Transcript

Zoe
Hello Welcome to the Autism and Theology Podcast, brought to you by the Centre for Autism and Theology at the University of Aberdeen.

Ian
Hello and welcome to this episode of the Autism and Theology Podcast. I'm Ian and I'm so glad that you've joined us this week. This podcast is a space where we engage with the latest conversations in the field of Autism and Theology, sharing relevant resources and promoting ways that help faith and non-faith communities enable autistic people to flourish. This podcast is run from the University of Aberdeen's Centre for Autism and Theology, which we've shortened to CAT. If you would like to access the transcript for this episode, it can be found on the link in the show notes.
Today we have with us Dr. Henna Cundill, a postdoctoral teaching and research fellow at the University of Aberdeen, where she is researching how attention deficit hyperactivity disorder impacts Christian discipleship and teaching in the Masters in Disability Theology program. Henna, thanks so much for joining us today.

Henna
Thank you for the invitation. It's great to be here.

Ian
So Henna, as I've mentioned, you've recently been looking into ADHD and prayer, ADHD and discipleship, and particularly you have been looking into the two different thought networks and how they might function differently for ADHDers. For those who might be unfamiliar or less familiar, can you explain what ‘task positive network’ and ‘default mode network’ are briefly.

Henna
Yeah, sure. So there's this whole really fascinating area of study called neurotheology. And I mean, as a school of thought, it does a number of different things. Sometimes neurotheology is looking for like biological cognates of spiritual experiences. Sometimes it's trying to prove that God doesn't exist and that it's all in the mind. Sometimes it's trying to prove that God does exist and it's not all in the mind. And so the ADHD research that I've been doing, I've started to go down this neurotheology route because there's quite a lot of literature on how the ADHD mind functions, maybe differently from other kinds of minds. And I'm sort of talking about minds rather than brains because it's about the thinking patterns of an ADHD person. So in terms of thinking the way we think consciously as human beings, we've got these two networks. There's the task positive network, which engages when we're paying focused attention on completing a task. We're trying to get something done. We're trying to solve a problem, trying to finish, complete or sustain attention on something. And that's the task positive network. 

But then there's also this second network called the default mode network, which does a number of things. It's sort of almost like sometimes it gets related to the past and the future. It dreams, it imagines, it hopes, it adds context to the tasks that we're engaged in. But it also remembers things, reminds us of things, again, if it's adding context to a task that we're doing, it's a thought network that kind of says, well, you did that in 2003 and now you're doing this kind of thing. It's that network that makes all those connections. 

And for a typical person, thinking is a kind of gentle toggling back and forth between those two networks. So if I, I'm trying to think of an example, like if I'm going to wash the dishes initially, it's my task. Sorry, it's my default mode network looks at the kitchen and goes, uh, the whole worktop's covered in dishes. That's not good. It puts a value judgment on that. And that value judgment is enough to make me think I am going to get a dopamine release, a sense of satisfaction if I if I correct this problem that this kitchen doesn't look very tidy. 

So then my task positive network kicks in. OK, I'm going to fill the bowl, I'm going to put the dishes in, I'm going to clean them. But then that's a task that I do every day, so I don't need a lot of conscious attention on it. It's not like a difficult problem to solve most of the time getting the dishes clean. So as I'm standing there, my default mode network will come back in and start thinking about the day, things I still need to do that, you know, evaluating until maybe it comes up with a reason why I could do with finishing these dishes because I've got ten other things to do that the default mode network has thought of.

And so it pushes the task positive network back into action. OK, I've got 10 more things to do. Let's get these dishes finished and on to the next thing. And so you've got that natural toggling between the two. 

But for ADHDers it seems that actually both of those networks are running pretty much concurrently, at the same time. And that the default mode network is much more able to interrupt the task positive network and a little bit the other way around. But really the default mode network is a bit of a bossy big brother to the task positive network. 

So all the time there's that little evaluation voice going, is this meaningful? Is this worthwhile? Is this a good use of my time? Where does this fit into the scheme of the day, the month, the week, the year, you know? And so that task that the task positive network is trying to think about is just constantly, there's this distraction of the default mode network going on all the time and that makes it often very difficult to sustain attention on a particular task.

And so you get that classic ADHD presentation of 10 tasks happening at once and not being able to sort of settle on to one of them for any long period of time, except for occasional periods of sort of super hyper focus where the, and that's where the default mode network has said this is really, really important and that kind of allows that task positiveness to stay, but really it's the default mode network that's driving that.

Ian
Yeah, that's fascinating. And I know, I mean, I come at this obviously from an autistic angle. I suspect I might be an ADHDer, too, although I've never actually pursued testing in that vein. But it's it's really interesting to think about that in terms of autism and how, for me, a lot of times it feels like both those networks are running simultaneously or have to be because the task positive network doesn't have access to all the stuff that it needs, right? You know that that idea that anytime I'm performing a task, even a sort of simple one I'm having to ask, “How did I do this the last time? What are the steps that go into washing the dishes?” Right and actually break it down and try and force my executive functioning to work? So you've already, I mean you've talked about this a little bit, but what is the what's the biggest difference, I guess, between the ways that those networks might function?
those two networks might function in neurotypical people versus how the current research suggests they function in ADHD brains, in ADHD thinking, I should say.

Henna
Yeah, so it's about the kind of the sometimes it gets called the glitchy switch. I'm not sure how I feel about that terminology, although I would say it is, it's the terminology adopted by Hallowell and Ratey, who are the two sort of leading ADHD researchers in the neuroscience field, or two of the leading ones and they are both ADHDers themselves. So it's sort of their own language that they're obviously comfortable with. But I just, I'm a bit uncomfortable about the word glitchy, but clearly there's that either this sort of concurrent running of the two networks in the ADHD brain, or a much faster and more frequent toggling back and forth between the two. And I, it may even come down to the individual person how they experience that, whether they feel that what they've got on their hands is that their mind is just very able to quickly, very quickly toggle back and forth between the two, or whether they've just got the two running concurrently. 

At the end of the day, we're sort of putting language around something that's something of an, like ephemeral experience. But certainly, you know, if you look at something like an fMRI scan, it's a slightly imprecise way of knowing what's going on in the brain. It really only sort of says there's something going on in the brain.
But when they look at fMRI scans, you know the two parts of the prefrontal cortex that are associated with default mode network thinking are sort of showing as very active even when the person whose brain is being scanned if they've got ADHD has been given a task to do.

And so, yeah, there's all sorts that you can infer from that. But the suggestion is maybe that these two networks just run concurrently. So there's a sort of exhausting little chatter box in the mind of the default mode network talking at you all the time whilst you're trying to get something done that might need some focus and attention.

Ian
Right. And that's what we end up experiencing as distraction or as our mind wandering or something like that is the default mode network interrupting with quote unquote unrelated or tangential type things.

Henna
Yeah, could be unrelated or tangential thoughts, you know, a bit of music or whatever that comes in. Can also be value judgments on the task. So, that feeling that finishing this task is or isn’t important is not actually controlled by the task positive network, it’s controlled by the default mode network. So that gets difficult in that the default mode network can come in and sort of say, OK, now that thing has just become more important than this thing and then something else and then something else, yeah.

Ian
Sure. I was just doing a little bit of a jigsaw puzzle a little bit ago just to take a break from work and had to think, oh, okay, this isn't worth my time. I need to put this down and go back to work. So yeah, that's that interruption, that's that default mode network, huh?

Henna 
Oh yeah, well, I'm glad that you're able to tear yourself away from the jigsaw puzzle, because I find once I sit down to one, I daren’t start one because I really, I have a very strong task positive network. I can't leave something not finished. If it's not finished, I can't leave it.

Ian
No, and I generally have to be the same way. If it weren't the week before Christmas and working as a clergy person, I'm I probably wouldn't have been as able to tear myself away, right?

Henna 
Yeah, yeah.

Ian
So this is, I mean, it's just fascinating and there's all sorts of interesting directions we could take this. I'm, I'm really, you know, you hinted at the idea that we that we're just sort of guessing at what's going on behind the scenes because the reality is even when you look at an fMRI, you're saying, “These are the regions of the brain that we associate with this type of thinking or this network type of thinking.” And even then, you're not saying exactly here's what's going through someone's brain, but it does give a hint at sort of what's going on and how those brains differ.

Cundill, Helena 
Yeah.

LASCH, IAN
I don't know, it's just it's really fascinating to think about from a very broad perspective. But you have been looking at this quite specifically in the context of how this difference in functioning, this difference in these, the interaction between these two networks functioning, how that affects prayer and how it affects mindfulness. What are some of those experiences that you've heard from neurodivergent folks, from ADHDers regarding prayer or mindfulness?

Cundill, Helena 
Yeah, yeah. So it's great and in… It was fascinating in that over the course of initially my doctoral research project, which was really focused on people with autism, but I had a number of research participants with the dual diagnosis, so AuDHD or autism and ADHD depending on how they preferred to describe.

And so some of them had commented about, “oh, I just, I don't even attempt meditation. I can't do it. I just can't do it. It just makes me feel hopeless because I can't access it at all.” And so, and you know, I kind of explored that a little bit there, but not not necessarily down the neurotheology route. 

And then in this second project that I'm now doing, the postdoctoral project, which is just focused on ADHDers, I sort of went in... Sometimes you don't realise your assumptions until somebody says something that throws you, but I sort of went in with this assumption that I was going to have a bunch of ADHD Christians saying I can't do prayer or, you know, I only do arrow prayers. And actually that that wasn't the case. The opposite came out that, “Oh no, I can pray. It's rambling and it goes, it goes all over the place and you know there's 10 different streams to it.” But I, you know, there wasn't necessarily this feeling of being inadequate at prayer per se, but meditation was definitely an area where they felt that they just couldn't, couldn't do what other Christians could do or what they assumed other Christians could do. That this was a real area of difficulty. 

So this, I mean, that's led me into a lot of thinking about what we mean when we say prayer. What kind of thinking is prayer? Instinctively, I would want to assume it's task positive network. You've focused on a task or I'm talking to God, just like I'm, you know, talking to you just now, God, I mean, Ian. And you know, sort of all this time that we've been talking, I've not been aware of the fact that, well, my cat is here on, you know, in the room with me sleeping peacefully or the wind is blowing on the windows. Or is it hot? Is it cold? I'm not really noticing. Because I'm focused on a task and as I said, I think I have quite a strong kind of task positive network kind of brain. I like to be focused on a thing. 

So sort of my instinct was to think, oh well, that's kind of prayer, but then the more I've thought about it, the more I've realised, and I'm actually prayer is almost, it's almost the two networks at the same time. We're on the one hand thinking I'm focused on talking to God, but what are we talking to God about? Well, actually it's all the stuff that the default mode network handles the past, the future, the way we feel about it, the value judgments. The this is happening or that might happen or this person's sick and this is so it's, it's almost like taking the work of the default mode network but also at the same time saying, but I'm focused on this is now prayer rather than just thinking.

And so there's a sort of, I mean what in Jewish theology would be called the the kavanah, the intention of the heart, going on is sort of an intentional kind of wandering kind of thinking and most of the time when we talk about prayer as Christians, that's probably what we mean. I mean, yes, there's liturgical prayer, which is a bit more kind of just very clearly a task, but you still need that intention of the heart there for liturgical prayer, hopefully. So well, the intent, that kind of intentionality comes from default mode network. It doesn't come from task positive network. So even there you're kind of pushing both networks to work at the same time. 

And so then the only kind of prayer that's just focused on the task positive network is mindfulness meditation, which is designed to deliberately engage only the task positive network. You think about your breathing, the present moment, one image of God, one short phrase of words, you know, something like the Jesus prayer or something. And every time your mind wanders off, you're supposed to, as it as it would say in the guidance, gently call it back.

Which is interesting because I like that the idea that you gently call your mind back in mindfulness or in meditative prayer, because when Hallowell and Ratey talk about the default mode network in the in the ADHD brain, they call it aggressive. So you're gently calling back this aggressive kind of mind wandering. And I could clearly see how that maybe just doesn't work. You know, this is actually a battlefield and there's nothing gentle going on there. 

So yeah, so it's just an interesting picture that's starting to emerge that there may be some ways in which the ADHD brain is very, very suited to prayer, because it can run those two networks simultaneously, albeit in a very lively way for some folks, I think. But mindfulness and meditation clearly does present a problem, and it's a shame that there's a big feeling of inadequacy that's been expressed by some of my research participants, which I just feel is really unfair because it's not a level playing field when we come to meditation.

Ian
That that makes sense to me. And yet I think, I think one of the things that we that I don't know if this is true, this is, this is Ian talking. I'm not an expert, but one of the things that I find at least in parish ministry is that sometimes our assumptions about the way that other people function are wildly wrong, right? 

Henna
Yeah.

Ian
I actually, I'm not big on mindfulness in particular. I have issues with interoception. I don't really know what different areas of my body feel like, or I'm not in touch with those. But I have found centering prayer to be really valuable. And one of the things that I always, always, always tell people… well, I'll start by saying in the Book of Common Prayer, in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer in the Episcopal Church, we have a prayer before worship that prays, “deliver us from coldness of heart and wandering of mind.” And I always think about that and I think how absurd is that, that we're trying to pray to be delivered from wandering of mind, like our mind is going to wander. 

And I think of this quote, one of my favorite quotes that I share at every opportunity I have from Thomas Keating, who was a sort of heavyweight in terms of teaching centering prayer. And he was, the story goes, I don't know if this is apocryphal, but the story goes that he was leading a retreat, and he had someone who was actually a nun come up to him after the fact and say, “what a what a failure I was. In 10 minutes my mind must have wandered 10,000 times.” and Brother Keating said, “What a gift! 10,000 opportunities to return to God.” 

So I always try to keep like for me I have the same issue with my mind wandering and we tend to insert that value judgment, right? We tend to import that default mode, default mode network to say, “Oh no, you're off task and that's wrong. So let's get back on task.” Whereas if we can just, I think, condition ourselves to have more of a prodigal son mentality about it, right? Sure, we've wandered, but like God is glad to welcome us back, and it is that opportunity to return to God. I don't know. I have at least found that I… my mind wanders. It's still going to wander. But as long as I'm not thinking that means I'm doing it wrong, that it's… it still can be a valuable practice.
I don't know, that may be just an interjection that has no utility whatsoever, but.

Henna
No, I think that's in a sense that's what you've described there is that sort of first type of prayer that I'm kind of talking about where the default mode network is going to do its thing. But what we're trying to do is just keep that connection to the task positive. Yes, but I'm now doing this with the intention that this is prayer. So I'm not just sitting and letting my mind wander without any attempt to make this into prayer, but I just wonder if there's that… 

The thing with mindfulness, because there's that pressure, you mentioned inter interoception, how difficult that is for you, that's not uncommon in various neuro divergences. And also of course the sensory sensitivities can make that really, really difficult, like to sort of sit and focus on your toes and then suddenly you realise that your toe is slightly uncomfortable and then all you can think about is that your toe is slightly and you need to move and. Well, what that is, is the default mode network is kind of always going to be hungry to for ways to get the task positive network to engage. So it will look for threats, typically. It's got a negativity bias. Unfortunately the default mode network it's going to look for threats. 

So for a lot of neurodivergent people, if they sort of sit down and try and do that kind of body awareness or breathing awareness, all it does is put the default mode network into high alert, like something's wrong or I need to find something that's wrong because my job is default mode network is to tell the task positive network what to do next. And if it doesn't know, it's going to look for something. And often that's, you know, that the sensory environment is going to become overwhelming or is slightly overwhelming, you know, or you're why are you focusing on your breathing? Have you forgotten how to breathe? What if you just don't focus? Are you going to stop breathing? You know, that kind of critical voice. 

So yeah, it's that putting that pressure on oneself to kind of be interoceptive, to be very aware of the body and the breathing. Risky feels like a strong word, but actually, you know, it can be very kind of not a positive experience for a neurodivergent person. So it's not, it might not be for everyone, those 10,000 opportunities to return to God. For some, it might be 10,000 opportunities to trigger a panic attack.

Ian
Sure.
Yeah, absolutely.

Henna
Extreme in the extreme, you know, or to just to, yeah, go on, yeah.

Ian
No, that's that's fair. And I don't mean to prescribe it for everyone. One of the things that I always try to tell people is different practices will work for different people and may work at different times in life, right? 

Henna
Yeah, that's true.

Ian
But some things are not necessarily for everyone. You were talking about identifying threats and distractions, and all I could think about was how this Advent I've been leading a series on prayer disciplines and spiritual practices, and we've been practicing in our parish hall, and our parish hall has a kitchen with a very, very loud refrigerator. Like a commercial refrigerator. So when it kicks on, I'm like immediately interrupted and distracted. And yeah, just an illustration.

Henna
Yeah, no, that kind of thing's really, really common. And just the smallest things. 
The, you know, if that kind of anxiety response to something kicks in like that, then actually what ultimately happens is both thought networks just start to shut down because your amygdala, your brain's alarm system is kicking in. And so then both the default mode network and the task positive network just start to sort of shut down and dampen down because your body at a precognitive level is busy responding to some kind of threat, even if it hasn't yet figured out what it is. 

And that's when you can sort of inadvertently start to really cause yourself longer term issues. If that's happening, it's not always happening, you know, but if that's kind of how somebody responds to trying to force themselves to sit still, they can be causing longer term issues in terms of kind of just, it's exhausting, you know, there's a burnout with that, a sort of nervous burnout, yeah.

Ian
So is there, I mean, is there anything to be done about this, anything that people can take away? Or in other words, if mindfulness is out, if that doesn't really tend to work as well for neurodivergent folks or for ADHDers, is there prayer that that tends to be more ADHD friendly? Is there anything that that you have identified from participants in your research that is particularly useful or helpful, or that they find meaningful?

Henna
Yeah, well, I think there is. And it's not even to go as far as saying that mindfulness is out. It's about Hallowell and Ratey put this. I mean, they're not talking about prayer, they're secular researchers, but they talk about finding the right kind of difficult.
And that's a really helpful kind of guiding concept to anything really for the ADHD brain in that. So the way mindfulness kind of works is that dopamine, this reward pathway in the brain works on a loop. When your task positive network gets engaged with something, there's a little dopamine release, a small one.

But that small dopamine release increases one's ability to focus. So, the normally, in a in a non-ADHD brain, the default mode network then goes, “Oh yeah, you focused. That made you feel good. Let's focus again, let's focus again.” And so it's like a reward pathway.

But often the research isn't clear as to what's going on with dopamine and ADHDers. It may be low dopamine synthesis creation of dopamine. It may be differences in the dopamine receptors in the brain, but ADHDS don't seem to respond to dopamine in quite the same way.

So instead of the default mode network saying, “Oh yeah, you know that that sort of sitting down and starting to breathe slowly has has made you feel good. Let's do that some more.” It says, “no, no, not enough. Find another task, find another task, find another task, you know, alert, alert. You need to go and do something else.”

So if you can find a way, um to sort of enter into prayer that does trigger that dopamine release, then you're going to set that, enough of a dopamine release that it registers in in the ADHD brain, it's going to set that nice loop pathway off. 

So for a lot of people, that's gentle exercise. Walking, or, you know, other forms of exercise that feel kind of not hugely effortful, but enough to be rewarding. Some of my research participants have talked about knitting and crocheting. It's that, it's rhythmic, it's calming, it's and I was to say mindful. It's a way into mindfulness, but it's also rewarding because especially with knitting and crocheting, you're seeing something be created. 

So, so again, it's just triggering enough of that dopamine release. It's the right kind of difficult to kind of keep you in that place, the jigsaw. You know, sitting down and just completing a jigsaw and no reason why you can't be praying while you do that, you know, and just kind of taking time to sit with yourself in the present moment. 

So yeah, so there's lots of different ways. I think probably it's going to depend a lot on the individual. And then one of the ways where I'm trying to reframe that kind of, I mean that that's probably been said enough times, you know, that it's good to go for a walk or do a jigsaw if you feel a bit wound up. And yes, Christians can take that and reorient it towards prayer.

But I'm still kind of got that idea of the kavanah, the intention of the heart kind of with me. And this is kind of the the leading edge now of what I'm trying to think through in my research is like, “what does it mean to give one's heart to God sacrificially in prayer if we're also having to play the dopamine game?” So I need to make prayer rewarding. But does prayer necessarily have to be rewarding? And what does it mean? You know, what does that mean in terms of the intentionality of the heart? And I don't have tidy answers to that yet. That's like just the the very edge of where my research has got to at the moment. And I need to start trying to think all that through in the coming months and sort of do the harder theological work behind that.

Ian
Yeah, it's and that is really fascinating to think about. It's it hints at that idea that you talked about. What did you say the good kind of?

Henna
The right kind of difficult.

Ian
The right kind of difficult, yeah. And like the difference between pain and discomfort, right? When we're growing or when we're challenging ourselves, it is uncomfortable to some degree because we're doing something unfamiliar. But when does that cross the line into, this is harmful, this is damaging. I'm not, this is not something I should be doing.
Henna
Yeah. Yeah. That's the heart of the matter. That's the heart of the problem that I'm kind of wrestling with here because I don't find that ADHDS are any less willing to be self-sacrificing in their faith, you know, and to work hard for God. That's there in abundance, you know, so just sort of working out what that looks like constructively in practice, and as you say, in a way that doesn't just ultimately lead to harm and these, you know, these feelings of shame and inadequacy that some of my research participants express. You know, God is love. There's no room for fear in love, as our liturgy says. If we're ending up in a place of shame and inadequacy, well, no, something's off there and just sort of trying to peel back the layers to the what's really going on question is the kind of work that I'm trying to do at the moment.

Ian
Yeah, it's it's always ironic to me that we spend, that we that we come away with or seem to come away with the message that so much of how we are built and how we function is wrong or shameful and that we need to be ashamed of that. And we spend so little time actually talking about honest to goodness sin in the church, right? Like, so we don't spend a lot of time talking about, “these are things you genuinely shouldn't do.” And yet we still manage to come away with the message that if my mind wanders when I'm praying, I'm a bad Christian, right?

Henna
Yeah, that's, yeah, that's well put, isn't it? So much focus on the things we can control, perhaps. 

Ian
Yeah, maybe.

Henna
Yeah. Or we think we should. We think we ought to be able to, yeah.

Ian
Those messages that we've just internalized. Yeah, it's, this is, I could talk about this for hours. This is really, really fascinating. Any, we are nearly out of time. Do you have any parting thoughts? Anything else that you would like to share, any advice you have for ADHDers or practitioners who work with ADHDers?

Henna
That's a good question. Yeah, I think I'm, I mean, I'm just, I'm keen to hear from ADHDers. I'm just keen to hear more. When I did my first round of data collection, see, I started to build up a picture. I've now done this neurotheological analysis and all it's done is given me more questions, which is great.

But I I don't want to run too far with those questions without really engaging with lived experience. So, I'm sure there will be people listening who would be interested to contribute their own experiences and tell me more from the inside of you. I mean, I have ADHD advisors who are working with me on the project very generously with their time, so that it's not just me as a non ADHDer sitting in a room imagining what it might be. 

But it's just always good to hear from quite a wide pool of people because neurodivergent experience is so personalised to each individual. So, I would encourage anyone listening just to keep an eye on the CAT website and mailing lists and newsletters because the kind of calls for participants in various kinds of data collection or other ways to feed into the project are coming up in the next few months.

Ian
Yeah. And this is, I mean, this is sort of on the cutting edge of this research. So, as you say, hearing from a lot of different people, a lot of different experiences, different backgrounds, different denominations, I can just imagine how much a role all of that might play in how people sort of internalize ideas of how they ought to be praying and how they’ve found patterns of prayer that worked for them.

Henna
Yeah, that's it. I mean, somebody that's grown up in a liturgical tradition and really had a focus on liturgical prayer from a young age has a completely different automatic set of assumptions when you say what's it like for you to pray compared to somebody from a more, you know, free church style of prayer, you know, with no written liturgy and so on. So yeah.

Ian
Well, Henna, we are about out of time, but it has been such a joy talking with you today. For our listeners, if you have any questions, you can message us @autismtheology@bsky.social on Bluesky or @autismtheology on Instagram, or you can send us an e-mail at cat@abdn.ac.uk. Even if it's just to say hi, we'd love to hear from you. Thanks so much for listening.

Zoe
Thank you for listening to the Autism and Theology Podcast. If you have any questions for us, or just want to say hi, please email us at cat@abdn.ac.uk, or find us on Twitter @autismtheology.