Episode 189: Neurodivergence and Creativity Part 2

This week on Fable and the Verbivore, we’re continuing our conversation about our individual journeys to understanding our neurodivergence and how that looks within our creative life through talking about labels and vocabulary.

This is part two of a series, so if you haven’t already we’d highly recommend that you listen to our “Episode 188: Neurodivergence and Creativity Part 1” first.

In this episode, we touch on several areas of our combined experiences that fall under the neurodivergent umbrella. They are:

  • Autism

  • Dyslexia

  • Dyspraxia

  • Highly Sensitive Person (HSP)

  • Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

Our conversation covers the benefit of having words to explain and express our experiences, ways that labels can be helpful and harmful, the importance of working past stereotypes to understand the nuance of unique and individual experiences, our love for books by neurodivergent authors Chloe Liese and Helen Hoang, and the value of stories that show diverse and varied aspects of the human experience (including varied neurodivergent POVs).

Towards the end, we discuss how the fear of appearing awkward or being misunderstood may never fully go away, but there are some things that we can do to help mitigate those feelings and prepare ourselves for unexpected hurdles. But, also, sometimes we have to accept that those anxieties are a part of how our brain works and that there are situations where we’ll have to show up afraid.

Next week, we’ll be back talking with two authors who are also neurodivergent about their stories, experiences, and how their creative lives look. It’s a fantastic conversation that we feel lucky to have been a part of, and we can’t wait to share it with you!

We hope you enjoy this episode. Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

We touch on one of our previous podcast episodes that is part 1 of this series. It is as follows:

The Verbivore talks about her experience with learning about dyspraxia and mentions that she’d never even heard the word before two (ish) years ago and that it’s a type of neurodivergence that’s not as well known. Here are some of the resources that she‘s found helpful in her journey:

The Verbivore mentions Morgan Harper Nichols and creatives like her that are unmasking and showing up vulnerably authentic. Here is one of her posts from Instagram about her experience:

In this series, we reference the circle graph or pie-chart representation of autism, rather than as a line. Here are some links to articles that talk about this model:

If you’d like to learn more about these topics, here are a few articles and videos to get you started:

Books and Films Mentioned:

Music from: https://filmmusic.io
‘Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Bethany Stedman