🃏 The Joker, Neurodivergence and the Need to Feel Something 🃏

After watching Joker (2019), I found myself reflecting on how the film captures the desperate human need to feel something. To connect. To be recognised. To break free from the weight of emotional numbness that so many people carry in silence.

Arthur Fleck’s descent into darkness does not begin with madness. It begins with neglect, isolation, and emotional invalidation. It begins in a place where the world looks straight through him, where his voice carries no weight, and where his attempts to connect are dismissed as inconvenient or strange. His tragedy is not born of evil but of disconnection, and at the heart of that disconnection lies one of the greatest needs of all: the need to be seen and understood.

That truth resonated with me deeply. I do not experience emotions in the same explosive, chaotic way Arthur does, but I recognise the hunger beneath it. My emotions have never been loud; they exist in subtler tones, often quiet and still, but always present. It is a paradoxical reality shaped by my neurodivergence. I do not suppress my emotions. Instead, I experience them differently, as if through a different frequency. They do not crash like waves; they hum quietly beneath the surface, guiding how I think, interpret, and respond to the world around me.

For much of my life, I have lived within that quiet spectrum, learning to translate what others might not hear. I have discovered that my strength lies in being able to verbalise emotions that others cannot find the words for. Where Arthur’s world collapses under the pressure of silence, I have learned to turn silence into language. That translation, that ability to take the intangible and make it visible through words, has become one of my most profound gifts. It gives me clarity. It gives me connection. And it allows others to find pieces of themselves in what I share.

The Emotional Revolution that I am championing is, at its heart, about this very understanding. It is not just about preventing emotional suppression. It is about recognising that emotion is not one-size-fits-all. It is about embracing the diversity of emotional experience that exists within humanity. Whether your emotions are muted, intense, fragmented, or fluid, they all have value. We do not all feel in the same way, and that difference should not divide us. It should unite us in curiosity and compassion.

The film made me think about the importance of validating emotions, no matter how they manifest. Every one of us has an inner voice. Some voices whisper, some shout, and some barely make a sound at all. Yet all deserve to be heard. True emotional understanding does not come from judging how loudly someone expresses their feelings. It comes from listening deeply enough to hear the quiet ones too.

I often ask myself: what if Arthur had been able to verbalise his pain before it consumed him? What if someone had truly listened to him, not to fix him, but to understand him? What if he had felt safe enough to express what was happening inside him without fear of ridicule or rejection? His tragedy is not simply that he became the Joker. It is that no one saw the human being behind the mask.

That reflection sits at the very core of my mission. The Emotional Revolution is not about fighting against anything. It is about opening ourselves to the possibility of what could be when we start to feel again. It is about creating a world where no one has to reach the extreme just to be noticed. Where silence is not mistaken for strength, and emotion, in whatever form it takes, is treated as something sacred, not shameful.

The truth is that we all carry emotional stories. Some are loud, some are quiet, and some are yet to be spoken. Whether you experience emotions with great intensity or through a gentler rhythm, they still shape who you are. They still deserve space. In my work, I want to help build a world that celebrates those differences, where expressing your emotional reality, in your way and at your pace, is recognised as courage, not weakness.

🧠 Neurodivergent or neurotypical, every person experiences emotion through their own unique lens and in my world every reality is valid. That is why the Emotional Revolution is for everyone. It is a movement that reminds us that being human is not about how much we feel, but about allowing ourselves to feel at all.

Because in the end, all any of us really want is to feel something real. To know that we matter. And to find connection, even in the quietest corners of ourselves.

Thank you for reading.

Mark