From personal experience, I have noticed that the majority of mainstream self-care practices are prescriptive rather than responding to the immediate needs and wants of someone’s body, which is what the neurodivergent body requires to achieve the benefits of self-care. By mainstream I am talking both about the “self-care” industries that produce products like candles, soaps, lotions, etc that use the idea of self-care as a way to get people to indulge in their products, but I’m also speaking to the practices that are pushed in one-on-one therapy such as ABA, CBT, and mindfulness exercises that are prescriptive in the way they seek to improve a patient’s mental health. These kinds of practices labeled as “self-care” might trick us into thinking we are doing the thing we are supposed to do–following established methods for caring for our minds and bodies–instead of doing what we need to do–listening to our sensory and somatic signals that can give insight into what we need in any given moment.
These mainstream and depoliticized self-care practices may in fact keep us from caring for ourselves by not empowering us to trust our own bodies, minds, and what they tell us. This misguidance about what real self-care is keeps us away from the real power that comes from self care- if we were to just blindly follow the recommendations of mainstream self care we would not be caring for ourselves much, leaving us in deficit of energy that the oppressive systems of power put us in in the first place. These mainstream ways of caring are not in fact recharging. The recharging comes from coming back to yourself, and there is no one way to come back to a self-this is something that must be investigated.
Dr.Megan Anna Neff, a neurodivergent psychologist defines sensory self-care as: “ the intentional practice of managing and meeting you sensory needs. Some common sensory needs include sensory detox, managing sound and smell sensitivity, deep pressure or strong physical sensations, and repetitive movement. When you practice sensory self-care you’ll recognized and respond to these needs in order to create a more balanced and regulated sensory experience.”1
This kind of self-care is radically different from the kinds of practices you will see offered in mainstream self-care ideologies as it is centered on knowing the body and the self and understanding at a fundamental level what it needs to return to equilibrium.
Neff writes that “Self-care is not a one-size-fits-all solution. So much of the self-care conversation seems detached from the complexities of real life…self-care is intricately woven into the fabric of our intersecting identities, which then interact with the surrounding social structures…[and] systems of oppression that influence BIPOC, disabled people, genderqueer people, and women…”2
Neff is illuminating the fact that the intersecting systems of power and oppression that influence our identities and how we experience them are what drive the need for an individualized model for self-care.
In support of this observation, it should be noted where prescriptive models such as ABA and CBT originate. Both of these practices come out of spaces in the medical and psychology fields that have historically done a terrible job of studying diverse sets of data that accurately represent the diversity of the real world, making findings from studies true only for a small set of people (often white, male, and neurotypical.) Yet, the methods that are developed out of narrow studies are still peddled as common solutions for most people.
Why would I, as a white, queer, neurodivergent person follow models that were not made for me? Why should anybody?
Knowing this we see then how sensory self-care is political in that it rejects these singular models for caring for our individual and collective bodies.
Other theorists, such as Audre Lorde also recognize the political power there is to be found in practicing care for a body that has been made a subject of power.3
This is one thing that is unique about the autistic perspective: the experience of having unique nervous systems which create unique relationships to our sensory experience and affective lives.
- Neff, Megan Anna. 2024. Self-Care for Autistic People. Simon and Schuster. ↩︎
- Neff, “Self-care…” 13. ↩︎
- Kim, Jina B., and Sami Schalk. 2021. “Reclaiming the Radical Politics of Self-Care: A Crip-of-Color Critique.” South Atlantic Quarterly 120 (2): 325–42. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-8916074. ↩︎
The Art of Autistic Joy 