Monotropic Time

Autistic AUDHD Experiences, Monotropism, and Neuroqueer Temporalities

“Lodged in all is a set metronome”
(W. H. Auden, 1969 – from the poem In Due Season).

We all have our own internal metronomes. Rhythms and patterns may fluctuate and change from person to person and even within each person, yet time is often treated as a neutral constant that we will all experience and understand in the same way. Time is seen as something objective, measurable, and universally experienced and is generally accepted without much question. However, each person’s experience of time is likely to be influenced by culture, age, disability and neurodivergence. For Autistic/ADHD/AuDHD people, time is anything but linear or neutral and is not a universally accepted given. Drawing from The Time We See (Tolani & Venkatesan, 2025), and my Map of Monotropic Experiences (2024) I will explore the subjective, embodied, and fluid flowy experience of time through the lens of monotropism and neuroqueer temporality. 

Disentangling Chrononormativity

Elizabeth Freeman’s concept of “chrononormativity” is introduced in her book Time Binds (2010) . She explains how we learn to use our bodies through normative time—schedules, deadlines, and life stages—all governed by the logic of productivity. According to Freeman, chrononormativity encompasses the socially reinforced expectations and norms of how we spend our time – it makes us question what governs ‘productive’ time and what we see as ‘rest’ time. She describes the process by which “the naked flesh is bound into socially meaningful embodiment through temporal regulation,” with the aim of “organizing individual human bodies towards maximum productivity.”

But what happens when we aren’t able to be as productive as others would like in the ways they like? What happens when we are in Autistic burnout due to the weight of masking and trying to fit into neuro-normative time? There is shame in not being able to manage to meet the same standards and expectations of neurotypical time as Autistic/ ADHD people. We are often criticised for being late/ messy/disorganised/chaotic/impulsive/ distracted – the list goes on. Tolani and Venkatesan highlight how ADHDers naturally diverge from this standard notion of ‘normal time’, not by choice but by being neurodivergent and experiencing time in a different way.

Tolani and Ventatesan explain that before we can really talk about the many ways people experience time, we need to look at what we mean by normative time. Neuro-normative time is the version of time that society quietly assumes is the “right” way to live; governed by our Westernised calendars and Smart watches, it shapes how we organize our days, what milestones we’re supposed to hit (and when from baby and toddler developmental milestones to the expected path of career/ marriage and having children), normative time is what the majority of society puts value on.

A neuronormative concept of time is deeply tied to ideas of productivity and efficiency. It’s built into expectations like finishing school by a certain age, getting qualifications at a certain time, obtaining a job soon after, settling down, having a family, and eventually retiring—ideally all on some invisible schedule. When a person’s timing doesn’t line up with this script (perhaps because they are Autistic) —whether they move faster, slower, or on a completely different rhythm and time frame —it’s often seen as a problem.

Chronophobia—fear of running out of time—can be internalized by Autistic people who may feel perpetually behind. In his blog Autistic Chronophobia Theory, Jim Irion (2023) writes that, “Social and economic integration are not experienced equally by all. For autistic people in particular, there are barriers that actively inhibit our ability to prosper at what aligns with our mental health. If an autistic person persistently feels that they are running out of time with regards to their socioeconomic development, there is evidence that suggests a connection that is associated with chronophobia.”

Chronophobia and deviations from the expected timeline of life aren’t just viewed as different; experiences are often pathologized, reinforcing the idea that neuronormative time is the only “right” way to live. For children in schools, harmful behaviourist approaches are often instilled to promote this trajectory of time and to meet set goals and milestones along the way. Sanctions are given for those who are unable to adhere to meet these milestones and can’t keep up with the strict timetables, fast pace of lessons, multiple changes of subjects and changes of teachers in a day – all of which can be really overwhelming for many Autistic people. Autistic people need a different, more flexible approach that understands Autistic monotropic ways of being. Perhaps we need neuronormative time to slow down, be more fluid and flexible so our authentic monotropic way of being and time can expand and so we can flourish?

Different Experiences Of Time

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to how we move through time, how we live or what accommodations and support we may need. Negative framing around concepts like ‘time blindness’ is often thrown onto us as neurodivergent people, adding another ‘impairment’ as AuDHers are set up against the standards of the neuromajority.

However, I believe there are innate differences in how we use time and also perceive time as neurodivergent people – whether we describe our time perception as neuro-emergent time as explained by Marta Rose, whether we use the analogy of spiral time or neuro-holographic time as we are exploring in the Cultural Autism Studies at Yale group with Dawn Prince-Hughes and our CASY community, or whether we frame it around the theory of monotropism and describe it as monotropic time – there is a growing awareness that time is experienced differently if you are living against the flow of neuronormativity and expected ways of being.

Monotropic Time

The theory of Monotropism (2005) was originally developed by Dinah Murray, Wenn Lawson, and Mike Lesser in the early 1990s and could offer a way to understand Autistic  / AuDHD monotropic time perception. Monotropism describes a cognitive way of processing in which a person uses more resources on a fewer range of interests than a non-Autistic person (and likely non-ADHD/ AuDHD people too). If you are monotropic, it will impact every aspect of your life – how your sensory perception system works, how you communicate, how you socialise and how you navigate life. If you are monotropic, it makes sense to me that everything will be experienced monotropically – including time.

If you are monotropic, you may have noticed that when engaged in your passions or special interests, you enter a type of flow state. It may feel like your neurotypical time is dissolving instead, ‘monotropic time’ consumes you and seems to make everything else around you melt or dissolve.

Engaging in interests and being in monotropic time can feel like an endless expanse of potential where everything outside of your attention tunnel ceases to exist, you may even feel like you are entering a type of portal like I do when writing or reading. If you are monotropic you may find that you get more work done in an hour of engaged flow in monotropic time than you would otherwise get done over several hours when trying to do something that is of less interest.

Being able to be fully immersed in your passions, special interests, and the sensory experiences that bring you joy as an Autistic person is an important way to recharge your nervous system and bodymind. Enabling time for people to engage in their passions is really important, even if some of those interests make no sense to others. I think enabling monotropic people to live in monotropic time – at least for some of their day supports well-being.

I have never been able to differentiate between work and rest time; all my time merges into a huge sea that often makes me feel like I am playing tug of war with reality, my monotropic needs in a constant battle against the tides of neuronormative time. I need many alarms, diaries and apps to keep track of time, help me focus on tasks of less interest and help with the transitions in and out of flow states – it is all quite tiring!

If you aren’t neurodivergent, you may be less likely to experience strong pulls towards intense interests that are constantly trying to lure Autistic/ AuDHD people into what I experience as being like a monotropic time portal. Entering monotropic time feels like I am falling into Alice in Wonderland’s alternative world, where I can lose myself for hours, days if I could, in my own world, in a deep flow state with whatever my interest is at that time – whether it is work/task-related or a more sensory experience. It can feel like a constant battle to try and return to my happy monotropic flow state, it is perhaps also a way of disassociating and being able to switch off from the demands of life outside of my attention tunnels – life feels much easier when in a happy flow state – even communicating is easier and I am far less anxious. All the things that make life hard outside of my attention tunnel no longer seem to matter, and I feel the relief of just being able to ‘be me’.

Neurodivergent people have to mask to fit into society’s norms and expectations, which means suppressing our innate ways of being, including how we engage with our passions, how we stim, how we communicate and also how we experience time to try and fit in. In many ways, we are all trapped in Capitalist society and neuro-normative time. We need jobs to earn a living, and we have to conform to set work shifts and set meeting times to function, but this all comes at a cost – it takes a great deal of energy to constantly mask and in addition to meet and match other people’s time schedules that may not align with our own and can lead to being pulled out of attention tunnels at very inconvenient times which is highly dysregulating unless you plan your day carefully. Masking and constantly being pulled in and out of attention tunnels with little autonomy can lead to burnout. We need to find ways to embrace flow and find ways to rest, recharge, and regain energy with our passions and interests – in our time and in our own way.

River of Monotropic Flow States and Battles with Neuronormative Time beyond the Riverbanks of Monotropic Time

In the safe space between the Riverbanks of Monotropic Time (as illustrated in my Map of Monotropic Experiences) that surround the River of Monotropic Flow States, there isn’t the now/not now dichotomy, there isn’t the anxious state of living in what can sometimes feel like a perpetual waiting mode or of being stuck in inertia. Instead, when you are engaged and immersed in the flow, whether with one of your deep passions or in a more fleeting moment of sensory absorption with something that has pulled your attentional resources, you can experience joy, awe, and wonder. Being in a happy state of flow helps to balance your sensory system and restore energy. Living outside of your natural monotropic flow states, beyond the river banks of monotropic time where chrononormativity rules can leave people stuck in or between flow states – unable to move as I have described in my blog about OCD and Monotropism and where flow may feel like it is frozen.
When you aren’t in flow, when thoughts are looping and ruminating it can leave you in a place of high anxiety, it may feel disorientating, exhausting and leave you feeling useless like you can’t cope with ‘real’ life – when in fact it is may be that your natural monotropic way of being is at odds with the values of other people and their expectations. If we can, we need to try and let go of neuronormative ideals and instead embrace our authentic selves and monotropic ways of being and in an ideal world, it would be lovely to live in monotropic time (a bit like Luke Beardon’s idea of Autopia!)

Finding out more about the theory of monotropism has been life-changing for me. It has enabled a deeper understanding of my own AuDHD identity. It has involved a lot of unlearning and relearning and is a continual process of discovery. I am beginning to realise that by embracing the idea of monotropic time, I can live in a more authentic way and am less likely to feel like I am constantly at war with myself. Monotropic time is non-linear and rhizomatic, flowy river of time in a different dimension to neuronormative time. By swimming with the tides of monotropism instead of against them it can help make life a bit flow a bit smoother.

The riverbanks that run up alongside the river of monotropic flow states offer safety; they cushion the river and go with the natural course of interest and flow – travelling they help absorb some of the impacts from the obstacles that you may come across when in flow and the demands of life are trying to pull you out of flow. The riverbanks of monotropic time can transform in shape, they can widen, narrow and change depth and course as the river flows enabling people to swim more smoothly. It is outside of monotropic flow that time that the river may be much harder to navigate hard for Autistic/ AuDHD people. It is when you have to somehow get out of the river and clamber up the river bank to try and adhere to neuronormativity that life gets hard, energy is quickly used up, and you can end up in burnout whirlpools.

In Capitalist Realism, Mark Fisher (2009) critiques how capitalist time structures enforce the illusion of perpetual productivity and agency. We may feel we have to keep trying to get out of the river or our authentic ways of being and to keep going on the man-made High Way of Neuronormativity. AuDHDers and monotropic people are often criticised for failing to “keep up,” with others. This is not due to laziness or moral failure but because our monotropic rhythms are innately at odds with capitalist realism’s chrononormative pressures that goes against the natural flow of monotropism.

The obstacles that cause the tides and currents to change direction and flow in the river of monotropic flow states can be huge. They are systemic boulders – the heavy weight of education, health and social care systems, policies and practices are just not set up for neurodivergent people and can cause great harm as explained in my blog: Challenges for Autistic Familie Navigating The SEND System. However, little changes in practice could go a long way to making things a bit easier and more aligned to monotropic time and ways of being for Autistic people – more flexible appointments, offering online alternatives to in-person meetings, offering emails as opposed to phone calls and enabling quieter spaces to regulate and rest when in busy, noisy waiting rooms could also make a difference and enable a smoother flow and passage of time.

Joining people in their interests, engaging in authentic ways of being with Autistic people such as body doubling can be really helpful and enable a collective flow which can be less energy draining and more productive – as well as being a nice thing to engage with! Monotopic people’s attention doesn’t easily switch tracks. Our energy doesn’t replenish at the same rate. What if time itself needs to bend or stretch more to accommodate monotropic ways of being?

Find out more: Edgar, H. (2025, February 15).
Autism & The Map of Neuronormative Domination: Stuck States vs Flow States.

Melting Time

When nearly all your attentional resources are pulled into a single channel or fewer channels of interest at anyone time, it can feel like time is dilating, melting or disappearing altogether into what I describe as going into an Alice in Wonderland type of rabbit hole. Kate Fox describes this in her poetry anthology Bigger on the Inside as a Dr Who type of time portal where perhaps it is not just the experience of being Autistic is bigger on the inside than perceived by others but also our perception of time is greater, more expansive and just different!

During my time at university studying History of Art, I was deeply fascinated by the surrealist painter Dali. I have always been particularly fascinated with how he represented time in his Persistence of Memory painting (1931).


The Persistence of Memory portrays an almost timeless landscape where soft, melting clocks flow over organic and man-made forms. The Painting invites us to challenge conventional understandings of time as fixed, orderly, and external. Instead, it suggests that time appears fluid, disjointed, and internal—subject to perception rather than the mechanical precision of clocks and suggests the harm that will come from Capitalism if we keep on enforcing such a restricted notion of time.

The painting offers us a vision of a type of temporal perception that I think aligns with monotropic time  – subjective, nonlinear, intensely felt, and often misunderstood by others due to neurotypical norms and ways of seeing. In many ways, Dali’s painting offers us an inner world of monotropic experiences:

• Dali describes the melting clocks as the “Camembert of time and space” —a melting block of cheese that oozes out in all its richness. The imagery in these clocks helps me reflect on how time loses rigidity during intense focus, mirroring my own Autistic/ AuDHD flow states, where 24-hour industrial/capitalist/ neuronormatavity clock-time bends or dissolves or melts ……like a Camembert!
  
• The dreamscape in itself could be seen to evoke the inner landscape of someone whose attention has tunneled down so deeply inward that the usual rules of space and time no longer apply – where a person may be so immersed in a task or activity or sensory experience that 3 hours may feel like 30 minutes, where you feel like you are always in a slightly another weird dimension.
  
• The calm, quiet environment of this painting hints at the solitude of monotropic focus, where sensory and social input may fade into the background as you become so absorbed in whatever is pulling you into the monotropic portal at that time.
  

Even the strange organic form in the center, which is sometimes interpreted as Dali’s self-portrait, could be seen as representing an AuDHD person, unmoored from time and external demands. The image in the centre reminds me of a burnt-out person, a person who has used all their resources and are left alone, with no support from others who understand their monotropic ways of being and experiencing time. It can feel lonely and really disorientating when you feel others don’t understand your ways of being, and you feel you are battling against time itself as a monotropic person in a non-monotropic world.

Intense flow states are often pathologised when describing Autistic/ AuDHD experiences by using words such as ‘restricted and repetitive interests. However, Csikszentmihalyi’s “flow” theory helps us understand that flow is an optimum state for everyone. When we embrace our monotropic flow and adapt our environments, and surround ourselves with neurokin, there is a greater sense of shared understanding, meaning and belonging of others who ‘get it’ and are ‘with us’.


By understanding Autistic/AuDHD life through the lens of monotropism and embracing monotropic time, we can begin to understand that monotropic people have a different pattern and rhythm that often clashes with external demands and neuronormative ideals. We need to create spaces where all different ways of being are not only understood and accepted but also more flexible and softer.

Temporal Embodiment

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1962) reminds us that perception, including time perception, is always embodied. Monotropic time is lived through the bodymind’s rhythms—flow, joy, restlessness, anxiety, exhaustion and inertia. The “waiting mode” embodies temporal paralysis described as Autistic inertia by Buckel et al. (2023). The monotropic body and mind seem to hold itself in pause mode, unable to move forward until the anticipated event arrives. Here, time is not a ticking clock but a felt suspension, a somatic stasis.

Barbara Adam (1995) similarly notes the multiplicity of bodily rhythms—circadian, hormonal, emotional—all of which interweave with social time. For Autistic/ AuDHDers and monotropic people, the mismatch between internal and external clocks results in disorientation, guilt, and social alienation – it makes the Double Empathy Gap (Milton, 2012) even DEEPER as I have described in my blog the Double Empathy Problem is DEEP.

When we move away from time purely as a ticking clock or a calendar of events locked into neuronormativity and work and instead see it as relational to our experiences, we can transcend ‘normal’ time. Being with neurokin and joining others in flow helps bring a sense of belonging and community togetherness to what can otherwise sometimes be a lonely place to exist. Sharing a monotropic time portal and engaging in interests together with neurokin can really enhance relationships and strengthen connections. There is less often less anxiety, less rushing and less masking when with neurokin, and you are both sharing a similar time dimension and flow state – it can feel like a ‘just right’ way of being where time is more aligned with you – a shared monotropic dimension of time.

Neuroqueer Temporality and the Double Empathy Gap

Damian Milton’s Double Empathy Problem (2012) critiques the assumption that communication breakdowns stem from Autistic deficits. Rather, he suggests that difficulties arise from a mutual lack of understanding between different neurotypes and cultural or other intersectional differences. Similarly, temporal (time perception) differences are not failures of Autistic/ ADHD/ monotropic people but could also perhaps be explained by mutual misunderstandings between temporal frameworks. As Tolani and Venkatesan note, ADHDers often feel alien in a society that only values neurotypical ways of managing time and doesn’t accommodate differences. The problem is not our internal body clocks, but instead, perhaps it is the world’s refusal to recognize temporal plurality, monotropic time and the potential for time itself to be queered.

Nick Walker’s Neuroqueer Heresies (2021) reframes neurodivergence not as pathology but as a different way of being. Walker suggests that everyone can become neurodivergent—that is, diverge from the restrictions of neuronormativity. Neuroqueering time means refusing to align with neurotypical and capitalist demands and instead tuning into your inner needs and expanding your own potential for creativity and new possibilities with others. Neuroqueer temporality is not rigid or linear; instead, it is fluid, rhizomatic, and present-oriented and can become a mode of resistance in itself when embraced.

Neuroqueering is a place of creativity, relationality, and survival. For some, it is also a place of expansive time, where time could be seen to be like a line of flight as described by Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus. The Autistic rhizome is a concept David Gray-Hammond and I have been exploring over the past couple of years and could also offer a liberatory metaphor for time. A time that is against and resists goal-orientated ways of being, a time that surpasses timezones as people communicate 24/7 online within their communities, time that is non-linear.

Whatever term we resonate more with – a deterritorialized concept of time, a time of becoming, a spiralling loop of time, a bending of time, a stretching of time, a nomadic time, a neuroqueering time filled with possibility, a liminal time zone, a time where we are able to be more in tune with our internal bodyminds and authentic ways of being, Autistic/ADHD time, emergent time, neuro-holographic time, monotropic time – whatever we call it people are experiencing it, and some are getting stuck and others are finding different, maybe neuroqueer ways for time to work with them, not against them.

From Disordered Time to Different Time

Robert Chapman, in Empire of Normality (2023), deconstructs the biopolitical mechanisms that enforce normative cognition and time. The classification of Autism / ADHD as a “disorder” is, Chapman argues, a political act that privileges a narrow conception of functionality and ignores the richness of our real lived experiences. By re-storying our narrative as Autistic/ AuDHD people through the lens of monotropism and sharing our experiences, we can begin to re-see, re-experience, and re-learn time through art, history, literature and the pathological framing of Autism and ADHD theory.

Sharing lived experiences of how we may perceive monotropic time and flow and talking about the support we need destabilizes this empire, affirming neurodivergence not as dysfunction but as a different way of being. By embracing our authentic ways of being, we can embrace monotropic flow and monotropic time and work with ourselves instead of battling against our natural ways of being.

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Towards A Temporally Inclusive World

To make space for monotropic time and for monotropic people to be included, we need to reimagine institutions, work, education, and our relationships with others. We need to reject time being used as a weapon for productivity and to measure success and instead embrace time as a medium of diversity.

Exploring the concepts I have been writing about in our Neuroqueer Learning Spaces projects with Stimpunks means that we not only learn to accept Autistic differences, but there is also potential to neuroqueer our ways of being Autistic/ ADHD and being monotropic even further in ways that will benefit everyone.

By reframing Autism through the lens of monotropism and embracing neuroqueer theory, we can begin to liberate time from the constraints of linearity and neuronormative control. Time does not need to be a prison—it can instead become a portal into deeper flow states and a more embodied, authentic way of being. There is no single “correct” way to experience time, just as there is no one right way to be Autistic—or non-Autistic.

Whether we use terms such as neuro-holographic time, monotropic time, or spiral time or create new vocabulary to try to capture our personal experience of time, what matters is that we honour and validate each person’s unique temporal experience. Just as our sensory worlds differ, so too do our experiences of time—and all are worthy of recognition and respect and should be embraced.

If you have read this far – thank you for your time!

Share Your Story Of Being Monotropic

If you fancy sharing your experiences of being monotropic, please feel free to participate in the Monotropism Story Project I am collaborating on with Stimpunks.

More info here: https://stimpunks.org/2025/02/23/call-for-submissions-share-your-experiences-of-being-monotropic/

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