klebriger Fokus
Und wieder sitze ich meiner Therapeutin gegenüber und esse. Es ist 12 Uhr, wir wollen arbeiten, mein Treibstofftank ist leer.
Ich habs gewusst, ich hatte einen Timer und ein safe food dabei und hab’s trotzdem nicht gemacht. Mein Fokus hat noch an einer Aufgabe geklebt, die ich unterbrechen musste, um zu ihrer Praxis zu laufen. Der Timer ist an mir vorbeigeflogen.
In my latest article, I explore how monotropism creates a vertical temporality. This concept bridges quantum physics and Jung's Spirit of the Depths. It represents a form of existence that functions elsewhere, far from the logic of the clock.
Read the full piece here: https://medium.com/@christian.gajewski/when-time-flows-elsewhere-autistic-life-between-quantum-and-hyperfocus-b66e7c8f946e
#AuDHD #Neurodiversity #Monotropism #Autism #actuallyautistic #Psychology #psychoanalysis
I uploaded the Korean article of #monotropism today!
Meerkat Mode, Monotropic Split, and Monotropic Spiral
Tanya Adkin and David Gray-Hammond are doing great work furthering our understanding of atypical burnout, monotropism, and the intersections of the two. Tanya’s conceptions of Meerkat Mode, Monotropic Split, and Monotropic Spiral really resonate with me. We created new glossary pages and updated our Monotropism and Burnout pages with selections from their work:
Table of Contents
Meerkat Mode
Lovingly dubbed “meerkat mode” by Tanya due to the heightened state of vigilance and arousal it presents, it involves constantly looking for danger and threat. It is more than hyper-arousal, Tanya believes that it is actually an overwhelmed monotropic person desperately looking for a hook into a monotropic flow-state.
This is not just sensory hyper-arousal, it is the tendency of monotropic [AuDHD] minds to seek out a natural and consuming flow-state to aid recovery from burnout and/or monotropic split. Because of the heightened sensory-arousal and adrenal response that comes with it, monotropic flow becomes difficult to access, leading into monotropic spiral.”
What is meerkat mode?
- Hypervigilance
- Seeking a monotropic flow-state (Hyperfocus)
- Increased Sensory Dysregulation
- May be unable to stop or rest
What is meerkat mode and how does it relate to AuDHD? – Emergent Divergence
What atypical burnout can look like is being stuck in a hyper-aroused state, Tanya often affectionately dubs this as “meerkat-mode”, she describes a meerkat-type nervousness, constantly on the look out for danger, unable to focus and self-regulate creating the need for constant co-regulation with another person, and a fear of being left alone. This is sometimes misinterpreted as attachment disorder because of the childs perceived over-attachment to a parent or safe person. We often see this type of response from children and young people in traumatic school environments for extended periods of time.
Creating Autistic Suffering: What is Atypical Burnout? – Emergent Divergence
Lovingly dubbed “meerkat mode” by Tanya due to the heightened state of vigilance and arousal it presents, it involves constantly looking for danger and threat. It is more than hyper-arousal, Tanya believes that it is actually an overwhelmed monotropic person desperately looking for a hook into a monotropic flow-state.This is not just sensory hyper-arousal, it is the tendency of monotropic minds to seek out a natural and consuming flow-state to aid recovery from burnout and/or monotropic split. Because of the heightened sensory-arousal and adrenal response that comes with it, monotropic flow becomes difficult to access, leading into monotropic spiral.
Monotropic Spiral
Tanya’s original concept of Monotropic spiral results from the inertia of monotropic flow. It may involve obsessive-compulsive type occurrences of rumination about a particular subject of experience that pulls the person deeper and deeper into an all-consuming monotropic spiral. Associative thinking that starts connecting this to anything and everything, seemingly like an ever increasing black-hole (Adkin & Gray-Hammond, 2023; Gray-Hammond & Adkin, 2023).
This can lead to the development of apparent loss of insight into ones own mental state and reality as described by the general population.
Monotropic spiral is not psychosis. It is rather the vehicle that carries the person into psychotic phenomena, and maintains its inertia. Much like a star collapsing on itself, the resultant black-hole sucks in everything in its vicinity and is all-consuming.
A person experiencing monotropic spiral may lose insight and their sense of Self, compounded by a decoupling from shared reality.
Monotropic Split
Monotropic split refers to a very specific type of attentional trauma experienced by monotropic people who are regularly exceeding their attentional resources (Adkin, 2022) in an effort to meet the demands of living in a world designed for non-monotropic (polytropic) people. It inevitably leads to burnout.
So, what happens when a monotropic mind is forced to live in a polytropic way?
A monotropic individual focuses more detailed attention over fewer attention streams than a polytropic (non-Autistic) individual. When they are forced into environments where they must perform like a polytropic person, the amount of attention to detail they apply to multiple attention streams doesn’t decrease, all that happens is the monotropic mind experiences trauma by being pushed into trying to give more attention than any individual can cognitively give.
I call this monotropic split. The monotropic mind is having to split its attention and give more mental energy and attention than it has available to be able to withstand the environment it is in and remain safe.
When we think of an Autistic person experiencing overwhelm, we are thinking of a monotropic mind taking on more than it can process and creating meltdown or shutdown. Therefore, experiencing monotropic split is the cause of meltdown or shutdown.
When we think of an Autistic person who masks, “copes” and “gets by” which eventually leads to burnout or mental health crisis, we are again thinking of a monotropic mind being forced to perform in a way that traumatises its processing capabilities. This is monotropic split causing trauma, burnout, or mental health crisis.
Autistic burnout starts with monotropic split (Adkin, 2022) over a sustained period of time. Burnout recovery can take months or even years, and the recommended course of action is usually to remove as many demands as possible, and recharge through interest-led activities.
Creating Autistic Suffering: What is Atypical Burnout? – Emergent Divergence
Related pages from our website:
#autisticBurnout #burnout #changelog #flow #meerkatMode #monotropicSpiral #monotropicSplit #monotropism #sensoryOverwhelm #trauma
Lovely to see Katie starting with this! #monotropism #eduSky
@pathfinder @MOULE @autistics My theory of #kaleidotropy — which originated as a variant of the #monotropism theory — combines these two, with the twist that the intensity of the perceived world originates within us, not merely from failure to filter outside inputs.
Ah, #ADHD and Monotropism—a riveting tale of endless explanations and updates, delivered in every language imaginable except the one that explains why this article even exists. 🥱🔍 Spoiler alert: If you were hoping for practical advice, you'll find more #clarity in a bowl of alphabet soup. 🍜📚
https://monotropism.org/adhd/ #Monotropism #AlphabetSoup #PracticalAdvice #HackerNews #ngated
ADHD and Monotropism (2023)
#HackerNews #ADHD #Monotropism #Neurodiversity #MentalHealth #2023
Let me Hyperfixate That For You: Fergus Murray, Monotropism, And “Weird Pride”
Tomorrow evening, I'm part of the panel at an event launching two short animations I helped make, with Thriving Autistic - 'Discovering You're Autistic' and 'Lightbulb Moments'.
I'm really happy with how they turned out, and I'm excited about sharing them with a wider audience.
I've also got chapters in a bunch of books that are coming out, including 'Someone Like Me', which launches next Thursday with an event at Lighthouse Bookshop (also streaming online). The other three books are about #neurodiversity and #education.
Most of the chapters are about #monotropism, and being @actuallyautistic, and learning.
Details here:
https://oolong.co.uk/launches-2025/
It's seven years since I wrote 'Me and Monotropism' for The Psychologist, The British Psychological Society's magazine. Back then, the theory was still relatively little known, despite a quarter of a century of development and application; its authors were all Autistic, and none of them really played the game of academia.
A lot has happened in the seven years since, and the magazine's editor asked if I could pen an update for them. That is now published here, underneath the original article. Enjoy!
#monotropism #autism #ActuallyAutistic
https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/me-and-monotropism-unified-theory-autism
MQ Assessment
Monotropism questionaire
@Ferrous @autoperipatetikos @actuallyautistic This is true; precursors of the changes you've made in the theory of #monotropism were already present in the original version. And I just finished Wenn Lawson's "The Passionate Mind" (the first, and so far only, book [as opposed to articles!] on autism I've read since my self-diagnosis), where he notes that #monotropic autistics CAN actually distribute attention effectively IF their interest is engaged.
But to me, that's an indication that the relevant factor is the #autotropic decoupling of attention from the social and physical environment — rather than restriction or narrowness or singleness of attention or interest in any sense, however liberally interpreted. Decoupling of attention and interest from the world should, so to speak, be treated as an axiom definitive of the subject matter, rather than a theorem to be derived.
And #monotropic attention is a special case, not a fully general theory. I felt it necessary to introduce the concept of #kaleidotropy because the phenomenology of my experience has been very different from what Wenn Lawson reports. It's much closer to what Kelter reports — except that what he experiences as a curse, to me is very much a blessing: "Every possible thought is instantly ten alternate thoughts that quickly grow to many more".
Kelter, M. Being hyperverbal is a real — and disabling — autistic experience. Thinking Person's Guide to Autism. 2019 July 11. Available from: https://thinkingautismguide.com/2019/07/being-hyper-verbal-is-realand.html
@dedicto @autoperipatetikos this is true, but I would suggest that even there, they significantly alter the meaning of 'restricted range of interests' relative to how people tend to interpret it: 'attention may be broadly distributed over many interests or may be concentrated in a few interests'; 'it is the difference between having few interests highly aroused, the monotropic tendency, and having many interests less highly aroused, the polytropic tendency.'
@autoperipatetikos @adelinej @Dianora @pathfinder @Tooden @filmfreak75 @actuallyautistic This article by @Ferrous is my principal source for the newer version of the theory of #monotropism. It is impossible to emphasize too much: I see this theory as by far the most useful and promising of current theories of autism, and I see my theory of #kaleidotropy as an evolutionary further development of it, NOT as a wholesale rejection of the entire approach.
Murray, Fergus. Me and monotropism: a unified theory of autism. Psychologist. 2018 Nov 30. Available from: https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/me-and-monotropism-unified-theory-autism.
@autoperipatetikos @adelinej @Dianora @pathfinder @Tooden @filmfreak75 @actuallyautistic One mnemonic for the generalizing step from just #monotropism to #autotropy, which includes #kaleidotropy:
A #kaleidoscope and a plain tunnel have one thing in common: they both close off the view of the outside world.
@autoperipatetikos @adelinej @Dianora @pathfinder @Tooden @filmfreak75 @actuallyautistic There's a great deal more to it. The later theory of #monotropism tends to draw distinctions between restriction of interests at a single time versus restriction of interests over a lifetime; the former can be restricted while the latter very much is not. And similar fine distinctions.
But my theory of #kaleidotropy, although an outgrowth and further development of #monotropism theory, goes beyond even these newer versions, primarily in two ways, both of which to my knowledge represent new departures:
(1) For at least some of us, the idea that our interests are in ANY way narrow or restricted — except transiently on SOME occasions — is not just in need of refinement or clarification, it's completely wrong, and even backwards. From our point of view, it is the interests of NEUROTYPICALS that are narrow and restricted! Note that this observation invalidates not only current versions of the theory of monotropism, but also the official DSM criteria for diagnosis of autism.
(2) The fundamental difference between neurotypical and autistic interest and focus of attention has nothing directly to do with wide or narrow focus. It is that neurotypical interest and attention is strongly yoked to the social and physical environment (#ecotropic), while autistic interest and attention is NOT yoked to the environment, but is autonomous (#autotropic). Classical monotropism theory acknowledges, and even emphasizes, this difference, but sees it not as fundamental, but rather as a downstream effect of restricted focus; autistics do not focus on the environment because they CANNOT — too much is going on for their restricted attentional focus to handle. But this #autotropic decoupling from the environment can occur even in the complete absence of any quantitative limitations on the amount of attention available. #Autotropism, not limited interest and attention, is fundamental. #Autotropic attention and interest is simply under far fewer constraints than #ecotropic attention and interest. It can indeed be more restricted (#monotropic), but it can also be LESS restricted — wider-ranging and more rapidly labile (#kaleidotropic).
@autoperipatetikos @adelinej @Dianora @pathfinder @Tooden @filmfreak75 @actuallyautistic I first started researching #monotropism after reading Lynch's 2019 NeuroClastic post, which had led me to self-diagnose. It was one of the 7 axes of autistic characteristics she listed. I was particularly interested in that one. It was the most closely related to my own reflections about my psyche before self-diagnosis. I also had a curious "almost exactly, but not quite" feeling about it. I definitely recognized the intensity of focus — but there were other aspects that very much did NOT fit. Looking into the topic further, I found the classic 2005 paper with its emphasis on restricted interests.
Lynch CL. "Autism is a spectrum" doesn't mean what you think. NeuroClastic. 2019 May 4. Available from: https://neuroclastic.com/its-a-spectrum-doesnt-mean-what-you-think/.
@autoperipatetikos @adelinej @Dianora @pathfinder @Tooden @filmfreak75 @actuallyautistic There's been a change in the theory of #monotropism since it was originally developed. The classic paper on the topic, "Attention, monotropism and the diagnostic criteria for autism" (Murray, Lesser, and Lawson 2005), actually IDENTIFIES monotropism with the "restricted range of interests" referred to in the official DSM diagnostic criteria.
