Neurodivergence Beyond Diagnosis: What if the traits you’ve been told are broken were never meant to be fixed?

Neurodiversity, a term introduced by Judy Singer in 1999, presents a transformative paradigm that reconceptualizes neurological differences as not deficits but as essential components of human diversity. Grounded in the principles of disability justice and acknowledging the extensive range of cognitive experiences, neurodiversity confronts the medicalization of difference and facilitates the development of more inclusive understandings of existence. This essay conducts a critical examination of how Western psychology, influenced by colonial and capitalist dynamics, has historically pathologized neurodivergent characteristics. Conversely, it investigates how non-Western and non-capitalist frameworks have embraced differences through spiritual, communal, and ecological perspectives.

This is a narrative and theoretical essay grounded in qualitative, intercultural therapeutic work, drawing from composite testimonies, decolonial theory, and lived experience.

This essay serves as both a critique and a call: a critique of psychiatric imperialism and its simplification of complexity into diagnosis and a call to embrace the ancestral, the sacred, and the plural. By drawing on examples from various cultures and grounded in decolonial, phenomenological, and spiritual traditions, this essay presents neurodivergence not as a disorder but as a gateway to reworlding our understanding of what it means to be human.

I. Introduction: Reworlding Human Difference

The neurodiversity paradigm is more than a theoretical shift; it is a political and spiritual act of reclamation. It invites us to reimagine how we define, respond to, and make space for human differences. Under systems of modernity shaped by Enlightenment rationality and industrial capitalism, only a narrow range of human expression has been sanctioned as "normal." These systems privilege productivity, conformity, and efficiency—qualities that align with the needs of empire, not necessarily the truths of existence.

Neurodivergence—such as autism, ADHD, Tourette’s, and other cognitive variations—has been treated as deviance to be corrected. But from a decolonial standpoint, divergence is not pathology. It is a reorientation toward alternative epistemologies—ways of sensing, perceiving, and relating that refuse to be domesticated by the status quo. This reorientation disrupts colonial categories of reason, health, and even time itself. It insists on the coexistence of multiple worlds within this one.

To reworld is to resist the monoculture of minds that empire has tried to impose. Reworlding means honoring Indigenous, ancestral, and ecological frameworks that have always embraced cognitive multiplicity—not merely tolerated it. This paper proposes that neurodivergence is not simply a condition but a form of remembering: a reactivation of ancestral and spiritual ways of knowing that have been suppressed under colonial rule.

II. Pathologization in Western Psychology: Tools of Normative Control

Western psychology has served not only as a healing profession but as a disciplinary apparatus—one that enforces colonial norms under the guise of care. The DSM-5 and its predecessors have acted as manuals of compliance, categorizing neurodivergent ways of being as symptoms, deficits, or impairments. These labels reflect a deep cultural bias toward cognitive traits that uphold Western ideals: linear logic, emotional restraint, verbal fluency, and individualism.

Western psychiatry and psychology have long medicalized neurodivergence, often viewing it through a deficit-based lens. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) (American Psychiatric Association, 2013) defines autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and other neurodivergences primarily by their impairments in socialization, communication, and executive functioning. These definitions reflect a Eurocentric ideal of functioning, one that prioritizes efficiency, productivity, and conformity to social norms (Goodley, 2017).

Such traits align with the needs of modern capitalism, which depends on punctuality, docility, and hierarchies of productivity. Furthermore, the rise of behaviorist interventions, such as Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) for autism, underscores the colonial impulse to "civilize" neurodivergent individuals, mirroring historical assimilation policies imposed on Indigenous and non-Western communities (Kapp, 2020). ABA, which rewards compliance and suppresses self-stimulatory behaviors, has been criticized for its dehumanizing approach, likened to the conditioning techniques used in colonial schooling systems (Milton, 2012). Gibson, Sakamoto, and Monroe (2022) emphasize that decolonizing neurodiversity requires addressing settler colonial foundations embedded within educational and psychological systems.

The neurodivergent body-mind, which may move slowly, feel deeply, focus intensely, or resist routine, becomes inconvenient to the machine. ABA and similar interventions attempt to "fix" this inconvenience, often at the cost of the individual’s autonomy and well-being. These so-called therapies prioritize external behavior over internal meaning, ignoring the lived experience of the person in favor of superficial compliance. Numerous studies and first-person accounts have documented the harm caused by ABA and other behaviorist approaches, particularly their prioritization of compliance over well-being (Kapp et al., 2020; Milton, 2012; Kupferstein, 2018)

IQ testing, personality inventories, and even modern psychiatric medication protocols carry forward a eugenicist legacy – categorizing people according to colonial standards of intelligence and behavior. This is especially visible in how non-white children are over diagnosed with behavioral disorders while being denied support systems that recognize the sociocultural roots of distress.

This pathologization is not neutral—it is rooted in Enlightenment-era ideals of rationality, control, and “normality,” which were weaponized through eugenics, psychiatric incarceration, and forced sterilization (Snyder & Mitchell, 2006). Neurodivergent bodies and minds were not merely misunderstood; they were actively excluded from the project of the “ideal citizen.”

The colonial export of psychiatric models into the Global South continues this legacy. Western diagnoses are imposed on communities with entirely different worldviews, often erasing communal, spiritual, and land-based understandings of distress. In this sense, psychiatry becomes a tool of epistemicide – the systematic erasure of Indigenous and non-Western ways of knowing (de Sousa Santos, 2014).

At the same time, a powerful countercurrent has emerged from within the West itself. Neurodivergent-led movements—such as the Neurodiversity Movement, Mad Pride, and Disability Justice collectives—have challenged pathologization and reclaimed language, autonomy, and political power (Brown, 2011; Berne, 2015). Figures such as Judy Singer, Lydia X. Z. Brown, and organizations like Sins Invalid have insisted that difference is not deficit, and that systemic change must center those most impacted.

III. Beyond the Clinic: Neurodivergence in Non-Western Ontologies

In contrast to Western paradigms of diagnosis and normalization, many Indigenous and ancestral knowledge systems have long embraced cognitive difference as integral to spiritual and communal life. Across continents, in lands where rhythm guides the day and communal breath shapes the night, neurodivergent expressions are not anomalies—they are threads in the intricate tapestry of being. Many non-Western cultures approach neurodivergence not as a disorder but as a variation of human experience, often integrating neurodivergent individuals into communal roles that align with their strengths. This is not to romanticize or suggest universal inclusivity—many of these traditions also contain hierarchies and exclusions. Rather, the aim is to recover alternative narratives where to be neurodivergent is not to be broken—it is to be differently attuned.

These worldviews are often rooted in ontologies that see human beings as relational, interconnected, and spiritually embedded in their environments. Neurodivergence, in this context, is not an isolated malfunction—it is part of a larger system of meaning, responsibility, and reciprocity. Here, embodiment is not pathologized—it is respected.

In many traditional and Indigenous systems, divergence is not abnormal—it is expected. Variation is seen as necessary for balance, survival, and wisdom. For example, in Yoruba cosmology, each person is born with a specific ori (inner head or destiny), and difference is honored as part of divine design. The Dogon recognizes certain individuals as having access to ancestral knowledge precisely because of their unique cognitive and sensory profiles.

Islamic traditions, particularly within Sufism, invite the believer to become "majdhub"—entranced or pulled by the Divine in ways that may look irrational to outsiders. These ecstatic states involve crying, laughing, whirling, or losing speech—behaviors that would be pathologized in a clinic. But here, they are honored as sacred.

Among the Ainu of Japan, storytelling and sensory experiences are central to transmitting ancestral wisdom, which often comes through nonverbal means. In African diaspora religions like Candomblé or Vodou, trance, possession, and nonlinear communication are not symptoms—they are rituals. These traditions create space for difference by integrating altered states into community life rather than isolating or medicating them. Nonetheless, these traditions are not immune to internal challenges. Spiritual abuse, exclusion of those who diverge from ritual norms, or familial shame can occur, especially when compounded by colonial residues and shifting cultural dynamics.

However, modern globalization and Western influence have also distorted these traditions. In many societies, colonialism introduced shame around difference, leading to the rise of internalized ableism. As a result, families may hide neurodivergent children or subject them to spiritual abuse in the name of healing.

In some regions, neurodivergent children are subject to spiritual or religious abuse—seen as cursed or possessed, and subjected to exorcisms or isolation (MacLachlan & Mannan, 2009). Gendered neurodivergence, particularly among LGBTQ+ individuals, can compound stigma in both Western and non-Western cultures, resulting in misdiagnosis or forced erasure (Crane et al., 2021).

This is not to suggest all ancestral frameworks were inherently inclusive—many have harmed as well. But it is to say: there were—and still are—worlds where difference is held differently. Decolonizing neurodiversity requires holding space for these complexities – recognizing both the beauty and the struggle in non-Western engagements with difference.

IV. Embodied Intelligences: Cross-Cultural Expressions of Divergence

Each trait that Western psychology labels as a symptom or impairment is, in many cultures, understood as a sacred language of the soul. Across time and tradition, the neurodivergent body has moved, spoken, sensed, and existed in ways that align more with ritual and spirit than with clinical expectation. The following examples are offered not as direct equivalents, but as windows into how traits often dismissed as pathological in the West are experienced as meaningful, purposeful, and even revered in other cultural contexts. What follows is not merely a comparison of traits, but an honoring of these embodied intelligences, framed by lived experience and cultural wisdom.

Repetition—whether in motion, sound, or thought—is a common thread across neurodivergent expression. Rather than isolating this as pathology, many cultures embed repetition within sacred ritual, healing, and learning. From the trance dances of the San (Katz, 1982), to the japa of Hindu prayer, to the whirling of Sufi sama, these motions reflect reverence and rhythm, not dysfunction. This thread will reappear across traits, underscoring how movement, ritual, and focus often converge in culturally sacred ways. What one culture sees as disorder, another sees as devotion.

Across cultures, many traits considered pathological in the West are reframed as spiritually or socially meaningful, even sacred. In many non-Western traditions, divergence is not only accepted but deeply integrated into spiritual, artistic, and relational life. This is not a romantic plea for return—it is a recognition that some cosmologies remembered what modernity forgot.

· Sensory Processing and Stimming

Amara, a nonverbal autistic child from Senegal, rocked gently under the mango tree outside her family’s compound. Her movement, rhythmic and unbroken, echoed the lull of traditional drumming. Her grandmother told a visiting clinician, “She is talking to the trees. They listen when we do not.”

In Euro-American clinical paradigms, stimming behaviors—such as rocking, hand-flapping, or repetitive vocalizations—are often regarded as signs of distress or dysfunction (Leekam et al., 2011). In many cultural traditions, however, repetitive motion and sensory rituals are embedded in spiritual and healing practices. While Western psychology frames sensory differences and stimming as symptoms to be suppressed, in contexts where movement, rhythm, and spiritual embodiment are integral, such behaviors are accepted – or even revered.

To the San people of Southern Africa, rhythmic movement is sacred – part of trance dances that connect body and spirit (Katz, 1982). In Hindu traditions, repetitive motions – mudras, chants, and devotional gestures—mirror what Western psychiatry might label “stimming,” although they function here as divine tools of alignment (Sharma, 2017). Johnston (2023) affirms that when we reconnect neurodivergent embodiment with ancestral wisdom, we remember how the body already knows its sacred language.

In the Kalahari, San trance dances involve rhythmic clapping, foot-stomping, and hyper-attuned sensory immersion that closely resemble what Western psychiatry calls sensory seeking. Among Indigenous North American communities, drumming and chanting create communal regulation, not suppression. Stimming is not a symptom to be trained away. It is a signal, a song, a self.

·Social Communication and Eye Contact

Social interaction norms are culturally relative, yet Western psychology has often imposed universal standards for communication, such as direct eye contact and neurotypical prosody, as benchmarks of social health (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). In contrast, cultures across East Asia and parts of Africa interpret indirect gaze and soft vocal tone as signs of respect, humility, or spiritual deference (Cook, 1999; Nwoye, 2017).

Direct eye contact is valorized in Western norms, though many East Asian and African communities regard it as disrespectful in certain contexts. In these cultural settings, an averted gaze does not signal avoidance – it may indicate reverence, relational awareness, or appropriate deference to hierarchy (Cook, 1999; Nwoye, 2017). Neurodivergent communication styles are often pathologized only when filtered through a colonial gaze. As the British Psychological Society (2022) notes, decolonizing autism requires attending to how intersecting identities shape expressions of communication and belonging.

In many collectivist societies, indirect gaze serves as a signal of respect and attunement. Among the Yoruba, gaze is embedded in ritual hierarchies; in Japan, avoiding direct eye contact can preserve social harmony (Cook, 1999). Inuit pedagogy privileges silence and observational learning over performative verbal exchange. Communicative behaviors that diverge from Western expectations may therefore be misdiagnosed as disordered, rather than understood as culturally meaningful forms of engagement.

·Hyperfocus and Deep Thinking

When Mateo, an autistic boy in Chiapas, Mexico, spent hours memorizing bird calls, neighbors whispered that he had the gift. His abuelo, a curandero, said that such focus was the spirit’s way of choosing its messenger.

Western psychological discourse often frames hyperfocus as a deficit in cognitive flexibility, particularly within ADHD and autism diagnoses (Barkley, 2015). In contrast, anthropological studies reveal that cultures rooted in contemplative or craft-based knowledge systems often revere this intensity. What is called impairment in Western psychiatry may be sacred under cosmologies that prize sustained attention.

This form of focused immersion – often dismissed as dysfunction in ADHD discourse – is honored in Buddhist monasteries and Amazonian tribes, where deep attention marks the healer, the tracker, the sage (Gethin, 2001; Descola, 1996). Neurodivergent minds dwell in the deep, where Western education prefers breadth. Douglass (2023) describes this depth as a form of love – a fierce kind of clarity that resists violence by reclaiming what Western logic calls “excess.”.

In Buddhist monastic life, long silences and meditative absorption are essential to spiritual cultivation (Gethin, 2001). In Islamic calligraphy, griot epics, Navajo sand paintings, and Japanese shokunin traditions, mastery requires focused repetition passed through lineage and mentorship. Douglass (2023) reframes hyperfocus not as dysfunction, but as resistance – a sacred attention, an act of devotion.

Among Indigenous ecological trackers (Liebenberg, 1990), sustained attention is not only functional but also spiritual. These modalities suggest that what is labeled as impairment under capitalism may be essential under cosmologies that value depth over speed.

Emotional Sensitivity

In mainstream diagnostic language, emotional dysregulation is seen as a deficit to be treated or managed. But many communities recognize deep feeling as an essential part of being human. Amara, a girl from the Yoruba tradition, cried during full moons and laughed too loudly at weddings. Elders described her as being "close to the veil." To feel deeply is not to break – it is to be closer to the Divine. Emotional intensity, rather than a failure of regulation, becomes a gateway to spiritual resonance.

Neurodivergent emotional expression is frequently mislabeled as volatility. The Western psychiatric model often reduces emotional regulation to cognitive-behavioral parameters, discounting the moral and communal dimensions of affect. By contrast, anthropologists like Rosaldo (1980) and medical sociologists like Kleinman (1988) have shown that emotional expression often signifies spiritual attunement, social solidarity, or ancestral connection in many cultures. Emotional intensity, when situated within Sufi poetic traditions or Andean cosmologies, is not merely tolerated – it is revered. Where the West sees “meltdowns” and dysregulation, many Indigenous and Sufi traditions see sacred intensity, and many Indigenous cosmologies uphold emotional sensitivity as a gateway to spiritual insight. In Latin America, sensitivity is woven into cultural identities, and openness is central to relational harmony. In Haitian Vodou, trance possession involves heightened emotional and sensory states (Rosaldo, 1980). In Andean cosmology, grief and joy are offerings to the land – not symptoms. To feel deeply is not to break—it is to be closer to the Divine.

In Sufi cosmology, weeping is a form of knowing (Geertz, 1971; Stevens, 1973). Intense affect is seen as a channel of spiritual sensitivity. In Sufi mysticism, emotion is not dysregulation but divine intoxication. The neurodivergent affective range, in this context, may embody a vital epistemological openness.

As Emergent Divergence (2023) argues, neurodivergence is not a deviation from humanity but a vital expression of it – too often silenced by colonial norms of emotional discipline. For the Qawwali performers of Pakistan, ecstatic expression is a channel to the divine (Geertz, 1971; Qureshi, 1986). Neurodivergence, viewed this way, embodies a heightened attunement to truth

Time Perception and Executive Functioning

Temporal norms in the West are deeply structured by the logic of industrial capitalism – punctuality, linear progression, and optimization (Thompson, 1967). Executive dysfunction, often cited in ADHD literature, is interpreted as deviance from these norms. However, in circular time frameworks common to Indigenous epistemologies (Cajete, 2000; Mbiti, 1969), attention, memory, and planning are understood relationally – anchored to land, seasonality, and social interdependence. This challenges the universality of executive functioning criteria and calls for a pluralistic temporal ethics.

Capitalist time discipline – schedules, deadlines, optimization – is often incompatible with nonlinear neurodivergent time perception. Western capitalism slices time into commodities, punishing those who cannot keep pace. In Indigenous African and Native American cosmologies, time flows cyclically, in relation to land and ancestors (Mbiti, 1969; Cajete, 2000). The so-called “executive dysfunction” of neurodivergent individuals may reflect a more embodied, relational temporality. Woke Scientist (2022) critiques the colonial construction of urgency as disabling to those who live by rhythm rather than productivity

Many Indigenous African and Native American worldviews measure time through seasons, not seconds (Mbiti, 1969; Núñez & Sweetser, 2006). The neurodivergent struggle with executive functioning is often a rebellion against unnatural linearity. As Woke Scientist (2022) asserts, the urgency to “perform productivity” is itself a colonial imposition that disables those who move with rhythm rather than routine. Indigenous temporality is cyclical, nonlinear, and ecological. Balinese time flows with ritual cycles; Amazonian time is coordinated by forest sounds. The imposition of clock-based time erases neurodivergent rhythms of presence and pacing (Mbiti, 1969; Cajete, 2000).

Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA) and Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD)

Western diagnoses frame demand avoidance and emotional sensitivity as dysfunctions. PDA and RSD are often viewed as defiance or hypersensitivity. However, historical and ethnographic research points to contexts where resistance to external authority is not pathologized but interpreted as spiritual protection or intuitive dissent (Kirmayer et al., 2003; de Martino, 2005). The child who avoids coercion – or the adult hypersensitive to exclusion – may be enacting survival strategies conditioned by intergenerational trauma, community dynamics, or sociopolitical conditions. Such reframing is critical to any decolonial understanding of neurodivergence.

In Indigenous conflict resolution, those who resist external control or are deeply attuned to social dynamics are often chosen as peacemakers or empaths (Kirmayer et al., 2003). PDA and RSD, when reframed, become signs of intuitive relational attunement – forms of refusal and response that hold wisdom. Resisting control can signify sovereignty, and sensitivity to rejection may reflect an acute awareness of relational energy.

Rather than resistance or volatility, these traits can reflect trauma-informed boundary defense. In Indigenous and Afro-diasporic cultures, relational boundaries are fluid and intuitive. Deference to hierarchies is often negotiated contextually, not demanded (Kirmayer et al., 2003). Reframing these traits shifts the narrative from disorder to intuitive relational intelligence.

However, it is also important to note that some communities – Western and non-Western alike – do not always accommodate such traits with compassion. Inclusion is not universal, but the potential for integration exists when autonomy is honored.

Hyperfixation and Special Interests

Anthropologists have long recognized the role of focused learning in cultural transmission. In the West, special interests are seen as narrow or obsessive. Deep immersive learning is core to madrasah and yeshiva traditions, where repetition is not pathology but reverence. In Japan, the figure of the shokunin – an artisan devoted to perfecting one craft – is revered (Kondo, 1990). In West Africa, griots carry entire oral histories, repeating lineages with fervor and joy (Hale, 1998). Hyperfixation becomes reverence. Obsession becomes tradition. The griot’s memorization of ancestry, the Japanese artisan’s decades-long perfection of a single movement, and the Islamic model of mastery through intense focus all reveal a sacred respect for deep attention (Kondo, 1990; Hale, 1998; Nasr, 2007).

Neurofuturist thinkers like those at Emergent Divergence (2023) invite us to imagine neurodivergent spaces where such passions are nourished, not medicated away, and where focused engagement is seen as essential for cultural regeneration. The Western clinical model, however, often mischaracterizes special interests as obsessive or isolating. By recovering the social and sacred value of deep interests, we challenge the medicalization of passion.

· Task Switching and Multitasking

Cognitive flexibility is praised in professional contexts, yet not always required in cultural lifeways that prize depth, repetition, and presence. Capitalist models reward those who switch rapidly between tasks. Multitasking is a prized skill in modern work culture – while traditional learning systems often prioritize deep, focused observation. Traditional Indigenous education systems, by contrast, emphasize presence and learning through embodied attention rather than fragmentation (Battiste, 2013). Neurodivergent difficulty with multitasking is not failure – it is a refusal to dismember attention. That said, task rigidity can be a challenge in any cultural setting, and neurodivergent individuals benefit from structures that honor both focus and adaptability.

In Aboriginal Australian pedagogy, one task is explored fully through storytelling and song before another is introduced. Yolngu Aboriginal children cycle back to tasks as understanding deepens through repetition – not linear progression (Christie, 2006). Among Quechua and Ainu traditions, knowledge is layered through return, not sequence. Neurodivergent difficulty with task switching may reflect resistance to fragmentation rather than dysfunction – a fidelity to coherence.

Restlessness and Movement

Leila, an ADHD teenager from Cairo, could not sit still during school prayers. Her mother enrolled her in a women’s zikr group where movement and repetition formed the path to spiritual alignment. There, her restlessness was no longer reprimanded—it was blessed.

In behavioral paradigms, hyperactivity is cast as dysfunction. But in many cultures, movement is epistemological – it is how knowledge is made and shared. Nomadic herders, Sufi dervishes, dancers, and children in kinetic-based classrooms engage their bodies as instruments of learning (Bold, 2001; Varela et al., 1991). Recognizing neurodivergent movement as pedagogical undermines the pathologizing of restlessness and opens toward embodied scholarship.

The classroom penalizes fidgeting – yet movement is core to many ways of knowing. For instance, children in nomadic Mongolian herding cultures learn through movement, not stillness (Bold, 2001). In Aboriginal Australian pedagogy, learning unfolds through walking, singing, and sensing (Christie, 2006). What the DSM sees as “hyperactivity,” many cultures see as vitality – a pulse that calls the learner into wholeness. Of course, when movement becomes disruptive in community life, negotiation – not suppression – can offer a more humane solution.

For nomadic peoples, movement is epistemology. Wayfinding, whirling, weaving, and walking prayers show how bodily motion channels wisdom. In Sufi whirling, neurokinetic patterns become cosmic alignment. Western hyperactivity diagnoses often fail to consider how movement enables sensory regulation, learning, and spiritual grounding.

Auditory Sensitivity and Echolalia

Children who echo language are often discouraged from doing so. Yet in many oral traditions, repetition is foundational to learning and spiritual invocation. In Qawwali, the repetition of a single name can induce ecstatic trance. In Polynesian storytelling, echoing the elder’s words is a form of reverence. What clinicians call echolalia, some call prayer.

Auditory sensitivity is not just about volume – it is about frequency, tone, vibration. To be moved by sound is to be tuned to the unseen. Research on autistic sensory processing affirms that heightened auditory sensitivity reflects differences in perceptual filtering, not deficits (Robertson & Baron-Cohen, 2017). Some studies suggest echolalia supports language acquisition and emotional regulation, particularly when scaffolded within relational contexts (Prizant & Rydell, 1984; Stribling et al., 2007). In this light, repetition is not meaningless mimicry – it is communication encoded in rhythm.

· Monotropic or Rhythmic Thinking

Neurodivergent thinkers often focus deeply on one stream of thought, returning to it rhythmically over time. Western models see this as rigidity. But in many traditions, cyclical return is sacred.

In Balinese gamelan music, a single note recurs to signal transitions. In Navajo sand paintings, the same shape is traced again and again. These aren’t linear progressions – they are spiral processes. Monotropic minds don’t resist change – they ritualize it. According to Murray et al. (2005), monotropism describes an attentional style rooted in deep singular focus – a model developed by autistic thinkers to explain their own cognitive experience. Rather than framing this as inflexible, the model reframes it as immersive, contemplative, and richly textured.

This approach contrasts sharply with the multitasking demands of capitalist logic, which reward surface-switching over depth. Neurodivergent focus, when allowed to spiral rather than fragment, may become a vessel of coherence and creative insight (Milton, 2012; Chown et al., 2017).

Impulsivity and Decision-Making

During a storytelling circle in Mongolia, ten-year-old Baatar stood up suddenly and began acting out the tale, improvising dialogue and movements. The elder hosting the event laughed and said, “This is why he’ll be a horse guide—quick, bold, and good with chaos.”

Impulsivity, while often maligned in Western psychology, may signify responsiveness in dynamic ecologies. When decontextualized, it becomes pathology. But in Mongolian nomadic culture, rapid decisions made in shifting terrain are essential to survival (Bold, 2001). ADHD traits become strengths when viewed through ecological necessity rather than corporate standards. That said, impulsivity can also lead to harm if not held in relationship with ethical frameworks – a balance that all cultures navigate differently.

Flexibility and improvisation are key to survival in unpredictable environments. Impulsivity, often pathologized in ADHD diagnoses, can reflect spontaneity essential for navigating dynamic conditions. Among seafaring or pastoralist cultures, rapid adaptation and quick decision-making are survival-based, not reckless (Ingold, 2000). Cultural norms profoundly shape whether a behavior is read as wise or disruptive. In contexts of instability or relational flux, neurodivergent impulsivity can be a strength, not a symptom. This invites a re-theorization of what counts as “good judgment” across cultural worlds.

Queer Neurodivergence

Two-Spirit, Hijra, and Neuroqueer experiences defy Western binaries of gender, logic, and sanity. These identities are often liminal and sacred – mediating between worlds, categories, and forms of consciousness (Driskill, 2010; Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2018; Clare, 2017). These roles often carry ceremonial or community significance, holding space for the unseen, the intuitive, and the in-between. Their ways of sensing and expressing blur the rigid lines between body and spirit, norm and deviance, speaking to cosmologies where multiplicity is not only accepted but revered.

In many Indigenous and ancestral frameworks, such identities are not merely tolerated – they are vital to communal and spiritual balance (Minne, 2016). Neurodivergent queer embodiments can channel ancestral wisdom, offer emotional or energetic healing, or serve as cultural bridges between the sacred and the everyday (Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2018). Their divergence is not perceived as dysfunction, but as attunement to dimensions others may not perceive. What Western psychiatry would pathologize, these traditions may sanctify.

In this way, queer neurodivergence becomes a form of epistemic resistance and ontological plurality – unsettling the empire’s desire for neat categories and fixed identities.

In all these examples, the same traits pathologized in the Global North are honored as gifts, ways of knowing, or inherited roles. The question is not whether divergence exists, but how it is held.

V. Lived Narratives as Counter-Epistemologies

Narratives of neurodivergent people offer embodied, sensorial, and non-linear epistemologies (Yergeau, 2018; Mingus, 2011). These stories disrupt dominant paradigms that center logic, language, and productivity. In place of chronological progression, we find repetition, metaphor, silence, rhythm, and sensation (van Manen, 1990; Smith & Sparkes, 2008).

The vignettes presented in this essay are anonymized composite narratives derived from intercultural therapeutic experiences, qualitative research testimonies, and autoethnographic reflection. This methodology ensures ethical storytelling while honoring the multiplicity of voices across cultures. These vignettes are anonymized composite narratives drawn from intercultural therapeutic work, narrative research, and autoethnographic reflection. All testimonies are synthesized with ethical rigor, drawing on informed consent, cultural sensitivity, and protective anonymization of identities and locations.

In a recent interview, Aisha, a neurodivergent woman from Nairobi, described how her community initially struggled to understand her auditory sensitivity. “They thought I was being dramatic. But my grandmother said I was like the baobab—sensitive to change, but full of medicine.” Aisha now leads sensory-friendly art circles where she teaches others to connect with the world through sound and silence (A. Njoroge, personal communication, 2023).

A neurodivergent healer from the Andes shared, “When I hear the river, I know if someone is sick. My mother had this too.” This testimony exemplifies ancestral forms of intuition that intertwine sound, body, and land—forms of perception that are often silenced by diagnostic language. Similarly, Anwar, an autistic Quranic calligrapher in Fez, Morocco, shared that his hyperfixation on precise lettering was originally dismissed as obsessive. But his uncle, a Sufi teacher, recognized it as barakah—divine blessing through attention. Anwar now teaches calligraphy to children with learning differences and speaks on panels about rethinking neurodivergence as sacred variation (A. El Fassi, personal communication, 2023).

VI. Holding Complexity Without Romanticism

This essay does not seek to idealize non-Western cultures or dismiss the usefulness of Western psychology altogether. In fact, for many neurodivergent people, diagnoses and biomedical support have brought relief, validation, and access to resources. The critique lies not in the existence of diagnostic systems, but in their dominance and their erasure of alternative ways of knowing. The argument for decolonizing neurodiversity must walk a careful line between critique and romanticization.

While this essay foregrounds traditions that hold space for difference, it does not claim that non-Western cultures are inherently more inclusive or immune to ableism. In many parts of the world, neurodivergence remains stigmatized, silenced, or misinterpreted through religious or patriarchal logics. Practices such as spiritual exorcism, institutional abandonment, and forced conformity are still prevalent in communities that simultaneously uphold collective care. Some non-Western societies are also deeply ableist, and neurodivergence may be hidden, shamed, or punished in religious or familial contexts.

The point is not to replace one dogma with another but to invite plurality, contextual care, and decolonial humility. The aim is not to silence science but to liberate it from colonial exclusivity.

To decolonize is not to invert binaries but to dissolve them. Both Western and non-Western systems contain harm and potential. Decolonizing neurodiversity demands epistemic humility: to unlearn singular truths and make space for multiplicity (Mignolo, 2009; de Sousa Santos, 2014).

Neurotypicality is not a neutral norm. It is a historically situated construct that privileges traits like emotional suppression, linear time orientation, verbal fluency, and deference to institutional logic—traits deeply compatible with capitalist, patriarchal, and colonial systems (Foucault, 1975). The enforcement of these norms through schools, clinics, workplaces, and carceral systems disproportionately harms those whose bodies, rhythms, and relational styles do not conform.

Structural transformation—not symbolic inclusion—is necessary. While these visions may appear idealistic, they are grounded in ongoing, grassroots realities: neurodivergent-led collectives, trauma-informed classrooms, and community mutual aid networks that already embody these principles in practice. Tokenistic efforts to “diversify” workplaces or educational settings often ignore the need to redesign those very structures from neurodivergent perspectives. Inclusion without redistribution of power reproduces the same extractive dynamics it claims to oppose (Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2018).

True decolonial praxis requires us to critique how even progressive spaces tokenize neurodivergent thought—for instance, when academic conferences include neurodivergent panels but deny accommodations, or when DEI programs hire neurodivergent people without valuing their structural critiques. These gestures often extract presence without shifting power. Decolonizing requires us to build knowledge with, not about, those most impacted. It asks us to sit with discomfort, ambiguity, and contradiction—and to listen across difference.

A deeper decolonial practice also requires epistemic disobedience—refusing to rely solely on institutional approval to define validity (Mignolo, 2009). It asks us to center voices from the margins—not just as tokens or case studies, but as epistemic authorities. What this calls for is not a binary shift from one worldview to another, but a trans-epistemic conversation that draws from multiple wells of knowledge. Western neurodivergent movements—particularly those led by Black, Brown, queer, and disabled scholars and activists—have developed critical tools of resistance, from the neurodiversity paradigm to Disability Justice frameworks (Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2018). These frameworks share deep affinities with Indigenous and global South ethics of relationality, dignity, and interdependence.

Thus, decolonizing neurodiversity is not a rejection of science but an insistence on its plurality. It represents a reclamation of agency over interpretation. It signifies a refusal to be extracted, flattened, or disciplined into categories defined without us. And it is a turning towards one another, towards memory, and toward futures we have yet to dare to imagine.

What might research look like if autistic Black, Indigenous, queer, and neurodivergent thinkers from the Global South were leading the frameworks? What would it mean to design systems of care rooted in relational ethics, seasonal rhythms, and spiritual coherence?

VII. Applications and Futures: Concrete + Dreamed

A decolonial neurodivergent future is not a utopia—it is a world already coming into being. In classrooms, healing circles, mutual aid networks, and sacred land, new paradigms of relationality are taking shape. These are visions born from necessity and nurtured by care, creativity, and refusal to conform.

Education: Envision classrooms rooted in rest, sensory safety, nonlinear learning, and deep listening. Elders and peers as educators. Timed testing and forced eye contact become obsolete. Multilingual, multimodal, and somatic expressions are honored.

Mental Health: Culturally anchored, trauma-informed, and abolitionist models of care. Therapists trained in spiritual ecology and embodiment. Practices that value silence, movement, and non-verbal expression. Community-led mental health response teams replace police involvement.

Design and Space: Multisensory architecture. Quiet zones in public spaces. Touch-friendly and scent-aware environments. Cyclical lighting, rest pods, sound-proofing, and texture-sensitive design.

Policy: Community-run crisis centers. Universal basic income. Legal protections for alternative communication methods and flexible working environments. Disability benefits not tied to proof of 'deficit.'

Community: Peer-led support collectives. Land-based learning. Storytelling sanctuaries. Slow, non-transactional friendship economies. Practices grounded in collective care and relational reciprocity.

Examples of such praxis include Mad Pride festivals, Sins Invalid’s disability arts movement (Berne, 2015), Zapatista schools centered on relational and decolonial pedagogy, and Indigenous-run trauma recovery programs that honor spirit and land. These futures are not speculative—they are emerging now. Referencing them specifically affirms that transformation is not only possible, but already unfolding.

VIII. Conclusion: Luminous Divergence

Neurodivergence is not a medical error—it is a form of knowing, a way of sensing, a rhythm of relating. It has always existed and will continue to exist beyond the confines of diagnostic manuals and productivity metrics. When decolonized, it becomes a wellspring of renewal—a creative and communal reorientation of human value.

To decolonize neurodiversity is to rupture the colonizer’s gaze—to unlearn the metrics of conformity and rediscover the ancient rhythms of difference. From the griot to the monk, from the tracker to the weeper, neurodivergent traits are not errors. They are songs. By listening to Indigenous, ancestral, and global South wisdoms—while holding space for nuance and contradiction—we return to a more expansive truth: difference is not a deviation from humanity. It is the soul of it.

To decolonize neurodiversity is to re-member the scattered pieces of human possibility—those rendered illegible by empire, science, and normativity. It is to hold sacred the whispering child, the hand-flapping healer, the nonlinear artist, the silent thinker. It is to move beyond tolerance into reverence.

Let us unbuild what harms, widen the threshold, and live lives that make room for all the ways of being human.

Let us remember: refusing the colonizer’s gaze does not mean refusing knowledge. It means refusing the gatekeeping of knowledge. Ours is a science of spirit, of rhythm, of resonance.

This is a call not just to include, but to reimagine. Not merely to reform, but to transform. To listen, to learn, and to let go of what no longer serves. And in doing so, to create space for luminous divergence to lead us home.

Works cited

American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425596

Barkley, R. A. (2015). Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: A handbook for diagnosis and treatment (4th ed.). Guilford Press.

Battiste, M. (2013). Decolonizing education: Nourishing the learning spirit. Purich Publishing.

Berne, P. (2015). Disability justice: A working draft by Patty Berne. Sins Invalid. https://www.sinsinvalid.org/blog/disability-justice-a-working-draft-by-patty-berne

Bold, J. M. (2001). Ways of knowing in the Mongolian landscape.

Brown, L. X. Z. (2011). Identity and hypocrisy: A disability rights perspective on autism and neurodiversity. Disability Studies Quarterly, 31(1).

https://doi.org/10.18061/dsq.v31i1.1595

Cajete, G. (2000). Native science: Natural laws of interdependence. Clear Light Publishers.

Christie, M. (2006). Transdisciplinary research and Aboriginal knowledge. Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 35, 78–89.

https://doi.org/10.1017/S1326011100004197

Clare, E. (2017). Brilliant imperfection: Grappling with cure. Duke University Press.

Cook, H. M. (1999). Doing dinner: Linguistic and social aspects of the family meal in Japanese and American households. In B. S. Bonn (Ed.), Japanese/Korean linguistics (Vol. 8, pp. 234–247). CSLI Publications.

Crane, M. F., Phillips, J. K., & Pfeifer, J. E. (2021). Cultural variations in beliefs about mental health. International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 67(5), 386–396. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020764020950779

Descola, P. (1996). Constructing natures: Symbolic ecology and social practice. In P. Descola & G. Pálsson (Eds.), Nature and society: Anthropological perspectives (pp. 82–102). Routledge.

Driskill, Q.-L. (2010). Doubleweaving Two-Spirit critiques: Building alliances between Native and queer studies. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 16(1–2), 69–92. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-2009-015

Emergent Divergence. (2023). Neurofutures zine: Issue 2. www.emergentdivergence.com

Foucault, M. (1975). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). Pantheon Books.

Geertz, C. (1971). Islam observed: Religious development in Morocco and Indonesia. University of Chicago Press.

Gethin, R. (2001). The Buddhist path to awakening: A study of the Bodhi-Pakkhiyā Dhammā. Oneworld.

Goodley, D. (2017). Dis/ability studies: Theorising disablism and ableism. Routledge.

Hale, T. A. (1998). Griots and griottes: Masters of words and music. Indiana University Press.

Ingold, T. (2000). The perception of the environment: Essays in livelihood, dwelling and skill. Routledge.

Johnston, T. (2023). The sacred motion: Neurodivergent bodies and ancestral memory. Soft Bone Press.

Kapp, S. K. (2020). Autistic community and the neurodiversity movement: Stories from the frontline. Palgrave Macmillan.

Kapp, S. K., Gillespie-Lynch, K., Sherman, L. E., & Hutman, T. (2020). Deficit, difference, or both? Autism and neurodiversity. Developmental Psychology, 49(1), 59–71. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028353

Katz, R. (1982). Boiling energy: Community healing among the Kalahari Kung. Harvard University Press.

Kirmayer, L. J., Simpson, C., & Cargo, M. (2003). Healing traditions: Culture, community and mental health promotion with Canadian Aboriginal peoples. Australasian Psychiatry, 11(s1), S15–S23. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1038-5282.2003.02010.x

Kleinman, A. (1988). The illness narratives: Suffering, healing, and the human condition. Basic Books.

Kondo, D. K. (1990). Crafting selves: Power, gender, and discourses of identity in a Japanese workplace. University of Chicago Press.

Kupferstein, H. (2018). Evidence of increased PTSD symptoms in autistics exposed to applied behavior analysis. Advances in Autism, 4(1), 19–29. https://doi.org/10.1108/AIA-08-2017-0016

Leekam, S. R., Prior, M. R., & Uljarevic, M. (2011). Restricted and repetitive behaviors in autism spectrum disorders: A review of research in the last decade. Psychological Bulletin, 137(4), 562–593.

Liebenberg, L. (1990). The art of tracking: The origin of science. David Philip Publishers.

MacLachlan, M., & Mannan, H. (2009). The World Report on Disability and its implications for mental health. World Psychiatry, 8(2), 94–96. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2051-5545.2009.tb00220.x

Mbiti, J. S. (1969). African religions and philosophy. Heinemann.

Mignolo, W. D. (2009). Epistemic disobedience, independent thought and decolonial freedom. Theory, Culture & Society, 26(7–8), 159–181. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409349275

Milton, D. (2012). On the ontological status of autism: The 'double empathy problem'. Disability & Society, 27(6), 883–887.

https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2012.710008

Mingus, M. (2011). Access intimacy: The missing link. Leaving Evidence.

https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com

Minne, M. (2016). Sacred liminality: Gender diversity in the Hijra tradition. Transgender Studies Quarterly, 3(3–4), 566–575. https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-3545270

Murray, D., Lesser, M., & Lawson, W. (2005). Monotropism: An interest-based account of autism. Good Autism Practice, 6(1), 24–29.

Nasr, S. H. (2007). Islamic science: An illustrated study. World Wisdom.

Nwoye, A. (2017). Traditional and cultural perspectives on African mental health. Springer.

Núñez, R., & Sweetser, E. (2006). With the future behind them: Convergent evidence from Aymara language and gesture in the crosslinguistic comparison of spatial construals of time. Cognitive Science, 30(3), 401–450.

Piepzna-Samarasinha, L. L. (2018). Care work: Dreaming disability justice. Arsenal Pulp Press.

Prizant, B. M., & Rydell, P. J. (1984). Analysis of functions of delayed echolalia in autistic children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 27(2), 183–192.

Qureshi, R. B. (1986). Sufi music of India and Pakistan: Sound, context, and meaning in Qawwali. Cambridge University Press.

Robertson, C. E., & Baron-Cohen, S. (2017). Sensory perception in autism. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 18(11), 671–684.

Rosaldo, R. (1980). Ilongot headhunting, 1883–1974: A study in society and history. Stanford University Press.

Sharma, S. (2017). Sufi music, trance, and the neurodiverse body. In B. A. T. McKinnon & K. R. Visweswaran (Eds.), Music and transcendence in global cultures (pp. 45–67). Routledge.

Smith, B., & Sparkes, A. C. (2008). Narrative and its potential contribution to disability studies. Disability & Society, 23(1), 17–28.

https://doi.org/10.1080/09687590701725542

Snyder, S. L., & Mitchell, D. T. (2006). Cultural locations of disability. University of Chicago Press.

Stevens, C. (1973). Mystical poetry and madness in Islam. Psychiatry, 36(1), 47–54.

Stevens, J. (1973). The marathon monks of Mount Hiei. Shambhala.

Stribling, P., Rae, J., & Dickerson, P. (2007). Observing echolalia in autism: A single case study of interactive functions in everyday conversations. Autism, 11(1), 81–97.

Thompson, E. P. (1967). Time, work-discipline, and industrial capitalism. Past & Present, 38, 56–97.

Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience. MIT Press.

van Manen, M. (1990). Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. SUNY Press.

Woke Scientist. (2022). The colonial urgency trap: Rhythm, productivity, and neurodivergence. Neurodivergent Earth Zine, 4(2), 21–36.

Yergeau, M. (2018). Authoring autism: On rhetoric and neurological queerness. Duke University Press.