The Value of Thoughtful Silence in Neurodivergent Minds.

[GHA]

For many neurodivergent individuals, silence isn’t a gap to be feared or rushed through — it’s a working space. It’s the canvas on which thoughts arrange themselves, patterns form, and clarity emerges. In that quiet, ideas can mature without being interrupted by the pressure to “fill the air.”

In contrast, for many neurotypical, silence can feel like a break in the social rhythm — something they rush to fill, even if it means breaking it with words that serve no real purpose and, at best, amount to little more than noise. This isn’t about one way being “better,” but about recognising that the comfort or discomfort with silence comes from fundamentally different cognitive wiring.

Where a neurotypical mind may thrive on a constant exchange of words to maintain social connection, a neurodivergent mind may value the pause — the space to process, refine, and respond with depth rather than immediacy. For NDs, silence is not absence; it is a form of presence.

 

[Outdated]

This isn’t about one way being “better,” but about recognising that the comfort or discomfort with silence comes from fundamentally different cognitive wiring.

Not necessarily a neurodivergent difference, travel to remote areas where people are used to having space to themselves and you'll find that they also enjoy silence and don't have to fill every moment with the spoken word.

I'm not talking about small towns here, if there's a town then it's Not remote, just rural. Where I lived for a decade there was 1 person for every 7 square kilometres. In places like that if you constantly chatter like a monkey it's seen as a sign of fear.

 

[GHA]

Not necessarily a neurodivergent difference, travel to remote areas where people are used to having space to themselves and you'll find that they also enjoy silence and don't have to fill every moment with the spoken word.

I'm not talking about small towns here, if there's a town then it's Not remote, just rural. Where I lived for a decade there was 1 person for every 7 square kilometres. In places like that if you constantly chatter like a monkey it's seen as a

Not necessarily a neurodivergent difference, travel to remote areas where people are used to having space to themselves and you'll find that they also enjoy silence and don't have to fill every moment with the spoken word.

I'm not talking about small towns here, if there's a town then it's Not remote, just rural. Where I lived for a decade there was 1 person for every 7 square kilometres. In places like that if you constantly chatter like a monkey it's seen as a sign of fear.

Agreed — in remote areas, people are often more humble, and above all more humane..

 

[TBRS1]

When I am alone, I am a part of everything going on around me.

I don't mean this as an abstract philosophical stance - I mean this literally. My "attention" is directly connected to what I am experiencing (and that is a HUGE world).

However, when another human enters the picture and I interact with them, the focus of my attention is pulled away from "what is going on around me" and becomes centered on that person (and that is a TINY world).

I hate that. I feel an almost physical sense of being pulled away from something deeply fascinating and wonderful, and resentment at being forced to focus on something as narrow as spoken words.

Sometimes being pulled away is refreshing, fun, interesting, etc., which is why I a have not gone fully silent.

But even when enjoying the company of others, I still have a constant desire to escape the tiny world of human language/interaction and return to the huge world of my fully subjective experience.

Plus, when I am alone I can sing, and nobody complains.

 

[Ronald Zeeman]

I enjoy being alone, same time have very active mind, like to exchange ideas, so one on one contact is what I really like. Hard to find other minds as active as mine, who have interesting ideas.

 

[Ronald Zeeman]

I have cabin in bush on 17 acres great place to get away could not see living there full time have. Brought buddies up for weekend campling trips. Wife and I camped a few times. My oldest likes going up in middle of winter, winter camping. hard to do really challenging. I bought it for my sons so they could go camping with buddies, No yogies or anybody to bother them. Sons would go up with many buddies fire pit lots of comaraderie. My joke was burning man north somebody always come back with burn injuries from doing something stupid.