Originally post on the BrynStorming Substack.
I don’t remember when I first heard the term “neurodiverse“, but it struck a spark in me because of the idea that we can and should be inclusive of people, accepting neurodiversity as part of who they are.
Not Just Accepting Neurodiversity, Embracing It
Some people may be perceived as being very different from “the norm” in how they think, learn, and interact with others–attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD), Asperger’s, Autism. But labelling people with a diagnostic term can be disabling, treating them as “disordered”, as “other”. By contrast, talking about people as being neurodiverse, while also recognizing that some may need specialized help in order to overcome the more debilitating or disabling aspects of their condition, can be a way to acknowledge their differences as being legitimate.
But these terms still separate the world into the “norms” (us) and the “different or diverse” (them). And I had situated myself in the norms, despite my own history. Yet, I’ve come to think differently about difference. In my 30+ years in academia in Canada, and in the UK where I did my post-doc, I’ve met so many people who were different (aka weird) that I’ve come to wonder whether anyone is “neurotypical” or normal–maybe we’re all diverse… whatever that means.
The use of these terms to normalize or demarcate difference also makes me question this need to label, to put people into boxes. People are complex, defined by and defining themselves through a multiplicity of terms, frames, cultures, narratives, and identities. I’ve also been labelled, and in turn used those labels to construct my own identity. And I’ve then questioned the defining power of these labels and re-appropriated them to give a different meaning.
Learning About My Neurodivergence: Turning Deficit into Capacity
Growing up severely dyslexic, I had to battle to learn to read. In primary school, I was taken out of regular class every day for 5 years to receive special education support, metaphorically re-wiring my brain to be able to see words and letters the right way around and so be able to read. I was incredibly fortunate to be diagnosed early–to be labelled–and to be in a school with the necessary qualified special educators. But primary school was still horrible, because I faced social exclusion and bullying for being different. I was “disabled” by dyslexia, and that formed a core part of my identity for many years.
High school was better, although I was still an outsider. I had to work incredibly hard, as I was just overcoming my reading delays. I was also a budding nerd, becoming enthralled in books (largely science fiction and fantasy) and in politics, science, and history. I became a voracious reader, if a slow one; I was a thirsty man in a desert who finds an oasis and tastes fresh water. And I learned the power of talking (maybe too much!) and debate as a way of engaging critically with ideas. This was probably the start of my academic narrative, and one that took me in many different directions in subsequent years.
It was during my PhD and postdoc that I transformed my label of being dyslexic, from one of “disability” into simply a different way of thinking and being. Essentially, accepting neurodiversity in myself. No longer a deficit, my dyslexia became a capacity, even a source of excellence, because I had developed my own strategies.
For me, pen and paper are a nightmare, because this medium is static–if I misspell or make a mistake, I have to start over. By contrast, the digital environment is a liberation, providing a fluid and dynamic space that, unlike paper, is not incompatible with a non-linear way of thinking or poor handwriting (mine is almost illegible). It’s no surprise, then, that I’m a techie by nature, and that I love working on computer, tablet, phone; that I never take notes on paper; and that I prefer reading digital to hard copy.
I realized that my slow reading and inability to scan a text–I read every single word, line by line–meant that while I needed to plan more time to read a text, this also made me an excellent editor. The extra spaces between words, the spelling error, the typo, all literally jump out of the text into my visual space. This interaction with text is visceral; when I’m correcting a student manuscript or an article for my journal, I have to first fix the formatting before I can begin to read and understand the content.
The medium comes before the message (to paraphrase Marshal McLuhan’s “the message is the medium“). I learned the importance of page-setting (the medium) to make a text more accessible, to make the ideas (the message) more compelling. And this massaging of text gives me genuine pleasure–I love editing!
Embracing Diverse Cognitive Styles in Learning and Teaching
Following numerous discussions with my wife about how we think about and view the world, we realized that our cognitive processes were diametrically opposed. She is hyper-visual—also known as hyperphantasia—and synesthetic, so she visualizes the world in an incredible range of images that are intimately linked to sound, colour, and even odour. For her, the world is an ever-unfolding cascade of images and ideas, that are interrelated in an extremely complex manner.
By contrast, for me, thinking is purely a matter of ideas–it’s totally conceptual, abstract. When I close my eyes there is only darkness. I have aphantasia, so I do not see images at all, and when asked to imagine something, I tell a story in my mind in words, but I do not “see” anything.
I have to think “out loud” and work through an idea until I get to the end; my wife, when she listens to me, is already at the conclusion (but, having stopped telling me straight away because she knows how I work, she’s waiting for me to get there myself), and so she’s simultaneously drawing up a shopping list, thinking about her next article, weighing the pros and cons of choosing our son’s summer camps, and pondering a host of other ideas.
Being both dyslexic and aphantasic meant that memorizing was never going to work for me–I have horrible short and long-term memory because I don’t visualize. And I think by writing and talking (a lot!), which is likely why I’ve gravitated towards teaching, working with the media, and public speaking.
The presentation, far from being a source of intimidation (which it was when I had to read a written text), is now a space for real-time creative thinking. “BrynStorming” with a group of graduate students–ideas flowing in every direction, everything on the table–is for me the apogee of intellectual stimulation, it’s a total academic buzz! But I also know that other people find such unscripted discussions to be disturbing, because they appear chaotic–“it’s all talk!”
These conversations helped my wife and I both realize that our presuppositions about how others think–“like me, of course”–needed to be thrown out. And it led us both to reconsider how we teach, because if the two of us were so very different in how we thought and experienced our respective worlds, it stood to reason that many of our students (and colleagues) might also think very differently. There can never be “one” teaching method to reach a group; multiple methods and media are needed if we are to engage meaningfully with our different audiences, that is, adapting our communication to many different ways of learning.
It was while I was in Cambridge for my post-doc that I really started noticing how academia was a world apart, with many eccentric types who had found a safe space in which to live their passions for esoteric subjects, and where their intensity and focus was considered an asset, even a mark of excellence, but never a deficit.
I met students and professors who had ADHD, Asperger’s, Autism, or some other of the many different ways of being and thinking that in “the outside world” would be markers of unacceptable social difference, to be labelled, to be set apart. And looking back to my undergraduate and graduate studies, I can think of many fellow students and professors who were also very “different” but had nonetheless found their place.
I’ve come to conclude that we’re all weird in some way or another, and that we think somewhat or even very differently from mainstream society, and from each other. So if that means we’re “neurodiverse”, that’s OK. The labels that we give ourselves or which are given to us can be defining, but they do not have to be limiting… and we do not have to let them define us. These labels can be transformed or even put aside when they are no longer pertinent or meaningful. So I would say to colleagues and students who sometimes (or even often) feel very different or like outsiders–“own your difference!”
