Justice sensitivity: how to be with the cruelty of the world?
Summary
The article explores the concept of justice sensitivity, defined as heightened emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses to perceived injustice, particularly prevalent among neurodivergent individuals like ADHDers and autistic people. It critiques the medicalisation of this sensitivity, emphasising its reasonableness in a world rife with systemic oppression and injustice. The author advocates for holistic approaches—spiritual, somatic, artistic, and community-based—to support individuals in coping with the overwhelm caused by justice sensitivity, fostering both personal healing and empowered action.
I was well into my fourth decade before I even heard of the term “justice sensitivity”.
A single candle in a glass holder burns an orange light on a dark table with a black background.
By that stage I had already had one career working for a human rights organisation. Here, every day we encountered severe torture, and the other unimaginable things that humans do to humans.
At the time, people would often say, “oh, it must be terrible listening to that daily”. “No,” I would answer, “nothing like what it is like for those that experience it”.
That was before the dreams started, where themes arising from what I was hearing would reappear in disturbing ways. Before I really got to take a look at how the deprave acts we humans bear witness to, or experience personally, can land in the psyche.
The term “justice sensitivity” is relatively new. Defined as the attempt to “capture individual differences in the frequency with which injustice is perceived and the intensity of emotional, cognitive, and behavioral reactions to it” (Bondü & Esser 2014), it was introduced as a personality disposition by psychologists in 1995 and used to examine human differences in response to unfair situations. It has been claimed that there are notable differences in responses between those experiencing unfair situations personally, those observing such situations and those profiting from them. Researchers have also examined differences in justice sensitivity in hospitals and other clinical settings among nurses and physiotherapists, with organisational psychologists emphasising as a result that social justice should be a component of clinical training. It has been claimed that differences in justice sensitivity are the same across cultures, regardless of differing conceptions of self in socio-centric and ego-centric cultures (Markus and Kitayama, 1991).
More recently, there has been a greater focus on justice sensitivity as applied to neurodivergence, particularly ADHD and autism. A 2014 study examining justice and rejection sensitivity in ADHD children and adolescents suggested that ADHDers are more sensitive than average to injustice, from both victim, observer, and perpetrator perspectives. This, in turn, was correlated to higher than average rates of anxiety, anger and depression. The same study noted that justice sensitivity “disposes the individual to a cognitive preoccupation with injustice (rumination)”, postulating that “both justice sensitivity and rejection sensitivity may contribute to explaining the emergence and maintenance of problems typically associated with ADHD symptoms, and should therefore be considered in ADHD therapy”.
The study also sought to ascribe direct links between justice sensitivity and behaviour. Researchers distinguished between “prosocial” and “antisocial” or “ impulsive disruptive” behaviours, suggesting that ‘treatment’ might involve behavioural interventions as well as cognitive restructuring. The connection between justice sensitivity and altruistic and harmful actions has been considered more widely too and not just as it applies to ADHDers.
And, if your justice sensitive ears pricked up (as mine did) when hearing the attempt to link ADHDers’ experience of justice sensitivity with antisocial behaviour along with yet another recommendation to “manage” ADHD behaviourally, you are not alone. There are damaging implications of applying a uniquely deficit-focused medical model paradigm as a means to explain justice sensitivity as a facet of human experience.
Not only ADHDers, but many humans suffer amid reports, or direct experiences, of impunity, war, genocide, climate destruction, systemic inequality, hatred, authoritarianism, wealth inequality, corruption and so on. Even the Samaritans (a charity existing to support people experiencing suicidality) has published tips on how to deal with the onslaught of negative news, where this contributes to doomscrolling (spending a lot of time online consuming negative news even if it causes stress or anxiety) and social media addiction. At the risk of stating another obvious point: we might say that the solution to justice sensitivity is —- justice! Scientific studies aiming to explain justice sensitivity in the context of a “disorder” fail to consider the obvious; namely that justice sensitivity might be considered a normal, rational and reasonable response given the state of the world today.
Applying a pathologising lens to this trait overlooks the importance of the legal/judicial lens, the moral lens or the social lens, and has the potential to create yet more internalised or externalised ableism for ADHDers to work through. It is also relevant to consider why it is claimed that ADHDers experience greater justice sensitivity than average, particularly given the the impact of minority stress on ADHDers and other disadvantaged groups.
The concept of minority stress explains how individuals with minoritised identities experience hostile and stressful social environments. This can impact in three ways, via: (1) overt violence, prejudice and discrimination; (2) the anticipation and expectation of violence, prejudice and discrimination; and (3) the internalisation of negative attitudes and prejudice from society. ADHD and autistic individuals are increasingly recognised as a valid minority group that experience minority stress. Minority stressors are known to increase risks for anxiety, depression, self-harm, suicidal ideation, suicidal attempts (Delozier et al 2020).
Perhaps, then, we should be talking less about neurodevelopmental differences, and more about ongoing exposure to traumatic daily interactions at school and at work experienced by ADHDers. Otherwise, a purely individualistic disorder-based perspective risks perpetrating the epistemic injustice many ADHDers have already experienced when seeking support within mental health settings.
Maybe the solution is to focus on alternative approaches to trauma and well-being that integrate justice, and novel forms of resistance to injustice, as an integral part of ‘treatment’? A few such approaches exist, and they are grounded politically and culturally, rather than clinically. All recognise the systemic, interconnected root causes of oppression and harm (Ginwright, 2018). maree brown, for example, posits pleasure as a form of activism (2020), while Tricia Hersey articulates rest as a form of resistance and reparation from dehumanising systems including racism and the legacy of slavery.
Healing justice approaches centre culture, systemic change and community practice, such as civic action, spirituality or art-making (Ginwright, 2018) - see Augusto Boal’s ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’ as an example of the latter. Healing justice approaches intertwine trauma healing and social and economic change as distinct yet interdependent processes that are most effective, transformatory and liberatory when executed in tandem (Haines, 2020; Johnson, 2017; maree brown, 2019; Karcher, 2017).
Transitional justice approaches aim to bring about societal healing in the aftermath of mass human rights violations. They focus on local reparative measures, which may be judicial (eg criminal prosecutions, truth commissions and memorialisation), well material (eg reparations) or symbolic (eg memorialisation). While the particular measures selected might be oriented towards individuals as well as the collective, the general focus nonetheless is on societal healing (ICTJ, 2009). Transitional justice has been deployed in many countries and is perhaps best known from South Africa and Guatemala. Although not usually characterised as a ‘mental health’ intervention, recent transitional justice research emphasises the importance of including psychological and embodied perspectives as well as disabled voices (Clark, 2019, 2023).
What these approaches all have in common is the widening of perspectives beyond the individual, and even the therapy room.
The importance of transdisciplinary, collective approaches to justice is increasingly acknowledged (at least outside the confines of traditional empirical mental health research).
Where does this leave the individual suffering because of their ‘justice sensitivity’?
And yet, where does our power to deal with our own heightened justice sensitivity lie as individuals? Working from a collective paradigm is healing, valuable and beneficial to both individuals and communities. And, in my personal experience, it has been worthwhile accepting justice sensitivity as a trait and finding ways to work with it with care and compassion.
This can be a delicate process. Actively accepting, addressing and caring for my own justice sensitivity helps me to live a better life and hopefully to be more effective and helpful to others. Otherwise, the cruelty of the world in its various forms can render me literally immobile at times; cognitively immobile (painful intrusive thinking patterns); spiritually immobile (loss of hope) and somatically immobile (interrupted breathing patterns, chronic tension). Caring for this trait can introduce just enough distance from the pain of injustice to recover the ability to act, recover aliveness and vitality and deliberately choose life-giving approaches that are lost when we succumb to overwhelm and despair. It is however important to avoid furthering any remaining forms of self-pathologisation and internalised ableism.
Here are some ideas for caring compassionately for the trait of justice sensitivity:
Spiritual approaches
As the Amnesty International motto goes, “it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness”. Spiritual approaches might include meditation and prayer that land us “in the world but not of the world”. The well-known serenity prayer articulates this approach. Some people of Muslim faith might find comfort in the idea that all actions are the will of Allah. These various approaches can provide us with the healing buffer necessary to access quieter states of peace and equanimity. They can allow us to hold simultaneous realities and truths (for example, real world/material and spiritual) and engage with them dialectically. Contemporary approaches to spirituality emphasise the importance of practical action and may also provide a frame with which to examine ourselves, our motives and our actions, honestly but compassionately. This leads us to…
Agency-based approaches
Agency-based approaches to justice sensitivity support people to separate elements in their lives over which they do not have control from elements that they can control. Why? Not because we do not care about the former but because we can not effectively change them. Agency includes not just discernment about where we can have real world impact but also working with/through paralysing thoughts, feelings and somatic responses. Taking small steps (as I have written about before) can lead us to have an embodied experience of agency which can support the restoration of hope. This leads us to….
Somatic approaches
Because the impact of justice sensitivity shows up so strongly in the body, it may need to be approached from the body. Stuckness and immobility can be addressed via the body in many ways. Dance, bilateral movement (eg walking), bilateral art, EMDR, drumming and breathing are just some methods. Working with a professional such as a dance movement therapist/psychotherapist can support individuals to discern and shift such patterns. Many of these methods may be more appropriate, or accessible, to groups that have experienced chronic injustice, such as torture survivors.
Trauma-based approaches
As mentioned above, ADHDers and autistic people experience high rates of trauma often deriving from experiences of injustice. Supportive measures might include attachment-focused EMDR with a practitioner who is competent in working with complex trauma, dissociation and neurodivergence.
Thoughts and feelings
Traditional CBT has been shown in some cases to be inaccessible or even harmful to autistic people and ADHDers, certain approaches to working with our thoughts in different ways can be beneficial IF presented in ways that do not deny the reality of injustice. These approaches can give us a break from cognitive responses to injustice that can cause considerable pain. Other ways to work with thoughts, particularly the thinking moving body, include dance movement therapy/psychotherapy.
Artistic approaches
Expressive and arts-based approaches support us with justice sensitivity (and the pain of injustice) in multiple ways. Accessing sensory, implicit reality helps us when being overwhelmed by injustice renders us unable to speak as Tantia, Malchiodi and others have documented. Artistic creation can, on the one hand, soothe us, anchor us, restore us, reframe us and empower us and, on the other, provide a tool with which to effect change.
Community approaches
As described above, community approaches to society, and to ourselves as individuals, are valuable means to bring us out of isolation and into connection with other people. Community psychology approaches have been described as a form of reparation for autistic people that improve mental health outcomes. They allow us to remember that we are not alone and to share the burdens and remember our common humanity, which can be destigmatising, and thus supportive, in and of itself.
Civic or service-focused approaches
We who are sensitive to injustice may naturally gravitate to demonstrating, organising petitions and other forms of advocacy. We may end up as lawyers or even politicians and yet these approaches encompass not just “grand” actions such as political activism but also simpler acts of service for friends, neighbours or strangers. I have put this last, not because it is the least important, but because, we commonly jump to this step and leave out other approaches necessary to compassionately tend to our own suffering.
In a sense, a coherent approach to the trait of justice sensitivity might involve applying a systemic approach to ourselves, which understands how patterns replicate from micro to macro. Justice sensitivity is an emergent area of focus and this article has been a long time in the making! How do you experience your own justice sensitivity, and other people’s responses to it? Feel free to let me know, and if you are struggling as a result of this trait, to get in touch.
