How would you know that you didn’t experience the world differently from most other people? Well, you wouldn’t! You’d go about your day, taking everyone’s actions at face value. That is until you cross a line that you had no inkling existed. One small gesture to you ended up being a declaration of malice and hate to someone else. You are not only wildly confused, but now you realise that people have vastly different lived experiences. So, you change to widen your view. You not only start to regulate how you navigate interactions, but you also take into account how others carry themselves and talk.

Critically analysing how people navigate their lives while considering their lives and memories is, what I understand to be, the basis of this line of study. While reading and then rereading the articles and passages about phenomenology, I could not place, why the concept seemed to come to me easily. How could I just feel like I know what these philosophers are trying to convey. And then it hit me like an MTA bus, I am constantly masking and analysing why I do the things I do in relation to what others do and their lives. This realisation got me thinking.

How do people with mental disorders and illnesses navigate phenomenology? I can only speak on a few, but it is incredibly interesting speaking with neurotypical folx on this matter. Of the people I have introduced phenomenology to, most of them related it to an “educated empathy”. A way of putting yourself in other’s shoes and really comprehending where they are coming from. When questioned further, they had similar sentiments. That thinking this way isn’t for every day thought. This is just for trying to fathom how your experiences relate to those around you. But to me it is every day. I just literally don’t have the words to express it.

I relate it more to watching everyone’s lives through a first-person screen like a security guard in a surveillance room with several encyclopedias of written lived experiences. Since society does not like when ASD (autism spectrum disorder) people unmask, I am constantly analysing how others exist in space and noticing every detail. Changing how I act, how I look, how I speak to match those around me, is just what I must do to survive. Just so happens that there are pieces of phenomenology that focus of those parts of consciousness. Then my brain switches over to overthinking mode and I try to figure out, for example, why a man would be darting his eyes around to see if anyone else is noticing him while his significant other is in a store that is “only for women”. Is it because he has some stigmas pinned on his back at a young age? Does he possibly have bad allergic experiences with something in that store? How would I feel if I was in his place and saw someone staring at him (me) in disgust over something they don’t think about?  

I just find it fascinating how this line of thinking isn’t naturally, or unnaturally, ingrained into how people see everyone else. In the search of learning how to understand and recognize how society sees and judges embodiment, I found that, there is little thought into how neurodivergent people fit into the picture. Just like always