Neurodiversity and booby comics

Okay listen, the word ‘neurodiversity’ wasn’t even invented until 1998, and since then we seem to have had **quite** the explosion of our understanding of ourselves. There’s recently been a huge rush of everyone realising they might have [whatever]. And I don’t think it’s bandwagon-ing – it seems an explosion of (1) better testing criteria, and (2) fresh interest in figuring ourselves out. The question is not “How do we fix neurdiversity?” (which would be an extremely Eugenic standpoint …), but “How did we ignore this for so long?!”

Just so we’re on the same first page, here’s neurodiversity boiled down to an extremely tiny list:

• Everyone’s different. (“We’re all geniuses”, says Einstein. EINSTEIN. Einstein though. Mr Big Brain himself.) The best tribes that survived to procreate were the most diverse ones, for a zillion different reasons you can probably guess if you put a tiny bit of thought into it
• Society may think it’s a linear spectrum, but even just within ADHD itself, there’s entire 3D spectra because we are all so different in how we perceive and journey through reality – there simply is not a ‘normal’ way of being (see Stephen Fry’s excellent description of normal)
• In basic terms, ADHD tends towards: new stuff, adrenaline-based decisions, bad working memory, rapid thinking, amygdala-based decisions, MORE DIFFERENT INPUT GO GO GO
• In basic terms, Autism tends towards: familiar stuff, repetition, locking-in on subjects, often poor verbal communication, different ways of communicating emotion, taking statements literally, MORE FAMILIAR INPUT
• In basic terms, Dyslexia and Dysgraphia and Dyspraxia relate to how we connect with patterns and physical space, and although many people have trouble with reading/writing – they tend to be very good at other pattern recognition (indeed GCHQ the UK intelligence agency specifically employ people for Dyslexia. 40% of Millionaires have Dyslexia …)
• You can have both Autism and ADHD tendencies (aka AuDHD), meaning there’s a bit of a battleground inside your head. Yay.
• In fact you can have smatterings of tendencies from anywhere in any spectrums, and that can be amazing, or suck, in equal measure. Some (particularly ADHD) tendencies can be medicated if you want to, some can’t.

Without going into too many personal details, let’s just say that discussions around neurodiversity are important to me. And the topic has always been there in my comics, whether it’s people taking statements literally …

… or struggling with verbal communication …

… or trying and failing to fit in with ‘normal’ people …

… or dealing with overwhelming emotional input while at the shops, and having a bit of a breakdown …

… I’ve always wanted that voice for those misunderstood, bullied, unheard people in my comics. Because I suppose that’s part of my own story. And the more I look for it, the more I see it in media/stories all over the place. You know, the old cliche of a misunderstood loser turning out, in fact, to be a bit of a legend at something …

… anyway, you all spotted the neurodiversity references in my comics, I’m sure. I didn’t really, until the last few years. Ahhhhem. But yeah, it turns out I’d been writing about it all the time anyway … kudos for subconscious consistency I guess!

No doubt my readers will have had their suspicions about me as an author – I mean after all I do seem to be one of the more prolific comic content creators out there.

So why is it that some humans create absurd amounts of stuff, anyway? Archimedes was famously so obsessed with pulleys/gears systems, that he was killed for ignoring a Roman Soldier and refusing to stop drawing circles in the sand. Picasso famously created over 50,000 works of art. FIFTY. THOUSAND. Mozart wrote more music than all of Spotify before he was three years old … or something like that. Pythagoras spent a reasonable amount of time living in a cave and drawing triangles over and over and over again. Edison patented thousands of contraptions and slept under his Lab table. Barbara Cartland wrote 740 novels, and had 160 sitting there unpublished when she died. That’s not … a regular amount of writing. That is Locking. In.

Anyway, I’m not saying I’m a genius because I can lock in, I’m saying we all are geniuses because we are all freaking nuts. If that wasn’t the case, you wouldn’t relate to what I’ve always been saying, and so you wouldn’t be reading this. And I know you are, because the stats on my comics are insane, and the stats on my blog are pretty damn healthy too. And I’ve never overtly spoken about neurodiversity before.

I’ve been talking to my friends about neurodiversity for some years, its always a good topic. Interesting thing is, we all have our biases when it comes to disabilities, I suppose the question is how do we respond if we were to discover we ourselves had that particular ‘disability’? I suppose the test for any internalised ableism is; if you were to discover you were in fact Autistic (for example), would you have a problem with that? Or would it be interesting/great news? If you randomly got diagnosed with ADHD … would that be bad? I think it’s worth us all thinking about, because there are some issues:

• Disproportionate amount of people in prison have ADHD. Like 25% or something
• Women with Autism are 8 times more likely to commit suicide than neurotypical women
• People with Dyslexia, ADHD or ASD are much more likely to suffer from depression
• The list goes on – people struggling to ‘fit in’ having a tough time
• eg sidequest champions (ADHDers) also very often struggle with substance abuse …

• Anxiety …

And I know labels are bad, and I know the ‘D’s in ADHD aren’t exactly complements … (that label will change soon I’m sure) … but how do we notice and talk about our wonderful, world-changing, explosive, extraordinary difference, without dishonouring ourselves or each other, eh?

Perhaps we could start by being as self-aware as possible. Take an in-depth adhd test, or an ASD test. I mean why not, right?

So where’s your brain at, chief?

Where’s your noggin at, tiger?

What’s goin on in that little sphere o’wonder eh, sport?