The Dysfunction Is Coming From Outside The House

Executive functioning is something that is discussed a lot in neurodiversity discourse.

‘My executive dysfunction’ gets blamed for a whole host of things.

Colonial sciences describe executive functioning as a set of cognitive skills which includes; working memory, inhibition, planning, attention, self-control. Often they are grouped together and described as ‘goal oriented behaviours’. Medical assessments for several DSM-5 diagnoses include assessing ‘Executive Functioning Skills’. This includes but is not limited to assessments for Autism, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).

The majority of the conversation around executive ‘function’ and ‘dysfunction’ centres around the idea that it is ‘normal’ to have a certain level of executive functioning at all times, in all circumstances, and that to differ from this framework is to be ‘dysfunctional’. Here we are starting from the assumption that the construct of normal is not only something to aspire to but that it is the only ‘right’ way to be, and that we have to discuss divergence from this construct as disordered, broken or at the very least incorrect. What if we didn’t?

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