the nonverbal attunements we practice as we stim and co-regulate, it happens in the neuro-affirming ways we can give time and space for each other, especially in online communities, our basecamps. Humans are interdependent and neurodivergent people and our communities are deep and rhizomatic, our stories need to reflect that.
Central to the work of both Jackson-Perry and Grace et al. is a call to resist extractive research practices and instead foster shared, embodied, and situated ways of knowing and unknowing. The academic world and our education system still cling tightly to its authority over what counts as ‘real knowledge’. Even in fields like Critical Autism Studies, where Autistic concepts and research such as the Theory of Monotropism and the Double Empathy Problem are increasingly acknowledged, the structures and practices to adopt this meaningfully in real life settings such as our schools and health care system are still often defaulted to gate keeping.
Autistic ways of knowing, rooted in sensory attunement, pattern making, connection, and deep, often nonlinear ways of processing, are frequently dismissed or, at best, absorbed into more palatable forms that meet institutional standards in a very neurodiversity-lite way. Community spaces such as Stimpunks and Thriving Autistic are helping to bridge these gaps, enabling space for communities and professionals to come together. They are spaces that support the unknowing and unlearning we need to go through personally and collectively. They are affirmative spaces where people can come together to discover more about their identity and support each other in the restorying process, whilst also adding to the wider network of knowledge being shared, created and validated.
Decolonising Research and Knowledge: Relationality, and Inclusion
Neurodivergent community knowledge has always existed beyond words on paper through campfire storytelling and yarns such, as those which Yunkaporta describes in SandTalk. Knowledge and stories are alive in blogs, Facebook threads, Discord chats, community workshops, zines, mutual aid groups, and conversations in our homes. Knowledge also happens in shared moments of attunement and in the sensory experiences we may have, however small and fleeting. Knowledge lives in how we hold space for each other when one of us is spiralling and another is helping to co-regulate; it happens through interdependence, not hierarchy and it happens when we connect with each other, feel safe and feel a sense of belonging. It is in the metaphors we create together to explain our inner experiences, such as those in the Map of Monotropic Experiences,. Knowledge emerges in the care practices we have to build to survive in a world that rarely meets us halfway, even under weighted blankets, fairy lights and stimmy sensory tools.
However, this knowledge has historically been treated as anecdotal, unreliable, messy, and even more so for those with profound and multiple learning disabilities, those who are non-speaking and those who do not use the written word. Generations of voices have been deemed invalid as they have not been translated into academia’s (and educational and workplace) formal, disembodied language. When attempts have been made, it often presumes our experiences and forces normative values on us in an attempt to ‘fix’ us.
From Knowing About to Being With
Restorying is about protecting the soul and felt experiences of our knowledge; it is about recognising that our stories do not have to meet academic conventions or certain educational standards to matter and be included and valued. Our ways of making meaning through metaphor, art, music and sensory resonance are legitimate. They are part of a different epistemology, one that is emergent, embodied, and relational and needs to be honoured in academia and within our educational system from Early Years and beyond. We need space to be with each other and for Autistic experiences to be validated for what they are, not as a means to know more about Autism to make us fit in, but to find out about Autistic people so we can create environments for us to thrive and be ourselves.
When we restory and share art, music, photos, memes, blogs, comics, podcasts and YouTube videos and messages together on line we are creating new frameworks, we are building new maps from the liminal spaces and edges where we have been left stuck and unheard. Community-led restorying does not need to ask for permission as it is rooted in collective care in our Discord servers and spaces, such as Stimpunk’s weekly Solidarity Sessions and Thriving Autistic’s monthly meetups and Discovery sessions.
Community-led restorying is in every Facebook, Bluesky and X thread you may join in and contribute towards. Adding to a story can be as simple as giving a single emoji thumbs up response to a post, every message we respond to can help add to the narrative and re-shape the future and make it a bit easier for others. By joining these communities, we are coming together and enabling a space to heal and restore together, to share and unite in a commitment to justice to be heard and seen. Community stories don’t just happen through published books and journals, they happen in multiple forms and through multiple spaces including in events such as Autscape, organisations such as AMASE and neurodivergent-led mentoring, and educational provision such as GROVE (all of whom I know and support/ work with).
Many Voices, Many Ways of Knowing
Restorying and embracing the practice of unknowing can inform how we advocate and support each other to co-create a more accessible future for everyone. It means building tools and resources that emerge from our reality and differences, not what service providers think we may or should need.
Restorying means refusing the binary between ‘academic’ / ‘professional’ and ‘lived’ experience, as many of us (like myself) also exist in the blurry space in between. By restorying involves including many different voices, in many different ways we can co-create knowledge that is decentralised, rhizomatic and truly honours the most marginalised people in society.
Autistic Pride: Restorying as Healing and Resistance
The deficit model of Autism is not just outdated; it is harmful. It erases our strengths, flattens our complexity, and narrows our futures. Restorying is how we can keep on undoing the harm that deficit-based research has caused Autistic people. Sharing our real lived experiences stories in whatever way we feel comfortable is a way of reclaiming our pasts, healing, reimagining our present, and expanding co-creating futures rooted in dignity, interdependence, and neurodivergent flourishing.
We all have a voice, no matter how that sounds or may be expressed. We need to keep telling our stories. Restorying is how we can reclaim our Autistic voices, honour our ways of knowing, and build futures rooted in connection, not correction.
Join community spaces, share your blogs, art, music, videos, creative projects, info dump about your passions, and join body-doubling groups and solidarity sessions for support. Let’s cite each other across social media, reply to each others posts, share each others work and stories. This will help to build archives of collective knowledge and create even more spaces for our voices to be heard.
We all have a voice and a story to tell and as Jackson-Perry said, there is ‘considerable potential to unknow, or to re-story, with advantages to both ethics and knowledge production‘. Autistic Pride Month is a great time to share, come together, rewrite the narrative and be heard.
Grace, Joanna, Nind, Melanie, de Haas, Catherine and Hope, Joanna (2024) Expanding possibilities for inclusive research: learning from people with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities and decolonising research. Social Sciences, 13 (1), [37]. (doi:10.3390/socsci13010037).
Jackson-Perry, D. (2025). Unknowing in practice: the promise of discomfort, failure and uncertainty in neurodiversity studies. Neurodiversity, 3. https://doi.org/10.1177/27546330251348083
Kavanagh, Day, A., Day, Kavanagh, M., Hartman, D., O’Donnell-Killen, T., & Doyle, J. K. (2025). The Neurodiversity Affirmative Child Autism Assessment Handbook. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Murray, D., Lesser, M., & Lawson, W. (2005b). Attention, monotropism and the diagnostic criteria for autism. Autism, 9(2), 139–156. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361305051398
Walker, N. (2021). Neuroqueer heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities. Autonomous Press.
Yunkaporta, T. (2020). Sand talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World. HarperOne.
Courses, books and resources
If you would like to take these ideas further, my courses, books and resources live on Autistic Realms. Everything in the shop is pay what you can, and many resources are free.
Rest can become a radical act in a world that often equates our worth with productivity, especially for Autistic or otherwise neurodivergent people navigating the tides of burnout, where even our ways of resting may look different. I have been really inspired by Tricia Hersey’s wonderful writing and their recent book, We Will Rest! The Art of Escape from Nap Ministry (2024).
The Tides of Burnout and Monotropism
Following on from my blog Tides of burnout and being monotropic I believe Autistic burnout is more than exhaustion; it’s a profound depletion of mental, emotional, physical and sensory resources. Burnout is often caused by prolonged masking, sensory overload, and the relentless demand to conform to neuronormative standards.
From my own experience of Autistic burnout, I think the theory of monotropismis key to helping us understand why and how burnout happens and can also support better ways for us to move on through burnout. Monotropism is a theory developed by Autistic people in the late 1990s and resulted in the paper Attention, monotropism and the diagnostic criteria for autism (2005) by Dinah MurrayMike Lesser, Wenn Lawson. Monotropism is a neuroaffirming theory of Autism (and many ADHD people resonate with it too!) where a person’s attentional resources are focused deeply on a limited number of interests/ events or experiences at any one time. While this deep focus and flow can enrich our experiences, things like shifting attention can be really challenging, especially when external demands pull us away from our areas of interest.
The dynamics between the theory of monotropism and societal expectations can create a cycle for Autistic people. Intense focus can lead to overexertion, and difficulties with interoception may mean you aren’t even aware of when you need a rest or when you are tired, and it may mean you miss some of the signs of reaching a burnout crisis. The immersive, joyful feeling of being in deep flow can mean that you want to carry on and on as time passes quickly, 5 hours may feel like 15 minutes, and you may not have eaten, drunk or moved. Alternatively, not being able to engage in flow and battling systems and trying to fit in to your place of work can be utterly draining, even if you enjoy your job! Often being around other people, having multiple demands at any time, and having to socialise and communicate in ways that fit into other people’s frameworks can leave us feeling more than depleted at the end of the day.
When you are in a flow state, external demands can feel painful, they take even more energy, and may leave you in a state of inertia, unable to do anything and feeling paralysed. Balancing the needs of wanting to immerse yourself in your interests and things that bring you joy, and the demands of work and family that may pull against your inner needs, means you may have even less capacity and even less energy to even know what you need to rest in a meaningful way. The feelings of needing to mask to fit in and juggle and balance your innate inner Autistic monotropic needs with the demands of neuronormative expectations can feel like you are trying to swim upstream; it is exhausting. Meltdowns, shutdowns, or reduced responsiveness can be a form of enforced rest when your body and mind are overwhelmed. Meltdowns and shutdowns are your body and mind in survival mode; they are a sign you need deep, authentic, meaningful rest.
Rest as Resistance
Tricia Hersey, founder of The Nap Ministry, advocates that rest is not a luxury but a form of resistance against oppressive systems that devalue our well-being. She asserts, “Rest is a form of resistance because it disrupts and pushes back against capitalism and white supremacy.”
For Autistic individuals, embracing our authentic ways of resting challenges the internalised narratives that equate our self-worth with neuronormative ideals.
Reframing Rest
Rest isn’t solely about sleep, yoga or other mindfulness-type activities; it’s about creating spaces, creating physical and emotional spaces, and meeting our sensory needs so we can exist without the pressure of performing to society’s expectations and suppressing ourselves. For monotropic people (Autistic/ ADHD), this might involve engaging deeply with our special interests, spending more time stimming, spending more time in your sensory den or simply allowing yourself more moments to be yourself without judgment.
How Autistic & Monotropic Rest May Look Different
The most restful spaces are often those where we don’t have to mask or justify our needs and where we feel safe.
Deep focus on special interests and passions
Society may see this as “work” or “obsession,” but for many monotropic people, being immersed in your flow state with something you are passionate about can be regulating and restorative.
Stimming
Stim vocalising and stim movement, such as rocking, tapping, flapping, or pacing or dancing may seem active, but they are often soothing and regulating, helping to release stress and maintain flow. Stim listening and stim watching can make you feel cosy and safe. They bring predictability and comfort, especially when the world feels chaotic. Resting in motion and stimming can give you back energy and give you more capacity to manage.
Solitude
Rest might mean being completely alone or managing to do your work by using body doubling strategies to help you focus your energy resources more easily and effectively, without the pressures of socialising or working in more conventional ways.
Monotasking (doing one thing deeply)
While multitasking is often celebrated, sustained single focus is how many of us find flow and peace, even if that feels more like a constellation type of thinking, with your mind diving in a million directions as you connect so many things together and doesn’t feel very ‘mono’ at all !
Spending time in dark, quiet, or low-stimulation environments
This sensory rest is vital for decompressing from overload, even if it looks like “doing nothing.” Using this like weighted blankets, ear defenders, and fidget tools are often essential for flow states, not optional extras as they can help you feel safe, regulated and rested.
These are not distractions but often meaningful ways to self-regulate and can be a great way to embrace flow independently or alongside or with others.
Delaying or avoiding communication (texts, calls, emails)when you can
Social expectations can be draining; rest might mean letting people know you prefer to text rather than speak verbally, or you can manage an online meeting instead of in-person.
Non-traditional sleep-wake cycles
Monotropic focus may shift sleep patterns; rest might come at unconventional hours, and that’s okay if you have supportive people who understand you. Find out more about monotropic time in my recent blogs.
Withdrawing from roles, routines, or expectations temporarily
Stepping back from responsibilities may look like avoidance, but it can be intentional self-preservation and help reduce the severity of a burnout crisis.
Talk therapy may not feel restorative.
Many Autistic people find traditional therapy approaches overly verbal, which can further drain energy. Many Autistic people need extra time and space to process thoughts or emotions by ourselves, outside of the demands of conversation and social expectations. Restorative therapy care might look more like body-based, creative, or activities with less emphasis on verbal support (e.g. art, or nature-based therapy may help).
“Going out with friends” may be socially draining, not restful
Socialising, even with people we love, can sometimes increase stress and add to burnout. Rest might mean not attending and connecting in quiet, low-demand ways instead.
Unstructured time without expectation
Just having a safe space where nothing is expected of you can be deeply restful, even if it “looks” unproductive. Rest means breaking free from the pressure to always say yes, even when you’re running on empty.
Rest is More Than a Nap: Reclaiming Rest as Autistic Liberation
Rest, as Tricia Hersey of The Nap Ministry reminds us, is about more than naps. It is a radical, embodied act of refusal. Rest is a disruption of neuronormative grind culture, capitalism, and all the systems that treat human beings as machines. Hersey reminds us that:
“Rest pushes back and disrupts a system that views human bodies as a tool for production and labor. We know that we are not machines.” — Tricia Hersey, Rest is Resistance
For many Autistic people, especially those of us navigating burnout, masking, and a world that often misunderstands our rhythms of being, means that our ways of resting are often misunderstood, denied and even stigmatised. We have been taught to ignore our bodies, to push through overload and to meet neurotypical expectations at the cost of our well-being.
Rest is often more than sleep. It’s more than self-care routines or sensory tools marketed as solutions. Rest is anything that reconnects us with ourselves.Anything that brings our monotropic attention gently back to flow, safety, stillness, or regulation.
Rest for Autistic people might look like silence, repetition, solitude, immersion in a special interest, and a withdrawal from speaking and other expectations. Although society may not recognise these forms of rest as valid, I think they are deeply necessary. They are a reclamation of our authentic Autistic monotropic selves from systems that expect us to perform, conform, and endure.
When we begin to honour our need for rest, not just to “recover” from burnout but to resist the conditions that cause burnout, we can begin to move. Rest becomes liberation. Rest becomes connection. Rest becomes our right.
As Tricia Hersey urges:
“Find ways to connect back to your body and mind. Find ways to intentionally slow down… It is your divine and human right to do so. WE WILL REST.”
Tricia Hersey gives us permission to slow down and let go of shame. She urges us to create community. When you are in safe spaces with people who ‘get you’ and allow you to be your true self, rest comes easier. It can feel like a mutual collective flow that is validating and empowering.
“Create community. Build community. Be community. Community care can seem impossible when you are exhausted. It is possible. Community is anywhere two or more are gathered……don’t rush to do anything alone. To be an escape artist is to. being the collective. Supported in rest, care, and love. Demand the collective as a source of inspiration and change. Real change comes from the people” Hersey, T. (2024). We will rest!: The Art of Escape. Little, Brown Spark. Pg 35
Let us rest.
Let us resist.
Let us reclaim our unique ways of being Autistic.
Some things to reflect on….
1. What does rest mean to you beyond sleep?
How do you define rest in your own life?
Are there certain activities or sensory experiences that help you feel rested?
2. How does being monotropic influence your need for rest (or those you support)?
In what ways does deep focus on specific interests affect energy levels?
Can engaging with your passions serve as a form of rest? Do you feel it helps restore your energy? Can you find ways to make more time for activities and experience that enable you to engage in flow more often?
3. What societal expectations make it challenging for you to rest?
Are there pressures to be constantly productive or social that impact your ability to rest in ways that feel meaningful for you?
How do these expectations conflict with your personal needs for real, authentic Autistic rest?
4. In what ways can rest be an act of resistance for you?
How does choosing to rest and embrace your monotropic ways of being challenge societal norms or expectations?
Can you view rest as a form of self-advocacy or empowerment?
Do you think positions of power and privilege and intersectional issues also affect your ability to rest in meaningful ways?
Murray, D., Lesser, M., & Lawson, W. (2005a). Attention, monotropism and the diagnostic criteria for autism. Autism, 9(2), 139–156. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361305051398
If you would like to take these ideas further, my courses, books and resources live on Autistic Realms. Everything in the shop is pay what you can, and many resources are free.
Quantumness tends to prosper in very cold systems that are carefully isolated rather than part of a tepid soup awash with other activity.” (Lewton, T. 2024)
This may be a weird take, but … I think we could use the idea of quantumness and reframe it around an interpretation of marginalised groups living on the edges of society, in the liminal zones. Those who are feeling deeply disconnected, isolated and frozen in a system that is not designed for us or meeting needs. This is highlighted by AutCollab’s recent research where they shared:
Our individually unique nervous systems and sensitivities develop and evolve over the course of our lives. 85% of neurodivergent adults often or always feel overwhelmed and misunderstood, and over 60% often or always feel disrespected and unsafe. Our overall sense of wellbeing is determined by alignment between our sensitivity profiles and the ecology of care we are embedded in (or not). (Jorn Bettin, Aut Collab 2024)
Collectively, our isolation can transform into something positive by our neuro-holographic energy coming together to enable neuroqueer transformations at a personal and also mass cultural level.
Disconnect at DEEP Levels in Liminal Spaces
As an autistic person, I do not see or feel a boundary between myself and my environment; I feel a deep attunement to the space around me. However, I also feel a deep disconnect with the majority of society and the pressures of feeling I need to conform to dominant social norms that have always left me on the edge; feeling separate and in many ways disembodied and shattered into millions of fractals. I experience the Double Empathy Gap (Milton, 2012) at an extremely deep level of intensity. The double empathy problem creates a gap of disconnect experienced between people due to misunderstood shared lived experiences. It is “a breakdown in reciprocity and mutual understanding that can happen between people with very differing ways of experiencing the world.”
I feel that as a society, those already marginalised are at risk of becoming even more disembodied, the double empathy gap is growing. In many ways, we are losing our primordial affinity with nature and drifting further from coherence, harmony, and the humanised ecology of care that we need. The double empathy problem feels extreme, it feels deep; it is what I have been describing as DEEP (Double Empathy Extreme Problem (Edgar, 2024).
The DEEP (Double Empathy Extreme Problem ) arises from feelings of disconnect, not only from cultural, sexual, political, religious, neurodivergent, or any other cross-section of differences but also through embodiment, or lack thereof. The double empathy gap is non-linear; it is deep, multidimensional, rhizomatic, and holographic (Mirra, 2023). DEEP could be a huge contributing factor that leads to burnout, ill health and is pushing people further out so they feel they are living on a knife edge just to survive. The DEEP gap can break people at their core, leaving them fragmented, disconnected, disoriented and disembodied, feeling like they’re falling into the void between spaces.
The DEEP problem may be intensified by being monotropic (Murray et al., 2005) and using most of my energy resources to zoom into these feelings and ways of being. This enables me to not only see the details, the harm, and the injustice but also to feel it in multidimensional synesthetic ways in how I see, feel, hear, move, and connect. All of these experiences merge and entwine in holographic ways.
I have been chatting to Dawn Prince-Hughes who is a lead in the CASY (Cultural Autism Studies at Yale) team, they describe similar thoughts and elaborate;
Because our [autistic] sensing mechanisms are super sensitive and often synesthetic (cross-sensing — for example, tasting colors or seeing sound) we often feel a part of the things around us. We don’t tend to see in hierarchies, but rather in “holograms,” as described. Always looking for connecting patterns in an overwhelming ocean of sensory, emotional, and energetic information, our relational culture focuses on how things go together and function. (Dawn Prince-Hughes, 2024)
Neuro-Holographic Communities
“Autistic culture is a unique phenomenon; it is constantly in the process of exploring itself, defining itself, and generating itself. Unlike holistic (non-autistic) culture, it is deeply relational. For many autistic people there is no strict boundary between self and environment, or self and other. We tend not to see things in hierarchies, but in relational ways that are in constant flux. “Neuro-Holographic” is an emergent idea that our group has embraced. Neuro-Holographic, as a concept here, refers to the idea that every small bit of energy and information, whether an atom or the universe, reflects every other part of itself in a seamless and meaningful way.” (Dawn Prince-Hughes, 2024)
In my previous blog, I intentionally used a hyphen between the words neuro and holographic to represent the in-between of neurology and holographic ways of being and experiencing the world, a pause for tuning in, an embodiment, a space of Ma. I have resisted using the word “neuro-holographism as that could imply another new theory or concept. Neuro-holographic is not a concept; rather, I feel like it IS the plane of immanence on which neuroqueer theory breathes and lives; it is the ‘wave that rolls and unrolls’ other concepts (Deleuze & Guattari, What is Philosophy, 1994, p36). To resonate with the term neuro-holographic is to resonate with each other as human souls, to be embodied with your core self, perhaps with your spirit, and to be open to holographic connections with others.
Quantum Entanglement
Nerve fibres in the brain could produce pairs of particles linked by quantum entanglement. If backed by experimental observations, this phenomenon could explain how millions of cells in the brain synchronise their activity to make it function.
“When a brain is active, millions of neurons fire simultaneously,” says Yong-Cong Chen at Shanghai University in China. Doing so requires even distant cells to coordinate their timing, which has led some researchers to wonder if this coordination could be due to what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance” — the instantaneous communication that occurs between particles linked by quantum entanglement. “If the power of evolution was looking for handy action over a distance, quantum entanglement would be [an] ideal candidate for this role,” Chen says.
……Once the brain creates entangled photons, the property of entanglement could be passed onto other parts of neurons, like the protein pores that play a role in electrical signalling across the brain, says Chen. When any two objects are quantum entangled, changes in one immediately cause changes in the other — so if different parts of the brain were entangled, they could synchronise much more quickly than through any other type of connection.
All of these factors mean that autistic people’s interoception system and exteroception system will entangle and respond differently too. Neuro-holographic people have strong open sensory gates. In our communities, we are finding neuro-holographic people are being drawn together; their holotropic energy fields seem to align with others of a similar frequency, fusing together and creating connections in all different spaces across the globe in weird and beautiful ways both online and in person. People are being led by their heart, their soul, their inner true intrinsic self and way of being and discovering that they are not alone, weirdness is ok and can be embraced.
Annie Murphy Paul in The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking outside the Brainshows that bodily knowledge (interoception) can be more accurate, for instance in the work of day traders who must juggle huge amounts of information very rapidly, than conscious analysis of explicit data. “The heart, and not the head, leads the way,” she concludes.11 Leslie Shelton puts it bluntly: “Emotion is the master over cognition.” (Blum, S. D. 2024)
Beautiful Holographic Potential and Created Serendipity
The online community favors and enables this unique energy and connections to synchronise, entangle, fuse, form and reform and enables potential to expand rhizomatically, holographically. People and communities that are embodied and intune with each other can create serendipity. The more connected and embodied you are, the more connections form and the stronger the hologram and holographic community becomes. Each node of the hologram is a community where collective energy is created and multiplied, it enables increasingly expansive new serendipity and possibilities to emerge. It allows us to lean into and embrace neuroqueer theory (Walker, 2021) and neuroqueering possibilities.
When people feel validated, they can validate the experience of others; a sense of safety is created between people where there is trust and mutual understanding. This enables stronger connections to form in community clusters, at the nodes, which works to strengthen the rhizomatic neuroqueer network. People are in a better safer place to unravel, de-mask, and dearmour themselves from the restraints of trying to live up to neuronormative ideas when they feel they can trust and connect with those around them. Safe spaces enable radical inclusive ways for people to be themselves, so they can explore their own ways of being without stigma and without fear of prejudice. Perhaps it is only through enduring a life living in the liminal and on the edges that we can truly embrace or feel the potential of Walker’s neuroqueer theory and value the potential neuroqueering?
After years of isolation and existing in survival mode on the side lines of the liminal parts of society some people are naturally finding their energy is gravitating towards certain people and spaces. Like myself, they are connecting with others who resonate with them in small community groups which are all connecting rhizomatically. Community provides a sense of meaning to life and validates what may previously have felt like a very disconnected, disembodied, chaotic existence. “Our overall sense of wellbeing is determined by the health of the ecology of care we are embedded in, by our sensitivity profiles, and our (in)ability to resolve cognitive dissonance.” (Jorn Bettin, AutCollab, 2024)
Persistent positive experiences (over months, years, decades) in the social and ecological environment beyond the human that allow us to feel understood and loved, i.e. experiences with non-judgemental animals and people with compatible sensitivity profiles — such positive experiences allow us to incrementally let go of internalised ableism, and they teach us how to nurture trustworthy de-powered (non-coercive) caring relationships with other living beings. (Jorn Bettin, AutCollab, 2024)
At a human scale, some ideas of quantum biology and quantum physics resonate with neuro-holographic concepts and ways of being. The beauty lies in the fact that the word neuro-holographic can only be felt or experienced in an undefinable, iridescent way as we are talking about energy, tiny particles of ourselves that can’t be seen or observed but are alive and seeking connections. Holographic energy is full of light and vibrations that can expand and ripple far beyond our own bodyminds to connect with others who are vibrating at a similar frequency. The fusion of this collective energy creates multiplicity and is ever-expanding, entwining, and merging with others, expanding each individual’s potential to challenge and subvert harmful systems and ways of being and discovering neuroqueer ways of embracing life in multidimensional ways. It brings people together to create ecologies of care, communities based on deep understanding, love and acceptance.
When people experience deep emotionally engaged thinking about complex issues, they are literally playing out that thinking process, our data would suggest and now many other sources of data would suggest, on the substrate of the cortisone cortical regions that literally also are feeling your guts.
Poets have had it right all along. (Immordino-Yang, 2024)
Connecting with others and following your intuition and your internal vibes or gut feelings in safe spaces enables people to explore emerging thoughts, to be open to explore the ‘perhaps’, the ‘may be’, the ‘could be’ and possibilities that ‘might happen’ if we truly embraced the neurodiversity paradigm and neuroqueer theory in creative ways, it enables awe and wonder and feelings of belonging. It enables our community rhizomes to expand into spaces full of radical, inclusive neuroqueer possibilities.
Opening up discussions and sharing lived experiences helps to bridge the deep double empathy gap. “A de-powered and less materialistic life is beneficial for our physical wellbeing, and that a socially de-powered life at human scale is essential for our mental wellbeing”(Bettin, 2024). We need to embrace the potential of quantum entanglement and it’s outcomes, it enables us to create new planes and plateaus to live together in our own authentic ways so we can keep holographically neuroqueering ourselves and the spaces we are in to create radically inclusive communities together.
Human Restoration Project. (2024, August 2). Keynote: Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang | Solving the Frankenstein Problem[Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUG_ATjjiw4
Murray, D., Lesser, M., & Lawson, W. (2005a). Attention, monotropism and the diagnostic criteria for autism. Autism (London), 9(2), 139–156. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361305051398
Prince-Hughes, D. (2024). Cultural Autism Studies at Yale — A meeting place for those interested in the exploration, identification, generation and preservation of autistic culture.https://culturalautismstudiesatyale.space/
Walker, N. (2021). Neuroqueer heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities.
Courses, books and resources
If you would like to take these ideas further, my courses, books and resources live on Autistic Realms. Everything in the shop is pay what you can, and many resources are free.
In Neuroqueer Heresies, Nick Walker (2021) describes embracing neuroqueering as a verb. When considering Neuroqueer Learning Spaces, we need to reinterpret, rethink, redefine, and reimagine what those spaces may look like and the journey required to be able to facilitate them. We are considering whether we can use the template Walker created for designing autism courses as a template for imagining neuroqueer learning spaces. It has prompted us to question the differences between being neurodiversity-affirming, having everyone’s needs met, and then stretching those possibilities into neuroqueer learning spaces that enable unknown potential to flourish. Once you are free from the reigns of neuronormativity, the learning possibilities of radical inclusivity with cognitive and somatic liberty will be endless.
Yunkaporta (Sand Talk, 2020) talks about being a ‘strange attractor‘ (pg82), which seems very much in line with neuroqueer ideology. To be a strange attractor in education means taking a risk and disrupting the order and current system. There is enormous negativity around words such as risk, anarchy and chaos, but as Yunkaporta reminds us, chaos means having no structure and being rhizomatic, and anarchy means having ‘no boss’. He asks if we could have a structure without a boss or management system. Neuroqueer learning spaces need to be de-hierarchical; we need a community of people, not masters and students. We need empathy, trust, and mutual respect for the uniqueness everyone can bring to adults and children’s learning environments. Deep learning is rhizomatic; it does not happen linearly.
The current education system is causing so much harm to so many young people whose needs are not being met; their mental and physical health is suffering as a consequence, with some having no access to any meaningful education at all. If the current system isn’t working, tightening the reigns further on behaviour and attendance policies isn’t going to help; it will cause more harm. We need to create spaces where words like normal, typical, and even divergent become irrelevant so children feel safe to be themselves and can learn in ways that enable their bodyminds to be liberated.
Audre Lorde (1982) says, “Revolution is not a one-time event. It is becoming always vigilant for the smallest opportunity to make a genuine change in established, outgrown responses…”. Neuroqueer environments are spaces for everyone to be neurodivergent, to be constantly evolving and expanding and reimagining themselves. We need to look for the slightest opportunity to make a change and find possibilities for playing, learning, exploring and opening up curiosity.
Being engaged, curious, playful and able to explore and move freely are essential components of learning to which everyone should be entitled. This is also reflected in the work of Alexander (Play Radical), who wrote a beautiful and inspiring Playful Manifesto. Their aims echo what we’d like to include in our own Neuroqueer Learning Spaces Manifesto;
“Create space to celebrate and recognise the infinite ways we play, communicate, and relate to each other as children and adults. And, in particular, lift those types of play that are often unseen or ignored and ways of communicating or relating that are often not valued by wider society.“
We are forming the beginning of our Open Framework for Neuroqueer Learning Spaces on the work of Walker’s (2021, pg144–156) ‘Guiding Principles for a Course on Autism’ which asks:
“What if both the education of youth and adults and the training of educators included the explicit understanding that no neurocognitive style is more “correct” or “normal” than any other and that the work of mutual accommodation is both an essential part of a proper education and an essential preparation for being a participating citizen in a civilised society?”
An Open Framework for Neuroqueer Learning Spaces.
(open for discussion, just the beginning…)
Balance
We don’t want to strike a balance between the neurodiversity paradigm and the pathology paradigm. We are wholly and intentionally rejecting the pathology paradigm as it has been shown to cause so much harm, especially to neurodivergent and marginalised groups. Nick Walker (pg 72) stated, ‘To create a better future, one must first be able to imagine a better future‘. Audre Lorde (1983) suggested we need to create tools not just to dismantle the education system but to build a new house (in this case, a learning space) that empowers educational facilitators and young people. We want to avoid rebuilding the same education, but just in a different way; we need something different and neuroqueer learning spaces.
Why Sheets — Anti-Behaviourism
We are deeply aware of the barriers young people and their families face in today’s education system. Families can not wait years for an education revolution; they need and deserve some tools to help their child tomorrow morning after breakfast when they may have to meet with a head teacher. We hope that by providing small steps such as ourWhy Sheets inspired by Alfie Kohn(2019), we can offer support and help families reclaim agency and autonomy for their children battling behaviourism, school-induced anxiety and systemic exclusion so they can self-advocate. These resources will also be invaluable for professionals who need well-researched neuro-affirmative resources to support their work. These are short-term answers and are more of a lily pad for the more radical reform needed.
2. Facilitators and Guides
Neuroqueer learning spaces should be nonhierarchical and rhizomatic. This means that we need to shift away from having teachers and students and instead need facilitators and guides. Guides walk alongside children, follow their leads and interests, and support them in developing curiosity and deeper learning. Mutual respect can be formed when there is no hierarchy when you are ‘in it together’; it also develops creativity and enhances communication.
We need to guide and facilitate young people’s movement between Cavendish learning spaces in their own time, as described in our previous writing (Cave, Campfire, Watering Hole). We need a diverse range of people as guides and facilitators. This includes people from all backgrounds, cultures, and needs groups. Other than safeguarding issues, there is no reason why anyone should be excluded. With the right support, everyone has something they can bring that could inspire others to learn more.
3. Adults must embrace the neurodiversity paradigm and be willing to explore neuroqueer theory with an open mind.
When designing an autism course, Walker (2021) suggests that it is “not enough for the instructor to be autistic; they need to be autistic with a substantial history of active participation in autistic culture and community, including autistic rights activism, resistance to oppressive cultural and professional practices based in the pathology paradigm, and a celebration of autistic pride”.
Everyone who facilitates neuroqueer learning spaces must fully embrace neuroqueer theory, as Walker (2021) defines it. Neuroqueering is open to everyone but requires a lot of unlearning, relearning, creating and recreating. There are likely many routes people have travelled and are travelling to get here. For those facilitating neuroqueer learning spaces, people will need to be neurodivergent; if not born neurodivergent, they will need to engage in neuroqueering to become neurodivergent, to diverge their bodyminds from culturally ingrained performance of neuronormativity. Those who are neurodivergent will need to be open to diverging further against neuronormative expectations and be willing to explore the potential of neuroqueer learning spaces.
4. Marginalised Voices Must Be Central
Marginalised voices must be central to the learning space so they can reclaim power and autonomy. Students’ resources also need to be more diverse and reflect indigenous cultures. Total communication systems and access to alternative and augmentative communication need to be standard, and the freedom to move indoors/ outdoors and between Cavendish Learning Spaces (cave/campfire and watering hole) at home, in educational settings, and multisensory environments is essential.
5. Truth Is Where It Is
Non-disabled people and non-neurodivergent people have primarily led the discourse about disability and neurodivergent people so far. Marginalised groups have largely been excluded, silenced or misinterpreted. By having a diverse range of educational facilitators and guides from marginalised communities, first-hand knowledge can be passed down and shared to challenge that narrative and promote a re-storying and validation of experiences.
6. Educational Facilitators / Guides Must Model Neuroqueering
Most educational settings “reflect ableist and neuronormative values of the dominant culture” (Walker, 2012). Students are rewarded for conforming, and those who don’t or are unable to conform are discriminated against. We need educational guides to declare their learning space as a ‘zone of freedom‘ away from neuronormativity. In the words of Audre Lorde (1983), ‘the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.’
7. Educational Guides Must Model and Invite the Embodied Expression of Neuroqueering
Educational facilitators must embrace neuroqueer theory and have an embodied approach to education, such as that suggested by Aldred (2023). We need to expand potential and provide a safe space for self-liberation where adult facilitators can shed neuronormative habits and children can grow up without the need for that shedding. We want children to have the freedom to be and become who they want to be. Educational guides must declare the learning space a “zone for free experimentation with shedding habits of normative performance and actively exploring, practising, reclaiming and cultivating non-normative modes of embodiment.”
Merleau-Ponty (1945) stressed the importance of nurturing relationships and fostering a sense of belonging and connectedness in our communities. For communities to happen, we need to start with the relationships of those we are with and the children we work with in schools and other settings. All our children deserve to feel safe and valued so their differences, unique interests, and ways of being are celebrated with others in an embodied, connected way of being together.
McGreevey et al. (2024) research offers a humanistic framework for “An Experience Sensitive Approach to Care With and for Autistic Children and Young People in Clinical Services“, which we feel will provide a secure base for creating a neuro-inclusive setting. “The experience sensitive approach is a coherent, neuro-inclusive framework that promotes a dignified, respectful, personalized approach to care”, which we believe will be equally valuable and essential as a foundation for neuroqueer learning spaces to promote:
Insiderness
Agency
Uniqueness
Togetherness
Sense Making
Personal Journey
Sense of Place
Embodiment
As Walker suggests, “introducing the practice of neuroqueering embodiment into the classroom (learning space) is an excellent way to introduce neuroqueering as a concept.” We are embracing this and would love for you to share your ideas to help develop this concept.
This is a community project. Feedback welcome.
If you’d like to add your signature to support our anti-ABA/anti-PBS/ anti behaviourism WHY SHEET resources, then please follow the links below:
To find out why we are anti-behaviourism, click here: ANTI-BEHAVIOURISM
Adding your signature to our resources will help add weight and give families the extra confidence to use these to advocate for their young people. Please click here: ADD YOUR SIGNATURE.
If you have any questions or would like further information, please contact us Ryan Boren at Stimpunks or Helen Edgar at Autistic Realms.
Lorde A. (1984a). The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house (Comments at the “The personal and the political panel,” Second Sex Conference, New York, September 29, 1979). In Sister outsider (pp. 110–113). Sister Visions Press. (Original work published 1979) (LittleRad.org also has a copy of the original source)
McGreevy, E., Quinn, A., Law, R., Botha, M., Evans, M., Rose, K., Moyse, R., Boyens, T., Matejko, M., & Pavlopoulou, G. (2024). An experience sensitive approach to care with and for autistic children and young people in clinical services. Journal of Humanistic Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221678241232442
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 1908–1961. Phenomenology of Perception. London : New York :Routledge & K. Paul; Humanities Press, 1974.
Walker, N. (2021). Neuroqueer heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities. Autonomous Press.
Yunkaporta, T. (2020). Sand talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World. HarperCollins.
Courses, books and resources
If you would like to take these ideas further, my courses, books and resources live on Autistic Realms. Everything in the shop is pay what you can, and many resources are free.
“Intentionally liberating oneself from the culturally ingrained and enforced performance of neuronormativity can be thought of as neuroqueering” (Walker, 2021).
More Realms has always been a space for me to push the boundaries of Autistic Realms and explore other ideas, theories, and possibilities of learning in different contexts by drawing on more diverse materials, including art, literature, and philosophy. Inspired by Stimpunks’ idea for Cavendish Learning Spaces, I invited Ryan Boren (Co-Founder and Creative Director of Stimpunks) to join me on a path to explore Neuroqueer Learning Spaces as a way of transforming education away from the enforced ideas of normality. This is forming part of my neuroqueering journey and to potentially form part of a chapter submission for Nick Walker’s upcoming Neuroqueer Theory and Practice Anthology.
This feels like a natural evolution and a bridging of Autistic Realms, More Realms and finding possibilities in the gap, the ‘ma’ that I began this blog series with. Often, within the gaps, the caverns, pleats and folds of spaces, we can shapeshift and find other meanings; connections can be formed. A collective flow can bring new possibilities, open up potential and allow us to find the ‘magic’ (Walker, ITAKOM Presentation, 2023).
Once again, I have started the beginning of this project in the middle of everything else! We dived in deep and realised our project had been underway for many years, but neither of us had the vocabulary of ‘neuroqueer’ and ‘neuroqueering’ (Nick Walker, 2021) to describe our thoughts and help us understand our journey. Now we have that vocabulary; it has opened up another world within a world. It enables us to connect and learn from others who are also interested in the neurodiversity paradigm and postnormal possibilities. It is carving out a pathway for us to expand our community networks and help facilitate a shift in the way education is currently structured. It is helping us move towards what Kay and Dan Aldred (2023) describe as an Embodied Education, which could be seen to be the golden thread that runs through Neuroqueer Learning Spaces.
We know the vocabulary surrounding new concepts like this can be tricky to wrap your head around. It has taken us some time to unlearn and relearn, and we are still learning! We have created a brief summary (below) of some of our main concepts that may not be familiar to everyone. A more in-depth version of this is available on Stimpunks’ website, with further references and ideas to open up discussion.
Embodied education is a concept we will return to and weave through our work alongside other emergent ideas about being a ‘space holder’ to allow the freedom of creative learning to take place. We believe, ‘There is no learning without the body.’ Aldred (2023). To deepen our understanding of this, we will collaborate with different communities to discover what an embodied, neuroqueer education and learning space may mean for those facilitating education and how it could support young people and what it means for the young people and families.
Drawing on the work of Octavia Butler and Adrienne Maree Brown, “The idea of interdependence is that we can meet each other’s needs in a variety of ways, that we can truly lean on others, and they can lean on us. It means we have to decentralise our idea of where solutions and decisions happen and where ideas come from. We have to embrace our complexity. We are complex.” (Adrienne Marie Brown, 2017.
Within an educational context, this means decentralising education, or at least making attempts within our own lives to change the way learning spaces are set up and used, moving away from the hierarchical model of ‘Master’ and ‘Student’. As (Audre Lorde, 1979) says, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”
We need safe spaces tobe witheach other in embodied, meaningful, collaborative, and responsive ways. Our children deserve to feel cared for, understood and safe to explore. We believe we needradical inclusivity to prevent the continuation of the severe mental health crisis our young people are experiencing today.
Over the past few years, I have discussed the current education and mental health crisis in the UK that has led to so many children experiencing burnout and living with the impact that the barriers of our UK education have created. This education crisis is also echoed in other countries, including America, where Stimpunks is based. Many of the issues are highlighted in Gray-Hammond’s (2024) CAMHS in Crisis, which I recommend for further insight into these problems.
It feels like we have reached a point where no one is happy or benefiting from our current education system. Fisher’s (2023) ‘Changing our Minds’ work highlights this from the perspective of teachers, students, and parents/carers. It has made me question our educational aims and what our schools are trying to achieve; it feels like we have lost our way. We no longer need workers for factory production lines; children are becoming more ‘disembodied’ as time passes, and teachers and students have even less autonomy than ever.
We are teaching children to be proud of what they know yet also ashamed of not knowing, teaching children that there is somehow a ‘right’ way to learn through reward charts and positive behaviour support programmes and revising for prescriptive exam criteria. However, it is by having a sense of wonder, curiosity, and unknowing that real learning takes place. This is why we chose the white rabbit symbol for our project. Our white rabbit (also known as Space Bunny) symbolises playfulness, curiosity, wonder, hope and the possibility of expanding learning potential. We use this as a symbol for people to follow us on our Neuroqueering Learning Spaces adventures. We are starting off down the rabbit hole, learning about the three Primordial Learning Spaces as theorised by Thornburg (2013).
Cavendish Learning Spaces are Neuroqueer Learning Spaces
Lorde (1979) declared, “Revolution is not a one-time event. It is becoming always vigilant for the smallest opportunity to make a genuine change in established, outgrown responses…” Ourtriskelionmotif reflects this, with the golden thread of embodiment (being with yourself and being with others) weaving between the three primordial learning spaces. We will be exploring this in more detail as the project evolves. This allows children the opportunity to flow between their cave, watering hole and campfire spaces as needed and be in a perpetually evolving spiral of new learning possibilities by revisiting and expanding on thoughts, ideas and play processes to keep building on connections.
Without information and training, many teachers are likely unaware of the different paths and the need to DE-SCHOOL their learning spaces, UN-LEARN their training and embrace radical inclusivity. A quote often credited to Maya Angelou reads, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” We hope this project will allow people to learn from others so we can all ‘do better together’. Teachers can not take that ‘small opportunity’ if they don’t know where to look for it or even understand why it is needed.
When I was working in class as a teacher, I was often far too busy with the day-to-day planning to think too far outside of my next lesson. Only now, with the privilege of time and hindsight, I have discovered new possibilities by connecting with other communities. Likewise, families also need time to explore and space to connect, validate experiences and learn together. Time is often something many families do not have; family life is generally busy! However, everyone deserves the opportunity to access practical information about different educational pathways and support for their children and to be able to advocate for their needs. Education does not and should not only happen inside a school building between 9 am-3 pm sat behind a desk. We are passionate about expanding learning opportunities and neuroqueer spaces for learning to take place and giving families and educators some ideas and resources to be able to do this.
We want to create a campfire experience by bringing community networks together; we want to share stories, knowledge and create connections to be with each other. We want to provide a space that brings agency and autonomy back to families and school staff. Educational settings and families need freedom for niche construction so children can move seamlessly and weave between different learning spaces. For families opting for alternative learning routes, these pathways need to be made more accessible, and the journey and support need to be much smoother and more empowering for families.
We aim to provide practical resources for professionals and families to support them. For families this may include resources to support them in being able to advocate for their child (such as template letters and signposting to research). For educational settings this will include practical ideas to launch their neuroqueer learning spaces in their own setting.
Caves:Space for quiet reflection, introspection and self-directed learning. A private space to transform learning from external knowledge to internal belief. Home of reflective construction.
Campfires: Space for learning with a storyteller. Education facilitators need to actively subvert neuronormativity. They need to embark on their transformative neuroqueer journey so their re-storying can inspire neuro-cosmopolitanism.
Watering holes: Space for being with peers and social learning. Community enables thoughts and ideas to expand rhizomatically. Embracing unique strengths expands creativity into new horizons and a collective flow full of potential.
A radical change to learning spaces is needed to enable children to be embodied, feel safe and feel liberated enough to explore and be curious about the world around them. We can work and learn in infinitely creative ways, but we need to be embodied in order to do that and connected within ourselves and with the world and people around us. To feel embodied, you need feelings of safety; people need to value strengths, validate difficulties, and provide support where needed. The neurodiversity-affirming work by McGreevey et al.(2023) based on the Life World Model by Todres et al. (2009) applies equally to health care and education. It offers a humanising framework for everyone, not just autistic people. Everyone deserves to feel a sense of togetherness and have their journeys make sense so they have agency and autonomy over their learning journeys.
We have created alilypadto launch our project by inviting discussion around the following ideas:
“Cavendish Spaces” are based on flexibility, interaction, movement, and the role of embodied responsive experiences. They reject the boundaries of traditional classroom settings and examine how they restrict embodied experiences and lead to disembodied experiences and harm. Our project is multidimensional, non-linear and de-hierarchical. We need to deconstruct, dismantle and un-learn as part of the neuroqueering process to lift the burden of neuronormativity that is weighing our children down. We are exploring the idea of an embodied education. We are exploring how learning spaces may impact neuroqueer learning potential and radical cognitive and somatic liberty. Inspired by Ira Socol who suggestsZero-Based Design as part of this process which means children will be no longer be trapped in your past. It will enable us to:
“Reimagine the Learner Experience. Reimagine the Learning Spaces. Reimagine How Professionals Learn”. (Ira Socol)
We are looking at neuroqueering from all angles across the community. We are looking at ways to give agency and autonomy back to families and support those working in educational settings that facilitate and guide learning experiences. Importantly, we want to offer children timeless learning and neuroqueer space to be with others, be themselves and ‘become’ and ‘become what they are’ (Watts, 1955).
The path to escape the box of a sick society involves rediscovering timeless and minimalistic principles for coordinating creative collaboration.
NeurodiVentures are a concrete example of an emerging cultural species that provides safe and nurturing environments for divergent thinking, creativity, exploration, and collaborative niche construction. NeurodiVentures are built on timeless and minimalistic principles for coordinating trusted collaboration that predate the emergence of civilisation.
“The global mono-cult pretends that all aspects of life can be categorised and understood in terms of normality — by the hump of the bell curve. But the living planet does not conform to anthropocentric normality; it is chaotic, but it is beautifully and awesomely diverse.” Bettin (AutCollab, 2024)
We are documenting the neuroqueering process of our journey as a live- stream across Stimpunks website as the project unfolds. It is a reflection of the kaleidoscopic rhizome of Stimpunks, which is a beautifully awesome and diverse learning space in itself.
Our project shows an example of a neuroqueering workflow transformation, which we will expand on in future blogs. Stimpunks is a virtual space holder for my personal neuroqueering process and the community joining us. As a space holder they provide safety to explore, try out new ideas and work collaboratively towards a mutual goal without fear of judgment.
To neuroqueer, you have to un-learn. I visualise my neuroqueering as being like fractals in a kaleidoscope. It is a process of turning, changing and becoming by un-learning and re-learning and time-less learning from others in a campfire space, having time for self-reflection and self-directed learning in a cave space, joining in with and alongside others and celebrating diversity in a watering hole space. We are not perfect, and the project may be chaotic and messy in places. However, we feel passionate that we are heading in the right direction and want to celebrate the ‘beautifully and awesomely diverse’ potential of neuroqueer learning spaces with you.
Created Serendipity
“Seemingly serendipitous events are also based on our willingness to create connections and be in the space, and to put in the effort in the first place. I often tell people that if you start connecting with others in online spaces, you won’t just find great ideas, but the great ideas will find you.” (George Couros)
Created Serendipity is a beautiful thing. We would love for you to join us and expand the potential of neuroqueer learning spaces!
We’re requesting community writing and art about neuroqueering education, play, and learning spaces. “Cavendish Space” is the first piece in our “Neuroqueer Learning Spaces” project. It’s also our explainer for the project. The campfires in the “Cave, Campfires, and Watering Holes” concept introduced in “Cavendish Space” are places for storytelling. They are places for elders and experts to pass along knowledge. We want to weave campfire wisdom into community storytelling. Community storytelling is part of our neuroqueer journeying and becoming.
For each section of the “Cavendish Space” piece, we’d like to have a “Campfire Wisdom” (working title) callout box featuring submitted writing and art. We want to highlight the wisdom of experts and elders in our community and associate it with the campfire primordial learning space and the storytelling and cultural transmission it facilitates. We’ll integrate submitted writing and art into “Cavendish Space” and other pieces created by this project. The writing might be included in a chapter we’re working on for a neuroqueer anthology. We’ll also publish standalone pieces of your work. Anything of any length is welcome. A poem, a paragraph, a painting, a plea, a blog or any other inspiration you may have for Neuroqueering Learning Spaces.
“…human nature is to nurture and be nurtured” Immordino-Yang (2023)
All submissions will be attributed and linked to you whenever used. We plan on writing up this project and submitting a chapter for Nick Walker’s new Neuroqueer anthology.
If you would like to take these ideas further, my courses, books and resources live on Autistic Realms. Everything in the shop is pay what you can, and many resources are free.
“The growing cracks in the thin veneer of our “civilised” economic and social operating model are impossible to ignore”, Jorn Bettin (2020).
As a late-diagnosed autistic person, I feel a massive disconnect with the world around me. I am living in the ‘gap’ between so many spaces but also feel the potential of neuroqueering and transforming what could be voids into ‘Ma’, a space for neuroqueer potential. I have lived through cycles of autistic burnout caused by systemic unmet needs and seen the effects of an education system that is not meeting the needs of my children and the many children of the many families I support as an education professional. (I will expand on the terms Ma and neuroqueering throughout this blog).
Neuroqueer has a verb form, unlike neurodivergent or neurodiversity. Nick Walker (2021) defines neuroqueering as “intentionally liberating oneself from the culturally ingrained and enforced performance of neuronormativity ”. Neuroqueering has helped me navigate and transition through a difficult period of my life and given me hope for myself, my family, and also those I support. ‘Anyone can neuroqueer. Neurodivergent or neurotypical. Gay or straight. Anyone can neuroqueer and be neuroqueer” (Ryan Boren, Stimpunks 2024). Neuroqueering is a form of embodied shapeshifting; it is an internal process that helps you discover potential in the spaces in between in Ma.
Ma: The Inbetween
I love this description of Ma from Ghibliosophy as it captures everything I am trying to convey within the context of neuroqueering, a journey which I began almost 25 years ago before I had the vocabulary of neuroqueering or even knew I was autistic; I have recently revisited these themes in my blogs in Middle Entrance and Caverns, Pleats and Folds:
“Ma’ is a captivating Japanese philosophy that finds beauty in the spaces between — the pauses, the silence, the emptiness. It’s like the breath between words, giving rhythm and depth to our experiences. Embracing Ma is not just about appreciating the void; it’s about understanding its potential. It invites us to pause, breathe, and find richness in moments of stillness. By integrating Ma into our daily lives, we open ourselves to a world of mindfulness and creativity, where every pause is an opportunity for growth and a deeper connection with the world around us. In the art of Ma, we learn that sometimes, what we don’t do or say can be as powerful as what we do.”
I have felt the burden of trying to be linear when my mind and body are anything but. Trying to conform and fit into the rigid boundaries of neuronormative society for so long has left me feeling shattered. I have taken a lot from Yunkaporta’s Sand Talk (2020). He has helped me realise why things have felt so hard and why I have felt so heavy and weighed down. Re-storying my own life through the lens of monotropism (Murray et al, 2005) and the neurodiversity paradigm has helped explain repeated cycles of burnout cycles to the point where I crashed entirely and would likely still be crashing if I had not found support and ways to move on through the neurodivergent community over the past few years.
Yunkaporta (2020, pg. 97) has drawn a symbol with two circles adjacent to each other and another line joins them to form a circle, this is enclosed within a hexagon shape. Yunkaporta suggests that the left-hand circle represents the abstract world of mind and spirit, and the right represents the concrete world of land, relationships and activity. The lines above and below, joining the circles, represent communication. Below is my reinterpretation of this image, with the flow of embodiment between the circles in Ma, where neuroqueering can happen and evolve and keep expanding and evolving and connecting with other spaces.
Yunkaporta explains the importance of metaphors being the ‘language of the spirit’, the language of ritual and magic. Transformative processes can create change in people. One way is through sharing stories and building connections, comparing stories and developing ever greater understanding as more connections and stories are shared and the story rhizome expands. As Yunkporta says (2020, pg 114), “We don’t want our stories to be used at bedtime to put children to sleep; we need an exchange of stories to be awake and grow.” I think the lines Yunkapoeta draws in the sand (see image above) could also be seen to representing the importance of embodied relationships, the flow of connections between people and their surroundings, the transformative process that enables people to continuously unfold and reform, to be creative and find joy in between neuroqueer theory and practice, in Ma.
Meaning in Ma and Connections
I have recently read The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben (2017) and Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta (2020). These are two texts, one about trees and one about Indigenous cultures questioning how contemporary life diverges from the pattern of creation and how we may be able to do things differently. I enjoy reading, but I often find more joy in discovering meaning in my thoughts that appear between texts. The shared message between these books is that we need to be more in tune with the world around us, make meaningful connections, and support our communities and stories from those around us and our elders from the past. We need to create time and space to be with each other in a more embodied way; we can find meaning in the spaces and the gaps in the inbetween-ness of Interaction as described in my previous blog, ‘Being With’ and within and between the Cavendish Spaces of our Neuroqueer Learning Spaces.
“People today will mostly focus on the points of connection, the nodes of interest like stars in the sky. But the real understanding comes in the spaces in between, in the relational forces that connect and move the points”. (Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk, 2020)
People, like trees, need each other; we need to focus on the ‘points of connection, the nodes of interest’. as mentioned in the above quote by Yunkaporta (2020). I find it valuable to be a part of an online community; it is currently one of the few spaces I can access where I can connect with people. The connections I am making are essential and allow me safe spaces to explore conversations with others, mostly about monotropism, the neurodiversity paradigm and neuroqueer potential, as described in Connections and Becoming. However, communities can be formed in many different ways. Just as trees can form woodlands and forests and protect each other, people also need to create more caring communities that work with the flow of people’s needs and interests and not against them, which can liberate them so they can thrive.
There is an ever-expanding network of online spaces that are evolving and branching out like a rhizome and connecting with other networks where more nodes and connections form and spiral out again and again from each point; this is repeated endlessly, and we have just added another with our Discord Server to explore Neuroqueering Learning Spaces. A rhizome, as conceptualised by Deleuze and Guattari (1987) and studied in my previous blog, ‘Middle Entrance,’ is a network with no central point of origin. It also has no dependency on other networks and can keep evolving and expanding.
Rhizomatic Potential
David Gray-Hammond and I discussed the concept of the Autistic Rhizome last year. The rhizomatic potential of online spaces enables people to explore different topics and interests, including neuroqueering learning spaces, a community project by Autistic Realms and Stimpunks, which we hope will transform future learning spaces. As more people show an interest and more connections are formed, the online rhizome keeps expanding, adding new potential and even more possibilities. Katie Munday came up with the concept ‘Neuro-Anarchy” and with David Gray-Hammond they co-wrote the blog “Neuroqueer neuro-anarchy and the chaotic self (2023). They suggest that most people are arriving in these spaces ‘by existing on the fringes of their communities and challenging the politics within them’. This appears to be the case for the majority at the moment, but also a significant proportion of the people who have been in contact with us via Stimpunks are parents and professionals who do not identify as neurodivergent themselves but are advocating for their children or those families they support professionally, they want a safe neuro-inclusive space so they feel less alone and more connected with others that hold the same ideals and beliefs.
It has been shown that single trees planted alone often grow less well and live shorter lives than those amongst other trees in a community. Trees connect through a nourishing network deep in the soil. They use this network deep underground to communicate and care for each other. Wohlleben shares how he discovered that trees could communicate by scent, share food, and nourish other trees struggling or in danger. We can learn much from forests and trees and what Simard et al.(1997) called the ‘wood wide web’ in our human communities and within the rhizomatic online networks of the emerging community exploring neuroqueering. Gray-Hammond (2024) reminded me that “we are not all trees”. Humanity is rich and diverse, and we all have our ecosystems that need to coexist and grow.
Gray-Hammond (2024), in response to my first draft of this article, wrote;
“Our mind can be thought of as rhizomatic. Each neuron is connected to the others through intricate paths. Each experience and thought is linked to the others. Each point is like the atoms of the wave. My human life takes form. Neuroqueering allows me to change the behaviour of that rhizomatic thought structure, moving freely between solid, liquid, gas, Earth, water, and air.”
This builds on the quote from Yunkaporta (2020) and emphasises that the only restrictions on neuroqeer potential are our minds; we are all human, but what that means for each individual is unique and can be transformed. Buddhist Teacher Daisaku Ikeda suggests that we could imagine life as a wave. A wave takes form within the ocean, follows its path, and eventually crashes into the shore before returning to the ocean. To neuroqueer is to consider what we may need to do to change the wave’s trajectory within us; this may mean going deeper within ourselves and allowing our bodyminds to expand further. Online spaces offer opportunities to make connections, form friendships and be with people in ways that will enable freedom to be and communicate in ways that work for them and in ways that fit into their day and lifestyle, with no demands and no expectations — other than to be accepting of differences and be kind.
The concept of creating primordial Cavendish Caves spaces, which we are exploring in our Neuroqueer Learning Spaces project, are spaces of quiet contemplation. They offer a chance to reflect and recover; for some people, this may involve listening to music, watching TV programmes on repeat or online gaming. For others, the Cave space may provide an opportunity to embrace the sound of silence. For me, it is within this silence that neuroqueer potential may be found, the bodymind replenished and new ideas created. It is within a silent space filled with Ma that I can breathe in safety and comfort and breathe out and expand ideas, to shapeshift and transform myself and my thoughts,
I see ‘Being With’ as a process of coming together. Deleuze’s (1987) concept of the line of flight allows us to explore meaning between created spaces and through our connections with people. It is a way of moving beyond and between the gaps of the often preconceived ideas of what ‘being with’ people may mean and what our roles as educators and care facilitators may be. ‘Being With’ creates an opportunity for an embodied sense of belonging and wonderful, meaningful shared experiences. ‘Being With’ is a process of coming together and being full of potential. ‘Being with’ means being willing to explore the unknown and benefit from Cavendish Learning Spaces (cave, campfire, and watering hole), as we have described in our previous blogs.
Yunkaporta (2020) suggests that we must diversify, connect, interact, and adapt. “Diversity is not about tolerating differences or treating others equally and without prejudice. The diversification principle compels you to maintain your differences…you must interact with other systems beyond your own, keeping your system open and sustainable.” I think this is important for neuroqueering; we need to seek out differences, work with diversity and connect with others to benefit from the potential that can bring for people in their learning spaces and those facilitating learning spaces.
According to Yunkaporta (2020), “Interaction is the principle that provides the energy and spirit of communication to power the system. This principle facilitates the flow of living knowledge. You must transfer knowledge (and energy and resources) with as many other agents as possible, rather than trying to store it individually.” The final guideline they suggest for sustainable communities is adaptation; within a neuroqueering context, this is not about adapting to the society that we already have that is breaking so many people; it is not about adding more accommodations into children’s care plans. There has to be a point where if a child needs so many accommodations, people should start to question whether the setting or provision is even suitable; nobody wants to feel different and like a burden. If there is no defined ‘normal’, there will be no need for accommodation, everyone will be different, and everyone’s needs will be met.
Instead, I feel Yunkaporta’s idea for adaptation is more about adapting ourselves, allowing ourselves to change and transform. For this, we need safe spaces online and in the community. Yunkaporta describes this as taking on the role of a “strange attractor’ to “facilitate chain reactions of creative events within the system” In my mind, this all has excellent neuroqueer potential to explore further and ties in beautifully with Bettin’s (2021) work where he suggests that we need to “Grow competency networks and catalysts rather than leadership and leaders — to get things done and distribute decision making to where the knowledge resides.”
Collective Flow
Connections create communities, and as described in my previous blogs, communities can generate a collective flow and potential for people to ‘become’ and for society to be shaped by us for our future. For flow to happen, there has to be intent, and people have to want their intention to lead somewhere positive, even if that endpoint is the unknown, in Ma. Knowing and feeling the energy and potential of others who also want to explore neuroqueer learning spaces is exciting. Not having an exact end destination or prescribed route to get there is still more exciting. We will all have to neuroqueer ourselves to begin reimagining education and consider neuroqueer learning spaces.
Looping back to Yunkaporta’s (2020) Sand Talk and connecting this with Walker’s Neuroqueer Heresies, we can learn a lot from focusing on the things people usually ignore and being able to discover the unknown potential in learning spaces. We need to neuroqueer ourselves from within to have an effect and even begin neuroqueering learning spaces.
In Neuroqueer Heresies, Nick Walker describes what it means to embrace neuroqueering as a verb. In learning spaces, we need to reinterpret, rethink, redefine, and reimagine what those spaces may look like and the journey required to facilitate them. I am considering if we can use Nick Walker’s template for designing autism courses as a template for designing neuroqueer learning spaces. It has made me think of the differences between being neurodiversity affirming and having everyone’s needs met and then neuroqueering those spaces to enable unknown potential to bloom; once you are free from the reigns of neuronormativity, cognitive and somatic liberty and learning potential are endless.
Yunkaporta talks about being a ‘strange attractor’ (2020, pg82), which feels to me as if it is in line with neuroqueer ideology. To be a strange attractor in education means taking a risk and creating chaos. There is enormous negativity around words such as anarchy and chaos, but as Yunkaporta reminds us, chaos means no structure, like a rhizome, and anarchy means ‘no boss’. He asked if we could have a structure without a boss or management. If the current education system is causing so much harm, we must move away from it and create something new. We need to make something where words like average, typical, and even divergent become irrelevant, as everyone will be diverging to and from each other, constantly evolving and expanding.
Walker (2021) posed a question that I think we need to consider for our learning spaces:
“What if both the education of youth and adults and the training of educators included the explicit understanding that no neurocognitive style is more “correct” or “normal” than any other and that the work of mutual accommodation is both an essential part of a proper education and an essential preparation for being a participating citizen in a civilised society?”
Family is important, but not everyone has a loving family that they can depend on, and even if you have a loving family (for which I am grateful), then found or chosen extended family and friends can still play a hugely important role in life. Whānauis a Maori term for an extended family group, as written by Jorn Bettin & Ulku Mazlum(2022). “Whānau is much more than the Western notion of “family”. It is a deep connection, a bond that you are born into that no one can take away from you.”
There is so much we can learn from other cultures. Adults and children need time and space to co-create Whānau in our neuroqueer learning spaces. As Bettin (2021) reminds us, “In many indigenous cultures, children with unique qualities are recognised, are given adult mentors with similarly unique qualities, and grow up to fulfil unique roles in their local community, connected to others with unique knowledge and insights, perhaps even in other communities. If we are embedded in an ecology of care, we can thrive and share the pain and the joy of life.” (Bettin, 2021)
The Magic Is Open
The magic of neuroqueering is open to everyone; it embraces the neurodiversity paradigm and celebrates the endless variation and potential of unique body-minds in our society and beyond as we learn from other Indigenous cultures. To neuroqueer is to become neurodivergent and to expand, unfold, create and recreate continuously. To neuroqueer is to explore the magic between spaces and discover possibilities that can emerge from Ma and be transformed into new spaces. We hope that by providing some ideas for neuroqueer learning spaces and opening up conversations about what neuroqueer learning spaces may be like, we will continue to expand the community rhizome. We are adding another node to the rhizome by opening up conversations for others to contribute so we can create more possibilities.
Murray, D., Lesser, M., & Lawson, W. (2005). Attention, monotropism and the diagnostic criteria for autism. Autism (London), 9(2), 139–156. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361305051398
Simard, S. W., Perry, D. A., Jones, M. D., Myrold, D. D., Durall, D. M., & Molina, R. (1997). Net transfer of carbon between ectomycorrhizal tree species in the field.Nature, 388(6642), 579–582. https://doi.org/10.1038/41557
Walker, N. (2021). Neuroqueer heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities.Autonomous Press.
Wohlleben, P. (2017). The hidden life of trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate — Discoveries from a Secret World. William Collins.
Yunkaporta, T. (2020). Sand talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World. HarperCollins.
Courses, books and resources
If you would like to take these ideas further, my courses, books and resources live on Autistic Realms. Everything in the shop is pay what you can, and many resources are free.
In Milan Kundera’s novel, ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’ (1981), he described the heaviness of life, the restrictive oppression and boundaries that can tie us all down, yet there is freedom in the possibilities the mind can bring and in the choices we can make. We can subvert the restrictions of neuronormative society; we can, to some extent, choose our line of flight and see the potential in the folds of our thoughts. This potential may be expressed through art, literature, science, music, movement, conversations and joining in collective flow states as a community and also through neuroqueering as discussed by Nick Walker in my previous writing.
This article is continuing my exploration of the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari in relation to the creation of concepts and theories, such as monotropism. I am interested in the inner experience of flow states and also the flow states within society as I have noticed that a new collective flow state is gaining momentum within the neurodivergent community. Talk about the theory of Monotropism (Murray, Lesser, Lawson, 2005) and The Monotropism Questionnaire (Garau et al., 2023) is flooding some social media channels, and many people (especially those who are Autistic/ ADHD) are sharing their experiences and resonating with this theory and the potential for a new way of framing their own experiences.
Monotropism Questionnaire
The Monotropism Questionnaire (Garau et al., 2023) research article has been shared millions of times across various social media platforms over the past few weeks. There are likely many reasons why the Monotropism Questionnaire has been taken so many times and has been so popular. However, I believe one of them is the feeling of validation it brings to autistic/ADHD people. It seems to be helping to create a sense of connection and understanding, a sense of safety and reassurance from other people that ‘get it’.
Neurodiversity Affirming Flow
There is a new energy and strong flow behind neurodiversity-affirming work, especially within education and mental health organisations. There is a variable weight to flow states and momentum created behind all the research; it is interesting to consider how and why this particular piece of research has moved so fast, especially across social media platforms. For example, Dr.’ Joey’s post on TikTok about the Monotropism Questionnaire now has over 3.5 million views, a staggeringly high statistic for any topic.
Validation
There is a deep yearning for people to feel understood, for their strengths to be celebrated and for their difficulties to be acknowledged. There seems to be a growing number of neurodivergent people seeking support and a growing number of neurodiversity-affirming, neurodivergent-led charities, organisations, and groups emerging to help people who have previously been marginalised and left feeling alone.
Many of the new organisations, groups and online spaces that are evolving are proving to be a wonderful coming together of different minds, a collective response to the long-standing unmet needs of neurodivergent people. They are an example of the internal experiences of neurodivergent people being acknowledged and represented in the community with shared experiences, empathy and understanding. This coming together and uniting through shared experiences and theories such as monotropism could be seen as being like a collective flow state; a combined energy of mutual understanding created by accepting and validating each other’s similarities and also differences.
Collective Flow
Deleuze and Guattari are philosophers, and they explored aspects of a broader interpretation of flow, a collective flow state in society. In A Thousand Plateaus (1980), Deleuze and Guattari specifically talk about society’s economic and social flows; this is a broader interpretation of flow compared to the internal channelling of attention resources described by Monotropism Theory (Murray et al., 2005) or the flow states described by Csikszentmihalyi (1990).
Deleuze describes the bigger picture, the flowing river of a community and society. However, the flow in society could not happen without the diversity of all different minds sharing their passions, skills and knowledge, all working together. The world is in a constant state of flux, and society is in a continuous state of movement. The world and its collective flow states are multidimensional; we live in a world of differences, and neurodiversity is that difference and where the creative potential lies.
Double Empathy
The Monotropism Questionnaire may be popular with Autistic /ADHD people as it reflects their experiences beyond a purely cognitive understanding and resonates with people’s inner states of being. Many people are taking the questionnaire and only then asking, ‘What actually is monotropism?’
A lightbulb moment is often felt, a moment of clarity and relief of being heard and feeling understood; this is reflected in all the likes and excited reshares across social media.
If you have constantly felt on the outside of spaces, there is often a deep yearning to be understood and to feel a part of ‘something’. By taking the Monotropism Questionnaire, there is a feeling of connection with others; there is no double empathy problem (Milton, 2012). Instead, there is a wonderful mutual understanding which reflects so many aspects of life, the positives and the challenges, and there is value in sharing these experiences.
Todd May suggests that the question Deleuze & Guatarri are asking about philosophy is, ‘How might we live?’ rather than, ‘How should we live?’This quote feels particularly relevant for the neurodivergent community and could be a way of reframing our understanding of autism and thinking about what it means to be Autistic/ADHD. Work led by neurodivergent people researching for their community is proving valuable, resonating deeply and is slowly flowing into other research. (I collated a Summary of Monotropism Research for Summer 2023, which can be found on Monotropism.org).
Monotropism is not a new theory, but the collective flow of the online community may have been what was needed for the current to gather this strong momentum and create such an exciting amount of energy. It has quickly moved out of purely academic circles into spaces where people are now sharing their own experiences of monotropism. People are sharing some of the struggles in their lives as they have tried to live up to the expectations of how they felt they “should be” against the norms of the neuromajority. People have been coming together to share ideas of how to manage being monotropic and sharing ways to try and balance energy.
Monotropism and Inner Experiences
Monotropism could be considered the most accurate reflection of autistic/ADHD experiences that we currently have. I feel it reflects a deep inner experience and way of processing that impacts every aspect of life, from cognition, attention, communication and socialising to sensory experiences and mental well-being.
Diving into your monotropic flow state can create a feeling of joy and safety. Immersing yourself in familiar topics and interests in an overwhelming and chaotic world is reassuring and can provide comfort. The theory of monotropism is helping some people understand and find ways of managing their energy and attention resources to support them in their day-to-day lives. It offers explanations for other difficulties people may have with focusing, switching tasks, concentration, attention, communication, interactions, socialising and also physical and sensory processing. Realising that others relate to this theory and struggle with more challenging aspects of monotropism is drawing people together across social media which can only be a positive outcome.
Creative Potential
Deleuze draws on the idea that philosophy is a process of creation, a process of possibilities and the art of concept creation. As a concept, monotropism absolutely works for me. I can apply it to every aspect of my life. Monotropism helps me understand myself and relation to others and the world around me, it is helping to bring some sense into what can feel like quite a chaotic world. There is potential in the theory on both a personal level and in the wider implications for supporting people in education and other settings and family life.
Rhizomatic Flow
Our collective flow from within the neurodivergent community is rhizomatically evolving and starting to branch outside the autistic community. Interest is growing that was not here even six months ago; webinars and training sessions are popping up over the internet, and new writing is being shared all the time.
I believe we need to embrace this flow and channel it into productive research and enable the inner experiences of neurodivergent people to drive the research so it is more meaningful for everyone. Neurodiversity is where potential and possibilities lie. Everyone has an integral and equally important role in creating and contributing to our community flow state and in the possibilities that may bring.
Celebrating Differences
The Monotropism Questionnaire has possibly gained significant momentum because there is a collective need for a shared neurodiversity affirmative understanding from within the neurodivergent community. Everyone deserves to flourish and live their best life; having your inner experiences validated is intensely valuable and has the potential to create new possibilities and better outcomes for autistic/ADHD people.
If we accept and celebrate differences, we can all work together to shape the course of our collective flow. More research into monotropism and inner Autistic ADHD experiences will help support and benefit everyone.
Deleuze and Guattari suggest:
‘Lodge yourself on a stratum, experiment with the opportunities it offers, find an advantageous place on it, find potential movements of deterritorialisation, possible lines of flight, experience them, produce flow conjunctions here and there, try out continuums of intensities segment by segment, have a small plot of land at all times.’
(A Thousand Plateaus (2013), Chapter 6, How do you make yourself a Body Without Organs?, pg. 187)
More Realms is a part of my Autistic Realms platform, advocating for a better understanding of autism and mental health in education.
Courses, books and resources
If you would like to take these ideas further, my courses, books and resources live on Autistic Realms. Everything in the shop is pay what you can, and many resources are free.
What would it mean to build a hearth that welcomes not only diverse minds, but diverse ways of sensing, relating, and becoming across human and more-than-human lives?
This blog emerged from a conversation with Stimpunks during our Neuroqueer Learning Spaces project planning, where we explored what it truly means to create spaces that sustain neurodivergent people, rather than simply include. We found ourselves returning to the image of the hearth, the Cavendish Campfire, a warm, relational centre where ethodivergence is held, honoured, and co-regulated. This piece reflects on ethodivergent hearth building as a neuroqueer practice of community care and more-than-human kinship.
Ethodivergence speaks to the richness of relational, sensory, and affective difference. It’s about how we move, connect, feel, and attend, how our rhythms and responses don’t always align with dominant norms. Drawing from Ombre Tarragnat’s (2025) concept of ethodiversity, this expands neurodiversity beyond the human brain into relational ecology, honouring the full range of our inter-being ways with the world across all species of living and non-living things.
More-than-human refers to the interconnected ecology of life that includes not just humans but also animals, plants, weather systems, seasons, fungi, rivers, stones, moon cycles, and sensory environments. It’s a way of recognising that our ways of being, knowing, and healing are shaped by more than just other humans and that these entanglements are vital, not peripheral.
The hearth is a warm centre, a gathering space, a site of return and regeneration. It holds history, presence, and possibility, it’s where people tend the fire together, share stories, and learn from one another, a rhythm of shared becoming. To build ethodivergent hearths is to make room for new forms of kinship, ones that honour slow attunement, deep presence, and non-normative ways of sensing, being, and knowing. It’s an invitation to live otherwise, interdependently, in communities shaped not by conformity but by relational integrity and care.
Beyond its physical form, the hearth also holds sensory and emotional resonance, it is a centre, part of the basecamp, that may not be an actual campfire fire or a room, but a feeling. Sometimes it lives in the softness of our favourite weighted blanket, the texture of moss under our fingertips, the familiar paths we may return to in the woods or our local park, the stillness shared with our chosen family and pets. In ethodivergent hearth building, these sensory and relational centres become vital anchors, places to return to without performance, where our difference is held with warmth rather than shame or stigma.
Cavendish Spaces and ethodivergent hearths are built slowly, relationally, through co-regulation, sensory consideration, and access intimacy. There is room for fallow rest time, stim time, quiet time, time that bends to our bodyminds rather than our bodyminds being twisted into neuronormative time constraints that lead us into burnout and mental ill health. These are spaces that reject extraction and standardisation and instead, they welcome divergence and difference through shared rhythms, bodily autonomy, and relational consent, psychological and sensory safety. Cavendish spaces are like ethodivergent hearths for the soul where people gather not to fix or scrutinise, but to sit alongside, validate, and co-exist.
To think about and create ethodivergent hearths is to imagine what it means to design for difference, to centre care and safety for those of us often left out in the cold, on the edges and in the liminal spaces. It’s about making space for monotropic attention, sensory flow, and nonlinear emotional rhythms. It’s about pacing together through co-regulation, glimmers, multi-modal ways of communicating and attuned silence. It’s about giving permission for slow grief, spiralling joy, or messy recovery.
Ethodivergent hearth building means:
Not centring only human and normative ways of relating and knowing.
Honouring sensory, affective, and relational exchanges between people and natural or material environments.
Acknowledging that Autistic, disabled, and neurodivergent people often form deep attunements with non-human kin, sometimes more sustaining than traditional social models.
It might look like mutual aid networks, or shared rest practices, it might mean building more flexible time-structures that go beyond our clocks. This kind of hearth holds our queertime, our difference, our interdependence, without trying to fix, mask, explain, or justify. It’s a way of living gently with difference, and tending the fire that can help sustain us.
Ethodivergent hearth building invites a shift from thinking of community as exclusively human, towards something more ecological, embodied, and expansive, a shared hearth where difference is relational, and care ripples outward beyond species boundaries. Ethodivergent hearth building is a neuroqueer practice of relational community rooted in presence, divergence, and shared becoming where everyone can thrive.
Courses, books and resources
If you would like to take these ideas further, my courses, books and resources live on Autistic Realms. Everything in the shop is pay what you can, and many resources are free.
This section of the poem from Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, speaks to me deeply and resonates with my Autistic experience of meaning as something felt, sensed, and lived through, especially in solitude, sensory immersion, and more-than-human connection.
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society where none intrudes, By the deep Sea, and music in its roar: I love not Man the less, but Nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the Universe, and feel What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.
Autistic meaning-making is not abstract, but an embodied attunement, a “mingling with the Universe” that resists neuronormative expression yet pulses with emotional and sensory intensity.
As Erin Manning wrote, “Autistics…are hypersensorial, alive not only to the presence of the other, but more importantly, to the absence of category. They live the differential, feeling into the world’s quality of emergence. Bodying, for them, is worlding.”
Autistic experience often resists the default social scripts and expected ways of making sense of things, our thoughts are less linear, more constellation-y and rhizomatic. They may appear chaotic and not always make sense to others as the connections are happening deep inside us.
Meaning for me, often arises between things, in the liminal spaces, in the felt sensory and emotional moments, a subtle change of a sound, the shifting pattern of sunlight on leaves and my relationship with living things that don’t speak in human words, and also a more natural attunement to people who also can’t or prefer not to speak verbally.
Like Lord Byron’s “rapture on the lonely shore,” the Autistic sense of meaning-making may emerge most powerfully in the absence of human intrusion, words and voices, not from isolation, but from a deep, open presence with what is. It is why we may crave time alone, in our dens, out in nature, fully immersed in stimming activities and other forms of communication and connecting online. Alone time is so often stigmatised as being antisocial, but it is a different kind of sociality, and may be more meaningful for many Autistic people and is something to value and allow ourselves the time to lean into in what ever way we want and helps us feel good. It may be less about escaping and more about finding belonging in other ways and belonging otherwise.
Autistic people often experience a heightened resonance and connection with our environment, this may not always be with people, but with animals, objects, places, atmospheres and sensory experiences. This is not a deficit of sociality, but perhaps a re-routing of relational (monotropic) attention toward the more-than-human, an ethodivergent way of being. (Ombre Tarragnat, 2025)
I have written extensively about liminality, the in-between spaces where many Autistic people feel they may be stuck, but I think it is in these liminal spaces and states, where our bodyminds “mingles with the Universe,” that we can find a quiet calm that helps regulate, bring comfort and a meaning that allows us to emerge from the liminal or delight in the dwelling moments of the unspoken between realms. It is in liminality that Autistic perception becomes a kind of aesthetic felt knowing. It may not be easily verbalised or put into human words, “what I can ne’er express” but it is real, it emerges and can be captured in art, poetry and nature, in our online community spaces and is valid.
“There is society where none intrudes”.
“There is pleasure in the pathless woods” when we diverge from neuronormative expectations and follow our inner compasses.
Allowing ourselves to feel, wholly and completely and merge with our environment is a way of creating our own language, a bodymind way of being that doesn’t rely on human words and can be felt and understood in other ways………we need to create our own worlds, reworld, neuroqueer – so we can survive together in a world dominated by neuronormativity and find our own place of belonging.
Sharing early morning thoughts after having read more of Erin Manning‘s beautiful work last night ‘A Feel for Others Feeling You‘ (2025), about challenging normative orientations around the concept of mirror-touch synaesthesia and touch (inspired by the DeafBlind Protactile community and work of John Lee Clark).
“To feel the touch of the world is to feel the difference the world brings to all it comes into contact with, and this contact cannot be separated from all that worlds. To be a body is to be in contact. To touch is to feel the differential.” (Erin Manning, 2025)
Thoughts welcome – I am hoping to set up an alternative space to explore through Autistic Realms into More Realms to share, discuss and collaborate on things like this with anyone who is interested alongside CASY Cultural Autism Studies at Yale and Stimpunks communities.
“Ocean Waves by Adriel J Wool” is a meditation in ambient flow states. Introduced with a special tuning that allows the brain to touch and feel more true pythagorean intervals of musicality.
The flows and textures of nature follow patterns that resonate with the human body through its ability to hear sound.
The nervous system is a microcosm, however it relates in scale to the power of nature, and is comforted within her crests.
To breathe more slowly and more deeply. The sound spectrum is given in the powerful release of deep sound energy, very much like the Earth’s beautiful shores.”
“Ocean Waves by Adriel J. Wool isn’t a recording of the ocean, it’s a fractal composition of the nature of the ocean. Modulated into swells, the rhythm evokes the massive release of great ocean waves and the more humble release of the human breath“. Ryan Boren (Stimpunks)
Courses, books and resources
If you would like to take these ideas further, my courses, books and resources live on Autistic Realms. Everything in the shop is pay what you can, and many resources are free.
The quote, “Attention without feeling, is only a report.” from Mary Oliver — Upstream: Selected Essays (2016) resonates with me as a deeply monotropic person. It summarises what happens whenever I find myself pulled into a moment so fully and immersively that the boundary between noticing and becoming begins to dissolve, and time melts away. These moments will be different for everyone, they happen when our monotropic bodyminds are pulled towards something, it returns when I am in woodlands and when I see moss, fungi, flowing water.
There’s something about moss, it’s soft resilience, its quiet deep greenness of a million shades, the way it persists and thrives on forgotten land and inbetween stones, on forest floors and brings old things back to a new life. Moss doesn’t demand to be seen, but when we do look, really look, really feel, and really give ourselves time to sense and be with moss, it offers a different kind of presence and an almost different kind of knowing and connecting and Autistic Joy.
I am exploring the idea of moss as an invitation to consider monotropism, ethodiversity, and neuroqueering our spaces as a way of creating belonging. Drawing from the work of Popova, M. (2023). The Magic of Moss and what it teaches us about the art of attentiveness to life at all scales, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Mary Oliver, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing and others, alongside my emerging neuroqueer and holographic ideas, I am considering if moss (like mushrooms and water which I have written about before!), could offer not only a symbol and metaphor for neurodivergent thriving but a methodology to reclaim creative practice and ways of being that resists the fast, extractive modes of dominant neuronormative culture.
Monotropism (Murray et al, 2005) is a neuro-affirming theory of Autistic experiences. It describes a tendency to enter flow states of deeply focused attention, to move inward towards just one or a few connected interests, sensations, or patterns at anyone time and to dwell there. This is not just a cognitive style; for myself being monotropic it is a whole-bodymind sensory way of being. For many Autistic/ADHD people, monotropism underpins and helps to make sense of our sensory experiences, ways of learning, communication styles, and creativity. If you are Autistic / ADHD the theory of monotropism may resonate and help explain how you process and relate to the world.
In environments dominated by neuronormativity ,which are structured around multitasking, high demands, quick-switching of attention tunnels, and surface level engagement, monotropic people can be often misread as being obsessive, inflexible, or disengaged. If we reframe this deep-focus not as deficit, but as capacity and energy, it offers a more affirming lens of Autistic experiences as being a form of attunement with attentional resources, a way of giving attention feelingly and holistically.
For me, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Gathering Moss(2003) exemplifies monotropic attentional ecology. Her writing spirals and notices what others may overlook such as the micro-patterns of bryophytes (group name for any non vascular, rootless plants like moss) , the webs that cover forest floors and emerge through cracks and over sleeping objects. Kimmerer just doesn’t describe moss she enters into relationship with nature, her science and writing is guided by care, her noticing is lived, it feels very monotropic much like Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled Life (2023).
To attend like this, monotropically, with feeling and deep attention is not just to extract facts, but to stay present with complexity, multiplicity and connect with nature and our environment rhizomatically, completely and become deeply absorbed in greenness and texture. As Mary Oliver reminds us, “without feeling, attention becomes mere reporting“. For some monotropic people their perception may offer a different kind of report / blog writing/ creative experience, one filled with sensory details and emotional resonance, there are no barriers between the body and the environment, the moss, nature.
Nature Positivity: We Are Not Outside the Ecosystem
Nature positivitywas a term only recently introduced to me on Barbara Melville’s writing course. It made me think about how as a neurodivergent person I am not disconnected from nature but often deeply and almost painfully attuned to it, inseparable, we are a part of nature. We do not need to be brought back into the natural world; we need to be recognised as already being part of it. Our sensory experiences, our flows of attention, our non-normative experience of time, memories and rhythms, aren’t deviations from a natural or ‘normative’ baseline, they can be seen to be part of biodiversity and our wider ethodivergent ways of being (Tarragnat, 2025).
Ethodiversity is a term developed by Ombre Tarragnat (2025) to describe the variability of behavioural and existential styles within and across species. Ethodiversity invites us to move beyond a purely neurological model of divergence and into a more-than-human framework of difference. It reminds us that there are many ways to live, relate, and thrive not only for humans, but for all living things.
Moss embodies ethodiverse wisdom. It rejects hierarchy and human time, it forms webs, it’s value is in its interconnectedness and the spaces inbetween. We can learn from all non-human beings and living things, we are all interconnected and if we give our selves more time to tune in to the natural world we could perhaps can expand our ways of thinking, not just as humans for humans, but as part of nature. We can help to recreate a world where every living thing can thrive (non-human and human). It creates a space to think about our relationship with the wider planet we are in, the importance of environmental sustainability, not just focusing on our human-centric needs (Solarpunk ideas).
In this sense, moss, like many other aspects of nature, becomes a kind of kin, we are interdependent. I think lots of us are trying to survive from the edges, in the liminal spaces, trying to grow in shade and darkness through cycles of burnout. I live in the dark-mode, underground settings of Discord servers, it is where I feel at home, inbetween the reality of life outside my front door and where I really feel safe and a sense of belonging. Moss grows across ruins, rooftops, gravestones and inbetween the places and objects people normally tread over or overlook. It softens hard spaces and it survives and thrives on it’s own terms, in it’s own way much like our online community spaces.
Mushrooms and fungi, like moss, offer a metaphor of hope and an opportunity to think about how we can create a life from capitalist ruins which invalidates and overlooks neurodivergent needs and potential. Anna Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the Worldreminds us that life persists in the ruins of Capitalism, not in spite of disruption, but through it and can flourish through adversity. Like matsutake mushrooms thriving in disturbed forests, neurodivergent people often live in the edges of systems, through adversity, in fractured spiral time, outside of centralised blueprints and neuronormativity, however hard these systems try to contain us and pressure us to mask. This resonates deeply with monotropic ways of being, our ability to create our own Autistic rhizomes and communities, how our senses sometimes form unlikely but radically resilient connections in overlooked spaces.
Tsing’s emphasis on precarity, interdependence, and multi-species assemblages mirrors the sintered ways neurodivergent communities form: not through uniformity, but through shared friction and feeling. Our creative practices become more than self-expression, they are part of what Tsing calls the “arts of noticing,” where we document life not for control or mastery, but as a way of staying with complexity and multiplicity and to create shared meaning. It is a way to honour our entangled, emergent, sensory ways of being as ecologically vital. It reminds us that even in fragmented systems and broken ground, we can reclaim ourselves, find connection, and grow into something whole, be together and create something new.
Sintering
In Sintering: Neurodivergent Community Building(2025), I explored the metaphor of sintering. Sintering is the process through which individual snow grains gradually begin to bond. Tiny necks form between them, bridging the gaps, making the snowpack stronger, more resilient, and more resistant to collapse.
In Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead(2025), Leanne Betasamosake Simpson offers this as a metaphor for collective becoming. “Sintering is a joining,” she writes, “It is a communal transformation that creates a fabric of former snowflakes bonded to each other… Sintering is bonding, it’s building coalitions with your neighbours” (p. 18).
This analogy resonates deeply with my own experiences of the neurodivergent community and the Autistic rhizome. Many of us begin our journeys alone trying to discover our real identity under the layers of masking and internalised ableism, realising we are caught in systems not made for us and that is why life has felt SO hard! Discovering I was Autistic was life changing for me. In my 40’s I suddenly had access to a whole world of new vocabulary to describe my experiences. It has been through connecting with other neurodivergent people through various online communities and sharing stories that my life has begun to make more sense. When we find each other across difference, across shared experiences, we can start to build bridges, rhizomes. Through conversation, care, and solidarity, we can begin to sinter.
Neuroqueering from the Liminal
InNeuroqueering Liminal Spaces (2024), I wrote about the spaces where categorisation breaks down between identities, between disciplines, between states of being. Neurodivergent people often find ourselves in these thresholds, not quite fitting in, living in the margins, I am suggesting that liminality can be a fertile and exciting place to neuroqueer and evolve from.
Moss is liminal, it exists between. It mediates, connects and holds and brings things together. In many ways it could be seen to reflect what neuroqueer creative practice can be, something that isn’t fixed, something that moves away from dominant frameworks, it is textured and radically relational and multidimensional.
To write from moss is to write from the in-between spaces, attune to our environment, to feel safe and at home. It is to resist linearity, binary ways, hierarchy and to embrace multiplicity, to value the process of becoming and connecting.
Moss offers a model for neurodivergent thriving, one that honours attention with feeling, presence without performance and growth without urgency. It teaches us to notice differently, to value slowness, to dwell in the cracks and embrace neuroqueering,monotropic felt time.
Our creative practice can be moss-like, it can be sintered through our shared stories and experiences. To attend with feeling and lean into monotropic time can be a lifeline for many people who are experiencing burnout. It is a way of reclaiming our authentic ways of resting and being.
Monotropic attention, a different ecology
In the Writing the Dawnworkshop I took part in this week, Barb Melville encouraged us to begin our writing with a nature-positive message. She asked us, not just what we notice, but why it matters. For me, moss represents a kind of quiet kinship, it is soft, slow and often overlooked and fills me with sensory joy. As a neurodivergent person, I see myself reflected in its persistence, its texture, its need for quiet, shaded places to thrive. In protecting nature and moss we are also protecting our sensory environments, the liminal spaces, and the overlooked ecologies that support neurodivergent ways of being and feeling safe.
This reflection can become call to action which Barbara invited us to think about. It enables us to think about reimagining ways of connecting, not just with nature but in the way we create our communities, educational spaces and care settings. We need to design practices that honour differences, not pathologise. Like moss, neurodivergent people thrive with more time and space, gentleness and connection in spaces like our Neuroqueer Learning Spaces.
My home is in the mossy, liminal spaces that we create together, in our reaching toward one another. Our strength is in radical resilience and sintering, our refusal to face the world alone, valuing interdependence and not conforming to harmful systems based only on neuronormative values.
Radical resilience does not come from hardness or conformity, but from mossy softness, it comes from flow and fungi like rhizomatic community networks and the cumulative strength of many unique connections forming bonds to offer support to each other. As Bruno Lataur summarised, “Learning to live in the ruins of capitalism means learning to do without the notion of projects and, finally, moving on to an attentive description of situations that cannot easily change scale…..With her dog Cayenne, Donna Haraway had proved how far one could take analysis of relations between species. With her matsutake (mushroom), Anna Tsing proves that we can go still further, modifying not only the landscape to be described but what we should expect of meticulous description.”
Mossy, messy, monotropic ways
Nature-positive writing what ever the focus – mushrooms, moss, trees, water can be a radical act of reclamation, helping us grow cultures and communities that are ecologically aware. Neurodivergent spaces are rhizomatic, soft, mossy, fluid, flowy, webby and spirally and entangled. They allow space for dwelling, noticing, interdependence and omnidirectional growth.
‘To walk attentively through a forest, even a damaged one, is to be caught by the abundance of life: ancient and new; underfoot and reaching into light.’ pg 155 (Tsing)
Let’s keep growing spaces that honour slowness, texture, and sensory ways of knowing and feeling, where monotropic ways of being are not just accepted, but celebrated. Spaces where infodumping, deep focus, stimming, and sensory richness are recognised as meaningful ways of connecting and building interdependence between humans, non-human beings and our wider environments.
Monotropism lets us sink into and experience the world with our full-bodymind presence, not just noticing, but flowing and feeling with the world in ways that bring resonance, validation, and a sense of belonging. Mary Oliver wrote “Attention without feeling, is only a report.”, for monotropic people how we use our attentional resources helps to explain everything, it is how we experience life in all it’s joyful mossy, messy ways.
“Next time the bus is late, take those waiting minutes to look around for signs of life….. amidst the noise and fumes and elbowing crowds, there is some small reasurance in the moss between the cracks.” (Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, pg 105)
References & Further Reading
Kimmerer, R. W. (2003). Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. Oregon State University Press.
Oliver, M. (2016). Upstream: Selected Essays. Penguin Press.
Tarragnat, O. (2024). Biodiversity, Neurodiversity, Ethodiversity: Towards a More-Than-Human and More-Than-Neurological Turn in Neurodiversity Studies. TRACE: Journal for Human-Animal Studies. https://trace.journal.fi/article/view/144936
Murray, D., Lesser, M., & Lawson, W. (2005a). Attention, monotropism and the diagnostic criteria for autism. Autism, 9(2), 139–156. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361305051398
Tsing, A. L. (2021). The mushroom at the end of the world: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton University Press.
Haraway, D. (2007). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century. In Springer eBooks (pp. 117–158). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-3803-7_4
Walker, N. (2021). Neuroqueer heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities. Autonomous Press.
Courses, books and resources
If you would like to take these ideas further, my courses, books and resources live on Autistic Realms. Everything in the shop is pay what you can, and many resources are free.
When snow first falls, its flakes are delicate and vulnerable, but over time, a quiet transformation begins. Sintering is the process through which individual snow grains gradually begin to bond. Tiny necks form between them, bridging the gaps, making the snowpack stronger, more resilient, and more resistant to collapse.
Sintering
In Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead(2025), Leanne Betasamosake Simpson offers this as a metaphor for collective becoming. “Sintering is a joining,” she writes. “It is a communal transformation that creates a fabric of former snowflakes bonded to each other… Sintering is bonding, it’s building coalitions with your neighbours” (p. 18).
This analogy resonates deeply with my own experiences of the neurodivergent community and the Autistic rhizome. Many of us begin our journeys alone, caught in systems not made for us. Discovering I was Autistic was life changing for me. In my 40s I suddenly had access to a whole world of new vocabulary to describe my experiences. It has been through connecting with other Autistic people through various online communities and sharing stories that my life has begun to make more sense. When we find each other across difference, across shared experiences, we can start to build bridges. Through conversation, care, and solidarity, we can begin to sinter.
World Making From The Liminal
In Neuroqueering in the Liminal Spaces, I explored how if you are neurodivergent, community connections often emerge in the spaces-between: the liminal zones where identities are unmoored and reforming. Liminality is not a passive in-between, but an active threshold a place of transformation. To neuroqueer is to inhabit these spaces intentionally, resisting the pull of normative timelines and expectations. It’s where we begin to re-imagine our relationships to time, to each other, and to ourselves. These are places where we unlearn and relearn and begin to create our own worlds so we can move beyond survival and can thrive.
Simpson writes, that “world making requires love, kindness, and care. It requires collectivity and relationality… [it] generates the knowledge needed to move onto the next step” (p. 41).
Trust in Human Scale
Jorn Bettin (2024) Trust in Human Scale explores how neurodivergent people are often asked to stretch beyond sustainable limits, to conform to institutional scales that demand efficiency over relationship, compliance over trust, “We are trusted only to the extent that we comply.”
This is why our sintering matters so much. Human-scale relationships form in peer support groups, online community spaces, through shared projects such as our Map of Monotropic Experiences, they prioritise relational attunement and rely on mutual trust rather than extracted performance.
As the Jorn Bettin says: “It’s not that neurodivergent people don’t trust. It’s that we often trust with more depth, more integrity, more sensitivity to rupture.”
Trust at human scale is fragile and strong, just like the sintering bridges between snow grains.
As Jorn Bettin writes in Trust in Human Scale, we need “a refusal of scale, a refusal of institutional metrics for safety and success.” Instead, we root ourselves in relationships, in slowness, in deep listening. These are the bonds that hold. As Simpson says, ‘world making is a communal struggle’ (pg 34).
Sintering Communities
Perhaps sintering is not just a metaphor, but we could use this as a method to build community? Together we can re-build our future through slow bonds, mutual trust, and the gentle resistance of staying human in systems that try to scale us and deny us our authentic Autistic identities.
Our home is in the liminal spaces that we create together, in our reaching toward one another. Our strength is in sintering. Just as snow grains join through small necks of ice to become a strong, stable snowpack, we can build strength through our relationships, our co-regulation, our refusal to face the world alone and to conform to harmful systems based only on neuronormative values.
Radical resilience does not come from hardness or conformity, but from the cumulative strength of many unique connections forming bonds and community spaces to offer support to each other.
Simpson, L. B. (2025). Theory of water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead. Haymarket books.
Courses, books and resources
If you would like to take these ideas further, my courses, books and resources live on Autistic Realms. Everything in the shop is pay what you can, and many resources are free.
Cartographers are people who create maps, and they transform physical geography into an accessible format so people can navigate in and through the spaces of the world. I recently watched a National Geographic documentary about caving ‘ Explorer: The Deepest Cave | Disney+ (disneyplus.com’). It led me to consider the underground maps inside the earth, the connections, pathways and hidden caverns that have not yet been explored. There is a whole space deep below the ground where you are currently that offers new possibilities, and it is within these folds of rocks that form the earth there are even more folds and spaces full of potential to explore. Whilst watching this film, I related it to the potential for people and thinking about how we need time and space to explore and discover what is inside us, time and space to make connections with others to give our lives meaning and time to explore the spaces within our folds, pleats, caverns and channels.
A particular moment in the documentary sparked my imagination. Around 11 minutes into the film, the cavers were trying to find the best route to go next. They created a small amount of smoke as they explained that ‘the stronger the smoke, the bigger the spots between the rocks are,’ which would indicate a path for them to explore. They said, ‘The wind can go places that we can’t. So the question is, can we follow the wind?’
‘Can we follow the wind’?
This leads me to Deleuze and his work around The Fold (1993). ‘A fold is always folded within a fold, like a cavern in a cavern. The unit of matter, the smallest element of the labyrinth, is the fold…’ (pg. 6). A fold is like a continuous curve; there is always a deeper element. I see this as much like a cave with pleats in its geography, where there are ‘folds of winds, of waters, fire and earth’. As I sat watching this programme with my son, I began to think about the infinite nature of our bodyminds and how caving could work as an analogy to describe the internal process of neuroqueering that is expressed outwardly on a cartographer’s map.
Neuroqueering and being a part of the neuroqueering community is the equivalent of trying to work your way around a rhizome, another concept Deleuze and Guattari (1987) discuss in their book One Thousand Plateaus. The outward map of how we live our lives in society reflects how we present ourselves and our bodies. This map can also reflect the journey our bodyminds take over time as we age. Increasingly, people are leaving digital trails of their thoughts all over the internet. They are making connections within these spaces, leading to an ever-increasing multidimensional map between cyberspace and the reality of where we are physically.
Choosing to neuroqueer your bodymind can be seen as an act of rebellion. However, I see it more as an act of seeking connections at a much deeper level with those in a similar space to you rather than needing to outwardly represent ‘queering’ in the way perhaps the punk movement did in the 1980s. Maps are a way we navigate paths as we head towards a destination, or they are used to reflect on past journeys and movements. If you choose to neuroqueer, you may find an intersection where the digital paths of the internet communities meet the folds inside your bodyminds. Within these rhizomatic communities, meaning is potentially being created for so many people who are otherwise unable to connect or feel a connection with people outside of these spaces in their local communities.
There is a natural human need to feel understood and connected; connections build relationships and support good mental health. For some people, those connections and relationships may not look different from the more conventional norms the majority of society holds but are equally valuable. For people who feel marginalised either by neurodivergence, disability or by being in another minority group, there is often no space already carved out for support and building connections in local communities. This can cause feelings of isolation and disconnection. Yet, the need to find people who understand and can connect within the same folds, with similar interests and values, can lead people to create their own communities.
It feels like a rabbit warren of underground tunnels and caves where people meet, mainly through online social media platforms. The continuous physical growth of these spaces where people are connecting is slowly creating ripples and heading into real family spaces and showing a genuine need for change in our education system as more and more children are showing how the current frameworks are just not meeting needs and resulting in school attendance difficulties and mental health concerns. There is a rise in the UK in families actively seeking alternative pathways through home education or alternative provision routes. Neuroqueering is not just a philosophical theory; it is about actively looking for positive change and creating new paths in your life and for your family towards a happier future.
Deleuze considers if ‘the world is infinitely cavernous if worlds exist in the tiniest bodies, it is because everywhere there can be found a spirit in matter’ (1993, p.7). This supports the idea of energy flow and the importance of the soul as a subject if we want to go beyond any boundaries and evolve and improve our mental health and that of our families. If this is the case, we need to unfold ourselves; this could be linked to a much deeper concept of autistic unmasking, where you find ‘some little opening’ of possibility within yourself to expand your body-mind; it is a space within a tiny fold / unfolding that we may be able to begin to neuroqueer. Much like the cavers who have to physically twist, turn and contort their bodies to fit through the gaps to find new caverns, we can find new spaces within and between the folds of our bodyminds through neuroqueering.
The potential to neuroqueer is inside us all, within a fold in a cavern. This may feel much deeper within some people than others due to the heaviness of neuronormativity, adding its layers and creating tighter folds for some people. It would be interesting to discuss if the concept of folds and caverns within autistic people is more porous or open to the possibilities of neuroqueering than non-autistic people.
Neuroqueering could enable a metamorphosis, a transformation process from within a fold. This is like how Deleuze describes a butterfly being ‘folded into the caterpillar that will soon unfold’. Deleuze finishes his first chapter by describing how ‘ the Fold is always between two folds’. Neuroqueering offers the potential to explore what is between the multiple folds and creases we live in and that are within us.
Let’s ‘follow the wind’ and see where neuroqueering takes us.
If you would like to take these ideas further, my courses, books and resources live on Autistic Realms. Everything in the shop is pay what you can, and many resources are free.
I believe that the DEEP (Double Empathy Extreme Problem) is at the heart of all the systemic ableist issues we have in our education, social and healthcare systems. The lack of an embodied presence and connection between people being together as humans is causing harm. It is leaving marginalised people further on the edges and at an even further disadvantage socially, financially, politically, and in every other dimension possible.
(Original blog written August 2024, edited March 2025)
DEEP Disconnect
The disconnect, lack of understanding and gaping hole where a sense of belonging should be is creating huge mental health problems, especially for our neurodivergent young people who are the focus of my Autistic Realms work. Many young people are now left with no accessible education; they are slipping through the cracks of a broken education and mental health system and getting stuck between systems that value neuronormativity and ignore or misunderstand neurodivergent needs.
We don’t want people to be ‘falling through the net’, feeling like they are ‘treading water in unchartered seas’, feeling adrift’ and ‘weathered like sea glass’ (Shepherd et al., 2024). As Gray-Hammond (2024) has highlighted, this impact stretches far beyond the young person; it can break family and professional relationships in multidimensional ways, and it is painful. Helen Mirra (conceptual artist) responded to my last post about DEEP with her insightful thoughts:
“I almost sense a space of opportunity being described — that while being in double empathy tangles unaware can be disorienting, that an awareness of the double empathy problem could rather have a potential for orientation — with a consciousness that Double Empathy needs to be recognised and acknowledged — maybe something like DEAP — Double Empathy Awareness Potential? Practice?”
I love trying to harvest something positive, to try and find potential in the in-between of things, the shattered systems, and our fragmented relationships. I feel eternally optimistic that things can change for the better; we can work towards radical inclusivity and embrace neuroqueer theory to find a space to breathe, re-connect, deconstruct and reimagine new possibilities. If we are embodied, tuned in, and have wide-open sensory gates, we can acknowledge the empathy gap and create a new plateau, a new space to rise above the disconnect. “Queer space is a space of somatic and cognitive discovery, made possible by the space between. It is through that discovery that we make connection with others possible” (Gray-Hammond, 2024).
Monocultures
I have had a few amazing and inspiring meetings this week, one with Jorn Bettin (AutCollab) and another with Dawn Prince-Hughes (CASY), both alongside Ryan Boren (Stimpunks). We all feel the DEEP gap of disconnect due to the domination of neuronormativity. Jorn has captured this within his writing about monocultures. Dawn is exploring similar avenues with the groundbreaking work being carried out by the Cultural Autism Studies Programme at Yale (CASY). Dawn has described this as people being;
Unable to see shades of lived nuance and constitutionally lacking organs of exquisite sensitivity, the truncated, neurotypical gaze rakes over the bodies of (neuro-holographic) life — whether designated autistic, animal, any other undesirable caste, or nature itself — they assess them only in terms of cost, threats, or utility. They can’t or won’t see them.
Modern, connectively truncated influence has driven an obsession with homogeneity and increasingly raised a maniacal rejection of inward and outward difference to a hellish art form. The lives (and deaths) of sentient, (neuro-holograhpic) beings is foundational to daily life and underscores the danger of using gifts evolutionarily tooled for a better, more compassionate future are pressed into service for the structure we were put here to change. (Dawn Prince Hughes, 2023) *neuro-holographic = my edits.
Ecology of Care and Transforming Spaces
Jorn Bettin (2024) wrote about Life in the compost heap of industrialised monoculture. He echoes my experience of burnout caused by systemic unmet needs. Jorn agrees that neurodivergent and other marginalised groups are often left out, alienated, and at the bottom of the compost heap. However, we can help people thrive; we can change our personal and institutional landscapes. Jorn, through their work with AutCollab, suggests that we need to embrace an ecology of care.
The emergence of ecologies of care is the emergence of a beautiful diversity of human scale cultural species and organisms in the cultural compost heap of the industrialised mono-cult. (Jorn Bettin, 2024)
Dawn suggests;
We can start a new, inclusive movement by leading the way back to the primal awareness, the connective wisdom, we were born with, because we are first and foremost, in all ways that matter, neuroexpansive minds. (Dawn Prince Hughes, 2023)
Through our discussions this week, we realised our vision and aims for Neuroqueer Learning Spaces (Boren and Edgar, 2024), reach far beyond education and the small communities we are already involved with. There is an energy-driving created serendipity that is dancing between our shared spaces and bringing like-minded people together. We all have our own stories and history, and for many neurodivergent people, we all have layers of trauma that live within our bodies, spreading back over generations and impacting our sensory way of being in the present and impacting our ways of moving forward. As David highlighted by drawing upon Nick Walker’s (2021) work;
The master’s house represents a dominant paradigm. In the context of neuroqueer theory, this would be the pathology paradigm. A paradigm within which deviation from normative embodiment is seen as disordered. The liminal represents a space outside of the paradigm. It is a pinnacle of queer space in that its potential is one of unbounded queening; in the liminal, the very meaning of being human may be called into question. (Gray-Hammond, 2024)
Helen Mirra (2023) expands on this idea of human potential in her concept of holotropism, which I have explored in my previous blogs. She writes;
“To be holotropic is to have wide open sensory gates. To participate in/as the immense world without becoming overwhelmed, we holotropes have two central methods: in, by hyperfocusing our attention on one sensory or cognitive path, and as, through synthesising our experience into coherence. A sense of wholeness occurs through both of these processes — less consciously in hyperfocus, more consciously in coherence”. (Helen Mirra, 2023)
David Gray-Hammond is bringing the conversation further forward and exploring my original idea of the potential of Neuroqueering in the In-between. He shares that;
The queer liminal space allows for connection and expansion because there is no axis to follow. There is no map to trace. The pathology paradigm seeks to arborify rhizomes, reducing them to roots and radicles. In liminal space, lack of structure allows for the organic development and joining up of rhizomes. It is in the liminal where minority silos come together. To the master’s house, it is an existential threat. To the oppressed minority, it is a place where what we were taught to be impossible becomes not only possible but probable. With infinite liminal space and infinite time, queer improbability becomes queer realisation. That which we are told can not happen is subverted into existence. (Gray-Hammond, 2024)
Neuro-Holographic
When people connect at a deeper level, going beyond any social, cultural, racial or gender differences, meaning can be found where words are not needed; we can be with each other as human souls. To have ‘wide open sensory gates’ is to be innately hyper-sensitive and hyper-empathetic. However, I do think everyone can work towards this regardless of differences in neurology. We can all become more embodied through somatic practices and having a willingness to open your sensory gates, to de-armour, un-mask and by being prepared to be vulnerable when it is safe to do so. Being embodied enables deeper more meaningful connections to form, it creates resonance and vibrations, vibrations are pregnant with energy, and energy is transformative, it has neuroqueering potential.
The word neuro-holographic has emerged from within the neurodivergent community, “a buried treasure of our culture that used many hands to lift up into the light”. As Dawn suggested, ‘We belong to the term, rather than the term belonging to us’.
So, what does neuro-holographic mean?
Dawn helped draw some light on what neuro-holographic means in the CASY Facebook Group (March 2025) and wrote, “So many autistic people are aware of, and affected by, the reality that there is no division between them and their environment — whether it is the person next to them, the dog running in the park, the plant in the windowsill, or the star at the edge of the universe.” Dawn shared a quote from Brian M Sabourin, which helps to explain the link between neuro-holographic thoughts and Autistic Physics a bit further:
“According to quantum physics a particle vibrating due to your sound when you speak can affect a molecule inside a star at the edge of the Universe instantly. This phenomenon is known as quantum entanglement. The greatest illusion of this Universe is the illusion of separation.” (Brian M Sabourin, Jan 2025)
When Dawn, Ryan and I discussed the term neuro-holographic, there was an instant shared resonance and affinity with the word, we were all on the same plane, the same plateau. We all experienced and felt validation from a shared understanding of quantum entanglement through our experiences of being Autistic and a different sensory system, feeling tuned into a wider energy with the environment around us. We shared a rhythm and way of being as neurokin, and the double empathy problem that persists in so many other spaces was somewhat dissolved – an experience echoed by many within the thriving CASY community group and within our online events, too. There is a sense of togetherness, belonging, and a shared intention to work against harmful neuronormative practices and instead to work together towards transformative neuroqueer possibilities.
To embrace being neuro-holographic is to embrace opening up spaces within our souls so we can work together and transform society and support each other.
Bodies Without Organs and The Plane of Immanence
In their work, One Thousand Plateaus (1987), Deleuze and Guattari discuss the idea of a body without organs. The body without organs is not a hollow body; rather, I see and feel that it is the plane where dwelling and possibility are, a kind of “liquid matrix” (Theoretical Puppets, 2021); it is primordial, a place where you aren’t restricted by your organs (literally your body in real terms, i.e. freedom of movement) or the organs (machines) of society. Deleuze and Guattari suggest that networks and connections are made possible through the body without organs as it liberates you from Capitalism and the knots of neuronormativity. It allows people to be free from control, free to follow our desire lines, free to be affected (experience affects).
To use the analogy in the webinar delivered by Theory & Philosophy (2020), to be a body without organs could be interpreted as us being similar to an unfertilised field. If no seeds are planted, if there’s no relational pull or movement, then the field will likely remain a field; it will never transform, it will never produce an outcome beyond itself, and there will be no crops. This could be positive or negative for a field, but when we talk about people, we don’t want people to remain static, unchanged or stuck or to stagnate, and we don’t want other people and systems to be deciding our use and destiny without our consent or input.
We need people to have agency, autonomy, and control over their own lives, enabling them to keep on transforming and being responsive, organically moving with the seasons and inviting natural processes. We need an attunement with nature so we can all morph in time and space organically, embodied, and as whole beings.
Returning to our primordial ways of being and being intune with the natural rhythms of the world around us allows people’s sensory gates to expand, it enables created serendipity to form further connections, adding luminescent nodes to the autistic rhizome. When connections develop in shared holographic space/time, it also creates deeper (perhaps, holographic?) connections of shared meaning, the potential for safe unmasking and bodily liberty; it enables neuroqueering potential and ideas to form more creatively.
In our meeting, Dawn, Ryan and all perceived and felt the word neuro-holographic at a deep inner level, in our core, it was a ‘felt’ understanding more than a cognitive or intellectual resonance. I am considering if using Deleuze and Guartari’s idea of being “bodies without organs” could help people understand the experience of being neuro-holographic. Neuro-holographic is a felt perception, an open ‘One-All’ that is perhaps more likely to be experienced when people are not tied down by neuronormativity and they have unravelled themselves and lived wholly in the in-between spaces.
To become a body without organs you need to have safe spaces and time to explore, you need to want to actively seek and find alternative ways, new paths, new plateaus and horizons and to change yourself and the wider systems, planes and spaces around you. There is definitely an element of privilege in finding safe spaces and communities to be able to do this and also to have the time to explore. If I hadn’t resigned from my teaching career, I would very likely have not had capacity to even dip my toe into reading about all this, I would have likely been left feeling very stuck. Exploring takes time, and it also takes time to neuroqueer your bodymind, My neuroqueering journey has been rhizomatic, chaotic but I have also found coherence as I connect with others on the plane of immanence as human souls all trying to find meaning in places where perhaps words and concepts are not even needed or relevant and cease to make sense.
The Plane of Immanence, as discussed by Deleuze and Guattari (1994), discusses philosophical concepts as “fragmentary wholes that are not aligned with one another”. They continue to explain;
They are not pieces of a jigsaw puzzle but rather the outcome of throws of the dice. They resonate nonetheless, and the ways introduces a powerful Whole aining open, is not fragmented; an unlimited One all….it is a plateau, it is a plane of immanence of concepts’ (they also stress that the plane of immanence is not a concept). (Deleuze and Guattari, 1994, p35)
On the plane of immanence, there are rhizomatic networks or connections, becomings and energy. In their book One Thousand Plateaus (1980), Deleuze and Guattari explain that on the plane of immanence;
“There are only relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements, or at least between elements that are relatively unformed, molecules, and particles of all kinds. There are only haecceities, affects, subjectless individuations that constitute collective assemblages. … We call this plane, which knows only longitudes and latitudes, speeds and haecceities, the plane of consistency or composition (as opposed to a plan(e) of organization or development).”
I have intentionally used a hyphen between the words neuro and holographic to represent the in-between of neurology and holographic ways of being and experiencing the world, a pause for tuning in, an embodiment, a space of Ma. I have resisted using the word “neuro-holographism as that could imply another new theory or concept. Neuro-holographic is not a concept; rather, I feel like it IS the plane of immanence on which neuroqueer theory breathes and lives; it is the ‘wave that rolls and unrolls’ other concepts (Deleuze & Guattari, What is Philosophy, 1994, p36). To resonate with the term neuro-holographic is to resonate as souls, with your core self, perhaps with your spirit.
To be part of society is to be part of a community and to live meaningfully. It means connecting as human souls and having a sense of belonging and a sense of togetherness with others. For many neurodivergent and marginalised people, this lack of connection and shared meaning is where disconnect and further stigmatisation often hits and breaks people. For a radically inclusive neuroqueer future, we need radical acceptance and to embrace liminal spaces, the plateaus, the sometimes painful caves, pleats, and caverns where we may become stuck in our lives. As David suggests,
The liminal space, then, is not a place of stagnation, but one of growth and evolution. It is the site of plasticity in the world’s communities. All communities exist within liminal spaces, much as planets exist in empty space. A community was once a nothing that became a something, liminality provided the potential to become.
Being Neuroholographic and Embracing Liminal Space to Neuroqueer
To be neuro-holograpic, to resonate with holotropism and embrace neuroqueer theory means that the weight of neuronormativity may be felt so painfully that it feels like it is piercing through the bodymind. This light can flow, it can move between the smallest of spaces and opening and shines through liminal spaces to offer some hope in previously dark void spaces. It allows light to enter Ma, a space where we can pause and breathe and act upon neuroqueer thoughts that can transform our bodyminds. It can enable new nodes on the rhizome to form from within our communities as we connect with others and transport us to new planes, new spaces to become and keep on becoming. Once DEEP is dissolved or there is a bridge or line of flight to rise above and support understanding of the differences between people, it allows for responsiveness without imposing on each other to change into something we aren’t (we don’t go from a barren field to a crop field ). We can transform within ourselves and create our own destinies by creating new paths. The impact of our inner transformation can lead to even more connections and so further expand the rhizome towards other bodies without organs to keep evolving, transforming and becoming.
Once we grasp and intentionally embrace the plateaus of liminal spaces, the smooth spaces, then the DEEP gap can dissolve and melt away, rising above the liminal disconnect. We can take a breath, be responsive to our environment and our relationships, and (in theory) ‘become bodies without organs’ to transform further. We can become neuroqueer in a phenomenological sense. Instead of the machines of capitalist society filling the spaces, if we embrace neuroqueer theory through the perspective of Deleuze and Guattari’s body without organs idea, then we can actively choose to subvert and queer the direction we travel in and neuroqueer ourselves and the spaces and relations around us, neuro-holographically.
Holographic Bodyminds
Dawn, Ryan and I tried to define the word and experience of being neuro-holographic, but we couldn’t; we just shared excited nods and stimmy responses of mutual agreement and joy at our connection. Perhaps the beauty lies in the way that the word neuro-holographic can only be felt or experienced in a luminescent, undefinable iridescent way, which creates a holographic energy of light and vibration that expands and ripples beyond our singular bodyminds to connect with other bodyminds, it creates multiplicity from the friction between us as humans. Connecting with others enables an expansion of our community rhizomes in exciting ways full of radical inclusive neuroqueer possibilities.
Dawn Prince Hughes works with Dr. Roger Jou, who founded CASY (Community Autism Socials at Yale) in 2014. This has now transformed into CASY (CULTURAL AUTISM STUDIES AT YALE). CASY offers a new way forward for Autism studies; they are a community that is truly pushing beyond the boundaries of normative hegemony but also stretches the potential of Neuroqueer Theory. CASY is based on a completely egalitarian and neuro-holographic model that stretches worldwide and involves many languages and cultures! If you’d like to find out more, please check out the links below:
Shepherd, J., Sutton, B., Smith, S., & Szlenkier, M. (2024e). ‘Sea‐glass survivors’: Autistic testimonies about education experiences. British Journal of Special Education. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8578.12506
Theoretical Puppets. (2021, March 28). Gilles Deleuze on Gilbert Simondon, Synesthesia, and The Body Without Organs [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2yyW3ml6nM
Theory & Philosophy. (2020b, August 4). What is the Body Without Organs? | Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari | Keyword[Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irrNcRPGr8Q
Walker, N. (2021). Neuroqueer heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities. Autonomous Press
Courses, books and resources
If you would like to take these ideas further, my courses, books and resources live on Autistic Realms. Everything in the shop is pay what you can, and many resources are free.
“By silencing our bodyminds, they (neurotypical society) have halted the growth of a chaotic self. We are no longer able to move fluidly through our experience, instead frozen like ice on an arctic tundra” (Gray-Hammond, 2023)
David Gray-Hammond (Emergent Divergence) and I are responding to each other’s blogs to help expand the Autistic Rhizome. We are adding nodules to the webs of discussions happening in the Dark Forests (Boren, 2024) of the online communities and creating an open-source bank of writing to carve a path for community discussion about neuroqueering.
David is continuing his ‘Reclaiming Neurofuturism’ series and has responded to my post The Double Empathy Problem is DEEP. He explored the litigious nature of disabled embodiment and questioned the intentional creation of minority silos via the double empathy divide (Milton, 2012). In support of my own thinking, David also suggests that we need to embrace the healing power of liminal spaces.
I am writing extensively about the in-between, liminal spaces and Ma as a potential chapter for Nick Walker’s new Neuroqueer Anthology (struggling to write it coherently so that it may make sense to others, but it is slowly forming!). Liminality has been a long term passion of mine, tunnelling back over 30 years. As an autistic person, I feel I have lived my entire life in the liminal. I have always been in-between or on the edges of social groups, always struggling with an internal battle due to the effects masking has on my sensory system. Being monotropic has meant the in-between is felt intensely; it has led to cycles of burnout and impacts my mental, physical and sensory health.
I am still living in the liminal, on the edges, often in spaces filled with anxiety and uncertainty. However, I have gone through a huge and difficult process of unlearning and relearning over the past few years since I realised I was autistic, rejecting the deficit ways of thinking about neurodivergence and dismantling my own ableist thought patterns. Patterns that have been reinforced over decades by the weight of neuronormativity. I am grateful for the autistic communities I am part of for supporting me and providing cushioning to help me navigate my way through this messy process whilst trying to prevent myself heading into a deeper burnout cycle. However, I still feel like I am living on the edges, even within the most caring and supportive neurodivergent communities.
The years of masking, the impact of living in a neuronormative ableist-driven society and going through cycles of burnout has, in many ways resulted in my bodymind being ‘silenced’, getting stuck. David echoed this feeling as he explained;
“By silencing our bodyminds, they (neurotypical society) have halted the growth of a Chaotic Self . We are no longer able to move fluidly through our experience, instead frozen like ice on an arctic tundra.”
Tundras are cold and harsh environments, but biodiversity adapts to the landscape and the short growing seasons, plants and animals transform their ways of being to survive. Tundras offer some hope that life can exist even in the cruellest of environments.
However, we don’t want people feeling frozen, stuck on an arctic tundra, trapped in endless freeze/thaw/burnout cycles. People deserve more than a life in survival mode where they are constantly on high alert for danger and in looping patterns of sensory regulation-seeking behaviour, living in Meerkat Mode (Adkin, 2023). In Walker’s inspiring presentation, ‘Expanding the Creative Potentials of Human Neurodiversity’ at ITAKOM (It Takes All Kinds of Minds Conference, March 2023), she explored how we need to work together so we can flourish so that the;
‘creative synergy, the chemistry that is between and among different minds’ can emerge…so the magic happens’.
We need our beautifully different bodyminds to work together; we need to develop a common language and be open to different ways of thinking, more accepting and inclusive. Radical inclusivity is a concept Ryan Boren (Stimpunks) and I have been exploring as part of our Neuroqueer Learning Spaces Project. There is no single path to radical inclusivity; it begins with being embodied, of being open to connecting with yourself and others, it is cultivated by ongoing neuroqueering efforts to meet needs, it is a confrontation with normativity. Radical inclusivity is more than accommodating needs; it is about fostering cognitive and somatic liberty to enable the potential of neuroqueering to open up new, as yet unknown possibilities.
Radical Inclusive spaces would benefit everyone. They are embodied spaces of deep connection and safety where people can tune in and be responsive to the needs of others. They offer a deeper connection, and they close the DEEP double empathy gap that I feel is at the root of so much hurt, pain, disconnect and disorientation. For radical inclusion, we need to work together. We need connections, a shared deep understanding, an embodied presence, a sense of meaning, and a sense of belonging. We need community, love and kindness to expand the rhizome.
Deleuze and Guattari’s One Thousand Plateaus (1980) explores the concepts of the rhizome and also the importance of plateaus being transforming spaces that resist the linear hierarchy of neuronormativity and embrace the potential of the multiplicity of rhizomatic connections. The possibility to use these concepts to explore neuroqueer theory shines through One Thousand Plateaus, it is like a sunbeam bringing hope in Ma, inbetween the doorways of the liminal spaces that so many of us may feel we are living in.
Rhizomes are open-ended; they have no middle, they have no start and there is no end. (Much like this series of blogs between David and I, I am again beginning in the Middle Entrance, again. You are joining conversations that have been evolving over the past two years in David’s Emergence Divergence Discord server, a node of the autistic rhizome, Open invite to join us there!).
In summary:
Rhizomes are interconnected networks of shared ideas and experiences filled with potential. Much like neuroqueer theory, rhizomes have multiple entry points, they are non-heirarchical. Anyone can neuroqueer, and anyone can enter a rhizome at any point, at any time, if the desire and intent are inside them to want to transform and explore neuroqueering.
Smooth Spaces challenge the idea of traditional hierarchy. They are continuous spaces where the theories of Monotropism (Murray et al., 2005) and Flow Theory (Heasman et al., 2024) can flourish and open up creative neuroqueer potential, an emerging way of being. I experience smooth spaces as the spaces in the gaps of the rhizome; they are the liminal spaces.
Plateaus are spaces of stability; they offer balance and equilibrium, equity, potential for awe and wonder and further expansion and transformation.
Liminal Spaces provide smooth, open plateaus, spaces to connect, transform, and neuroqueer from the safety of our rhizomatic communities.
This new series of blogs will provide a plateau for discussion, a space where the intensity you may feel of being stuck at or between a node point of the rhizome can gain some stability and grounding. We are seeking to expand our bodyminds as we write and connect with others, exploring the dynamics and discord of the DEEP Double Empathy Extreme Problem. As Walker (2019, pg 283) suggested in her thesis;
“we need to “look beyond social cues to the deeper dynamics of interacting bodies, exceptional tactile and kinesthetic sensitivity, and affinity for what I’ve termed the aesthetics of emergence”
We are opening discussions to explore the endless possibilities of an awe-inspiring neuroqueer future, to help bridge the DEEP empathy gap so many people are experiencing and to work towards a radically inclusive society.
“To recognise our responsibility to each other lies in our power to create better futures for each other. Connection is the striking surface of a hammer on the walls of the masters house.” (Gray-Hammond, 2024)
Heasman, B. et al., Towards autistic flow theory: A non-pathologising conceptual approach. Journal for Theory of Social Behaviour, https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.12427
Murray, D., Lesser, M., & Lawson, W. (2005c). Attention, monotropism and the diagnostic criteria for autism. Autism, 9(2), 139–156. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361305051398
Nick Walker. (2023, March 19). Dr Nick Walker • Expanding the Creative Potentials of Human Neurodiversity • ITAKOM Conference 2023 [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOITXkj5bqM
Walker, N. (2019). Transformative Somatic Practices and Autistic Potentials: An Autoethnographic Exploration. California Institute of Integral Studies ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2019. 27665905.
Courses, books and resources
If you would like to take these ideas further, my courses, books and resources live on Autistic Realms. Everything in the shop is pay what you can, and many resources are free.
A behind-the-scenes look into the collaborative workflow between Helen Edgar (Autistic Realms) and Ryan Boren (Stimpunks) as we write about Neuroqueer Learning Spaces (NQLS) and continue our neuroqueering journeys, connecting with awe-inspiring people and discovering new ideas to explore along the way.
Liminal Spaces
Ryan Boren (Stimpunks) and I are neuroqueering ourselves and the spaces we work in as we write about NQLS. We met online in 2022 in the liminal spaces between various online neurodivergent communities, both constantly feeling on the edge of things, even in the most neuro-inclusive settings and groups we could find.
We are both autistic and multiply neurodivergent and deeply passionate about working towards radical inclusivity. Due to our lived experience as parents and professionals, we have seen first-hand the harm that the heavy burden of cisheteronormativity, neuronormativity and neuro-essentialism is causing, especially to neurodivergent people. Normativity is breaking people’s mental and physical health and severely destroying the tremendous potential that is inside everyone. We need to find caring spaces to connect with others, to create an ecological system of care (Bettin, AutCollab), a responsive space that enables authenticity and values the potential of everyone, regardless of neurology, disability, race, gender or any other intersection that is marginalised.
Liminality
by Carrie Newcomer (2021)
So much of what we know Lives just below the surface. Half of a tree Spreads out beneath our feet. Living simultaneously in two worlds, Each half informing and nurturing The whole. A tree is either and neither But mostly both.
I am drawn to liminal spaces, The half-tamed and unruly patch Where the forest gives way And my little garden begins. Where water, air and light overlap Becoming mist on the morning pond.
I like to sit on my porch steps, barn jacket and boots In the last long exhale of the day, When bats and birds loop in and then out, One rising to work, One readying for sleep.
And although the full moon calls the currents, And the dark moon reminds me that my best language Has always emerged out of the silence, It is in the waxing and waning Where I most often live, Neither here nor there, But simply On the way.
There are endings and beginnings One emerging out of the other. But most days I travel in an ever present And curious now. A betwixt and between, That is almost, But not quite, The beautiful, But not yet.
I’ve been learning to live with what is, More patient with the process, To love what is becoming, And the questions that keep returning.
I am learning to trust The horizon I walk toward Is an orientation Not a destination And that I will keep catching glimpses Of something great and luminous From the corner of my eye.
I am learning to live where losses hold fast And grief lets loose and unravels. Where a new kind of knowing can pick up the thread.
Where I can slide palms with a paradox And nod at the dawn, As the shadows pull back And spirit meets bone.
Our Neuroqueer Learning Spaces project is born largely from trauma, grief and a shared passion for challenging, deconstructing and re-imagining what our education and healthcare system could be like if people were prepared to unlearn and unleash their bodyminds from the weight of conforming to neuronormative, socially constructed ways of being. The pressure to ‘fit in’ is real and intense, and neuronormativity is limiting for everyone (not just neurodivergent people).
The pressures and barriers to education and health care we have endured and are still battling against are heavy. It has left us, like so many other people in our situation,feeling broken and ‘weathered like sea glass’ (Shepherd et al.,2024). As part of NQLS, we have created a community-driven NQLS Manifesto and an NQLS Open Framework of Guidance. We are also in the process of developing anti-behaviourism resources to help parents/carers and professionals and those they support to challenge harmful practices, such as (Applied Behaviour Analysis) ABA and (Positive Behaviour Support) PBS. These WHY SHEET resources are free open license and can be edited and used to help self advocate for young people who may be facing barriers accessing education.
If you value this project, please consider signing our WHY Sheet endorsement page along with many other parents/carers and professionals to help give confidence, agency and autonomy to those needing these resources.
Where my voice has often felt dismissed as a parent, it is often validated, listened to and sought as a professional. Trust is an issue. Different voices are trusted by different people, in different places. Safe spaces are needed to develop trust, and time is needed to be with people to gain trust. Reaching out and connecting takes courage; there is always a doubt as to whether you are really in a safe space where you can truly trust and be trusted. There is a vulnerability in admitting things aren’t working, exploring what is under the surface, finding people to connect with who share your struggles and ethos, and having a shared hope for change to find a way out of difficult situations. We need spaces where we feel safe and where there is trust so that we can unlearn and relearn and continue to neuroqueer.
As a white professional person, being a part of both the neurodivergent parent/carer communities and the professional education and healthcare communities, I am aware I am in a unique and relatively safe position of privilege to even write and explore this topic. Enforced hierarchy and the double empathy problem (Milton, 2012) are at the root of so many difficulties and often result in the voices of neurodivergent or disabled people being dismissed. At best, voices may be silenced, and at worse, lived experience can be so deeply misunderstood and misinterpreted it can lead to accusations of not parenting ‘right’, being sent on courses to try and make families conform to neuronoramtive ideals, or in some of the most severe cases we have seen lead to accusations of neglect, FII and safeguarding concerns (Shona Murphy).
Trust, safe spaces, and community are vital to NQLS and our own personal neuroqueering journeys. When the world feels unsafe, you need to create your own spaces and make your own connections. We think creating neuroqueer learning spaces is one possibility that is worth exploring.
Can we trust the space you offer? Can we trust the words you utter?
Can we trust the time decided? Can we trust the form provided?
Can we trust your singular view? Can we trust the treatment we receive from you?
Can we trust the way you perceive? Can we trust you to sit, listen and receive?
Can we trust you not to leave another dent……in us….again? Can we trust the system you’ve decided and provided … will it actually be in our best interest… … with our knowledge and guide?
Can we trust you to understand that sound is once, twice, three times as loud? Can we trust you to understand that light, ‘that light’… there is burning, burning our eyes?
Can we trust you to provide the space to breathe? Can we trust you to understand that our senses are more involved- BIGGER? Can we trust you to let us move away from you… that you cause the trigger?
Can we trust you not to deplete our hard fought for energy and vigour? Can we trust you to listen when we say we are tired…. and let us leave the room?
Can we trust you to give us time to form……form our own words…..it our way and not yours?
Can we trust you not to constantly correct when we misspell or stutter? Can we trust you to say what you are going to do and not just assume?
Can we trust you to understand that your correction……. may only be correct for you?
Can we trust you to not magnify difference and constantly question our existence? Can we trust you to leave us and let us decide?
Our work has taken place in the dark forests of online communities, “Dark forests like newsletters and podcasts are growing areas of activity”. As are other dark forests, like Slack channels, private Instagrams, invite-only message boards, Element, Discord and a myriad of other interconnected platforms that people are seeking because they are “spaces where depressurised conversation is possible because of their non-indexed, non-optimized, and non-gamified environments. The cultures of those spaces have more in common with the physical world than the internet.” The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet — OneZero via The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet. This dark forest metaphor fits nicely with the NQLS idea of primordial learning spaces such as our Cavendish caves, campfires, and watering holes.
** Caves are spaces for quiet reflection, introspection, and self-directed learning.
**Campfires are spaces for learning with a storyteller — teacher, mentor, elder, or expert.
**Watering holesare spaces for social learning with peers.
Intermittent collaboration = group work punctuated by breaks to think and work by ourselves.
The golden thread of being a “space holder” has been inspired by Kay and Dan Aldred (2023) and is woven through our NQLS ideology. It is within the forests of online community spaces that the role and value of being a virtual “space holder” is valued. It allows the exploration of thought and the creation of connections within connections — rhizomes within rhizomes.
As a community, Stimpunks has a unique way of working; they have created and are nurturing the role of ‘space holder’. This has enabled me to safely explore, take risks and expand my ideas of how workspaces can be transformed. Stimpunks is a living example of how a neuroqueer learning space can work and is working .
Stimpunks offers various online platforms and spaces in their local community. They offer;
watering holes for collaborative work and parallel play,
campfires to learn from others & share resources
caves to rest, and have independent time to reflect.
Our Journey
Ryan’s IT skills have been embraced and expanded as we collaborated with people across various countries and communities, merging projects and ideas, which is something we will be continuing to develop. This is in line with AutCollab’s NeurodDiventures project where our “evolving web of relationships, mutual aid, and peer support initiatives is best understood in terms of emergent Ecologies of Care beyond the human”. NQLS aim to create radically inclusive, non-hierarchical spaces that are safe, nurturing environments for divergent (and neuroqueer) thinking, creativity, exploration, and collaborative niche construction. We believe NeuroDiventures is a wonderful structure for NQLS to build upon.
This has been, and continues to be a fairly intense, immersive roller coaster of a journey. Ryan and I are both Autistic, multiply neurodivergent and monotropic. We dived into this project with our entire bodyminds, leaving little space for other work, which has sometimes been tricky to navigate and manage, switching attention tunnels as monotorpic people is exhausting. Our shared interest, passion and seemingly endless capacity for neuroqueering our bodyminds and education has made our workflow fairly prolific. Whilst Ryan has created new additions to Stimpunks neuroqueering webpages, I have infodumped my thoughts as I have read through 100’s of pieces of work (academic research papers, blogs and books) related to the barriers of education our young people are experiencing and ideas for more humane progressive neuroqueering ways forward. Ryan has been diving into his own reading lists and also sharing with the Stimpunks team along the way. We have a mountain of materials; what we have reflected upon and written about so far is only the tip of the iceberg. We are trying to weave in emergent thoughts as we go along, creating a neuroqueering tapestry of ideas which is reflected via Stimpunks website and our blogs and social media posts.
Writing
As with all projects, there have been hurdles and obstacles to overcome and crashes along the way where we have just become ‘stuck’; this has been no exception. The ebbs and flows of our own mental and physical health have had an inevitable impact. We have had to find ways between our time zone differences, family demands, lifestyles and different workflow patterns to try and resolve things along the way. One of our biggest stumbling blocks was the actual process of writing. This was a significant issue given that our project needs to be reflected online through words and the spaces between our words to bring meaning to others.
We needed to find ways to write and work together in a shared space, which involved neuroqueering my own ways of working and collaborating. It has made me reflect upon previous projects, taking the positives and negatives and bringing some of those ideas into our shared new online spaces and neuroqueering them in the way we communicated and socialised in multiple online watering hole spaces where we discussed what we had learnt from others in our meetings (campfire spaces) and reflected by ourselves (in cave spaces) in our own niche constructed sensory dens at home.
The progress of my IT skills have been lying dormant since the late 1990s. Ryan is a former WordPress and Automattic lead developer with a very efficient workflow system fully embedded into Stimpunks running of their organisation. I worked as an early years and primary teacher in the UK, supporting those with profound and multiple learning disabilities. I learnt the importance of listening and being there even when verbal words aren’t used, the value of connecting in shared spaces, and the potential of guiding learning by following and building on children’s personal interests to deepen their learning through play to provide more meaningful experiences. These were all valuable experiences for NQLSs, but my tech and writing skills were not developed beyond the needs of class planning and report writing.
Collating vast amounts of research and creative writing using either my trusted Word or Google Docs was not working for Ryan; it was proving to be a huge barrier to any successful collaboration. While our independent work was carried out in its own fairly reliable way, our collaborative chapter for Nick Walker’s upcoming new Neuroqueer book, which we hope to submit a chapter towards, was very stuck.
I defaulted to multicoloured pens and paper and laboriously retyped my thoughts onto my laptop, transferring them to our websites, whilst Ryan was magically transforming our many conversations on a live stream via Stimpunks.
Due to the distance of around 5000 miles separating us, these conversations took place and continue to take place across multiple online platforms, often simultaneously, as we move between our many open tabs of Discord, Element, Word- Press, Facebook, Twitter and a myriad of other apps and spaces within the same conversations, often resting in HyperBeam for co-regulation and to share music and videos with other Stimpunks family peers, creating a sense of togetherness and belonging.
Whilst the conversations continued to flow, our collaborative chapter remained static as a 20k word draft of my stream of consciousness lay in Ryan’s inbox with hyperlinks to a vast amount of research to try and validate and justify (some of) my thinking (some of it is just my thoughts, and I am hoping they may resonate with others?!).
We called on the support of a member of the Steampunks team to help bridge the gap, but it soon became evident we needed an entirely different system to work. Being a tech person at heart, Ryan needed Markdown as a part of his creative writing method (Markdown gives documents semantic structure without specifying formatting at all). We have now transferred our working documents to GitHub, enabling a flow to resume, and I am quickly seeing the benefits of adopting Stimpunks workflow thinking and moving on from 1997. (However, I still use my multicoloured pens and paper to make notes as I go!)
We are approaching an extended deadline date for Nick Walker’s chapter submission, but with a neuroqueering workflow in place and the evolution of our ever-expanding Cavendish online spaces, we are making progress, hurrah!
Onwards
Living within Stimpunk’s myriad of primordial Cavendish Cave, Watering Hole, and Campfire spaces in the forests of the online community is proving to be an epic journey. I have found spaces where I can finally breathe, explore, have some me-time, continue my own neuroqueering journey and intermittently collaborate with others. I feel fortunate to be meeting some amazing people along the way. I am having fun, diving between and venturing out from the edges of liminal spaces to create and explore neuroqueer learning possibilities with others who share this passion and know the potential of Neuroqueer Learning Spaces.
If you want to learn more, here are some codes to Markdown and plain text and the workflow thinking they enable.
If you’d like to learn more about collaborating, please contact us via Stimpunks. (PS, we accept submissions and collaboration from everyone in all formats and languages, including handwritten work using paper and pen, voice recordings/ podcasts, photography, art and all forms of Alternative and Augmentative Communication……all welcome, Mardown skills are not a requirement!).
Courses, books and resources
If you would like to take these ideas further, my courses, books and resources live on Autistic Realms. Everything in the shop is pay what you can, and many resources are free.
