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Monotropism in Autism: Strengths and Challenges

Russ Harris explains the strengths of monotropic thinking, along with the challenges it can present for autistic clients.

From the course
Young man smiling - in the distance someone is runningACT for Autism: A Neuroaffirming Approach
Diana Murray and Wenn Lawson coined the terms monotropism and the monotropic brain. The term refers to a cognitive style that is characterized by intense narrowly focused attention on a small number of interests. This intense narrow focus often enables people to access a kind of flow state often called monotropic flow or hyper focus. This tendency of the monotropic brain has many benefits. One obvious example is that the flow states that arise are very satisfying, very enjoyable. Another is that the ability to sustain deep focus on a particular task or activity helps you to do it a whole lot better. Also, when you focus on a particular topic or an area of interest and you sustain that deep focus, you get to develop a whole lot more in-depth knowledge about it. And usually it comes with a high capacity for detecting patterns and details within that specific focused area which makes it very useful for all sorts of creative and analytic pursuits. So, there's some very obvious powerful upsides to a monotropic brain. There are also unfortunately some downsides. One common problem is switching between tasks when you're very kind of hyper focused, absorbed in a particular activity. It may be very hard, often overwhelming, exhausting, emotionally draining to bring your attention out of that activity and transfer it to a new one. Another area of challenges where you have a very strong interest and deep knowledge in a particular niche area. It can be really challenging to find other people that share that niche interest or are interested in talking about it and when you find yourself in contexts where the other people don't really share that interest and want to talk about other things that can give rise to all sorts of awkward social interactions. So, our work with autistic clients involves recognizing and actively using the many strengths of a monotropic brain and also bringing in new skills for those contexts where monotropism may be maladaptive.