A yellow lead pencil – creative thinking and superpowers
PSA Lead for Disability, Supt Paul Burrows shares his latest blog as part of Disability History Month 2024: In this blog I will return to some of the themes I have touched upon in my previous writings. First, however, I will pose a question. ‘How many uses can you think of for a yellow lead pencil?’ You have 2 minutes….
I read recently, that some autistics have been challenged by other autistics because they have expressed the view that they would rather not be autistic. The view for some is that autism, along with other neuro-diverse conditions, is and should be seen as a ‘superpower’, and it is wrong to wish it away.
I have however, found myself thinking that I would rather not be autistic. Yes, I have skills that the ‘condition’ brings me. Yet, on a check and balance sheet I feel the checks outweigh the balances. This is a very personal view, but I do I feel it worthy to air as a discussion.
There are clearly professional benefits arising from who I am. These benefits are not, however, absolute. Particularly when there is a lack of understanding or adjustment around who I am and how I prefer to work. Nowhere near enough is made of my skills. This, I know, is a common frustration held by those with neurodiverse conditions across many workplaces.
On the flip side, the personal benefits are, for me at least, almost totally lacking. I have wracked my brain and asked myself, ‘is there any personal benefit from being neurodiverse?’ The only one I can think of, is being asked to stand as captain of the sports club I’m a member of because I am seen to be fair and would approach the role without bias (typical autistic traits). I’m not sure that’s a benefit to me though!
In my previous blogs, I have outlined the benefits I, and people like me, can bring to the service I work for. I will therefore focus on some of the down sides of being who I am. You can decide whether it’s a superpower that I possess.
First and foremost, I have a complete inability to sleep well. 4 hours a night is good. I wake in the middle of the night and simply can’t sleep again, so I live life in a state of perpetual exhaustion. I am aware of adults who have received a diagnosis of autism having gone to their GP with an inability to sleep. This is not abnormal. I dislike spontaneity, I need to know what I am doing and any break to routine can be quite stressful. I love watching rugby but find the press of people in a stadium too much to bear so I don’t go. I struggle to have friends or build relationships. I live life in a state of perpetual introspection – have I upset someone by how I have said something? And, finally, I spend all day masking or acting, pretending I am someone who I am not; simply to fit in with social norms. I am not claiming to be unique, but simply providing an insight into my existence.
I was recently made aware of an article on evolutionary psychology which I think addresses the question at the heart of what I am seeking to say:
"Our evolutionary history is often ignored when thinking about mental health. We forget that the world humans lived in for millions of years – which our brains and minds are designed for – was very different to today. We assume a mental health diagnosis means ‘something has gone wrong’ in the person. But what if that person’s difficulties are more related to changes in the world, and modern expectations for how minds should work? We expect people to sit still in classrooms, read with ease… but classrooms and writing are very new inventions. Nobody ‘should’ be able to sit still in classrooms or read with ease, evolutionarily speaking. The fact that some can and some can’t is a matter of happenstance, but doesn’t reflect true biological breakage. It may be better understood at what is called ‘evolutionary mismatch’ - our bodies and brains aren't designed for this world, and sometimes we medicalise the problems which result.
Evolutionary psychiatry is a scientific discipline reframing mental health conditions by trying to explain them in relation to our evolutionary history. When it comes to neurodiversity, there are big questions which previous biomedical approaches haven’t managed to solve – why are these cognitive differences so common in the population, last so long, and appear so early in life? They are somewhat genetically caused, and the genes which make people autistic, or ADHD, or dyslexic, are clearly common in the population, and affect us for all our lives. This isn’t what we expect from disease, which often appears later in life, or is rare, or not inherited. Evolution could have caused everyone to be neurotypical, if that is what is optimal. But it hasn’t. Why?
One of the key evolutionary explanations for explaining neurodiversity is actually the same process which should explain ‘normal’ personality traits – we differ in extraversion, and we differ in autistic traits, and the same evolutionary dynamics should explain why those differences persist. There is a reason why we aren't all extremely extraverted or extremely introverted, or all extremely autistic or non-autistic - there is a reason our minds work differently from one another. The core dynamic revolves around cognitive strengths and weaknesses, and how they fit into our social groups. Our ancestors lived in close bands and tribes, hunting and gathering food every day as a collective. Within social groups, individual differences can evolve, as a sort of division-of-labour, or what is termed ‘social niche specialisation’ in evolutionary biology. Within our hunter-gatherer ancestral groups, for millions of years, assuming similar rates of autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and all sorts of neurodivergent traits, there would always be at least one autistic person per extended tribe (of about 150 individuals) and one person with broad autistic traits (the ‘broad autism phenotype’), one person with ADHD and one with dyslexia per band of individuals who sleep and hunt together on a daily basis (of about 25 individuals). The same goes for most neurodivergent traits. Although we can’t know for sure how they fitted into those societies, all of the genetic and biological evidence implies that those individuals were there, and weren’t any worse off in evolutionary terms than neurotypical people. The basic inference should be that their strengths were balanced with their weaknesses, and that they found a way to fit in in those societies.
It’s widely recognized, both by science and people familiar with neurodivergent people on a personal basis, that despite experiencing problems which others don’t due to their cognitive style, they also show strengths that others don’t. In the realm of sport this could manifest as unusual obsessiveness, attention to detail, and dedication. The same tendencies can lead to exemplary ability in all sorts of other realms of life, too. And they come with costs. But those costs, at least evolutionarily speaking, were probably justified by the benefits – that’s why these traits persist in the human population in so many people, that’s why we have never found biomedical evidence of ‘pathology’ causing them, and that’s why if we were to shift our expectations and our environments to better incorporate neurodivergent people, supporting them through their weaknesses and harnessing their strengths, we would actually be tapping into an evolutionarily-ancient well of human potential, overlooked for too long by contemporary mainstream psychiatry."
So, returning to my start point, how many uses are there for a yellow lead pencil?
When I did this exercise, I thought of 86 and was still going strong as the 2 minutes ended.
What I considered was whether the whole pencil was made of lead, whether it was the graphite or the pencil ‘outer’ that was yellow, and how big / long it was - it could have been the size of an ocean-going liner. By de-limiting ones thinking and pushing to one side, or at least identifying one’s presumptions the opportunities are endless.
Is this a ‘normal’ way of thinking or a superpower? Is thinking of 86 uses for a yellow lead pencil actually a superpower? The creativity that goes with it probably is, but only if the society within which I live values this and seeks to make the most of my different way of thinking. The Adam D. Hunts “evolutionarily-ancient well of human potential.”
My conclusion is that my superpower is cloaked by society, and whilst I would love to see it as a positive, it is exhausting trying to do this in the face of the barriers. The cost, for me, outweighs the benefits. I will continue to flinch at the use of this descriptor as the depths of what sits behind it, are largely not understood.
I frequently reference the Garfield cartoon, where Garfield and Oddie climb a tree. Garfield tells Oddie that ‘dog can’t climb trees’. So, Oddie fell out of it. It’s amazing what you can achieve when you don’t know you can’t. In my experience, many neuro-divergent people know they can climb trees they shouldn’t be able to. Their / my frustration is not being asked how we did it.
