Neurodiversity Quotes

“My room is the safest place my body has. My mind doesn’t really have a safe place.”
― Anna Whateley

“A various set of symptoms which are all part of the human condition.”
― Jamie Kershaw, Hurricane to a Rainbow: Anxiety, PTSD, BPD, Autistic Spectrum, and Schizophrenia

“Therapy that is focused on battling “irrational beliefs,” such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), doesn’t work as well on Autistic people as it does on neurotypicals. One reason for that is many of the fears and inhibitions of Autistic people are often entirely reasonable, and rooted in a lifetime of painful experiences. We tend to be pretty rational people, and many of us are already inclined to analyze our thoughts and feelings very closely (sometimes excessively so). Autistics don’t need cognitive behavioral training to help us not be ruled by our emotions. In fact, most of us have been browbeaten into ignoring our feelings too much.”
― Devon Price, Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity

“My current state is better by far than I could ever have imagined when I was a teenager.”
― Jamie Kershaw, Hurricane to a Rainbow: Anxiety, PTSD, BPD, Autistic Spectrum, and Schizophrenia

“Their invisible struggles with feeling other, their faces pressed against the window into a world to which they desperately wanted to belong.”
― Gina Rippon, Off the Spectrum: Why the Science of Autism Has Failed Women and Girls

“-autism is neither a deficit, disease nor disorder, but simply a different, and equally valid, way of being.”
― Victoria Honeybourne, A Practical Guide to Happiness in Adults on the Autism Spectrum: A Positive Psychology Approach

“It’s not damaged. It’s stuck in survival mode.”
― Ronen Dancziger, The Therapist's Handbook for Breaking the Loop - Your NeuroFlex ACT Workbook: Rewire Your Mind. Reclaim Your Life.

“Your brain is not broken. It’s trying to protect you. It just may need a reboot.”
― Ronen Dancziger, The Therapist's Handbook for Breaking the Loop - Your NeuroFlex ACT Workbook: Rewire Your Mind. Reclaim Your Life.

“You are not broken. You are not a problem to be fixed. You are a human being with a mind that has learned, often for good reasons, how to survive.”
― Ronen Dancziger, The Therapist's Handbook for Breaking the Loop - Your NeuroFlex ACT Workbook: Rewire Your Mind. Reclaim Your Life.

“Your brain isn’t broken. It’s just doing what it was designed to do, on overdrive.”
― Ronen Dancziger, The Therapist's Handbook for Breaking the Loop - Your NeuroFlex ACT Workbook: Rewire Your Mind. Reclaim Your Life.

“People try to fix what they have not fully allowed into the room yet.”
― M. Ian Niad, Just Sit With Me: When Understanding Is Misunderstood

“Belonging that costs is not belonging.”
― Howard Chambers, MISREAD: How the Workplace Misunderstands Neurodivergent Brains – and What We Can Do About It

“If it is true that those who are slaves to their moods, beings drowned in their sorrows, reveal a number of psychic or cognitive frailties, it is equally true that a diversification of moods, variety in sadness, refinement in sorrow or mourning are the imprint of a humankind that is surely not triumphant but subtle, ready to fight, and creative...”
― Julia Kristeva, Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia.

“I was lured away by the kettle’s siren song.”
― Dassy Bernhard, A Most Disastrous Courtship: A Comedy of Manners, Mistakes, and Mild Concussions

“The same person. Different conditions. A completely different result.”
― Howard Chambers, MISREAD: How the Workplace Misunderstands Neurodivergent Brains – and What We Can Do About It

“That's not a knowledge gap. That's a design gap.”
― Howard Chambers, MISREAD: How the Workplace Misunderstands Neurodivergent Brains – and What We Can Do About It

“I accepted that his dream wasn’t smaller—just different and I stopped searching for dreams for him that were bigger than the ones where he felt safe and at peace.”
― Jolanta Kigele, They Don’t See Me: A Mother’s Memoir of Autism

“It wasn’t that his senses were broken. They were simply dialed to a volume the world wasn’t built for.”
― Jolanta Kigele, They Don’t See Me: A Mother’s Memoir of Autism

“They tell you ‘Put your own oxygen mask on first.’ But you think—not with my child. Until the plane actually starts to fall. That’s when you finally understand.”
― Jolanta Kigele, They Don’t See Me: A Mother’s Memoir of Autism

“Trust is not rebuilt with a single apology. It returns inch by inch, strand by strand.”
― Jolanta Kigele, They Don’t See Me: A Mother’s Memoir of Autism

“I realized then, with terrifying clarity: Ima’s boundaries are much more fragile than those of other children and they are never meant to be broken by force. They must be allowed to fade away on their own terms, no matter how much time it takes.”
― Jolanta Kigele, They Don’t See Me: A Mother’s Memoir of Autism

“I see your child, whose world experiences a seismic shift at the slightest change.”
― Jolanta Kigele, They Don’t See Me: A Mother’s Memoir of Autism

“Never let a white coat decide your child’s worth—sometimes even the biggest names in the field are totally blind.”
― jolanta kigele, They Don’t See Me: A Mother’s Memoir of Autism

“The life that used to be filled with voices and shared adventures suddenly fell silent. The phone stopped ringing. The invitations dissolved. One by one, the doors closed. We were the ones left standing outside.”
― Jolanta Kigele, They Don’t See Me: A Mother’s Memoir of Autism

“We didn’t know what to say’ is the ultimate shield for the emotionally lazy. It shifts the burden from their comfort to your survival, suggesting that if they can’t find a perfect, polished sentence, you aren’t even worth a broken one.”
― Jolanta Kigele, They Don’t See Me: A Mother’s Memoir of Autism

“It took a time to realize that their silence wasn’t about my child’s inability to fit into their world. Not at all. It was about their inability to expand theirs.”
― Jolanta Kigele, They Don’t See Me: A Mother’s Memoir of Autism

“No, it wasn’t the end of the world. But knowing that you are being systematically erased from the lives of your friends—and worse, your own relatives—simply because your child has special needs, is a pain that guts you out from the inside.”
― Jolanta Kigele, They Don’t See Me: A Mother’s Memoir of Autism

“Convenient doesn’t mean better. Your child is not convenient, but he is magnificent, and you know it. Stop waiting by the fence for people who are too small to appreciate his world.”
― Jolanta Kigele, They Don’t See Me: A Mother’s Memoir of Autism

“He had taught me not to walk past. He had taught me how to truly see.”
― Jolanta Kigele, They Don’t See Me: A Mother’s Memoir of Autism

“We had spent years trying to prepare him for the world, completely underestimating his ability to conquer it on his own terms.”
― Jolanta Kigele, They Don’t See Me: A Mother’s Memoir of Autism