How to create the mental world of a neurodiverse person

Hello everyone, I come here with sort of petition of help:

I have this idea of my mind of a person who have the power to "enter" the world, well he dosnet enter the mind but rather his power create a sort of ilusory space conected to the mind in order to interpretated what is there in a sort of "mental" world, the reason is that a mind is a very complicate thing and you cant just enter something, so he sort create a proyection of it in order to further help pacients by interacting with their issues in a way it helps.

Now something I have ocurred is what would happen if a neuroatypical person used this and how would proyect, since in some cases stuff like avoiding eye contact like person with autism would heavy alter the mental world.

Of course and issue here is that I feel that could totally backfire and being seen as insensitive so rather than trying into educate guesses, I want to ask how do you feel a neuroatypical mind would be "seens" or if you are one itself, how would you "proyect" your mind into a mental work to better express how you see it.

And of course if anything I said come as problematic, I apologize beforehand.

Hello! As an autistic person myself, this sounds like a really cool concept! Since you describe a mental world, perhaps you could literalize this concept of the mind as a place, and represent it with physical landmarks. For example, in this song, a woman with bipolar disorder compares her mood swings to mountains- wild, crazy, dangerous- and exciting. Perhaps mania may look like exciting mountains with sheer cliff faces and rolling fields, while depression could look like a dark, musty swampland.

My biggest advice is to do research that goes beyond textbook definitions. Many neurodivergent people on tumblr will blog about what their particular differences may feel like to them specifically- which in writing, is much more helpful than a list of symptoms. For autism specifically, I'd also recommend looking at Amethyst Schaber's Youtube channel, on which they have a series called "Ask An Autistic".

One final thing to remember- and this also applies to writing neurodiverse characters in general- is that no one person will display every single symptom. It's just not possible in real life, and it's part of the reason why only a certain number of those symptoms are required to diagnose a mental health disorder or neurological condition.

Also, don't forget that people can have trace and traits of more than one psychological disorder, which causes them to be wrongly diagnosed when examined by psychiatrists.

For example:

- Asperberger Syndrome - Clinical Depression - Anorexia Nervosa - Binge Eating Disorder - DID (Dissoactive Identity Disorder) - Schizophrenia - Phobia - OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) - PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) - Anti-social personality disorder

Etc...

I do know someone with traits and display of all of these, trapped in a single body, which is basically making their life a gigantic hurdle and mess to deal with every day.

So if you are making the worlds of these people who got more than one thing to deal with, you might keep in mind that their worlds might be a bit more diverse than expected.

thanks for all this advise, I will said the main hurdle for me aside of the obvious(being neurotypical so all will do is educated guesses at best) is that in some condictions like depresion of autism can experience the world to extent that can baffle neurotypical person(which is unfortunaly produce much misundetadning).

Some idea I have was one were the chararter have chains in is whole being, depresenting depresion as weight from inside, or another one who is autistic who see the eyes of people as bright and disconforting and so own, but I have a nagging feeling Im throwig dark to the light.

So in a way im more asking how people in their divergenting condition would like to proyect your own "mental" world if you could.

Again, I apologize for any inconvience.

Ah, in that case...

DID: A humanoid of broken mirrors trying to interact with the world, but echoing the voices of other personalities without true dominant control and ending up hurting people when trying to reach out to them with hands and fingers of broken mirror-shards.

Anorexia: All food they can see exists in its decayed state, and filling them with disgust as they watch other people it the "spoiled" food. They themselves resembling a starving bag of bones with bloated mid-section from the starvation.

Depression: A empty shell in a gray world void of color, scents, sounds, touch and emotion. A world were all forms of water is thick and black, resembling ink, and the air itself is coated in gray fog of pollution and decay. A dark and depressing place.

PTSD: A neverending time-loop of the traumatic event in question, trapping anyone stumbling into it in its nightmare while trying to set things right in the groundhog day that is the mental state.

Just a few suggestions and ideas...

As someone with Asperger's I might be able to say some things. I have recently done a bit of research into autism in general and I can definitely draw parallels to myself.

Anyways, a prominent feature of Autism in general is that some subconscious "filters" that neurotypicals have are missing or different, for example how nonverbal cues are interpreted (or in case of a missing/different filter, are ignored/misinterpreted). I suppose you could visualize the resulting "mental world" quite overwhelming to neurotypicals since they are used to having working filters, this could result in hearing every sound equally without being able to focus on one specifically.

Another thing are patterns, the mental world would have to be very structured, for example houses always being grouped in blocks of three, then a lonesome house, then three houses again. The logic the patterns follow doesn't have to be so simple of course, it may be completely nonsensical to a casual observer.

The last thing I have is resistance to change, I personally hate having to make changes in my daily schedule or reacting to surprising changes in plans. You could perhaps visualize this as having everything in the mental world be rigid, even things like grass by the side of a road.

Of course you don't have to follow the specific examples I gave you here but I hope I was able to get you at least some degree of insight.

Thank you with your answers ir really help me in many ways.

I have some of those ideas but is nice to have someone actually help me with it, one idea I have to manifest the disconfort some autistic and people on the spectrum is a sense of shock everytime one of those limits are move: for example if those glass panels are push suddenly everything start to trembling for example.

Another was how "people"(or the manifestation) show in this mental work for example are people use work mask that hide more of the facial feature, making dificult to actual imposible to understand what they are saying, or making their eyes bright to high.

Also why this dosent enter in neurodiversity range, I have this idea to portray a mental work of gender dysphoria as sort expressing themselves as wood maniquing, who move in a rather clumsy girl, with vivid eyes, the more this person feel is gender dysphoria lessen the more the wood would mold into clay and become more....fluid as whole.

nevertheless I would still read you and thanks for any input.

Seeing as no one's mentioned ADHD yet, I'll put in my ten cents about ADHD. Sorry if this is unwanted. (By the way, this is based off of my own experience and probably other people would be different).

I find my thoughts are constantly jumping from one thing to another, it's impossible to focus on a single thing for more than a few minutes. One time, the sheer effort it took to focus gave me a mini migrane for the rest of the day. My brain treats every outside stimulus as a valid reason to stop what I'm doing and investigate, from a bird to a car horn. Ironically, another less well known thing about ADHD is hyperfocusing. Occasionally I am suddenly so focused on a task I can go at it non stop for hours, but after overclocking my brain like that my mind goes really foggy and I can't really do much thinking, let alone focusing.

As for the hyperactivity side, it's as if there's this strange energy inside me which just builds and builds and is highly unpleasant if I don't let it out.

I imagine my mental world as very busy, with lots of things flying past in different directions at any given time. The setting constantly blurs and warps between things. At times, the world is suddenly incredibly clear and stable. The things flying around are all channeled in a single direction, but after that there is a period where the entire world is cloaked in horribly thick fog, where it is impossible to see what is in front and behind you.

Sorry if I rambled a bit.

An idea for the autistic world might be to have other people appear flat and unemotional, yet demanding, always wanting something with no clue what that something might be. These people also act in randomly emotional ways, one minute being friendly, another aggressive, yet again indifferent, with no pattern to these actions.

Edited by DeMarquis on Dec 12th 2019 at 9:24:21 AM

I was trying to represent this as mannequins in a mental world, or dolls, with a speech pattern that for the character who is witnessing that is flat and monotone, like a video game dialogue tree set in maximun dificulty because it seen all the answers are wrong.

I mean is one idea I have, is there is a problem with it?. and if that is not the case, what would be and ambient that is relaxing and less challening for you?.

Again if all this is come as insensitive and preemptively apologies.

If you are still talking about autism, then I don't think the mannequin idea accurately reflects the experience, because it's obvious that everyone else is sharing genuine emotions with each other—they aren't dolls wearing masks, at least not among themselves. They clearly understand what they are doing, and can be quite animated about it. Instead, the autistic person is looking through a faulty window, and no one can see them. Or something like that.

Edited by DeMarquis on Dec 17th 2019 at 10:45:29 AM

.....i could get it now, granted if I remember a lot o autist dunno like see people face to face, isnt? granted Im probably taking out of my ass here.

Different people are different. A fair number find making eye contact too overstimulating to bear. Others prefer to watch the other person carefully to pick up any clues that they can. Still others prefer text or voice messages to face to face contact. It's a spectrum of symptoms and behaviors.