Category: Resources for neurodiversity

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Community conversation Resources for neurodiversity Resources to tackle privilege

Do we tend to the consequences of our ‘othering’, or rush on with our plans? by Sue Johnston

On September 17th 2021, the Community Conversations team in CTW hosted a Conversation about Social Change asking the following questions.

  • What is the world needing that you as an NVC practitioner, or us collectively, as NVC practitioners, could contribute to?
  • What is it important to be doing right now?
  • What will deepen our lives and our connections to one another and the web of life?
  • What are our options for integrity in a time of increasing marginalisation of some, of collapsing systems and civilisations and the threat of extinction?  
  • How do we choose where to put our energies? 
  • What if we have low capacity or ill health? 
  • How can our practice of NVC support all of this?

This is Sue Johnston’s response to these questions. Sue poses some helpful questions you might want to ask in your groups and communities to nourish the sense of ‘we’ in our interactions amidst difference.

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“My interest is around the disadvantaged, disabled, sensitive, outsiders, misfits and frankly rejects; those with conditions that suffer more than enough ignorance and intolerance – for example neurodivergence, CFS, fibromyalgia; illnesses that additionally lend themselves to imposter syndrome in my culture. People with conditions often undiagnosed or ordinary looking enough to still be measured against norms and found wanting. Repeatedly.

Who in NVC circles may, for example, experience significant difficulties in “the basics” such as remembering “an occasion when”; in identifying feelings and/or needs; or in making clear requests. Perhaps because their executive function isn’t orientated that way. Perhaps for other, maybe unknown, reasons.

Here are some questions that come:

  • What does it cost our humanity when we protect our own comfort/perceived safety above another’s basic well being, when our fears blind us to wider consequences?
  • What gets in the way of our curiosity about their story?
  • What hampers our curiosity about the negative consequences for them and ourselves when we other them?
  • What stops us seeing when we are othering?
  • Could it be that taking time to grieve might  address something of our failings at such a time?
  • Do we tend to the consequences of our othering, or rush on, away, with our own plans and preoccupations? And what is it that orientates us when we choose between these?
  • When we focus on removing people who interrupt our plans for harmony and growth, is it possible that we undermine the very qualities we seek?
  • Are our time frames askew; when we “protect ourselves from inconvenients”; what happens when we one day become the inconvenient ones?
  • What is this process doing to our culture?
  • What are the children learning from seeing this happening around them?
  • Could it be the self same approach that is eliminating inconvenient life everywhere? Weeds, trees, bees?
  • When particular individuals with difficulties consistently run into the personal boundaries of others and therefore become isolated, to what degree is it “their problem”? Could it also mean anything for those personal boundaries? Are they really as personal as we may believe?
  • Could we be reinforcing the very prejudices we long to address?
  • Is there any value in having “difficult” people in our midst?

In such troubled times, when there is so much we are each struggling with, could it be that gathering such folk in might better serve the whole? Might listening to them be a worthy endeavour? Not to “help them” or “support them”, but to learn and live and model interdependence, and much more besides?

Obviously I am orientated in a particular direction, given my experiences of loss of self and others; of isolation. And at the same time I’ve been on both sides; I’ve found people very daunting indeed, and blocked many out. I’m longing to listen for what I am missing when I am convinced of my position; longing to find patience and humility to put the health of interdependence and relationship before my needs or yours. Whenever, that is, I have sufficient capacity to do so without jeopardising my basic health and ability to contribute (interesting, “perfectly reasonable” boundary, right there;  what does it cost, I wonder?). 

And even if I withdraw from you into self, for I am a limited being, I want to be in the “us” as I do so. To pause with my wake as it ripples into your life and beyond. I’m guessing that at the end of days especially, I’ll  regard my wake with less regret, for every inclusive, less ‘Suecentric’ choice I make now.  I find personal comfort such a burden to drag through this time and place, both of whom are calling out for love with woefully inadequate response. Comfort has a way of drawing me away and devouring my humanity.

Written in gratitude to the ones I have othered in any degree, who have endured my clumsy attempts to reach out in curiosity, who have indeed humbled me with their stories. And written in grief for my negligence in witnessing the wake of most of my othering, more times than I cared to know.”

Further reading

An instruction manual for and about dissenters by Miki Kashtan

Categories
Neurodiversity

Conflict Transformation Weave fundraiser

The Conflict Transformation Weave (CTW) has a mission to pre-empt and transform conflict within the NVC UK network, in order to strengthen the potential of NVC to support social change.

You can contribute to our ‘Creating resilient relationships and a vibrant world’ fundraiser HERE

We are passionate and committed to this mission, and behind the scenes a lot of ongoing work is needed to support this to happen. We need to raise funds so that we can continue to offer this work, supporting people in NVC networks in the UK to live NVC consciousness when conflict arises.

Contributing to this fundraiser will allow us to continue to…

TRANSFORM Offer conflict transformation support that is free at the point of use

PRE-EMPT Offer spaces that build conflict resilience such as Community Conversations

OUTREACH Engage with NVC practice groups and people hosting events to support them in creating local conflict agreements

SUPPORT Offer conflict surgery events for people who are supporting conflicts

SUSTAIN Cover the sustainability costs for our team for all the behind the scenes work

You can read more about our vision, mission and purpose here .

Categories
Resources for neurodiversity Resources to tackle privilege

Beginning to undo internalised ableism by Sue Johnston

We put a call out for resources around neurodiversity to support neurodiverse people in the NVC feel valued and a sense of belonging and to support neurotypical people learn and grow in understanding. Here is one response.

Beginning to undo internalised ableism

Sue Johnston

“So much arising in me. Deep gratitude. And deep sorrow that I would feel so grateful.That this could look to me like a big step, simply because it actually makes neurodivergence a hint more visible in one small place, when ableism is so powerfully alive and well, barely challenged, at such enormous cost to us all. And our community is no exception.

I’ll name one of my wonderings.

Marshall’s 40 word rule. Utterly beautiful. And structure and limit is GREAT for an ADHD brain. And what about when that brain has flipped into a supersonic hyperfocus monologue? What does it cost that person to be kindly interrupted because you are bored? How long after your interjection will they have finally recovered from the shock of smashing into a brick wall?  The kind of shock that has already happened a few times that day perhaps? A shock likely invisible to you, or were it visible, incomprehensible, maybe to the point of incredulity. Alien.  So the voices in the workshop continue, like feint fuzzy echoes in the distance, as they try to find their way back into the room, into the subject, way behind now so maybe confused. Maybe ashamed. Again.

If you ever interrupt in this way, do check how they are afterwards? 

Do you think they could answer honestly, when they’ve always been told they are exaggerating, that the experience they have just had doesn’t exist? And so now, that’s still what they believe, even as the experience shakes them again to the core? They unconsciously know that their task is to keep quiet and not disturb the nice normal folks anymore than they already have done. 

I’m used to being the nuisance, causing a scene, holding people up, taking more than “my share” of space, being told as much, often kindly. Used to being the frightened silent one who dares not speak for fear of getting it wrong again. We’re talking terrified here. (Which I now realise  is why most of my empathy guesses for a good long while centred around fear!). I’m familiar with being too much. 

I’m not claiming to have any answers. I only got to understand the gulf between cultures by remarkably good fortune and by dogged determination to survive in a world that doesn’t meet my kind where we are, but instead consistently expects us to meet it, in it’s manner. I know how lucky I am to have survived long enough to be identified (not diagnosed; I’m not ill). Many don’t. I know too how lucky I am to get the chance to begin to undo the I internalised ableism in this one human here. To see now so much more clearly the extent of the diversity of human minds.

And my heart breaks for all those attending NVC  workshops who come away with their difficulties compounded by ignorance. It’s real. It matters. 

Please remember, there are quite possibly neurodivergents in your workshops who have no idea  that they don’t experience the world in the same way as everyone else, don’t know that they think differently, that in some ways their brains cannot do the same things as neurotypicals. 

Or if they’ve managed it, it takes masses more effort to achieve the same outcome. They don’t know that their suffering and that of those in relationship to them may well be created less by their disconnection from their needs; and more by daily misinformation about what needs their behaviours and emotions actually point to.

One small example. I used to cry a lot on empathy circles when I first came to camps. Many people liked it. They said it helped them access their emotions. So I would deliberately go first to help people. It felt like a responsibility. Many neurodivergents work that way; wired to put others first. But it could be invisible. Maybe it looked like lack of consideration to some. Sometimes it probably was.  I imagined that this was some kind of skill.  But what was invisible to me, and those around me, despite the tears, was just how distressing it was. How surprised I often was to find all this pain in me over something I hadn’t thought was a big deal. But I’d heard the psychologised explanation that I was in denial; and I’d heard the NVC explanation that  I’d been disconnected from my emotions/needs til that moment. And, being autistic, I’m wired to trust, accept, take literally. It makes me vulnerable. I would unconsciously disregard the extreme angst in my body afterwards, believing it was just a sign that I had “processed deeply”, and it was all good. After all, I’ve been systematically trained to deny my symptoms. The empathy did give relief in some ways, of course. But I do wonder now, whether far from offering relief, it often reinforced my inability to know myself.  

And another thing I’m aware of. Exposure anxiety. 

It’s an autism thing. I will often cry intensely when I speak, even if I want to say something brief and trivial. It really isn’t necessarily to do with the content of what I’m saying at all. When  I hear my voice it can freak me out, I’m overcome with such pain throughout my body. I didn’t know that those sensations weren’t something everybody had to contend with, that I wasn’t just  less self disciplined. So when empathisers linked my tears to my observations of my life…assumed remembering was generating emotion… It was supporting me to prolong the agony created by the current situation. And I’d crack on on my quest to be normal ( some hope! Laughing a lot!).

Tragically, people can’t ask for the accommodations they need, because often they don’t even know that society disables them. 

What accommodations could you make? Well, I wonder myself. We’re all so different. Think in terms of someone who keeps trying to walk up the steps and falling down them, unaware that their legs don’t work like other people’s, and that ramps and wheelchairs exist. And when they eventually think to tell  an able bodied person about their problem, the response is, ” I know what you mean, I have that problem, I just do x”, so start trying and failing all over again.

If you made it thus far, I’m super grateful.  May it be that it serves your continued open heartedness and curiosity. So much in life is mystery, and it seems proper that we respect that.

In warm gratitude for this amazing life,  neurodivergence, and this community.”

June 2021