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3.76 AVERAGE
3.76 AVERAGE
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
informative
medium-paced
informative
medium-paced
I really wanted to like this book. It was recommended to me by a neurodivergent colleague. It just did not work for me.
I found the book very poorly (almost incoherently) organized with so many zig-zagging topics with far more breadth than depth.
The whole book felt like a rambling of generalizations. The lack of specificity was confusing for me where I never quite felt like I could connect to what the author was trying to get at.
Also, this book was clearly a therapeutic endeavor for the author. I wonder if would have been better positioned as a memoir as it’s clear she’s pulling so specifically and repeatedly from her own lived experience.
I found the book very poorly (almost incoherently) organized with so many zig-zagging topics with far more breadth than depth.
The whole book felt like a rambling of generalizations. The lack of specificity was confusing for me where I never quite felt like I could connect to what the author was trying to get at.
Also, this book was clearly a therapeutic endeavor for the author. I wonder if would have been better positioned as a memoir as it’s clear she’s pulling so specifically and repeatedly from her own lived experience.
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
An interesting read for anyone who is, or wants to understand better, a woman with neurodivergent traits.
informative
medium-paced
"Divergent Mind" by Jenara Neremberg is an enlightening book, perfectly balanced between scientific theory and practical advice.
I can highly recommend it to anyone who has a personal or professional interest in neurodivergencies.
I can highly recommend it to anyone who has a personal or professional interest in neurodivergencies.
hopeful
informative
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
An interesting look at the similarities and differences of neurodiverse experiences and the strides being made in research about them.
Everybody should read this and they'd be able to have so much more compassion and understanding for everyone in their lives. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses but our society only supports a privileged minority while everyone else struggles to keep up, many of them not realizing the amount of effort they need to put in is abnormal, as their neurodiversity isn't as visible as physical disabilities (which we're also bad at accommodating).
This is a hodgepodge of review and book report, with notes from just a few interesting things out of order from how they were addressed in the book:
Talks about synesthesia, SPD (sensory processing "disorder") ADHD (attention deficit hyperactive disorder--where the deficit is in regulation of attention, not attention itself, and hyperactivity can be external and/or internal), HSP (highly sensitive people), autism, etc. primarily regarding women, since they've been left out and misunderstood until very recently (like the last 20-30 years, but still very limited). I relate to so much from each of these.
And before you dismissively say "everyone's a little ADHD" or whatever, let me kindly correct you and reframe your thinking: If everyone experiences these to some degree from time to time (and they do), that should make them be able to be more empathetic for people for whom these are chronic, often debilitating issues, rather than dismissive of just how significant they might be to someone else. Just because you can relate sometimes doesn't make someone else's experience less of a big deal. And if you think you relate more, perhaps you'd benefit from looking into it personally and perhaps getting a diagnosis and learning what would help you to thrive! The neurodivergent world is an inviting place because we're used to feeling left out of other spaces whose way of being make us feel more disabled than we are and don't want more.
When talking about futuristic brain tech and the possibility of being able to experience how others perceive and live in the world, Eagleman dismayingly didn't see the value. I think any decent human shouldn't "hesitate at the chance to experience and better understand what it's like to be inside an autistic mind and body, for example. When I think of the potential of technology to help all of us better understand and empathize with the experiences of those who are different, I literally get chills."
Benefits of various neurodivergencies (read the book for more specifics): Problem-solving, creativity, empathy, inclusion, innovation, observation/hyperawareness and masking to blend in, attention to detail, etc., some of which are a double-edged sword leading to fatigue, burnout, stress, overthinking, etc. Consider which symptoms are a blessing and which are a problem (situation dependent, of course)--that restores your agency in how you learn about and work on yourself. Remember to "zoom in" or "zoom out" on your self/situation so you don't get caught up too much in being all in your head or worrying too much about the big picture.
You've heard about some struggles, so I won't list more here, plus they're more nuanced and deep than you might remember to consider. They span everything from how you use your body and mind, to how you interact with society/relationships, how you perceive your worth/abilities/sexuality/gender, to how well you manage in our capitalist society, etc. Don't think of these as just diagnoses, problems, or something to be rid of; learn how to work with them (accommodations, therapy, meds, hypnosis/awareness/meditation, etc.). Treat distress, not difference. Heck, maybe some of that distress is from "neurotypical" society holding those with neurodivergences back instead of helping and learning from them.
Stop attributing everything to "trauma"--there is no magical utopia we could have grown up in that would leave us free from all struggle, and if there was, we'd be fragile in other ways. Yes, people perceive and experience situations differently, and context of their life/family/etc. is important, but we can't go so far that we blame everything on that and feel like things are out of our control.
Stop pathologizing difference. Not to the point where you say things like "I don't see autism as a disorder at all" like one guy quoted, because it's a spectrum and for some it can just be a difficult difference to figure out how to handle and succeed in the world, but for others it very much is disabling, especially given the context in which they live. Also, sometimes calling things a disability is the only way to get people to pay attention and take it seriously (and not just insurance companies who already resist paying for helpful therapies).
All these benefits and struggles make neurodivergent individuals people who should be consulted and considered in all facets of life so we can make the world a better place for everyone, from architectural design, to accommodations in office jobs so people can thrive and meet the company's expectations in ways that work for them, and beyond. It's also interesting to note the rise of things as society changes. Of course a lot of that is awareness, but a lot of it is also that we live in crowded, noisy, indoor areas with "unnatural" levels of stress due to living in a post-Industrial Revolution world, and things like that are big contributors to anxiety.
Fascinating observation about racism and architecture from Lee: "A real bias from the colonialist mentality informs our spaces. When Europeans were setting up colonies in Asia and Africa, they were put off by the expressiveness of native peoples and the ways they exhibited joy--drumming and dancing and public merrymaking interwoven with everyday life. Europeans never wanted to show too much emotion or be too expressive or joyful or exuberant because it would blur the divide between colonizers and colonized. So European culture leaned in to restraint as a way of differentiating itself from other cultures that Europeans defined as savage. That had implications for dress and architecture" as well as the entire field of psychology. Similarly, paces designed for those with autism, blindness, or other accessibility needs also benefit able-bodied, neurotypical people too: that's called "universal design" and we need more of it. (Plus cubicle farms, fluorescent lighting, and other sterile/bland spaces are just as bad as overstimulating ones.) If you scoff at the idea of sensory rooms and safe places, maybe you wouldn't if you realized that they have the same value as a wheelchair or glasses can for some, and you certainly wouldn't deny people those.
Companies now recognize (even if just in name only for legal reasons) race, disability, sex/gender, religion, etc. as ways in which people are diverse; it would be so great if more would officially recognize, help, and train all employees on temperament as another form that's just as valid of deserving respect and accommodation. "Workplaces hold the power to drastically reduce stigma, and that change reverberates outward into families, communities, and society at large."
One thing that bothered me was some of her wording. This book was published in 2020, and I feel like preferences haven't changed much since then. It's obviously down to personal preference, but most of what I see online from people is that they either prefer to embrace their divergence ("autistic person") or reject those terms because they don't want to be solely defined by their struggles ("person with autism"), and she probably did a decent mix of those. However, she also used terms like "autistics" and "autist" that just felt weird to me because the name strips away the personhood, referring only to the diagnosis/struggle/what-have-you and it rubbed me the wrong way. Back when Asperger's was a diagnosis (it's not used anymore; those people are in the autism umbrella/spectrum) I know some people called themselves Aspies. My take is that if people use those terms for themselves, it's fine, but when speaking about others we should always use a term that references their personhood, not just their diagnosis. She also uses the phrase "being ADHD" which is both grammatically incorrect and too all-encompassing; there's more to me than a diagnosis I have; it's not all I am. You can talk about a person "with ADHD" or who "has ADHD" instead. Last note: what the heck with this made-up[-sounding?] word: "doctors, lawyers, and academicians"? Just say academics.
Talked briefly about the history of people paying attention to psychology and the difficulty getting funding, especially early on but also now. I bet a lot of that is that it's easier for politicians or whoever to justify giving money when they can see progress, but this is a field that's hard to measure, but it's a lot easier to widely hear from people about their experiences with their minds and results of various treatments thanks to social media.
With rising generations more tapped in to social media than ever before, many of which use it more often specifically because of their neurodivergences, Millennials, Gen Z, and eventually Generation Alpha have power to do a lot of good for mental health--raising awareness, eliminating stigma, improving treatment and accessibility, implementing Universal Design in objects and spaces, studying communication/interaction patterns so we could all understand each other better, sending therapists as first responders to homeless/erratic behavior/domestic violence/etc. situations instead of [just] cops (since many cops can't tell the difference between an autistic person having a meltdown or getting panicked and them being disobedient or willfully uncooperative), etc.
"Positive psychology" was a trend in the late 90s and focused on strengths, but was biased by how it defined happiness and success (Western/capitalist/individualistic notions) and could too easily ignore struggles that really needed help.
"Gifted" kids are often actually "asynchronously developed" because they excel in certain things and struggle in others, like what's called "twice exceptional" in relation to people who are autistic savants.
Good quote from Cain: "Once people became aware of themselves [and what they deal with], that gave them the permission to be themselves and carve out the space they need to protect themselves. And it also gave them the confidence to use their gifts the way they were meant to be used. And there's a weird paradox that happens--that the more people give themselves the permission, the more proficient they become in settings that you would think of as not suited to their best strengths." Confidence helps.
Good observation from the conclusion: "People fear being exposed, thinking to themselves, 'I don't want people to know my challenging parts,' so they hide and stay separate and isolated. And the isolation turns into physical and psychological symptoms. It's not enough to say we need more connection or to point out that loneliness is a problem. We need to know how to connect, which means learning how to have better conversations with others and reveal ourselves to others more fully. Sharing our struggles, especially our mental health ones, is a direct path to connection. Not everyone will know how to respond or what to say, but by opening your door, you help open theirs. It can take time, but soon everyone in your circles of family, friends, and colleagues will feel a little more at ease being themselves. The amount of stress decreases, and we are healthier--and more connected--as a result.
This is a hodgepodge of review and book report, with notes from just a few interesting things out of order from how they were addressed in the book:
Talks about synesthesia, SPD (sensory processing "disorder") ADHD (attention deficit hyperactive disorder--where the deficit is in regulation of attention, not attention itself, and hyperactivity can be external and/or internal), HSP (highly sensitive people), autism, etc. primarily regarding women, since they've been left out and misunderstood until very recently (like the last 20-30 years, but still very limited). I relate to so much from each of these.
And before you dismissively say "everyone's a little ADHD" or whatever, let me kindly correct you and reframe your thinking: If everyone experiences these to some degree from time to time (and they do), that should make them be able to be more empathetic for people for whom these are chronic, often debilitating issues, rather than dismissive of just how significant they might be to someone else. Just because you can relate sometimes doesn't make someone else's experience less of a big deal. And if you think you relate more, perhaps you'd benefit from looking into it personally and perhaps getting a diagnosis and learning what would help you to thrive! The neurodivergent world is an inviting place because we're used to feeling left out of other spaces whose way of being make us feel more disabled than we are and don't want more.
When talking about futuristic brain tech and the possibility of being able to experience how others perceive and live in the world, Eagleman dismayingly didn't see the value. I think any decent human shouldn't "hesitate at the chance to experience and better understand what it's like to be inside an autistic mind and body, for example. When I think of the potential of technology to help all of us better understand and empathize with the experiences of those who are different, I literally get chills."
Benefits of various neurodivergencies (read the book for more specifics): Problem-solving, creativity, empathy, inclusion, innovation, observation/hyperawareness and masking to blend in, attention to detail, etc., some of which are a double-edged sword leading to fatigue, burnout, stress, overthinking, etc. Consider which symptoms are a blessing and which are a problem (situation dependent, of course)--that restores your agency in how you learn about and work on yourself. Remember to "zoom in" or "zoom out" on your self/situation so you don't get caught up too much in being all in your head or worrying too much about the big picture.
You've heard about some struggles, so I won't list more here, plus they're more nuanced and deep than you might remember to consider. They span everything from how you use your body and mind, to how you interact with society/relationships, how you perceive your worth/abilities/sexuality/gender, to how well you manage in our capitalist society, etc. Don't think of these as just diagnoses, problems, or something to be rid of; learn how to work with them (accommodations, therapy, meds, hypnosis/awareness/meditation, etc.). Treat distress, not difference. Heck, maybe some of that distress is from "neurotypical" society holding those with neurodivergences back instead of helping and learning from them.
Stop attributing everything to "trauma"--there is no magical utopia we could have grown up in that would leave us free from all struggle, and if there was, we'd be fragile in other ways. Yes, people perceive and experience situations differently, and context of their life/family/etc. is important, but we can't go so far that we blame everything on that and feel like things are out of our control.
Stop pathologizing difference. Not to the point where you say things like "I don't see autism as a disorder at all" like one guy quoted, because it's a spectrum and for some it can just be a difficult difference to figure out how to handle and succeed in the world, but for others it very much is disabling, especially given the context in which they live. Also, sometimes calling things a disability is the only way to get people to pay attention and take it seriously (and not just insurance companies who already resist paying for helpful therapies).
All these benefits and struggles make neurodivergent individuals people who should be consulted and considered in all facets of life so we can make the world a better place for everyone, from architectural design, to accommodations in office jobs so people can thrive and meet the company's expectations in ways that work for them, and beyond. It's also interesting to note the rise of things as society changes. Of course a lot of that is awareness, but a lot of it is also that we live in crowded, noisy, indoor areas with "unnatural" levels of stress due to living in a post-Industrial Revolution world, and things like that are big contributors to anxiety.
Fascinating observation about racism and architecture from Lee: "A real bias from the colonialist mentality informs our spaces. When Europeans were setting up colonies in Asia and Africa, they were put off by the expressiveness of native peoples and the ways they exhibited joy--drumming and dancing and public merrymaking interwoven with everyday life. Europeans never wanted to show too much emotion or be too expressive or joyful or exuberant because it would blur the divide between colonizers and colonized. So European culture leaned in to restraint as a way of differentiating itself from other cultures that Europeans defined as savage. That had implications for dress and architecture" as well as the entire field of psychology. Similarly, paces designed for those with autism, blindness, or other accessibility needs also benefit able-bodied, neurotypical people too: that's called "universal design" and we need more of it. (Plus cubicle farms, fluorescent lighting, and other sterile/bland spaces are just as bad as overstimulating ones.) If you scoff at the idea of sensory rooms and safe places, maybe you wouldn't if you realized that they have the same value as a wheelchair or glasses can for some, and you certainly wouldn't deny people those.
Companies now recognize (even if just in name only for legal reasons) race, disability, sex/gender, religion, etc. as ways in which people are diverse; it would be so great if more would officially recognize, help, and train all employees on temperament as another form that's just as valid of deserving respect and accommodation. "Workplaces hold the power to drastically reduce stigma, and that change reverberates outward into families, communities, and society at large."
One thing that bothered me was some of her wording. This book was published in 2020, and I feel like preferences haven't changed much since then. It's obviously down to personal preference, but most of what I see online from people is that they either prefer to embrace their divergence ("autistic person") or reject those terms because they don't want to be solely defined by their struggles ("person with autism"), and she probably did a decent mix of those. However, she also used terms like "autistics" and "autist" that just felt weird to me because the name strips away the personhood, referring only to the diagnosis/struggle/what-have-you and it rubbed me the wrong way. Back when Asperger's was a diagnosis (it's not used anymore; those people are in the autism umbrella/spectrum) I know some people called themselves Aspies. My take is that if people use those terms for themselves, it's fine, but when speaking about others we should always use a term that references their personhood, not just their diagnosis. She also uses the phrase "being ADHD" which is both grammatically incorrect and too all-encompassing; there's more to me than a diagnosis I have; it's not all I am. You can talk about a person "with ADHD" or who "has ADHD" instead. Last note: what the heck with this made-up[-sounding?] word: "doctors, lawyers, and academicians"? Just say academics.
Talked briefly about the history of people paying attention to psychology and the difficulty getting funding, especially early on but also now. I bet a lot of that is that it's easier for politicians or whoever to justify giving money when they can see progress, but this is a field that's hard to measure, but it's a lot easier to widely hear from people about their experiences with their minds and results of various treatments thanks to social media.
With rising generations more tapped in to social media than ever before, many of which use it more often specifically because of their neurodivergences, Millennials, Gen Z, and eventually Generation Alpha have power to do a lot of good for mental health--raising awareness, eliminating stigma, improving treatment and accessibility, implementing Universal Design in objects and spaces, studying communication/interaction patterns so we could all understand each other better, sending therapists as first responders to homeless/erratic behavior/domestic violence/etc. situations instead of [just] cops (since many cops can't tell the difference between an autistic person having a meltdown or getting panicked and them being disobedient or willfully uncooperative), etc.
"Positive psychology" was a trend in the late 90s and focused on strengths, but was biased by how it defined happiness and success (Western/capitalist/individualistic notions) and could too easily ignore struggles that really needed help.
"Gifted" kids are often actually "asynchronously developed" because they excel in certain things and struggle in others, like what's called "twice exceptional" in relation to people who are autistic savants.
Good quote from Cain: "Once people became aware of themselves [and what they deal with], that gave them the permission to be themselves and carve out the space they need to protect themselves. And it also gave them the confidence to use their gifts the way they were meant to be used. And there's a weird paradox that happens--that the more people give themselves the permission, the more proficient they become in settings that you would think of as not suited to their best strengths." Confidence helps.
Good observation from the conclusion: "People fear being exposed, thinking to themselves, 'I don't want people to know my challenging parts,' so they hide and stay separate and isolated. And the isolation turns into physical and psychological symptoms. It's not enough to say we need more connection or to point out that loneliness is a problem. We need to know how to connect, which means learning how to have better conversations with others and reveal ourselves to others more fully. Sharing our struggles, especially our mental health ones, is a direct path to connection. Not everyone will know how to respond or what to say, but by opening your door, you help open theirs. It can take time, but soon everyone in your circles of family, friends, and colleagues will feel a little more at ease being themselves. The amount of stress decreases, and we are healthier--and more connected--as a result.