Part 1: Re-worlding Neurodiversity: Monotropism, Ecological Belonging and Neuroqueer Futures
Part 2: When the Ecology Fractures: Monotropism and Autistic Burnout
Reconnecting attention, care and becoming
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.
Edgar, H. (2026). The autistic rhizome: Community, liminal spaces & belonging. https://autisticrealms.com/the-autistic-rhizome-community-liminal-spaces-belonging/
Gray-Hammond, D. (2025). Mental health as an ecosystemic process. NeuroHub Community.
https://neurohubcommunity.org/2025/12/21/mental-health-ecosystemic-model
hooks, b. (1984). Feminist theory: From margin to center (Chap. 2). South End Press.
Lorde, A. (1977). The transformation of silence into language and action. In Sister outsider: Essays and speeches (pp. 40–44). Crossing Press.
Manning, E. (2016). The minor gesture. Duke University Press.
Milton, D. E. M. (2013). ‘Clumps’: An autistic reterritorialisation of the rhizome.
Sins Invalid https://sinsinvalid.org
Stimpunks https://stimpunks.org/
Tarragnat, O. (2025). What is ethodiversity? https://ombretarragnat.com/2025/02/25/what-is-ethodiversity/
Walker, N. (2021). Neuroqueer heresies: Notes on the neurodiversity paradigm, autistic empowerment, and postnormal possibilities. Autonomous Press.
Parts 1 & 2