Open Society

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental condition, commonly associated with differences in attention, and/or hyperactivity and impulsiveness. A lesser known, but highly impactful characteristic of ADHD is emotional dysregulation, which causes difficulties in emotional expression and identification. An aspect of emotional dysregulation which remains relatively unexplored in ADHD, is rejection sensitivity. In people who experience rejection sensitivity, perceived rejection and/or criticism can evoke extreme dysphoria. To investigate the lived experience of rejection sensitivity in ADHD individuals, five undergraduate students participated in focus-group interviews. The subsequent thematic analysis revealed three key themes which encapsulated their experiences; withdrawal, masking, and bodily sensations. The participants explained how rejection sensitivity elicited unpleasant bodily sensations, anxiety, and misery, and how, in turn, they used masking to camouflage these feelings. They then discussed how the use of masking had caused them to become dissociated from themselves and to withdraw from others, which often resulted in loneliness. It was apparent that rejection sensitivity significantly impacts mental wellbeing, eliciting feelings such as anxiousness, despair, and embarrassment. In turn, social function is significantly impaired, alongside career opportunities, and daily life. Our findings indicate a need for deeper understanding of ADHD traits and emotional dysregulation, which may in turn lessen the presence of rejection sensitivity in ADHD individuals.

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Applied behavior analysis is a widely used intervention for autistic youth, though its mental health impacts remain under-researched. This study aims to investi...

Recent reviews have suggested promising evidence for creating built environments for autistic people but, to date, none of these have focused specifically on the school setting. This systematic rev...

Autism, Neurodivergence, Support Needs and Inclusion — What’s New in December and January

Monotropism is a neurodiversity-affirming theory of autism, developed by Autistic people, that explains many common Autistic experiences. Parenting as a monotropic Autistic person brings both challenges and strengths.

Sensory overload is often about uncertainty and how long the brain has to stay engaged—especially in autism and ADHD.

Progressive education is a world-building project rooted in the radical hope that schools can become something fit for human beings. Published by Human Restoration Project, a 501(c)3 organization restoring humanity to education.

Progress Principle

The Dilution of Transformative Language in Professional Practice

Fergus Murray and Wenn Lawson (2022) See also the archive of Dinah Murray’s work. Dinah Murray completed her PhD in psycholinguistics at University College London in 1985, with the title ‘Lan…

An Autistic guide to accessing healthcare written by an Autistic person.

Autistic psychotherapist Alexis Quinn explains how understanding monotropism has been the key to reducing conflict, supporting learning and protecting her children's sense of self (and her sanity).

Taking drug in pregnancy does not raise chances of autism, ADHD or intellectual disability, ‘gold standard’ review finds

"...autistic people don't lack humanity. Research just lacked the humanity to see it."

This book draws on personal stories and insights from autistic people with high and low support needs to present these individuals as equally capable of offering useful and relevant insights, and by doing so argues against the dividing up of some autistic groups from others.

I kicked off a new principal licensure cohort this week. It’s always fun to meet a fresh group of graduate students for the first time. They bring new energy and perspectives, new experiences and e…

Bodily autonomy is essential to Autistic well-being. Interoception supports bodily autonomy through guiding behavior in support of homeostasis. Promoting adapti...

Neurosocial and Neuroperipheral Through the Lens of Monotropism Monotropism, a framework developed by Dinah Murray, describes how attentional resources are organized—whether attention is broadly distributed across many channels or deeply focused into fewer priorities at a time. Many people have asked for clearer definitions of neurosocial (NS) and neuroperipheral (NP), and how these terms relate to the neurodiversity movement’s language of neurotypical and neurodivergent. This document responds by clarifying these distinctions through the lens of monotropism. NS and NP are parallel identity terms, not replacements. They describe functional patterns of attention, prediction, and energy regulation rather than diagnostic categories or social identity alone. While neurotypical and neurodivergent language has been essential for visibility, rights, and community formation, it does not always map cleanly onto the regulatory strategies that shape how people allocate attention, manage stress, and engage with complex environments. These distinctions reflect long-recognized patterns in human communities, which have always included both stabilizing individuals, whose regulatory strategies support social coordination and distributed attention, and peripheral individuals, artists, explorers, pattern-seekers, and deep specialists whose depth-oriented cognition supports adaptation and growth. This is cooperative neurodiversity: diverse regulatory strategies as a normal feature of functioning systems. Within CAS materials: Neurosocial refers to attentional and regulatory patterns most commonly supported and rewarded in contemporary social systems, including distributed attention, rapid context switching, and social synchronization. Neuroperipheral refers to patterns that tend to operate at the edges of these systems, prioritizing depth, precision, and sustained focus, often at higher energetic cost when environments demand constant switching or unpredictability. Through a monotropism lens, NS profiles more often rely on polytropic attention, while NP profiles more often rely on monotropic attention—selective, sustained, and deep. This reflects differences in regulatory organization, not differences in capability or value. This framing helps clarify a persistent source of confusion in neurodiversity conversations: the assumption that neurotypicality represents a single healthy norm and neurodivergence represents deviation or deficit. Instead, distress often arises from misalignment between system demands and regulatory capacity. When NP individuals are required to operate as though they have NS regulatory architecture—constantly switching, broadly monitoring, and socially synchronizing—the energetic cost compounds. The issue is not the peripheral pattern; it is the mismatch and the neurosocial niche creation. 2015 Poster https://lnkd.in/gFxefasS

Introducing Cybercultural's history of web design, from the grey web pages of 1993 to the colorful, mobile-centric web designs of 2012. A celebration of the peak years of personal websites and blogs.

The president decimated the U.S. government’s digital design agencies and replaced them with a personal propaganda czar.

This study examines how neurodivergent undergraduates navigate higher education by theorizing neurotypical perspectivelessness—the institutional erasu…

Published in Clinical and Experimental Optometry (Ahead of Print, 2026)