On Simone Biles, autistic interests & the mental health of neurodivergent people

Some musings after watching the World Championships last week.

Like much of the world, Simone Biles came onto my radar during the 2016 Rio Olympics.

That summer was the first summer after my admission to a mental health unit, and the summer before I entered Year 11 after having returned to school on a part-time timetable.

Gymnastics had always fascinated me - I mean, who wouldn’t be invested in how humans can do that? - but that summer I found myself gripped to it.

Of course, I was heavily invested in the Great British team (and I still have an extremely soft spot for the girls that were in that particular team), but I don’t imagine there was a single soul who wasn’t baffled by the talent of Simone Biles.

She won 4 golds and 1 bronze in that Olympics, and I’ve been following the sport closely ever since.

Autistic special interests (also known as focused interests, or sometimes just autistic interests - it depends who you ask) are magical; there is simply no other word for them. People don’t ever seem to grasp the depth and importance that they hold for us, the ways they can regulate us and make us light up from the inside out.

World elite gymnastics quickly became one for me. Worlds, Europeans, Commonwealths, Olympics… I watch it all, spend my time comparing performances from their pasts, learning their stats, understanding the scoring.

But Simone, of course, is now the most decorated gymnast in history.

She also has ADHD, just like me.

I didn’t know I had ADHD until I was twenty, four years into my love for the sport. I had always wondered if there was more to my brain than the knowledge we already had, but my doctors insisted that my internal hyperactivity and impulsivity were nothing more than “autism-associated anxiety”.

When I finally put together the pieces for myself, a year into the pandemic, things suddenly made a whole lot more sense.

A few months after my formal diagnosis, Simone Biles took to the world stage at the Tokyo Olympics. I, and the world, believed we were in for a repeat performance of Rio - there seemed to be no other way.

Instead, we watched as Simone struggled and withdraw from several finals with what is known as “the twisties” - where gymnasts get lost in the air, often attributed to where they are mentally.

It makes sense to me that this could happen more easily to an ADHD brain than a non-ADHD one. Our brains are essentially a mental version of the twisties all the time - too fast, too chaotic, not quite able to put the pieces together for the actions to be in the right order or at the right time.

We’re prone to overthinking, to getting too in our own heads for our own good; making a decision in the two seconds before it occurs.

Having the whole world, literally, on your shoulders at your second Olympics seems as good as reason as any to end up under so much pressure your brain gets so overwhelmed it is unsafe for you to do your job.

But what the world didn’t expect was her reaction. Pulling out for her own safety, returning only when it felt safe, under her own terms during that Olympics. When you see the history of the sport and of USAG particularly, it felt like a massive move - because it was.

Last week, Simone Biles returned to the world stage for the first time in eighteen months at the Antwerp World Championships, and it has been an utter joy to watch.

She was there because she loves the sport, not worried about proving a point; she made mistakes and just laughed, knowing that it is not the end of the world.

As an ADHDer, that is something so empowering to watch.

Our brains not fitting into the society we live in means we feel so much pressure to fit, to excel. I do have worth, I promise.

The superpower narrative around ADHD (and autism, too) means there is this specific pressure for us to prove that not only can we keep up with neurotypical people, we can actually do more or be better than them. It is an insidious part of the capitalist machine - neurodivergence should mean you are useful, not a drain on resources, not struggling the way many of us actually are.

But Simone - who is probably the closest to superhuman that anyone is ever going to get, let’s be real - pushed back on that.

She can be brilliant, she can be the best in the world… But she showed us that she was allowed to struggle, and allowed to take all the time she needed in order to return to what she was good at.

Under her own terms, under no time constraint, refusing the pressure that anyone else may have wanted to place there.

Especially for her as an ADHDer who is also a Black woman, increasing the level of expectation and marginalisation she faces, that is so important and incredible to see.

There are, in my opinion, so many lessons for us to take from that.

Her gold medals this week in Antwerp are more than just a win (though, the way she stays several points above the rest of the field is certainly still a massive win without any other implications).

They show us that our mental health is worth more than anything else, and that doing what we love, because we love it, is just as, if not more, worthy of celebration.

My ADHD means life at a thousand miles per hour, and it also means doing things I feel like I should to appease a society that isn’t built for me, and not knowing how to slow that train down.

Watching someone with a brain not unlike mine give me permission for that has been something extremely special.