Neurodivergence For Everyone! Jenara Nerenberg On New Frames of Mind About The Human Brain

The Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum

Meghan Daum

Society & Culture

4.7 • 855 Ratings

🗓️ 31 January 2022

⏱️ 83 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Terms like neurodiversity and neuroatyptical are everywhere these days. And though they can refer to any everything from social functioning to learning differences, the terms are most often applied to people on the autism spectrum. Because of that—and because autism has historically been associated with boys and men—there hasn't been a lot of thinking about neurodivergence in females. Jenara Nerenberg is trying to change that. Growing up in the 1990s, she was considered a "sensitive" child but was high functioning enough to thrive academically and eventually establish a successful career in journalism, not least of all because of her ability to remain hyperfocused on tasks. But later, when the hyperfocus began to compromise her daily life, she looked deeper into her traits and learned that she was actually on the autism spectrum and struggled with ADHD. This led her down a research path that resulted in a book, Divergent Mind, which looks at how diagnoses like autism, high sensitive, sensory processing disorder, and synesthesia play out in women and why a combination of inadequate medical research and a tendency among women to mask their symptoms has led to rampant misdiagnosis and misunderstanding. Jenara talked with Meghan about what this new information has meant for her and, more importantly, why she thinks it's crucial that neurodivergence be understood as something far being the scope of autism.

Guest Bio:

Jenara Nerenberg is a writer who began her career with Fast Company and CNN in Asia after graduating from the Harvard School of Public Health. When she returned to the U.S. she chronicled her journey through the field of "neurodiversity" in her book, Divergent Mind, and began covering science and psychology books for the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, prompting her to switch to the world of book publishing. She now hosts bestselling authors live in San Francisco and online, and is head of the agency Divergent Literary, in addition to running publicity for international publishers. She appears at public events and conferences with The Aspen Institute and Commonwealth Club, and continues to speak widely on the rhetoric of psychology and implications for society.

The episode of The Unspeakable is sponsored by Better Help online therapy. Visit Betterhelp.com/Unspeakable for a special offer.

Transcript

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0:00.0	ADHD, the stereotype we have is, yeah, like a little boy who can't stay still.
0:08.3	The research that we have on girls is showing that there's a little bit more of like the
0:14.8	inattentive type.
0:16.1	So the spacing out and daydreaming.
0:19.0	So while a girl might be sitting still in classroom because they've
0:22.8	been told that, you know, that's, that's the proper way to be or whatever. Internally, their
0:28.7	internal lives are quite active. And so they might be kind of all over the place and in different
0:34.2	spaces sort of inside their minds.
0:42.3	And so then what happens, again, because my book really focuses on adult women,
0:47.0	you know, these girls are not really labeled with anything.
0:59.7	But then when they get older and they're adults and they start having a really difficult time at work or in college, they're confused because they,
1:04.9	you know, they've never been told anything. They've never been like given a label sometimes through hyper-focusing, which actually is part of ADHD. So ADHD is not really a deficit of attention. It's more a challenge of
1:13.7	regulating it and like directing it, right? So what a lot of adult women do is they,
1:20.9	they hyper-focused. So they will get really good in like one specific area to sort of compensate for the distractedness.
1:31.6	And so they might excel actually in certain areas.
1:39.1	Welcome to the unspeakable podcast. I'm your host, Megan Dowm.
1:47.5	Terms like neurodiversity and neuroatypical are everywhere these days, and though they're extremely broad, referring to variations in the
1:53.1	brain related to any number of cognitive functions, from social functioning to learning differences,
1:59.0	they are most often applied to people on the autism spectrum.
2:02.7	Because of that, and because autism has historically been associated with boys and men,
2:07.8	there hasn't been a lot of thinking about neurodivergence in females.
2:11.9	My guest, journalist Janara Nuremberg, is trying to change that.
	...

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