🔊 Listen

We are inviting neurodiversity and disability rights activists, Autistic psychotherapists and other Autistic health professionals, indigenous rights activists and scholars, as well as Buddhist and Daoist scholars. All these perspectives are highly valuable for the conversations and the omni-directional learning that is needed in these times.

Over the last 3 years, as a result of writing about Autistic ways of being and Autistic culture, and especially since the publication of The Beauty of Collaboration at Human Scale, I am having more and more conversations with Autistic and otherwise neurodivergent psychotherapists, as well as with neurodivergent health professionals from a broad range of disciplines.

As to be expected, Autistic health professionals have the same urgent need for peer support and mutual aid as other Autists, and the same applies to health professionals from other marginalised groups.

AutCollab is committed co-creating a comprehensive support model for Autists and otherwise neurodivergent and intersectionally marginalised people that is grounded in our collective lived experience, informed by what we are learning from the results of our ongoing participatory research.

The lived experiences of those Autists who spend many of their waking hours assisting other Autists constitute a repository of valuable knowledge and insights. The lived experiences I am curating from conversations within the AutCollab community seem to be appreciated by many neurodivergent therapists and former neurodivergent therapists, and are shaping the AutCollab Ecologies of Care support model for neurodivergent and intersectionally marginalised people.

Below is the list of topics that have been submitted for the NeurodiVerse Days of Solidarity this month. I am looking forward to seeing which topics participants will dive into!

1. The Autistic experiences of modern day colonialism. What can the Neurodivergent community in the West do to support healing?
2. Support for Autism, how to find and create a network within my community that I just came back from being abroad after 6 years.
3. Navigating the political research landscape, when you don’t have a map or a guide, only a moral compass.
4. Neurodiversity and psychedelics.
5. Neurodiversity affirming group therapy.
6. Neurodiversity affirming psychiatry.
7. How to recover from autistic burnout?
8. How medical providers can provide a safe and affirming environment tailored to strengths and challenges of autistic thinkers to help them more effectively meet their goals.
9. Anti-imperialism; Afropessimism x “Marxism” (Marx hated the term); or the idea that the subjugation of Africa precipitates Capitalism, not the other way aroundGender Abolition: Investigating for ANY progressive origin of gender in any societyReclamation of “Disorder”: When Order is Hegemony.
10. Autistic community, challenging social norms, education of young neurodiverse students.
11. Time to listen to each others stories and to be heard. Can be focused on challenges we face, where we find joy, or be more free form.
12. Education and how disabled groups can work together.
13. Nurturing diversity in humans and non-human nature – bringing the two together.
14. Non-violent communication.
15. What would small ecologies of care look like?
16. Register and add your topic!

Based on recent conversations with several neurodivergent therapists, I would like to add the title of this article, Therapy and beyond in a Post-WEIRD world, as an additional topic to explore.

According to our glorious leaders in government and industry, the Western world is still Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic. But on the growing margins of society, hardly anyone believes this anymore. Rather the Western world has been heavily indoctrinated, increasingly de-industrialised, the gaps between rich and poor are widening, and democracy has become a spectacular form of elite performance theatre.

It is completely unsurprising that the demand for peer support and mutual aid is going through the roof, and that the mental health of marginalised people is in a correspondingly bad state.

How does psychotherapy fit into this picture?

The modern disciplines of psychology and psychiatry are a product of the European industrial era, focused on helping people to cope with the mental burden and cognitive dissonance that is generated by having to function – or pretending to be functioning – as a cog in the industrialised machine. The problems of alienation are as old as industrialisation. Karl Marx is famous for writing extensively about it.

After decades of outsourcing and offshoring, many of the so-called rich nations are no longer heavily industrialised in the classical sense of producing material goods. Instead, many people work in the so-called service sector, and many of those who have attained higher levels of indoctrination, i.e. certified professionals, work in bullshit jobs. Those performing such jobs know that their job is entirely meaningless, and in many cases, that it actively contributes to the modern human predicament.

This is the result of an oxymoronic “economic” system that literally optimises for the appearance of busyness. This is not a joke, and many Autistic and otherwise marginalised people are fully aware of this fact.

The specific challenge that mental health professionals face is a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) that reflects the cultural bias of Post-WEIRD “normality”, in which sanctified bullshit is the informational fuel that runs the so-called economy. The psy disciplines, being an integral performative part of the economic system, have resulted in a therapy industry that is heavily dependent on a steady stream of “clients”.

The therapy industry is most developed in the Anglosphere, and especially in the United States. Many therapists and psychiatrists have the best intentions, and genuinely want to help people, but whatever assistance they provide, at the latest when patients are sent back into the economic engine to “perform” in the mono-cult that is liquidating the living planet, they will again suffer from predictable mental health problems.

Mental health professionals want to help, yet can only offer very temporary assistance and emergency relief. At the same time, especially if they are neurodivergent, they often find themselves in situations that mirror the impossible situations they encounter amongst their patients, including lack of psychological and cultural safety in the work environment.

Furthermore, many marginalised neurodivergent people, irrespective of their line of work and expertise, tend to be locally isolated – they are not embedded in a supportive ecology of care of trustworthy family and friends. These considerations have led to the multiple human scale time horizons, which are integral to the Ecology of Care support model:

Time horizons relevant for human wellbeing

Depending on the context of a specific situation, one or more of the following time horizons may be relevant for our mental health and for supporting each other within an ecology of care:

Acute Emergency: Focus on the here and now, to complement emergency mental health support, to listen to those in distress, and help them regain the capacity to engage in mutual aid networks.

Surviving: Focus on the here and now, on the mutual aid needed to cope on a daily basis, within the current social operating model.

Evolving/de-powering: Focus on the year(s) ahead, to rediscover the beauty of collaboration at human scale and the timeless patterns of human limitations.

Thriving: Focus on the 7 generations ahead, integrating lived experiences from the last 7 generations, to participate in comprehensible local ecologies of care beyond the human, and to live meaningfully, compassionately, and courageously no matter what.

Humans evolved to have most of their social and wellbeing needs met via relationships at human scale and smaller, across all four time horizons. We can visualise our relationships as an evolving system of concentric Circles of Care.

1. Intimate partner
2. Household
3. Human scale ecology of care / whānau / extended family
4. Bioregional ecology of care
5. Planetary ecology of care

Perpetually stuck in survival mode

The capitalist conception of society as individuals and households has literally atomised our ecologies of care (hint: “nuclear” family) to create new opportunities for markets and capital to extract greater levels of profit from the social fabric. Healthy extended multi-household families functioning as a mutual aid network and economising unit simply don’t provide optimal leverage points for maximising GDP growth and for coercing everyone into artificial busyness and consumption.

Nuclear families and atomised societies are essential for the “wellbeing” of the industrialised machine, but as it turns out, counterproductive in terms of human wellbeing and the health of bioregional and planetary ecosystems.

As an added bonus, the resulting chronic mental and physical health conditions have led to entire new industries of over-worked health professionals. The Autism Industrial Complex exemplifies the underlying intent: anyone who does not meet the exacting industrial definition of the standard Human® as demanded by Capitalism Inc, receives a pathologising label and is subjected to traumatising “normalisation” treatment.

Ubiquitous mental distress and traumatised populations set the scene for the psychotherapy industry. Everyone is desperate for assistance, but even the best assistance that is on offer within the system keeps people trapped in survival mode – because there simply is no exit from the toxic mono-cult.

Re-creating or co-creating healthy human scale ecologies of care, i.e. entire ecologies of healthy enduring relationships, lies far beyond the capabilities of health professionals and psychotherapists, who are as entrapped in the toxic bigger social system as everyone else.

The time horizon of Capitalism Inc is limited to quarterly financial results, and the time horizon of WEIRD politicians and governments extends as best to 3 or 4 year election cycles, roughly on par with the job hopping cycle of obedient Human® cogs in the industrial machine.

A culture that has no institutions that attend to the basic human need for stable ecologies of care across multiple generations is a deeply sick culture.

(Re)opening space for breathing, thinking, and solidarity

How do we glue atomised societies back together into healthy ecologies of care beyond the human? This is not something that we learn in school or in our universities. This is something that we need to figure out together, at human scale, in an adequately safe environment, which is not something that any industry or government provides – it is also something we need to co-create.

One useful technique that I can draw on is 24 years of experience in facilitating Open Space, which is a minimalist practice of self-organisation of people who have come together to address one or more wicked problems. In my experience Autistic people take to Open Space like fish to water, because there is no one who pretends to be “in control”, and because everyone is actively encouraged to spend their time in a place where they are either learning or contributing to the learning of others – and to use their two feet as needed to remain in such a place throughout the workshop. Also, Open Space tends to consist of small groups of between 2 and 7 people. An experienced facilitator will encourage larger groups to divide into smaller groups and then reconvene for short periods in a larger circle to share (intermediate) results.

You can experience Open Space by joining the NeurodiVerse Days of Solidarity.

We have adapted Open Space to online environments that offer multiple communication modalities, including text only. Furthermore, we accommodate asynchronous communication by allowing people to contribute over the course of four weeks, whenever they have the time and the spoons to do so.

However, a person who is currently finds themselves in an acute emergency or is struggling in survival mode, at risk of slipping into an emergency situation, won’t be able to benefit from Open Space, and may need a less stimulating and dynamic environment to relearn how to feel safe in a small group context. This is where Autistic psychotherapists can offer valuable experience from group therapy settings.

One possible way of integrating Open Space with group therapy settings is to offer one or more streams of group therapy alongside dynamic Open Space break out groups.

In-person NeurodiVerse Days of Solidarity?

A month ago I was asked whether I would be interested in perhaps organising and co-ordinating a retreat for Autistic therapists. This fits well with what I had been discussing locally with Autistic friends in terms of local / regional community building – we are thinking of organising a meeting amongst Autistic activists in Aotearoa. I now live on a plot of land where there is some space to organise meetings, including two small houses and a 50 sqm workshop (shed). Our two households are collaborating on growing food locally, and we are planting a little food forest.

For a multi-day workshop of Autistic activists and therapists, including from overseas, I could organise accommodation in the nearby hotels or AirBnBs. Depending on how many people are interested, we can expand the venue to a suitable hotel in the small city here. To get everything organised, and to give all of us adequate time to prepare, fit the event into our calendars, and book travel, I am thinking that perhaps September or October 2024 would be a good target to aim for. Of course we can also offer ways of contributing remotely for those who are unable to attend in person.

For such an in-person retreat / workshop, I would propose Catalysing healthy ecologies of care beyond the human as the overarching theme, with Therapy and beyond in a Post-WEIRD world as the sub-title.

I am looking forward to jointly developing this idea during the NeurodiVerse Days of Solidarity this month (April)! All your ideas and input are welcome!

The theme and the timing fits well with our plans for incrementally rolling out and jointly refining the AutCollab Ecologies of Care support model for neurodivergent and intersectionally marginalised people. You are encouraged to review the current outline of the model and contribute your ideas and experiences.

Registration of Interest : Catalysing Ecologies of Care

If you would like to participate in an in-person retreat in Aotearoa on the theme of catalysing healthy ecologies of care beyond the human sometime later this year, please register interest below.

We are inviting neurodiversity and disability rights activists, Autistic psychotherapists and other Autistic health professionals, indigenous rights activists and scholars, as well as Buddhist and Daoist scholars. All these perspectives are highly valuable for the conversations and the omni-directional learning that is needed in these times.

Onwards!