I’m a real newbie in the neurodivergence world. Only a year into my own formal autism identification, although (as for so many people) this was after years of exploring neurodivergence and finding the neuroaffirming approach.
So I was really honoured and also terrified to be asked to chair a panel for Neurodiversity Celebration Week, thanks to wonderful
(whose own panel on late discovered autistic women and menopause is a must watch).I was invited to pull together a panel and asked four people who have been influential along my own autism discovery. Catherine, whose podcast the Late Discovered Club and Circle communities were a soft place to land for me in exploring autism;
who helped me unpack neurodivergence and trauma, and I’m lucky to now call a friend as well as colleague; Ben Branson who invented Seedlip and recently founded Prism ND and the Hidden 20 podcast, who is revolutionising the way we speak about neurodivergence and neurodivergent strengths, and Dr Luke Beardon - senior lecturer in autism at Sheffield Hallam University and the author of multiple brilliant books which offered me numerous lightbulb moments while reading.We had an incredible discussion about mental health and neurodivergence. I chose to focus on the topic ‘Neurodivergence isn’t a Mental Health Problem’, based on Luke’s Golden Equation which suggests that autism itself doesn’t lead to particular outcomes, but autism + environment together affect outcomes. It is true that the stats for mental health difficulties in neurodivergent people are depressing in themselves, but we focused our conversation on how we can better support neurodivergent people, understand where mental health difficulties come from (and how this can be different for neurodivergent people, as well as people from other marginalised communities) and create environments which promote mental wellbeing for neurodivergent (and all!) people.
It was a really inspiring panel, and we spoke a lot about how to embrace the differences in us (and others) and accept ourselves, in the face of messages that tell us those differences are unacceptable.
The events are all free, and you can catch up on our panel here and the recordings from the rest of the week here.