Wheezie-Brain 2, the MORE Neuro-Affirming Sequel on Perseveration
To best define perseveration, we need to look into my short-lived fandom of Dragon Tales.
My favorite character is Wheezie. She and her conjoined twin brother Zak represent my brain. Zak represents logic and rationality, whereas Wheezie represents creativity and fun.
And even years before Dragon Tales first aired on PBS in 1999, when I moved from my native North Jersey to the Tampa Bay Area, there were times my Wheezie-brain took over my Zak-brain.
Picture this: I returned to school days after debarking the MS Tropicale (that gaudy yet classy Joseph Farcus-designed 1982 vessel). I'd just sailed on my very first cruise - a 7-night Western Caribbean with a stop in New Orleans out of Tampa.
The very first special interest (SPIN) of which I was told off on was Tropicana Lounge. Sweet, melodic Tropicana Lounge. From knobby knees contests to production shows backed by the 7-piece Tropicana Orchestra, it was my favorite place on the vessel.
But alas, that was when perseveration played a role in coping with post-vacation blues. Instead of bawling over the fact that vacation was over and going back to school very down on myself, I talked to myself about Tropicana Lounge before I and my class at a private school headed to lunch, though I wasn't aware of me doing so.
My kindergarten teacher noticed, restrained me a bit, and said in a highly stern voice:
I didn't understand why. And neither did I understand why talking about Ellen's Energy Adventure - which made my grandmother say, "Forget About Ellen" - while waiting for the school bus in the front yard one morning in 1997, days after a fruitful spring break at Walt Disney World, was inappropriate at times.
Until I learned about perseveration.
In my post about perseveration I wrote back in 2022, I initially wished my aides or coaches would’ve created distractions lists in my school days. It was an idea I conjured one day while listening to The Perfectionism Project episode, “3 Procrastination Tips That Don’t Work For Perfectionists,” while working out when I was living in Florida.
Sam Laura Brown, the podcast host, suggests creating a distractions list to help perfectionists curb their procrastination. She said, “This is where you create a list with all of the things you want to be distracted with as it happens. Every time I wanted to do something that wasn’t what I planned to do, I would write down what it was.”
The more I read about the neurodiversity community, the more I realized that it might not work for most of my compatriots of a widely varied brain wirings.
"Imagine there is something you love more than anything in the world—anything from Sonic the Hedgehog to cars to dinosaurs—and you want to tell your speech language pathologist (SLP) about it," an AuDHD SLP, Alexa Kelly, explained.
"But the SLP, concerned about your ability to vary your social conversations, wants you to practice talking about a variety of topics, and says, 'Don’t tell me about that, tell me about something else.'"
This practice of talking about your SPIN at length is called "infodumping."
Now, imagine if a registered behavior technician (RBT) resided with me in Riverview, FL, throughout summer break of 2001. Classical music became my new SPIN, rooted in me playing Donkey Kong 64 (my favorite character is the orangutan trombonist Lanky Kong) and watching Ovation TV and Classic Arts Showcase on a regular basis.
My SPIN was also rooted in a copy of Phil Goulding’s Classical Music: The 50 Greatest Composers and Their 1,000 Greatest Works. I’d picked it up at the local Books-A-Million at the mall, a tome far too advanced for my grade level, but I devoured it anyway. Because my school made Accelerated Reader and Star Assessments optional (no rewards or weighted grades attached to them, whew), I had the luxury of pursuing this interest without academic constraint.
But in the real world, my passion was viewed as a behavioral hurdle.
Recall in my previous post about my Wheezie-brain that I called my DU about the life of George Frideric Handel; my DM intervened, cutting the call short and taking the device from my hand. Together with my late DF, she gently explained the social friction my enthusiasm caused — that not everyone shared my appetite for musicology, and that talking at length about it could be perceived as inappropriate.
This lesson was reinforced again, with a soft reprimand, just before a family fishing trip when I tried to engage my cousins in the same way. I attribute it partly to a new place where we were going to - a night fishing trip on the pier next to the Sunshine Skyway.
Had a behavior technician been present during that call, her pen would have been flying across her clipboard, documenting every "infraction." Those notes would have eventually become the blueprint for social stories — meticulous, written guides designed to teach me exactly when it was, and wasn't, acceptable to explain the role of the clarinet in an orchestra to my Filipino relatives.
Over the course of adulthood, I have read about how schools and families had long pathologized perseveration. For schools that have curricula centered on ABA like mine, they don't see it as a way to regulate myself after a happy high while on a super-memorable vacation. They saw it as distracting barrier to learning that must be reduced or replaced.
In my household, the neurodivergent tendency to "infodump" collided head-on with the traditional Filipino pillars of kapwa (shared identity), pakikisama (interpersonal harmony), and a strict deference to elders.
To my family, my passion — such as a deep dive into a Baroque composer to soothe my impending anxiety over a new class, Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) prep, and homework overload — wasn't seen as a coping mechanism, but as a disruption to the domestic order and a risk to developing hiya (public shame).
When I became immersed in a topic, I often overlooked the subtle cues of waning attention, drifting far beyond the socially acceptable boundaries of a brief weekly update about my 11-year-old life. In this cultural context, such enthusiasm is frequently dismissed as being madaldal (overly talkative) or makulit (persistently annoying), signaling that the interest is unwelcome.
Because children are taught never to dominate a conversation, my childhood monologues on a cruise ship's show lounge, a Walt Disney World attraction, and classical music were viewed as cultural transgressions. Rather than recognizing these patterns as neurodivergent traits used for emotional regulation, my family treated my perseveration as a behavioral flaw to be corrected through discipline.
Imagine if more attention and acceptance of neurodiversity had existed in the summer of 2001. Before, an ND child’s tendency to "hijack" her DU's phone conversation to discuss the life of Handel might have been labeled as manipulative behavior. In a neuro-affirming world, however, a life coach —informed by trauma, Filipino cultural nuances, and neurodivergence — would have stepped in to reframe the narrative for her DPs.
Instead of a behavioral lapse, the coach would explain that sharing these passions is a gesture of trust and a "gift" reserved for those the child feels safest with. She would validate the parents' anxiety about social perception and school preparation, while emphasizing that this passion is actually the child's primary way of bonding.
That child, as discussed, was ME.
This shift in perspective extends to clinical goals. Kelly suggests that SLPs move away from rigid metrics, such as "taking turns for three or more turns," and instead focus on "engaging in a 10-minute conversation about personal interests by reciprocating prompts."
Similarly, rather than trying to "decrease perseveration" to fit neurotypical norms, a goal could be for the client to use functional language to request permission to discuss a special interest.
Brown, though an entrepreneurial life coach, further posits that "fixing" perseveration is less effective than fostering self-awareness. By keeping a "distractions list" in a journal, a client can externalize the urge to discuss a specific topic — like a recent Disney trip — without the fear of forgetting it, allowing them to stay present in the current conversation.
"To actually beat procrastination," she says, "you need to learn how that urge (to procrastinate) will come up and to not resist it and react to it, as in actually acting on the urge. But just let it be there; let it be okay that it’s there."
"It’s like basically inviting that urge in being like, 'Okay you can be here, but I’m just not going to be giving you much attention,' instead of, 'No! Don’t come in! Don’t come in! Don’t come in! Don’t come in!,' which is how we usually deal with the urges that we don’t want to feel."
Brown compares the management of these mental urges to the way she handled her pestering brothers as a child: by remaining neutral and calm rather than reacting with resistance, the "noise" eventually subsides, causing them to proceed to do something else other than bother her.
To beat procrastination or - in my case - the impulsive urge to "infodump" about Sonic the Hedgehog, cars, or dinosaurs, Brown suggests inviting the urge in and acknowledging its presence without giving it full control.
For a neurodivergent person living within a family or school system designed for neurotypicals, the act of writing down these interests becomes a tool for both self-regulation and self-awareness, honoring their internal needs while navigating the external world.
"Shift the expectations of the people around the child as often as possible," Adina Levy, an Australian neurodivergent Speech Therapist & Professional Educator, wrote on Instagram, "to be welcoming of this deep interest and this excitement and engagement."
