Revisited: Neurodiversity is the Fucking Coolest Thing in the World

To kick off 2025, Talkhouse Film is revisiting some of its favorite pieces of the previous 12 months, including this one. Happy new year! – N.D.

The film I most recently directed, Out of My Mind, has impacted my life in so many beautiful ways, but the most personal of these is how it affected my concept of self. Growing up, I have no memory of anyone talking about the concept of neurodivergence. People were either “normal” or “damaged.” If somebody had, say, ADHD or anxiety, the common concept was that something was wrong with them, that their brain was broken in some way. Diagnoses like that were looked upon with pity, and the assumption was that those people would struggle in life to not only fit in, but to thrive. I have a family member who, when I was in my late teens, experienced severe mental illness. They were in and out of psych wards, and couldn’t work or have lasting relationships, and so the concept of being diagnosed back then was seen as dire.

Throughout my childhood and into my 30s, I always felt like I was a weirdo (and was called that quite often). I worked very hard to fit in and I desperately wanted my family to be considered “normal,” though I knew we were anything but. I was considered very blunt, and people would often say that I was “strong” or “intimidating,” though I never quite understood why. I was aware that things I said out of a righteous desire to be honest, sometimes hurt people’s feelings. But at the same time, I was also shocked, because I consider myself to be a person who is always overly concerned about other people’s comfort, well-being and happiness. I always felt it was crueler to lie to someone than to tell them an untruth to spare their feelings, but this didn’t seem to be the norm amongst my peers.

When I was in my first year of college and struggling with anxiety, I went to see a therapist, who was probably just a graduate student in psychology, no more than five years older than me. This therapist had a big yellow legal pad where she took notes, and in one of our sessions, she wrote in the column on the side: “OCD.” The way she was holding her pad, I could see what she’d written, so I said, “What’s OCD?” She immediately pulled the pad up to her chest, because of course I wasn’t supposed to have seen it. She mumbled something about how she wasn’t sure I had it, she could look into it with her superiors, blah, blah … But after that, I started reading a little bit about OCD and although I had not been officially diagnosed at that point, I would glean little bits here and there from articles I read or things I’d hear and over the years became pretty certain that I did, indeed, have OCD. It never stopped me from doing anything per se, and I wouldn’t even say it necessarily got in my way, but I still did not understand how my “weird” brain would actually be key to me becoming successful in my industry.

By the time I had children, the perception of neurodivergence had thankfully changed a lot, and is continuing to change at a very rapid pace. I feel very lucky to be alive in a time where we are starting to normalize not just physical differences, but also mental differences. Diagnoses are now not so scary, in fact I would say they are the norm. The kids I know today see their neurodiversity as their superpower. They are learning about how their brains work best, how they learn best, and better understanding the things they struggle with, and why they struggle.

When the pandemic hit, my son really started to have a hard time (as most of us did). He was suddenly deprived of all his social outlets and the exciting stimulus of the rest of the world. After an assessment, he received a diagnosis of ADHD. Years before that, I had thought a diagnosis for my child would bring me to my knees with anxiety and fear. I thought it meant he wouldn’t be welcomed into the world by society at large, be rejected by employers, friends, and romantic relations – that it would radically affect how he would be perceived. But when my son was diagnosed and I started learning more about ADHD, and how incredibly common it was, that whole view just shattered. And after a lot of research and learning, I eventually came to where I am now – which is understanding that neurodiversity is the fucking coolest thing in the world. I, too, see it as a superpower. For the first time, I not only understand, but also love and appreciate, my own brain and how it works. Because doing all this reading for my child led me to understand that I, too, have ADHD. I can’t describe the relief that comes with finally understanding why I am the way I am, and that there’s nothing wrong with that.

Coming to this place of self-love and self-acceptance has also helped me immensely from a creative point of view. I’ve come to see that my neurodivergence has given me a lot of the skill sets that are crucial to me as a filmmaker, including my ability to focus on and think about 200 things at one time. The intense craving I have for honesty makes me dig deeper into every scene, until it feels truly authentic. I can use my tendency to get bored if not mentally stimulated to my benefit. My obsessive qualities ensure that I don’t give up, even when it might be easier to. Neurodiversity might sometimes make me struggle to have a linear conversation for very long, or feel socially awkward, but I’m past the point of caring now. I used to get really embarrassed, but now I just let people know, This is who I am. I can say with certainty that I’m a better director because of my neurodiversity. I might be a bit of a weirdo, but I’m OK with that! I guess what I’m saying is that, in effect, the creative life I crafted for myself is, in part, because of those things that we label neurodivergent, rather than in spite of them.

I was lucky that all of this personal edification was going on at the same time as I was making Out of My Mind (out now on Disney+), because I was learning about disability and how the neurodiversity piece fits in under the disability umbrella. The film tells the story of Melody Brooks, a whip-smart girl who is navigating 6th grade as a non-verbal wheelchair user who has cerebral palsy. With the help of some new technology and her devoted allies, she will prove that what she has to say is more important than how she says it.

I was determined to do as much research as I could for the film and really understand Melody’s specific perspective, because her story does not speak for all kids with cerebral palsy, let alone all people with disabilities. We built that perspective for our character by pulling from all sorts of sources: from the book of Out of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper, from our actress Phoebe-Rae Taylor, from the screenwriter, Daniel Stiepleman, from our wonderful consultants on the film who have lived experience with cerebral palsy, and from myself. I wanted to make sure it was a truly authentic portrayal of a full human being who feels isolated, different, and left out. I think because I’ve just always felt weird and different, I assumed that everybody could feel that way too. I think most, if not all, people feel isolated, alone, different or weird at some point in their life. And because of this universal feeling of isolation, my take on the film was: Sure, she’s got cerebral palsy, she’s nonverbal, she uses a wheelchair, but she’s just like anyone else. She wants friends. She wants a love interest. She wants to be considered and included. She wants people to laugh at her jokes, like all of us do…

One of the first books I read when I was doing research for Out of My Mind was Demystifying Disability by Emily Ladau. Right at the start of the book, Ladau lists all the conditions that fall under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and OCD was one of them. I said, Wait, what? Hold on a second … It really floored me. I then started to do more research about OCD, because again this was during the pandemic and my OCD was worse than it had ever been. I then was properly assessed for OCD and ADHD and found out that I do officially have both of them. After that, I thought, My God, what had I been afraid of all those years? It was such a waste of fear and anxiety. Having these diagnoses now has been incredibly helpful and empowering, and I can honestly say it has made me like myself for maybe the first time ever in my life. I did a huge amount of research on disability, accessibility, and ableism for Out of My Mind, and I credit the film with really helping me accept who I am and how my brain works.

Embracing who I am and how my brain works has also made me more confident about what I do, especially as a writer. I’m very aware now that I will never be that person who gets up at five a.m. and writes from five to nine every single morning, no matter what. That’s just not me. I’m the person who will take a week away from my family and write for 14 hours a day and finish a script in one week. That’s how I work best, and now I’m able to structure my schedule in a way that fits my creative type.

A large part of why I feel the confidence to be open about this now is Shannon Plumb’s piece for Talkhouse a few years ago in which she talked about her husband, Derek Cianfrance, having OCD. I had always been scared to be perceived in the industry as somebody who was neurodiverse, but when Derek was upfront about his OCD, I thought, Well, fuck it, if he can do it, I can be open about my diagnoses too! I’ve now lost count of the number of highly successful creatives, tech moguls, engineers, doctors, writers and others who identify as having ADHD, Autism, OCD, or another type of neurodiversity. I’ve come to see that these diagnoses can quite often be an indicator of a superpower type of intelligence in a specialized area. This might also mean that you have a propensity for extreme honesty, or you like to tell silly jokes, or parties make you nervous – not everything that comes with neurodiversity is necessarily easy. But I’ve also come to see those with learning and personality differences to be the best people I know; they make me laugh, think, feel, and love with the greatest depth.

I can’t say enough good things about us all learning about our different neurotypes and how our brains work and what actually works best for each of us, rather than comparing ourselves to others and how we think we should be behaving, thinking or acting. As I said, neurodiversity is the fucking coolest thing in the world.