Never Good with Horses: Neurodiversity, Wholeness, and the Danger of Selective Seeing
Nimble Counselling contributor Blake Mahovic reflects on the themes in Never Good with Horses, weaving poetry, personal experience, and conversations about neurodiversity into a meditation on wholeness. Through metaphors of rocking horses, pinned butterflies, and spherical coins, Blake explores what’s lost when we try to separate a person’s strengths from their struggles—and why embracing the whole matters.
Poetry can be a tough sell, especially spoken word. It can conjure up images of berets, turtlenecks, and finger snapping, and if that’s your thing, that’s great, but I understand it’s not everyone’s. Still, poetry’s ability to reframe your world is second to none, giving you a sense of perspective that can be truly eye opening.
My amateur hypothesis is that the metaphor in poetry allows us to re-circuit different parts of the brain than we’d usually use to overcome a certain problem. These novel ways of thinking can help us break free from cycles of thought or overcome the inertia of change in our thinking.
If you’re looking for an introduction, Simon Armitage’s (Poet Laureate) music collective, LYR, is a great place to start. Spoken word poetry over layered instrumentals, haunting vocals, and electronic house influences is pretty mesmerising. One of my personal favourites and the subject of this blog post is Never Good with Horses.
I kept coming back to the lyrics throughout my research, speaking to teachers about neurodiversity. They made me reflect on my own experiences of being neurodiverse, professionally, as a student, and personally. My take on the poem is that it’s essentially about disenchantment with a person as a whole: once you realise that the quirks you love come inherently with traits you find challenging, the shine can wear off. What you think you like about someone might just be a selective, incomplete version of them.
Armitage speaks about the wildness, unpredictability, and mystery of horses “couldn’t bear to look in the dark rockpools of their eyes” and how approaching them and their complexities can bring fear and hesitation. The subject of the poem, though, longs for a rocking horse with predictable movement and a smooth finish. But in trading for that predictability, they lose the intricate beauty of a real horse. As Armitage puts it:
“…their pretty ankles and smooth coats,
look at the grey and the black
but you wanted the painted wooden kind
that rocked this way and that.”
The poem is full of metaphors about preferring a projection of a person with all the unfavourable parts removed, “tropical butterflies pinned in glass cases”, “sharks in glass tanks.” The truth is, the favourable and unfavourable quirks of a person aren’t two sides of the same coin; they are the same coin, if the coin were spherical rather than flat, spinning and rotating constantly in multiple dimensions.
What I’m trying to say is: people are complicated. What you love most about someone is often what frustrates you the most, even if you don’t see it right away. Failure to see this leads to disenchantment, and not being seen leads to disconnection and heartbreak.
In my conversations with teachers, I found that most conflict wasn’t necessarily with the students themselves, but with the juxtaposition of what seemed like two entirely different students inhabiting the same teenage body. Teachers spoke about their experiences with neurodiverse students—ADHD, ASD, and dyslexia specifically. They noticed and valued their students’ strengths: athletic ability, social prowess, attention to detail, creative flair. These strengths were seen and appreciated, which was heart-warming.
But there was always a “but.”
And just like an apology loses meaning when followed by “but,” so too do these strengths when they are predicated with:
…but they can’t sit still
…but they distract others
…but they read slowly
…but they struggle with social dynamics
It’s human nature—an evolutionary hangover—to focus on the negatives. That tendency kept us alive as hunter-gatherers, but now it can drive a wedge in classrooms. We end up treating these two (or more) sides of a student as if they were different people: the creative student and the distracted student. The athletic student and the disruptive student. Even though they inhabit the same body, we split them in our minds, and given our bias, we focus on the “problem to solve” rather than the “seedling to cultivate.” By focusing on one element of a person and not the other, we neglect the whole and risk dimming the very light that makes them who they are.
That mindset is dangerous.
It’s like a homeowner in the 1970s covering hardwood floors with yellow carpet to solve the problem of cold floors, without realising they’ve erased the depth and character of the wood. It’s like pinning a butterfly to admire its beauty, without asking what we lose when we stop it from fluttering. It’s like choosing a rocking horse for its stability, without considering what’s lost in its warmth and vitality.
When we focus on getting a student to match our perception of success, better concentration, faster reading, sharper social skills, what do we lose in their ability to express themselves physically, to create freely, or to connect deeply?
I explore this idea more in my blog You Can Do Anything, But You Can’t Do Everything.
Personally, I’ve felt this duality constantly. When I was a full-time teacher, I was praised for my creativity in lesson development and my ability to connect with students. But my difficulty keeping up with emails, parent communications, or the general bureaucracy of education caused friction. Creativity can only be allowed to be explored if the conditions are met and meeting those conditions often leaves no space for creativity at all.
I can credit much of my moderate rugby success to ADHD. The ability to see everything at once without a filter is truly a superpower on the field. But it’s not one I can switch off. Everything. Everywhere. All at once. That same constant stream of stimuli makes city streets and grocery stores tolerable only in short bursts, or completely overwhelming.
Read more about how to manage ADHD in everyday like in our blog:
Living with ADHD: Finding Understanding, Support, and Self-Compassion
I like to think I’m social and able to hold a conversation with most people. My curiosity and ability to connect ideas helps me form rich relationships. But I have the executive functioning skills of a six-month-old golden retriever: losing keys, misplacing wallets, forgetting tasks, doing things out of order, generally being inefficient. What starts as a charming quirk can become a real drain on those around me.
In Never Good with Horses, Armitage writes: “You said a man with his own telescope isn’t especially strange, or to be a collector of dolls’ houses is fine for a man of your age.” In the poem, these eccentricities or annoyances are treated as something to be endured, or even overlooked, because there are other aspects the subject likes more about the author. But what’s missed is that these are not quirks to be brushed aside, they’re fundamental to a person’s being. Overlook them without truly understanding, and they will eventually become the very things you resent.
For me, that’s looked like employers’ frustration with administrative tasks outweighing the value of novel thinking, or friends and exes correcting my spelling in texts, assuming I wasn’t trying, and taking it as proof they weren’t worth a proofread and anxiety about my own ability to execute and plan ahead, as well as how others perceive that in me.
Ultimately, this is not a call for those who struggle with neurodiversity to “give in” to their shortcomings. It’s a call for empathy, towards others and towards ourselves. It’s an invitation to reframe the “but” into another “because.”
I am good at sports because grocery stores are overwhelming.
I care deeply because I get anxious.
I am creative because I read slowly and spell poorly.
I am multi-faceted because I lose my keys all the time.
I am full because I was hungry.
I am warm because I was cold.
As a final note, I see neurodiversity like a star sign. It can guide how you approach life and tasks, but it’s still your responsibility to make it work. You can’t skip work on Monday because you’re a Sagittarius—but if Mercury is in retrograde, you might decide to take the bus. Similarly, you can’t avoid replying to emails because you’re dyslexic, but you can find better strategies—asking to be removed from unnecessary mailing lists, using AI tools, or collaborating with others.
There is value which is often unseen in the adversity you face. The goal isn’t to remove the barrier entirely, but to use it to be kinder to yourself and others, while finding ways to thrive.
If you’re struggling to reconcile the whole of yourself—or to see someone in your life as more than their separate parts—our counsellors at Nimble can help. Use our Match with a Therapist tool or book an appointment today to explore how we can support you in seeing, valuing, and embracing all of yourself and others.
