Creativity as a Neurodivergent Coping Strategy

For as long as I can remember, words have been my safest place.

Before I had the language for “autistic” or “ADHD,” before I knew what masking was, I knew how to disappear into a page. As an author and screenwriter, I’ve always gravitated to writing as my main form of creativity. But the more I’ve learned about my own neurodivergence, the clearer it’s become that creativity isn’t just a hobby or a career path.

For many of us, it’s a coping strategy. A survival tool. A way to stay alive in a world that keeps insisting we should be someone else.

When the world is built for “typical”

If you’re neurodivergent, you don’t need me to explain what it feels like to live in a world calibrated for a “typical” brain.

You already know the quiet pressure to be easier, quieter, less intense.

You already know the performance of “fine” when your nervous system is on fire.

You already know the masks you’ve built just to get through school, work, relationships, family.

So much of our life is spent contorting ourselves into shapes that feel acceptable to other people. And when you spend years doing that, your inner world has to go somewhere. The feelings, the questions, the rage, the grief, the curiosity – they don’t disappear. They just get buried.

Creativity is where a lot of us go to unbury ourselves.

Creativity as a pressure valve

For some, that looks like painting, music, dance, photography, building worlds in video games, designing costumes, making memes, obsessively curating playlists. For me, it’s stories.

Fiction lets me do three things at once:

• Share my perspective in a way people can actually hear.

  I can put my lived experience into a character or a world and suddenly it’s “just a story” – but the emotional truth lands much deeper than any PowerPoint or policy document ever could.

  
  

• Process trauma and feelings at a safe distance.

  I can hand my grief, burnout, and confusion to a fictional character and watch them navigate it. It gives me enough space to feel without being completely consumed.

  
  

• Start conversations that are otherwise impossible.

  A book, a film, a scene can become a talking point. It gives people permission to say, “I saw myself in that,” or, “I didn’t realise it felt like that for you.”

Creativity doesn’t magically fix the systems that harm us. But it does give us a way to name what’s happening, to reclaim our narrative, and to build worlds where we finally make sense.

Masks: turning lived experience into film

All of this is why Masks, my short film currently in pre‑production, matters so much to me.

You’ve probably guessed from the title – it’s about masking. Not as a clinical concept, but as a lived, daily reality. The tiny, relentless ways we edit ourselves to survive. The cost of that. And the question of who we are underneath it all.

I wrote Masks during my own diagnosis journey – the long, exhausting years moving through the NHS process, trying to hold my life together while quietly unravelling. The script became a way for me to start peeling back the masks I’d crafted over a lifetime: the “competent professional,” the “easygoing colleague,” the “fine, honestly” version of myself.

On paper, Masks is “just” a short film. In reality, it took a long time to get right.

It went through countless rewrites and adjustments because I wasn’t just trying to tell a story – I was trying to tell the truth. Not the neat, inspirational version, but the messy, contradictory, painfully human version that so many of us recognise and almost never see on screen.

Building a team around a shared vision

Right now, Masks is in pre‑production. We’re building the crew around the vision that director Gary Fannin and I share for this film.

Gary is well connected in the film world, with some incredible acting credits under his belt. I often feel like the outsider with big dreams – the neurodivergent writer who’s spent more time in fictional worlds than on red carpets. But the conversations we’ve had while planning to bring Masks to life have shown me how aligned we really are.

We’re hoping to bring the project into production in early 2026. Beyond this one film, we both see Masks as a springboard – a starting point for more collaborations that centre lived experience, emotional honesty, and the kind of stories that don’t usually get the spotlight.

Who Masks is really for

Although Masks comes from a neurodivergent perspective first and foremost, it isn’t only for autistic or ADHD audiences.

It’s for anyone who’s ever felt the pressure to conform externally and the toll that takes on your identity and growth – whether that’s around:

• Beliefs

• Sexuality

• Neurodivergence

• Culture

• Or anything else that forces you to dust off a mask and apply it, day after day

With Masks, Gary and I aren’t trying to lecture anyone about neurodivergence. We’re not making a “condition explainer” or a glossy awareness campaign.

We’re trying to do something more human:

• Bring the conversation to the table in a way that’s vivid, provocative, and emotionally real

• Validate the people who live this every day – the ones who see themselves in the quiet moments, not just the dramatic ones

• Open up avenues for reflection and discussion – between neurodivergent people, their families, their colleagues, and anyone who’s ever wondered, “Is it just me?”

If we do our jobs right, Masks won’t just educate. It will resonate. It will give people language and imagery for things they’ve felt but never quite managed to explain.

Why this matters beyond one film

I’m not sharing all this just to talk about my project. I’m sharing it because I want to underline something that often gets dismissed as “just a hobby” or “just art”:

For neurodivergent people, creativity is often the only place we’re allowed to be whole.

It’s where we can:

• Drop the mask and let the intensity show

• Explore our obsessions without apology

• Turn overwhelm into something structured and meaningful

• Transform shame into story, and isolation into connection

Whether you’re writing, drawing, coding, composing, building, crafting, or daydreaming entire universes – that isn’t “wasting time.” It might be the most honest, effective coping strategy you have.

For me, Masks is one expression of that. A way of taking my private coping strategy and turning it into something shared, something that might help other people feel seen.

For you, it might be something completely different.

But if you’ve been taught to see your creativity as a distraction, a side‑quest, or an indulgence, consider this your permission slip: it might actually be your nervous system trying to heal.

From coping strategy to change‑making

A lot of my work now lives in that space between survival and change.

Through NeuroEdge, I’m building tools for neurodivergent adults who are burnt out from a lifetime of masking and still want to create something honest with what’s left of them.

Through OFF SCRIPT, I’m working with organisations and leaders who are finally ready to stop demanding masks and start making room for real humans – the way we think, feel, communicate and create.

Masks is the story version of that same mission: taking what we were never given language for, and putting it on the table.

If this resonates, keep an eye out – I’ll be sharing more about Masks, NeuroEdge, and OFF SCRIPT as they unfold. In the meantime, if all you can manage today is one small act of creativity that feels like you, that’s more than enough.