When meaning arrives sideways

by mandy parida, ma, lmhc

July 11, 2026

There are moments in therapy when a client stops talking about why they came. All of a sudden we’re talking about a television show. Or a lyric they can’t stop thinking about. Or the profound relief of unexpectedly seeing themselves represented on screen for the first time. Something shifts. The room becomes more alive. And so do we.

Many therapists would call this a tangent meant to avoid the work. For me, those are the moments I trust most. Not because they distract us from the work, but because they so often are the work. For a moment, we are no longer talking about life. We are inside it.

As a neuroqueer therapist, I don’t think neurodivergent clients taught me this so much as they gave me permission to stop pretending otherwise. They gave me permission to trust the moments I had always found most meaningful—the moments that refused to stay on script, that couldn’t be reduced to a treatment goal, that seemed to know something before either of us had words for it.

The longer I do this work, the less interested I become in whether people are functioning and the more interested I become in how we decided what functioning was in the first place. That may sound like a strange thing for someone writing a book about executive functioning to say. But hidden inside every conversation about executive functioning is another question entirely: What kind of competence matters here? And perhaps more importantly: Who gets to decide?

Because every system measures competence differently. Schools measure one kind of competence. Workplaces measure another. Families and therapist, another. What counts as competence in one context may be completely invisible in another.

One child quietly completes a worksheet. Another spends forty-five minutes building an elaborate city out of cardboard and tape. There are roads. Neighborhoods. Public transportation. A park. There is a dragon.

There is always a dragon.

Building that city requires planning, organization, flexibility, sustained attention, creativity, frustration tolerance, and the ability to hold multiple variables in mind at once.

And yet, in many settings, it is the child building the city who is described as having executive functioning difficulties.

The worksheet was completed on time. In our culture, that counts for a great deal. The same system that praises a child for remembering their homework may shame a parent for arriving late to school drop-off. Not because that parent lacks competence, but because they displayed competence in the wrong direction.

Perhaps they spent the morning helping a dysregulated child find their shoes, locate a missing backpack, adapt three plans on the fly, negotiate a conflict, prevent a sensory meltdown, and somehow get everyone out the door. None of that counts.

The clock counts.

This is the part nobody tells you about executive functioning. It is not simply a collection of cognitive skills. It is also a reflection of what a culture chooses to value.

Expressive arts therapy gave me a language for understanding why these moments mattered.

Neuroqueering gave me a language for understanding why they were so often dismissed.

In expressive arts, we are taught to follow the image, the movement, the sound. Not to explain it. Not to interpret it too quickly. Not to force it toward a predetermined outcome.

To follow it. To become curious about it. To stay with it long enough to discover what it knows.

A drawing becomes a story. A story becomes a movement. A movement becomes a memory. A memory becomes grief. Grief becomes a song.

Meaning arrives sideways.

The goal is not to drag the process back toward the original question. It is to trust that the process itself may be wiser than the plan.

Neuroqueering asks us to bring that same curiosity to people, relationships, communities, and systems.

What if participation doesn’t always look like participation? What if communication doesn’t always look like communication? What if attention doesn’t always look like attention? What if competence doesn’t always look like competence? What if healing doesn’t always look like healing?

What if the problem is not that people are failing to meet expectations? What if the expectations themselves deserve examination?

A neuroqueer perspective invites us to become suspicious of the obvious—of the interpretation that feels self-evident, the intervention that seems inevitable, the definition of progress everyone takes for granted. It asks us to notice how often we confuse compliance with competence, performance with participation, and predictability with health.

Then a neuroqueer client enters the therapy room and reminds us how fragile those assumptions really are.

Thankfully.

They remind us that we don’t actually know where meaning lives. Not because they are avoiding the work or trying to be difficult. But because the work may be happening somewhere other than where we expected to find it.

Expressive arts taught me to follow the thread. Neuroqueering taught me to question who decided where the thread was supposed to go.

Together, they invite the same posture: Humility.

The willingness to admit that what we called a distraction may actually be the doorway. That the tangent may be carrying the insight. That the image may know something before language does.

That the dragon city, the clay sculpture, the joke, the silence, or the moment of shared delight may contain more truth than the answer to the question we originally asked.

Anyone who has ever played music with other people knows this feeling. You begin with a structure. A rhythm. A melody. A shared understanding of where you think you’re going. Then something unexpected happens. A note hangs in the air a little longer than expected. A harmony appears. The music begins telling you what it wants to become.

The worst thing you can do is drag it back to the original plan. The best thing you can do is listen. Respond. Follow. Trust.

Maybe therapy is like that.

Maybe parenting is like that.

Maybe community is like that.

Maybe executive functioning is like that.

What if the goal is not to get people back on script? What if we become curious about the story that is trying to tell itself? To listen for surprise. To follow the thread.

Because sometimes the thing we call a distraction is where meaning has been waiting all along.

Sometimes meaning arrives sideways.

The language of neuroqueering is deeply influenced by the work of Nick Walker and others in the neurodiversity movement. My understanding has also been shaped by relational psychotherapy, expressive arts therapy, existential therapy, and developmental and attachment-based approaches. This essay reflects my own synthesis of those traditions in clinical practice.