Navigating a World That's Not Designed for Me

Image created on Canve by Madeline Summers, 2023

Neurodiversity encompasses any disability that alters someone’s brain function from the ‘normal’. It includes Autism, ADHD, OCD and many others. Simply put, my brain is different from the majority, and with that fact comes some challenges. Social interactions and communication are probably the two I feel most prevalently.

In a world designed for neurotypical people, there’s an abundance of blockades and pitfalls for us neurodivergent folk. From social spaces to the professional world, we’re expected to mould ourselves into uncomfortable shapes to ‘fit in’, or risk isolation, ridicule, or reprimand for our ‘strange’ ways of navigating the world.

The Double Empathy Problem

Social ineptitude has been a defining characteristic for Autism since its earliest accounts. There’s been a long-running assumption that Autistic people are the weird ones, that we are the ones who misunderstand social settings and therefore we should change. Then there’s the double empathy problem. What this theory suggests is that a mismatch of people leads to faulty communication. In the case of non-autistic and autistic individuals, there’s such a variance in the way their respective brains function, that the misunderstanding goes both ways. It helps to diminish the stigma that its autistic people causing the issue of miscommunication, and perhaps there’s work to be done on both sides to try to understand each other.

In simpler terms, it’s a disconnect between two people with completely different worldviews, ways of thinking, or personal understanding of the world around them. Socially, neurodivergent people struggle – we don’t necessarily understand social cues, and we tend to present as stoic or disconnected. In these situations, we often mask to smooth over rifts in social settings. It’s hard. It’s also frustrating to have others assume we lack empathy when we simply present our façade differently.

A neurotypical blogger from Neurodivergent Rebel writes: ‘We’re used to stretching ourselves to be understood by people unwilling to extend themselves to meet us’ and ‘It’s not that Autistic people don’t feel empathy … but that non-autistic people present and interpret our empathy differently’.

It's not that we don’t want to connect the rift, but rather that the world we live in does not cater for us to do so. There’s not enough understanding, to put it bluntly. For us neurodivergent folk, we are constantly either explaining ourselves and pleading for understanding, or we’re trying to mask to fit in – which is detrimental to out mental health.

There should be better understanding. There should be no stigma. There should be room for neurodivergent folk to simply be themselves without fear or negative repercussions. The threat of social shunning or workplace issues are enough for a lot of people like me (and including me) to suppress their neurodivergent urges and try to fit in. Which is asinine, by the way, as all it does is push fast-forward on the onslaught of autistic meltdown (a state in which no autistic person wants to be).

Hopefully one day more neurotypicals will be more accepting that we simply think differently. There’s a lot of self-worth to be had in becoming content in your true self, and neurodivergent folk deserve that too.

References

National Autistic Society. (2020, August 14). Meltdowns - a guide for all audiences. Www.autism.org.uk; National Autistic Society. https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/topics/behaviour/meltdowns/all-audiences

Rivera, L. (2023, September 19). Empathy for Autistic People: Autism and the Double Empathy Problem. Neurodivergent Rebel. https://neurodivergentrebel.com/2023/09/19/empathy-for-autistic-people-autism-and-the-double-empathy-problem/

Zamzow, R. (2021, July 22). Double empathy, explained. Spectrum | Autism Research News. https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/double-empathy-explained/