Life is tough, and we all find ourselves in the muck of feeling negative from time to time. Finding things to be thankful for can help us snap out of it, at least temporarily. Today, the term grateful is slathered with a hashtag across social media, home décor, clothing, and more. While this can be a good reminder for people to shake off the negative and adopt the positive, telling people to just be grateful can be problematic for mental health.

The way we do everything in our society – how we socialize, how we work, how we learn, and how we are expected to react to our environment – is based on how the neurotypical (NT) brain functions. We know that most NT people have no major problems with making eye contact, participating in small talk, or understanding other peoples’ emotions, and that they don’t get overwhelmed by their environments, but autistics and other neurodivergent (ND) people often experience challenges when it comes to functioning in our complex world, making each work or school day harder than it is for their NT counterparts.