Uncovering my neurodivergence

When I started my sabbatical I collected a list of topics I wanted to explore. I gave myself permission to be disorganized and messy on how I progressed. I just wrote topic ideas down and trusted the process (or to be more specific, I trust that the brain quirk of the frequency illusion can be intentionally pressed into service).

The nerd in me loves the intersection of neuroscience, cognitive bias, health and other idiosyncrasies of the human condition and their link to opportunity. I want to understand what are the systems that have the biggest impact for both individual and organizations thriving.

A few tl;dr things I’ve learned

• Prenatal and early childhood nutrition have the biggest overall impact on cognition.

• Sleep improves grades, health (both mental and physical) and cognition

• Our first person experiences impact how we learn and understand the world

• Being poor is a terrible thing for educational opportunities.

• Our frameworks for identifying neurodivergence are far too simplistic and as we get better at understanding the brain (and all the related systems) we are likely to begin to recognize (and address/leverage) the myriad of strengths and weaknesses of our different brains.

• Useful to remember that left handedness and color blindness (which is actually a spectrum not a binary) are types of neurodivergence.

  
  

I personally believe that neurotypical is a myth. Our unique brains, backgrounds and abilities are a strength not a weakness. Striving for the mean is not only unhelpful, it’s often harmful. Instead, understanding your unique basket of gifts and challenges creates the path to growth and thriving. I find this especially important as we begin to see technology improvements that create an opportunity for new norms and help us reimagine how we spend our time and cognitive capacities.

My time down a rabbit hole and what I learned

When I first got my hands on ChatGPT, I recognized an opportunity to level of the playing field for people with written expression challenges. Two groups that immediately came to mind, non-native English speakers and dyslexics. The former I’ve worked with my entire career and the latter I have raised (my oldest daughter who was diagnosed in middle school – the moment that I learned there is FAR more to dyslexia than the common “struggles to learn to read” understanding I had before having the luxury of many expensive tests and discussions with learning doctors.)

Side note: these learning doctors are a-mazing and honestly life changing, they are also very much in demand and super expensive. I was introduced to learning doctors with my youngest – diagnosed with ADHD in first grade. I had no idea there was so much to understand about the mechanics of the brain and the intersection of learning and environment. For any parents of young twice exceptional kids I want to tell you that the parenting road is not easy but important. Learning tools to navigate the complex emotional and educational challenges make you a more empathetic and better human. I also want to remind you that it is completely understandable to [privately] tell judgemental parents, teachers and bystanders to GFY when they want to judge your parenting choices.

For years, I described myself as the only neurotypical person in the family, and often pointed to my own deficits of spatial navigation as a reason to not feel shame when things just don’t work for your brain. As I continued to read, learn and explore this topic the more I realize I am not at all neurotypical I’m just less visibly and less diagnosable neurodivergent.

Ironically, the key to unlocking more self awareness came from my investigation of bias. Some years ago I took an implicit bias test and was shocked to realize I was biased against women. One might note that I found this so shocking I had to mitigate the title of that blog to help myself feel better. Again, self discovery and honesty are a journey. The part that relates in this context, was less my inability to see myself clearly (because honestly this is obvious and not news — for any of us) but the awareness of how it feels when your brain struggles to make a connection. It’s not quite physical pain, but it is most certainly discomfort. The feeling that something should be easy but isn’t and that you struggle to make your brain cooperate to do the task at hand.

Who moved 42nd street and why can’t I find my way back from the bathroom?

My specific disorder is one of visual spatial processing

Because I am a creative sort, and have some useful gifts [good memory], I am pretty good at masking my challenges. I have discovered complex work arounds – I also am relaxed about walking further and taking a lot of u-turns — doing [a lot of] pre-work and giving myself extra time to navigate, tends to cover most bases.

One annoying and comical issue that is harder to hide, is finding my way back from the bathroom. You’re at a dinner, maybe you have had a drink or two, you get up to use the restroom, the staff to point you in the right direction so you are all set. THEN you come out of the bathroom to realize you have zero clue how to reverse your way and find the table again. I can’t tell you the number of times I have felt real panic in this situation.

Navigating new locations, even with a GPS (honestly god bless Gladys West) I still end up going the wrong way 50% of the time. My working title for my memoir chapter of hilarious navigational disasters is Who moved 42nd street? based upon my many NYC visits. What is uniquely ironic, is that when walking with groups people naturally feel compelled to follow me, which I always try to clarify is a great idea in the conceptual and disastrous in the navigational.

The crux of the issue is that I need words to comprehend things.

Visual cues aren’t helpful as somehow they fail to properly connect in my brain to meaning. I am pretty sure this is a recall issue vs. a storage issue – I do remember how things look and can describe visual properties (color, shape, even where the damn gadget is in the house that we haven’t used in five years but need), I just can’t recall them easily and I absolutely cannot manipulate them. To read a number or a graph, I have to turn them into words and I have to audibly say them in my head to get them to mean anything – until I do, the information is precisely the same as my ability to decode kanji – shapes with no meaning. This is my hint that this has more in common than dyslexia than it seems. It’s a decoding problem. [side note: surprising things related to dyslexia include reading an analog clock, learning math facts, tying shoes, riding bicycle and telling left from right]

I have a few other characteristics that feel a bit closer to ASD – certain frequencies and sounds physically hurt (most stressful is Apple speakerphone [Airpods are fine] but also the fan on our stove and not unique but certainly awful all the types of leaf blowers and compressor based machines – oh how I adore electric cars).

Why I’m bothering to write this down

In my youth, I was a good test taker and yet struggled to get above 90th percentile, of course I was not raised by Asian parents so this was celebrated as outstanding, but I digress… I realized there were things I just would never be good at, and moved on toward things that were better aligned to my abilities. Like you, I wisely didn’t pursue Olympic sports.

I recently took a timed cognitive test [don’t ask!] that had a lot of visual pattern recognition and I could, feel my brain struggling. The work I had to do to get the shapes to manipulate was absurd – in the end, I had to ask for extra time and I honestly memorized several from the practice tests as that was quicker [see note above about a above average ability to memorize]. This was uniquely frustrating as pattern recognition is a huge strength and I’m quite fast at it, just not the kinds of patterns that were on the test (!).

I am talking about these things more, as I know I am not really alone. In addition, I want to see more tools that make my life easier. Simple things that are already coming into play, auto-transcription, text to image (and back again!), AI to help break things down differently and my holy grail – some kind of AR glasses to tell you which direction you are actually going and help you navigate the reverse of your trip inside a building. I know these are possible, because you can already get tech to help you find where you parked your car (something I don’t’ need because I’m religious about memorizing and/or taking photos). The innovation I want is really dynamic signs – the things that put into words the bits you need to know [way back vs. just way out]. This would reduce so much anxiety for me, it’s fair to say it would be life changing.

I also want to have someone create an app that helps me build the neural pathways that are blocked/missing. I am thinking an intersection of tetris-type game and a specific kind of psychedelic therapy would be helpful – might not happen in my lifetime but I am hopeful.

Outside of me writing down my specific tech and science requirements, I share my story to remind us all that just because something is obvious and easy for us, does not mean that the same is true for others. Perspective taking is hard. One way to get better is to hear and reflect on the stories of others with curiosity and empathy.

I once had the opportunity to hear someone share a funny and painful story about frantically asking a passenger if the single flashing light was yellow or red. That story forever opened my eyes to how unnecessarily hard we can make things for people who are not like us. Maximizing human potential means valuing humans and thankfully but awkwardly, humans are complex and imperfect. We should start by appreciating the messiness and stop hiding our imperfections.