Neurodiversity, Autism and Dyslexia

Tuesdays or Thursdays are usually our lecture days here at the continuum care campus. I try to go to them all for several reasons: 1) I figure if they don’t get supported they’ll quit inviting speakers to the CCC (and I feel sorry for speakers when only a handful of us shows up), 2) I like learning new things, and 3) even if I don’t like the topic the experience might make good blog fodder.

This week's lecture was titled, ‘Neurodivergent StoryTelling.’ “What’s that?” I can almost hear a few voices coming at me. That’s what I wanted to know too, having never heard of term ‘Neurodivergent’ before. The Cleveland Clinic defines it this way: “The term ‘neurodivergent’ describes people whose brain differences affect how their brain works. That means they have different strengths and challenges from people whose brains don’t have those differences. The possible differences include medical disorders, learning disabilities and other conditions…Neurodivergent isn’t a medical term. Instead, it’s a way to describe people using words other than ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal.’ That’s important because there’s no single definition of ‘normal’ for how the human brain works.”

The cynical side of me wants to challenge the well-renowned Cleveland Clinic on their claim that we can’t label individual brains as normal or abnormal. Certainly the character Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory displays many/most of the classic traits of autism but you’d hardly say his brain is normal. I just finished reading a forum thread on Reddit about Sheldon where members were debating if he has high functioning autism or if he’s just a “rude asshole” whose mother protected him too much as a child. The fact that one of the writers on the show is autistic my money is on the former.

The lecturer is the author of a book titled On the Spectrum and he’s a college professor who didn’t find out he was on the autism spectrum until he was 35 years old. Obviously, he’s on the high functioning end of the spectrum who says he uses writing to work through his trumps and heartbreaks. (Me too!) He told of needing a lot of alone time, of his need for routines and being one-tracked and of the shame he felt before his diagnosis knowing he was different than his older brother.

As I sat listening to the lecture I was struck by how much of what he shared about his life before he was diagnosed could also be said about my experiences with being dyslexic and left-handed. How I didn’t know why I was different from my brother, of how I was called “dumb” and “stupid” because I couldn’t tie my shoes or read a clock until I was much older than other kids and because I struggled with reading and still can’t sound out words or spell those I haven’t memorized. I also get obsessed with projects to the point that my husband used to call me 'One Track.' Imagine my surprise when after the lecture I googled ‘neurodiversity’ I found out that dyslexia falls under that umbrella. Would having your frustrated mother call you a neurodivergent hurt any less than having her call you stupid?

LeafComplexCare.com says, “Dyslexia is associated with creativity, empathy, communication, design skills, observation, narrative reasoning and “big picture” thinking.” That sentence gave me a few more boxes to check off in understanding myself. Big picture thinking, for example, is something I’ve always been able to do and never understood why some people can't.

Goggle is so much fun. Next I goggled famous people with dyslexia and found a long list that includes: Richard Branson, Pablo Picasso, Albert Einstein, Cher, Anderson Cooper, Tom Cruise and Robin Williams. One of my favorite writers---Fannie Flagg---I’ve written about before in Trip to the Corner of Fiction and Dyslexia talks about how so many people can't understand how she can write when she can't spell. I get asked that all the time. Then I goggled famous people who are autistic and found a shorter list, but no less prominent, that includes: Bill Gates, Anthony Hopkins, Jerry Seinfeld, Albert Einstein, Emily Dickinson, Bobby Fischer, Elon Musk and Steven Spielberg.

What I took away from the lecture was that I had a misconception of autism. The image in my head was of little boys who seem to be locked inside their heads with few verbal skills, who need consistency in their routines and rituals but eventually grow out of it with treatments. I learned that it's a sliding scale kind of thing involving the classic symptoms. And I learned a new word: Neurodiversity which covers a whole host of brain related labels. All the websites I visited want to sell us on a romanticized view of these conditions, in my opinion, as being “linked to unique strengths and perspectives that enrich our world.” I get that, I really do. One cannot look at the lists of famous people who are “on the spectrum” without seeing the truth in that statement. However, what is lacking on those medical websites---but the lecturer focused on---is the pain that one goes through who is on the spectrum and how they have to work twice as hard to do average things. He talked about how just having a name for his condition changed his life.

On the other hand, perhaps the idea of abolishing the words ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ in this context isn’t akin to giving everyone a ribbon for participation---my first cynical impression. Maybe the goal in what I labeled ‘romanticized’ is to get society to accept and embrace the diversity in the way our brains function which in turn might cut down on the pain people on the spectrum go through? Whatever the case, neurodiversity is a complex topic and I’ve barely scratched the surface but it made pretty good blog fodder, didn't it? ©