Productive Pessimism for Neurodiversity

This week (March 18th-24th 2024) is Neurodiversity Celebration Week.

As a neurodiverse-led organisation (our Director, co-founder, and lead Trainer, Morgana, has ADHD and autism, both of which were diagnosed in adulthood, but which influenced her experience of childhood and adolescence), The Productive Pessimist are aware that 'celebration' can feel like a very loaded word, both to people who live with a particular condition or experience, and to those who work with them, educate them, and parent them.

Social media, in particular, has often centred white-passing female/femme individuals, who are highly verbal, skilled at art, and with strong social skills as "neurodiversity rep", a backlash to society's frequent presentation of socially-inept, emotionally unavailable men, or hyperactive boys, often as the "accepted medical presentation" of neurodiversity.

Many people would ask how someone who is non-verbal, someone who lacks awareness of their basic bodily needs, someone who is fully dependent on others, or even simply someone for whom their neurodiversity has caused significant negative impacts - the loss of a job, which led to the breakdown of a relationship, which led to homelessness - can be expected to 'celebrate being who they are.'  Others would state that the ability to celebrate difference can only exist for those who hold a certain level of societal privilege in other respects.

But celebration doesn't have to simply mean "be really jazzed about the thing".  It can mean - and, for The Productive Pessimist, when we're providing businesses and organisations with consultancy services on inclusion, including neurodiverse workforce inclusion, it does mean - simply centring 'the thing' - neurodivergence, in this case - as the normative experience.

Productive Pessimism is a mindset and a method which is fully inclusive. For neurodiversity, it includes both the very able, highly competent individuals who struggle to be seen simply because they can't put themselves and their experience in a neurotypical frame, and the people whose lives can often be very limited and isolated by their particular experience of neurodivergence, and their carers and family members.

Productive Pessimism and 'Levels of Neurodiversity'

Firstly, we don't talk in terms of 'levels', or 'degrees.' We don't say someone is 'severely autistic' or 'mildly ADHD'. At The Productive Pessimist, we use 'support positions', and we also acknowledge that, for many neurodivergent people, their support position will vary depending on the situation.

The support position model of neurodiversity inclusion looks like this:

High Support - the person is usually entirely non-verbal, and may struggle to communicate in any way, including through Assistive Communication, Sign Language, or other, more accessible means.

They struggle with bodily awareness, and often have significant physical health challenges.

For high support individuals, the Productive Pessimism centres more on their carers and family members. The Pessimism is about accepting that the person you care for, the person you love, is not going to 'get better' - because they're not ill, or at least they are not ill because of their neurodiversity, though they may be very unwell with other medical conditions.  It is looking at them as they are, and not diverting your mind to how you would wish them to be.

It's about accepting that many things that are taken for granted as 'rites of passage' in society won't happen for these individuals - and it's about accepting that they will have their own feelings about that, depending on their age and levels of awareness of societal norms.

It's about accepting that you're not going to have the same kind of conversation with them that you take for granted with other people.

The Productive element comes in realising that only 7% of communication is verbal. 

Touch is a form of communication - consider the difference in meaning between someone lightly tapping your shoulder, and someone shoving you.

Tone is a form of communication - think about how readily, for the most part, you can distinguish between someone laughing and someone crying, although they both often involve an interruption to a normal breath pattern, and can sound very similar as vocalisations.

Energy is communication - think about how often you've thought 'the vibes are really off here' when you've only just walked into a room, before you've spoken to anyone.

Just because high support individuals are unlikely to have paid employment, it doesn't mean they aren't able to contribute - through art, through caring for a garden or a pet, through peer support, if they are able to use Assistive Communication, or can communicate through the written word, even if their language is 'simplistic', and often just by showing other people that it is possible to live and be happy in a very different way to the way many of us engage with society.

Mid-Support - Perhaps the most common experience of neurodiversity. The individual appears able to manage a 'normal' life, but presents with 'unexpected difficulties' around particular aspects. For some people, this will be managing finances, for others, it may be sustaining paid employment, maintaining healthy relationships, or being able to plan, purchase, and prepare meals every day.  

Productive Pessimism for mid-support individuals centres on the individuals accepting that needing help doesn't mean they are helpless, incompetent, or 'not real adults' (if, indeed, they are of adult age), and framing their lived experience with their competence in the foreground.

The Pessimism aspect could look like "I can't even begin to think how to shop for a whole week, or even what I'd need for a day's nutritious meals! It's all really confusing and overwhelming, and sometimes it feels easier to just not eat."

The Productive aspect would look like: "Okay, food is hard. I don't really get how 'grocery shopping' works, but I know I'm better at managing other things when I'm not hungry.  If I make a list of the flavours and textures I like, and then ask someone what foods those flavours and textures make them think of, I can just write down their answers, and then do an online food shop from home.  

As long as I just set times for when to have meals, I will then be fine with everything else."

Low-Support  is where neurotypicals often believe any neurodivergent person who isn't high-support could be, if they 'just tried hard enough', or 'found the right intervention.' They can manage almost everything, and they seem to have their lives pretty much together.  

What frustrates neurotypicals, however, is that Low-Support individuals will appear to 'randomly completely f-k up, for no reason', often completely out of the blue, and in areas where they've previously been performing well.

Neurodivergence doesn't require 'interventions', and most, if not all, neurodivergent people are trying far harder than you could ever imagine, every single day.

Productive Pessimism for Low-Support individuals actually doesn't centre on them at all - rather, it centres on the neurotypicals in their lives; their parents, siblings, friends, educators, and employers.

The Pessimist aspect involves accepting that Low-Support individuals are not going to just glide smoothly along life's track. It's being aware, and accepting, that, at some point, there will be a derailment, and that it will upset the neurodivergent individual far more than it upsets anyone else.

The Productive aspect is putting the 'response vehicles' - a quiet area, a reduction in demands, someone for the neurodivergent person to vent to, stim and comfort items, an easy-to-action plan to get back on track - in place from the very beginning.

Talk to the neurodivergent individual. Acknowledge that you're aware there may come a point where everything starts to feel a bit out of control for them, and that they can come to you at that point, and you will gently guide them into the 'sidings' of life, and bring in relevant 'rescue vehicles' to support them while they recover, attend to anything that needs to be repaired, on a physical, cognitive, or emotional level, and be there to guide them safely when they feel ready to 'get back on track' - or to take them to a different track, if they've realised they can't  continue the journey they were on.

The way we employ Productive Pessimism with and for neurodivergent people can be applied to anyone.  Neurodivergent people are 'normal' people within their own experience and communities.

But neither of those things means that 'everyone is a bit neurodivergent, really.'

I (Ash) am blind. My sight is rapidly and actively deteriorating.  I wear glasses, as do many people.

Other people who wear glasses to correct long or short-sightedness are not 'a little bit blind', even if they struggle significantly without their glasses; there are wider impacts from sightloss that someone who simply needs to wear glasses doesn't experience.

The same is true for neurodivergence. It's not only 'a different way of looking at the world'; it's a different way of experiencing everything about the world that brings wider impacts and implications for neurodivergent individuals.

What should be celebrated this Neurodiversity Celebration Week is neurodivergent peoples' resilience, their insistence on keeping going, even when they are completely unable to interact with the neurotypical world.

It's their creativity - their ability to find ways of interacting with a world they don't necessarily understand, and presenting their experience in relatable ways to people who don't necessarily understand them.

It's their grit - the way they will keep trying to succeed, even if they have to change both the game plan for, and the definition of, 'success' multiple times.


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