Articles and reflections

Author’s Note The piece is informed by experiences in which feedback and institutional responses left a student both exposed and oddly invisible. For neurodivergent students, these moments can illuminate what happens when masking, shame, and systems of care collide. It considers how easily personal distress may be misread as failure. When Feedback Feels Like Erasure There is a particular kind of sinking feeling that happens when you receive feedback on an academic paper, and

How TTRPGs Hack Social Anxiety Why pretending to be an orc might be the most honest thing you do all week. This is part of a series on TTRPGs, mental health, and the stories we tell about ourselves. In this instalment, I want to look at one simple idea: Why is it sometimes easier to be honest when you’re pretending to be someone else? If you’ve ever found yourself speaking up more boldly as your D&D character than you ever would as “you,” this one’s for you. The Weight of th

Why Rules Feel Like Home to Neurodivergent Brains For many neurodivergent people, the world isn’t just “a bit much.” It’s a place of relentless, grinding ambiguity. Whole conversations seem to run on invisible code: unspoken social cues, shifting expectations, and rules that everyone else seems to know without ever being taught. A coffee with colleagues can become a quiet assault course of micro‑calculations: Am I making enough eye contact? Did that joke land, or did I just o

How TTRPGs Help Us Rewrite the Script on Anxiety and Trauma