Neuro Flavours: Understanding the Unique Profile
When receiving coaching, I was told a very powerful saying: “If you’ve met one neurodiverse person, you’ve met one neurodiverse person.” While simple, it holds a powerful truth. We are all different in so many ways.
Even identical twins, sharing the same genetics, often differ in traits like handedness due to subtle biological variations during development—such as the direction of cilia rotation in the embryo. Understanding these characteristics is the first step toward change. I can’t stop being neurodiverse, but I can improve how I interact with the world by understanding my unique "profile."
My Personal Flavour Profile
For a long time, I thought Autism was my main "flavour." However, after my ADHD diagnosis, I discovered that ADHD symptoms played a much more significant role in my life than I realized. Here is how these overlapping "flavours" impact me and how I mitigate them:
ADHD & ASD
Impact: These are the "base" of my profile. They affect how I process focus, social cues, and energy levels. ADHD often brings the challenge of task initiation, while ASD can make sensory environments overwhelming.
Mitigation: I use intentional movement to regulate my dopamine levels. By scheduling high-focus tasks immediately after exercise, I "hack" my focus window.
Prosopagnosia (Face Blindness)
Impact: I have significant trouble recognizing people if they change their appearance (new hair, glasses). This makes live-action movies difficult to follow, as I lose track of characters between scenes. Research suggests that the exaggerated features in animation make them much more accessible for people with recognition challenges.
Mitigation: I prefer animated content over live-action. In social settings, I am open with people about my difficulty with faces, which reduces the anxiety of "forgetting" someone I've met before.
Aphantasia
Impact: I cannot "see" images in my mind's eye. This makes traditional visualization techniques (like "Memory Palaces") completely ineffective for me.
Mitigation: I rely on logic, stories, and physical anchors rather than visual imagination. For example, using mnemonics for Kanji works because it is a narrative, not a mental picture.
Memory Issues & Gut-Brain Connection
Impact: Working memory is a constant hurdle, often exacerbated by physical health and stress levels.
Mitigation: I treat my health holistically. Managing my "gut-brain" axis through diet and movement reduces the brain fog that makes memory issues worse.
Understanding these flavours isn't about "fixing" them—it's about learning the recipe of who you are so you can move through the world with more ease.
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