That’s a bit of a pretentious title isn’t it. Apologies, the rest is likely to be more of a stream of consciousness, with a bit less grandiosity.
There are these times in life when you see a pathway that you maybe knew existed but you never really looked at it. Maybe you thought it just wasn’t for you, maybe even you didn’t feel that welcome there. And then something takes you down it. And you realise that it leads you to a whole new world, with a new language, new people. and an astounding amount of new information.
That’s happened to me a few times in my life. When I found a theatre community when I was 12, who didn’t look at me out of the corners of their eyes when I was as pretentious as I was at the beginning of this essay. When I found Grunge, and then Indie, and then House music. When I discovered feminism, and ways to channel a largely suppressed anger. When I moved to London, and people stopped assuming I was Indian and started asking ‘what’s your background?’ When I started my clinical psychology training and met people who were as keen as me to talk about trauma and sadness and the impact of society. When I became Jewish, and became part of the Golders Green community for a time. When I became pregnant, and entered the liminal space of housing a child… and then when I became a parent and learned (and still learn) untold amounts. When Covid-19 hit and the world changed. When George Floyd died and I turned to Black and Brown folks to learn, in a way I never had before (many of whom were wondering what the hell took me so long). And when I started, and now continue, the winding, complicated and unpredictable pathway of understanding neurodivergence. All pathways, in their various different ways, taking me further away from what we can often assume is a ‘Normal’ life.
The Path to Home
This pathway has felt a bit different. My autism diagnosis earlier this year, rather than taking me on yet another long, interesting journey, has led me somewhere that felt a lot like coming home. And to a community of people who are rich, complex, diverse and deeply welcoming.
I knew it was coming, of course. I first started wondering about autism for myself after learning about hyper-empathy in autistic people. I’ve always felt deeply for others, to the point where I would get confused when I noticed that how someone felt was different to how they were saying they felt. I learned pretty early on that most people don’t appreciate it when you point that out to them.
I started looking into it in more depth after reading this article in The Guardian about autistic therapists and kept coming back to the line ‘autistic people often excel at problem-solving, enabling them to pick up cues that neurotypical therapists might filter out. They’re unlikely to judge people, enabling clients to feel genuinely accepted, and often have intense interests, which can lead to an obsession with research, training and further education.’
Along my assessment journey, I discussed with a psychologist how beneficial autism had been for my work. Hyperfocused on human relationships, I get joy from helping other people understand the patterns in their lives that I find myself putting together like an ever changing and expanding puzzle. Therapy is one of the few places it is not only socially acceptable, but actually helpful to ask people what exactly do they truly mean, and how do they really feel.
I didn’t realise until incredibly recently that other people don’t put everything into models in their minds as they go about their day. Very useful when you’re doing a psychological assessment and find it easy to remember the finer details about someone’s life. Less so when you’re trying to navigate the fridge to get dinner on the table for hungry children. Or to do a quick shopping trip. Or, in fact, in a lot of adult daily life.
Un-Normal
Which brings me here.
My process - my apparently autistic process - throughout my life has been to ask questions, find out theories, create models of understanding. Pull together things that may not seem connected (like, let’s say, the rise in individualism globally and the increased amount of demand avoidance… more on that another time). My work, in various ways, throughout my life has been to support people in embracing the things that they feel make them ‘not normal’. The things we are ashamed of, the things we hide. As I unmask, I ask question after question about all of my - I now know - monotropic autistic interests like neurodivergence, trauma, race, feminism, mental health (and, at the moment, The Barbie Movie). I invite you to join me on this pathway.
If you’ve ever asked yourself the question ‘Am I normal?’ this is a place for you.
With love,