Life Before Collapse: A Conversation with Chris Stephens, CPA
For many late-identified neurodivergent adults, collapse marks and end of one way of being and the beginning of another. What follows is a conversation on life before.
The following podcast is Part 1 in a multi-part series that explores the concept of “coherence” that Chris Stephens, CPA outlines in her groundbreaking work, Mapping the Territory of Coherence from her newsletter, Almost Structured.
Non-linear, gestalt processors know before there is language to explain. We frequently live in environments that assume the primacy of language, demanding words as a precursor to knowing. For gestalt processors, this demand is opposite to the architecture of our cognition.
Chris outlines the basics of gestalt processing in her post, Thinking in Wholes. We pause there for some foundation before launching into a long discussion about what it’s like to live without the language to describe how your thinking works.
Neurodivergent adults spend a lifetime adjusting to the demands of a world that wasn’t built for us. Masking (or adaptation, as some have taken to calling it) has brutal effects on neurodivergent adults over time. The is especially the case for adults who doesn’t know they’re neurodivergent, or realize decades into their lives that they have a different neurotype than what our social structures are built for.
Being forced to adapt divorces us from our self-concept, our emotions, our instincts, our bodies, across domains and relationships. The damage is real and it takes years to undo.
Moreover, there’s a unique load that non-linear thinkers (who may or may not be neurodivergent—there’s overlap between autism, ADHD, AuDHD and gestalt processing) endure as they are faced with the pressure to adapt at the level of cognition.
Information processing itself is what must “mask” in order to meet the demands of neurotypicality: words first, meaning in fragments, the parts before the whole—exactly opposite from the way non-linear minds are naturally wired. The damage lands differently, though the effects are equally brutal.
(It’s possible, as I reflect on this idea, that all neurodivergent people must adapt at the level of cognition in some way, but if this is the case, this kind of adaptation gets missed when behaviors are what the medical system providing autism and ADHD treatments focus on.)
Let it be said, then, that my conversation with Chris is about the cumulative effects of one flavor of cognitive adaptation:
Non-linear cognition —> linear cognition.
Chris Stephens is a gestalt processor, twice-exceptional and late-diagnosed autistic who endured what she describes as an “acute collapse” that became a health crisis. From there, as part of her healing, she took to Substack to write from the inside of her experience, painstakingly constructing a framework to describe the architecture of her mind and information processing style.
The following conversation explores her life before collapse. I also chime in as a fellow gestalt processor and tell my own story, arriving meaning-first the way gestalts do.
Our dialogue is asynchronous and takes place over nearly a month of voice memos. We discuss psychiatric medication and its adverse effects, hostile work environments whose effects accumulate, our shared interest in the paranormal, mental health treatments, body/mind/soul connections, and more.
Listen below:
Episode 03: Chris Stephens, CPA on Mapping the Territory of Coherence, Part 1: Life Before Collapse
The following podcast is Part 1 in a multi-part series that explores the concept of coherence that Chris Stephens, CPA outlines in her groundbreaking work, Mapping the Territory of Coherence from her newsletter, Almost Structured.