Neurodivergent Club. Why it matters to have self-help tools and concepts tailored to us.
Join for 35$ per session :: ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AUGUST 15th 2022
My biggest intention behind creating and launching the Neurodivergent Club this Fall is offering self-help, psychology and nervous system health tools specifically tailored for the neurodivergent individual.
So many of our self-help, psychology and nervous system health tools are literally made BY neurotypicals and FOR neurotypicals.
For example, attachment theory. Attachment theory is awesome. I’ve done a lot of in depth training on it. AND AND AND, it barely even acknowledges that attachment differs for neurodivergent individuals.
So someone who is HSP (highly sensitive person) autistic or ADHD may be taking in the attachment advice instagram (or in a more legit setting - a well meaning therapist) is throwing at them constantly and applying it to their lives and it is accidentally mislabeling.
A highly sensitive person may present as an avoidant attached because they have too many mirror neurons firing and they become overwhelmed during the initial dating phase. But they are not at all avoidant attached… they are just feeling the other person’s process as their own and need to retreat in order to see what their own feelings and thoughts are before taking correct action.
An autistic person may be accused of being intimacy-phobic, and dismissive, when in reality, it’s just that touch is painful and they don’t know how to advocate for the correct touch they seek and feels good to them. Or they may even be labeled as co-dependent or extremely anxiously attached because they have care givers or partners they need to regulate off of because the world is so loud, bright and overwhelming. And in fact, autistic people are typically amongst people who have an excellent sense of self (they know who they are and what they like pretty seamlessly), so they are not co-dependent at all.
An ADHDer may be told they have ambivalent attachment (disorganized or anxious-avoidant - all the same) because sometimes they are hyper-focused on their relationship, and other times, they need a lot of space because they are hyper focused on something else away from the relationship (a work project let’s say) or maybe even processing emotions that feel like tsunamis to them before they can go further. In fact, in this scenario, they could be secure attached, but they don’t yet understand how to communicate their need to bounce from hyper fixation to hyper fixation with their partner and they don’t know how to transition smoothly or ask for more time in a way that makes the other people involved feel safe too.
And this is just a few examples about how attachment theory can completely miss neurodivergent people and if we are not aware of this, we may be mislabeling ourselves. This is really sad and also potentially dangerous for our self-concept.
These are the sort of topics/ education I will be discussing with you on Monday afternoons each week starting on September 12th.
I’ve decided to offer the first iteration of this club at an accessible cost. 140.00 USD for the monthly membership. That’s about 35$ a week.
If investment is a barrier to join for you, please send me an email and I have sliding scale/ barter options available.
You can sign up here for monthly payments.
Quote from chapter 12 of Can You Turn The Lights Off?
Illustration: Lisa Seilkopf