Community Night

We gather three nights a week for community calls. These are informal and loosely structured. Usually Myk is facilitating, but sometimes other members of the community will run the evening instead. We have a structure we sometimes use, but just as frequently we shoot from the hip and allow conversation to play out as it naturally flows.

Structure (sometimes used)

10mins casual conversation as people trickle in

10mins body scan or other collective grounding exercise

20mins holding space for anyone who needs support

20mins if there’s time, we may spend the remainder of the call discussing a topic offered by the facilitator, but this time is sometimes spent continuing to hold space, or just pursuing any threads opened up in the previous 40 mins.

Community Guidelines

This is an informal social gathering of neurodivergent people. Participants vary wildly in all kinds of ways, and so we have to be mindful of what’s required to allow a group like this to thrive. Some things to keep in mind:

Many people on these calls are dealing with various forms of complex PTSD, and that means people sometimes have triggers that are non-obvious. We ask that everyone be willing to respect the triggers of others, and to avoid conversation topics that make anyone uncomfortable. We try to check-in to make sure that folks are comfortable as we go.

Neurodivergent folks run the gamut from those terrified to take up any space to those who easily monopolize conversational space without realizing it. This means that we ask everyone to please be mindful of these dynamics, even if it’s tricky, and that nobody take it personally if the facilitator “takes back the mic” after a while when they feel like others need a chance to speak.

We are wildly divergent in all kinds of ways and that means we have to be wildly tolerant and inclusive. People in this community are often queer, for instance, and we will always protect that over the comfort of someone who has a problem with it. We see no such thing as a “paradox of tolerance” - intolerance is simply not tolerated, and while mistakes can happen we will ask anyone who is routinely intolerant to discontinue their participation.

Let’s be kind, let’s be thoughtful, let’s be welcoming to new community members and let’s try to focus on healthy strategies for moving forward together.

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