I'm a late diagnosed female with AuDHD. I'm a mother, I'm employed as a teacher of personal development in further education and I'm an artist - trying to maintain a practice as an artist. Like so many.

 

I once heard the musician Tom Waits say, 'songs find you', as though songs were living entities that hunted down and attached themselves to chosen communicators, and were inescapable. I remember this often and relate to this in an unusual way, because I never understood why, when my own art practices sometimes caused me such anguish and discomfort, I just kept doing them. As though the art had latched onto me and I couldn't let it go.

 

I am predominantly a performance artist, but a visual artist too.

 

Many, many torturous thoughts and uncomfortable feelings - that still persist from experiences past, and now eased by medication - come from my performance art path, discomfort resulting from being so revealing to the public, from belief that I was causing others problems and pain, from inadequacy, from not understanding things, from peoples feedback (even if it was very good), from interactions, from trying to find energy when there was non, from many things, that repeated. So why did I keep doing art? I now understand that all those experiences, I now recall as I move around my house to think, and then talk, to type up later, are a result of my neurodivergence and embodied trauma.

 

Diagnosed in the last two years with ADHD and Autism, I experienced incredible imposter syndrome from this news, and sought further opinion from other clinicians. I spent so much of my life being told other things or believing other things about myself, why would I see this as the truth now – ADHD and Autism? My imposter syndrome was enhanced by believing the shared stereotypes about ADHD and Autism. I feel so lucky to have worked with a neuropsychologist that explained to me how the following factors remove these stereotyped views of these two conditions, being a women and having both ADHD and Autism together, AuDHD is like a separate condition and it manifests differently. When she described how to me, she described me.

 

I'm curious that I wasn't someone who gave a sigh of relief on receiving diagnoses as some do, but instead an inflated belief (and anger) that it wasn't true and accurate enough, which may suggest my neurodivergent traits. Many people go 40+ years not knowing they're neurodivergent, I was put on prozac when I was a young teenager, I have seen multiple therapists, had issues with alcohol, been referred to mental health and alcohol services and my mental health has always been at the forefront of my mind - for as far as I can remember.

 

As I stand now talking into my phone, I have had a thought, 'Look at your performance art for god sake, doesn't this reveal your neurodivergence?' My solo performance art is frantic, it contains multiple narratives, its scattered and repetitive in nature, it holds rigorous patterns and a desire for raw authenticity. I think, 'Look at how much you want it to be in a constant flow of expressing raw emotion. Why?' Perhaps because I spend so much of my life in my mind and body, in extreme emotions and very specific, challenging mental processes, 'you're a very internal person' a university lecturer commented once, one also told me I was 'a clown' and I've always loved that, humour is another saviour, as well as art.

 

Art makes sense of these mental processes, it makes use of them and tells them it's okay. It feels like I didn't choose my art. It found me, and said, 'you have to do this because if you don't do it, life will be unbearable'.

 

It seems true to me, when I think of my friends, that the neurodivergent naturally lean towards the arts. Perhaps because what they are experiencing mostly feels impossible to express in conventional ways, judgement and a need to avoid perceived rejection may be relevant here.

 

Art found them. Art. A discipline that causes no problems, physically or mentally, but regulates and develops the brain, a discipline that brings people together. Being neurodivergent you can't express away your personal neurology, but art will give you moments of release and allow you to enjoy yourself sometimes. It will connect you to people that you feel so privileged to know. In the arts there are the problem solvers, the explorers, the designers, and those that care and create community - it earns its rightful place at the top of the thinking hierarchy, Blooms Taxonomy.

 

Now I am accepting my own diagnosis I crave a conversation about neurodivergnce in connection with growing art practice, and wonder how I connect the two now and make them work better for me, while giving thanks to my life and who I am to this point, including the pain.

 

Along with the barriers and struggles, I currently see some benefits of my neurodivergence in my teaching practice: with neurodivergent experiences and a hypersensitivity to peoples emotional states (painfully) I communicate understanding. I create creative, energetic spaces with movement, looking for novel angles. I read the room well and make constant connections between peoples ideas. I have to have it simple, clear and structured for me, therefore, I deliver content this way.

 

But how else can my neurodivergence serve people, specifically in my life as an artist and arts facilitator?

 

I wish we all, in society used our experiences to develop the environment, and we all allowed people to claim and share their experiences without judgement. I want people to use art to look at themselves and see how okay they are, I want to do this because it's important for me, for other people and, I believe for the world. I believe the route to a good society is people feeling good about themselves. This is what I want to generate in a workshop space, to slow down, to utilise the body we've been given, to appreciate ourselves and give ourselves permission to be authentic. When I teach, I move, hop and jump around a lot when I'm thinking. If I allow this of myself, it brings high energy to a space and will encourage others to be as they feel themselves, it opens an opportunity to allow myself this while learning a way to make what I am delivering accessible for everyone.

 

I want to harvest a community where we celebrate who we are and how we can communicate. I think sound poetry does this, it comes away from decided words and meaning and allows people to project what comes naturally from their own bodies. It expands the field of vocalisation to include not just words but non text sounds too, it prioritises style instead of prescribed meanings. In my workshop I explore how key practitioners related to sound poetry explore form over content, covering Antonin Artaud, Lily Greenham and Isidore Isou. Their theories prompt a series of exercises for self expression where the workshop participants play and discover their own styles and capabilities.

 

I want people to extend this conversation with me, of being 'undeniably ourselves' through art, to collaborate with me and create a community, through physical and verbal discourse.

 

Sounding Out is at Seven Arts Centre on the 29th August at 13.00pm.