“Throughout our lives we, as creative people, have been seen as different.”
— sometimes positively as with accomplished artists, musicians, and writers, sometimes negatively as with school kids who doodle or won’t sit still in class, or adult professionals who “break the rules” or won’t do busywork tasks they find unnecessary or uninteresting.
Diagnosis of a Disability or Disorder
You may already have a neurodivergent diagnosis of ADHD, OCD, ASD - Autism Spectrum Disorder, APD - Auditory Processing Disorder, Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, Dyscalculia, Dyspraxia or maybe disorders with outdated terms such as Asperger’s Syndrome or High Functioning Learning Disability.
Creative brains often are accompanied by what is typically perceived as visual-spatial difficulties and language processing difficulties. This means we have trouble processing and understanding what we hear in our society’s “typical” or “normal” world of school, work & home life.
Perceived as “lazy” or “unmotivated”
Often CreativeTypical™ my be percieved as “lazy” or “unmotivated” yet what may be really happening might just be a brain difference or disability realted to executive function which is causing you, or your loved one, to 1) Minimize the number of transitions or motor planning demands, 2) Take in the processing time their brain needs, 3) Mitigate inertia or anxiety associated with transitions & tasks.
CreativeTypical™ language is spoken here
If you feel you are unlike other “normal” or “typical” people or have been called neurodivergent of some kind, therapy in this space is spoken genuinely in your creative language. This is why kinesthetic art making, visual and non-verbal approaches to therapy led by a Board-Certified Art Therapist are so important and integral to the work done, and why our modality of psychotherapy may be different and a better fit than other therapy you may have tried in the past.
You will be treated with respect
At The Limbic Lounge,™ we are Neurodiversity affirming. This means we understand that individuals have differences in their abilities and how they interact with the world around them – We have a deep understanding & respect for what it is like to move through the world as a CreativeTypical™ person. What is considered not typical to others, feels very familiar and normal to us. Having to fit in all day to someone else’s typical world often causes anxiety, depression, and neuro-crashes (aka meltdowns, tantrums, or acting out behaviors). We do, however, live and want to live comfortably & genuinely among our neurotypical peers and family members —sometimes we just need help to learn how to integrate or navigate our different worlds.
Whether or not you, or your loved one, has (or needs) a formal medical diagnosis for school or work accommodations to access learning, information & services in the typical world, it is very important that you have a good understanding of how your unique brain actually works in the context of your own life.
For more info, or if this has sparked your curiosity, please contact us to get started and learn more.
Some helpful official terms for things you may have experienced difficulty with in relationship to school, work or personal life. Please note these issues are NOT connected to intelligence. Unfortunately, that perception often leads to myths of true academic or work performance ability when access to info or accomodations are not made available.
Executive function and Self-regulation – the mental processes that enable us to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and juggle multiple tasks successfully. The brain needs this skill set to filter distractions, prioritize tasks, set and achieve goals, and control impulses.
Dyslexia – causes an inability or great difficulty in learning to read or spell, despite normal intelligence. It inhibits the typical recognition and processing of graphic symbols, particularly those pertaining to language.
Dysgraphia – makes the act of writing difficult, which requires a complex set of motor and information-processing skills. It can lead to problems with spelling, poor handwriting, and putting thoughts on paper. People with dysgraphia can have trouble organizing letters, numbers, & words on a line or page as is typically required.
Dyscalculia – is a wide range of lifelong learning issues involving math and can vary from person to person. It can also affect people differently at different stages of life because the parts of the brain involved in complex calculation develop over decades and often differently in different people.
Dyspraxia – is a difference in the way that the brain processes information, which results in messages not being properly or fully transmitted in a typical way. The term dyspraxia comes from the word praxis, which means ‘doing, acting’. Dyspraxia affects the planning of what to do and how to do it. It is associated with problems of perception, language and thought. It can be perceived as clumsiness, slightly slurred speech, awkwardness with walking or short term memory loss.
