I'm autistic. I've seen firsthand the stigma that is associated with being neurodivergent. People have a hard time understanding and accepting things that are different. The idea of neurodiversity is to fight that stigma by normalizing being neurodivergent. There's nothing wrong with having a brain that is wired differently. This is a lesson that everyone needs to internalize — including neurodivergent people themselves. Too often neurodivergent people wish they were someone else, wish that their brains were "normal." The intention of this guide is to show how you can accept and even celebrate neurodiversity, and it uses philosophy to do it.
Pragmatism
Pragmatism is a way of doing philosophy that treats ideas as tools. The test of a tool is whether it works when you put it to use. That's the approach I take here. As you read, you'll notice I borrow freely from different philosophies, because these are the tools that have worked for me. Maybe one or two will work for you. Keep what works and leave the rest.
Choose to Be Lucky
Did you know you can choose to be lucky? That's because lucky is a mindset. It's something you can learn. Stoicism shows us how.
Stoicism is a philosophy that originated in ancient Greece and Rome. The Stoics started from a hard premise: the world is governed by fate. Most of what happens to you — where you were born, the body you live in, the way your mind is wired — was never up to you. You can rage against that, or you can do the harder and stranger thing the Stoics asked of themselves. You can welcome it. Marcus Aurelius, one of the most famous Stoics, set the bar high: to welcome with affection whatever fate sends — not merely to tolerate your life, but to want it.
Welcoming your fate is not resignation, and it is not pretending. It asks you to stop wishing your life had been a different life, and to turn toward the one you actually have.
So how do you welcome being neurodivergent?
Start with what's yours. You didn't choose your wiring; no one chooses theirs. The Stoics drew a sharp line between what is up to us and what isn't, and almost nothing drains a person faster than spending their strength on the wrong side of that line. Why am I like this? is mostly unanswerable, and grieving it can eat a whole lifetime. Given that I am, what now? is a question you can actually act on. Your neurology is not up to you. Your response to it is.
Consider the example of a poker player. She didn't choose her cards — they were dealt to her. There is no way she could know what the dealer would give her. She has no control over that. What she can control is how skillfully she plays the hand.
The Stoics had another practice to help get into the lucky mindset. Instead of dreaming about how things could've turned out better, they compared their life to inferior situations they imagined and concluded that things weren't so bad. This is known as negative visualization. Briefly considering how your circumstances could be worse can help you feel lucky.
But there are also genuine advantages, things you would never have found on an easier road.
Malcolm Gladwell wrote about the unexpected advantages of being dyslexic. One thing he found was that by the time many dyslexic people finish school, they've failed so many times that failure has simply stopped frightening them, so they look at a situation and see much more of the upside than the downside. Because they're so accustomed to the downside. The downside doesn't faze them. They've lived there. For some, dyslexia isn't the thing they succeed in spite of. It's part of why they succeed at all.
The very thing that made your path harder also built something in you that an easier path never would have, a tolerance for difficulty that becomes a real advantage. You are accustomed to the downside. It doesn't faze you. That is not a small thing.
Marcus put the principle in a line that a modern Stoic, Ryan Holiday, later used for a book title: The Obstacle Is the Way. The thing standing in your way can become the way itself. The obstacle isn't the detour from the path. Handled well, it is the path.
None of this happens on its own. The advantage was never in having the obstacle; it's in what you do with it, again and again, when quitting would be easier. Holiday's instruction is about as plain as advice gets — persist and resist. Persist in the work that is yours to do. Resist the pull toward distraction, toward discouragement, toward disorder. The persistence is the part that converts a hard fate into a strong one.
So, you become lucky the way you become anything — by practice. By meeting your fate with affection instead of argument. By looking for the advantages hidden inside it and the strength it built in you, and then putting that strength to use. The world handed you this wiring without asking your permission. What you make of it is the part that is up to you.
Loosen Up
Anxiety is common in neurodivergent people. It's important to remember that things generally go better when we loosen up a little bit. The challenge is to figure out how to do that. Stoicism and Buddhism have some actionable advice.
The first thing to do is to focus on your own opinions, not other people's. As Marcus wrote: It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own. A lot of anxiety comes from worrying too much about what others think of you. You should focus on what you think of you.
That brings us back to one of the key ideas in Stoicism. You should focus on what you control. You can't control other people's opinions. You can't control the economy. You can't control the weather. You can only really control your effort, your attitude. That's where you should focus your energy.
A couple of other things you don't control are the past and the future. You only have the present, so that's where you should focus your effort.
If you find yourself worrying about things you don't control, remind yourself that, This is nothing to you. But what if you are having some serious anxiety, and you can't just disregard it? This is where Buddhism comes into play. Buddhism gives you another tool in your toolbox to deal with anxiety: mindfulness meditation.
What mindfulness meditation does is create some space in your mind to allow you to observe your anxiety and not get carried away by it. As you focus on your breath and remember that emotions come and go, you'll be able to navigate your way through the emotion.
Here are the general steps for meditation:
- Sit comfortably. You can close your eyes or you can leave them open and adjust your gaze to a neutral point on the ground.
- Bring your full attention to the feeling of your breath coming in and out. Pick a spot where it's most prominent: your chest, your belly, or your nostrils. To help maintain focus, you can make a quiet mental note on the in-breath and out-breath, like in and out.
- The third step is the key. As soon as you try to do this, your mind is almost certainly going to mutiny. You'll start having all sorts of random thoughts. No big deal. This is totally normal. The whole game is simply to notice when you are distracted, and begin again.
These steps can help you survive anxiety.
One additional thing you can do after you start your meditation with these steps is you can shift your focus to the anxiety and observe it without judging it. Try to keep the part of your mind that labels things as "good" or "bad" quiet and just observe the anxiety. What is the texture of the anxiety? Does it have a shape and color? How would you describe it? As you observe it without judgment, it becomes less a part of you. It has less influence over you. Eventually, it will subside. Through mindfulness meditation you can transform unhealthy emotions into healthy ones.
Conclusion
This guide asks that you stop fighting the wiring you were given and start working with it. But acceptance does not mean forcing yourself to endure every environment exactly as it is. Working with your wiring may mean asking for accommodations, protecting yourself from sensory overload, building routines, using medication, seeking therapy, or leaving situations that continually harm you.
This guide also offers a set of tools to help you work with your wiring. Stoicism teaches you to draw the line between what is yours and what is not, to welcome your fate instead of arguing with it, and to find the advantage hidden inside the obstacle. Buddhism gives you a way to sit with anxiety until it loosens its grip. You did not choose your neurology. You still have a say in how you understand it, work with it, and build your life around it. That part is up to you.
Notes
Introduction
My favorite definition of neurodiversity comes from NeuroTribes by Steve Silberman:
Neurodiversity: the notion that conditions like autism, dyslexia, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) should be regarded as naturally occurring cognitive variations with distinctive strengths that have contributed to the evolution of technology and culture rather than mere checklists of deficits and dysfunctions. Though the spectrum model of autism and the concept of neurodiversity are widely believed to be products of our postmodern world, they turn out to be very old ideas, proposed by Hans Asperger in his first public lecture on autism in 1938. The idea of neurodiversity has inspired the creation of a rapidly growing civil rights movement based on the simple idea that the most astute interpreters of autistic behavior are autistic people themselves.
Some people argue that this condition or that condition should or should not be included in neurodiversity. I have a very broad interpretation of neurodiversity.
In NeuroDiversity, Judy Singer originally defined neurodiversity very broadly:
While my focus was on AS, I considered that the scope of neurodiversity was far broader. It could encompass the near-absurdist splintering of the then DSM IV.
Pragmatism
From Reconstruction in Philosophy by John Dewey:
If ideas, meanings, conceptions, notions, theories, systems are instrumental to an active reorganization of the given environment, to a removal of some specific trouble and perplexity, then the test of their validity and value lies in accomplishing this work. If they succeed in their office, they are reliable, sound, valid, good, true.
Choose to Be Lucky
The Art of Living by Sharon Lebell is a contemporary interpretation of Epictetus's most important teachings. It has this:
As you think, so you become. Avoid superstitiously investing events with power or meanings they don't have. Keep your head. Our busy minds are forever jumping to conclusions, manufacturing and interpreting signs that aren't there. Assume, instead, that everything that happens to you does so for some good. That if you decided to be lucky, you are lucky. All events contain an advantage for you — if you look for it!
How to Live a Good Life by Massimo Pigliucci, et al., has a good introduction to Stoicism.
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, translated by Gregory Hays, has a lot of wisdom, including these passages about fate:
To welcome with affection what is sent by fate.
And this:
That every event is the right one. Look closely and you'll see. Not just the right one overall, but right. As if someone had weighed it out in the scales.
Discourses and Selected Writings by Epictetus, translated by Robert Dobbin, has the card-player metaphor:
Model yourself on card players. The chips don't matter, and the cards don't matter; how can I know what the deal will be? But making careful and skilful use of the deal — that's where my responsibility begins. So in life our first job is this, to divide and distinguish things into two categories: externals I cannot control, but the choices I make with regard to them I do control. Where will I find good and bad? In me, in my choices. Don't ever speak of 'good' or 'bad', 'advantage' or 'harm', and so on, of anything that is not your responsibility.
William B. Irvine covers negative visualization in his book The Stoic Challenge.
The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday is a must-read. The phrase "persist and resist" is originally from Discourses and Selected Writings by Epictetus.
David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell has the stories of people who have thrived with dyslexia.
Loosen Up
The quotation from Marcus Aurelius is from Meditations, translated by Gregory Hays.
The Epictetus quotation and paraphrase are from The Complete Works by Epictetus, translated Robin Waterfield. It clearly explains what is up to us:
Some things are up to us and some are not. Up to us are judgment, inclination, desire, aversion -- in short, whatever is our own doing. Not up to us are our bodies, possessions, reputations, public offices -- in short, whatever isn’t our own doing. ... So take up the practice right now of telling every disagreeable impression, 'You're an impression, and not at all what you appear to be.' Then go on to examine it and assess it by these criteria of yours, and first and foremost by this one: whether it has to do with the things that are up to us or the things that are not up to us. And if it has to do with the things that are not up to us, have at hand the reminder that it’s nothing to you.
Instructions for meditating are from Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics and 10% Happier by Dan Harris; Why Buddhism Is True by Robert Wright; and You Are Here by Thich Nhat Hanh.
In No Mud, No Lotus, Thich Nhat Hanh wrote about how to transform suffering:
With mindfulness, you can recognize the presence of the suffering in you and in the world. And it's with that same energy that you tenderly embrace the suffering. By being aware of your in-breath and out-breath you generate the energy of mindfulness, so you can continue to cradle the suffering. Practitioners of mindfulness can help and support each other in recognizing, embracing, and transforming suffering.
Conclusion
Meditations, translated by Robin Waterfield, discusses Marcus Aurelius’s insomnia and his use of medicine to help him sleep.