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Neurodivergence - Is It Really That “Divergent”?
Updated: 4 days ago
A Personal Reflection on Labels, Difference, and Belonging
A little preface: I want to preface this blog post with the comment that these are simply my reflections on neurodiversity - thoughts that have come from my own experience as a proud neurodivergent person who is continuously celebrating, grieving, questioning and learning about what my identities and lived experiences mean in this wild world.
My thoughts are informed by personal research, including readings, my training, and my work as a psychotherapist who supports neurodivergent clients. This isn't meant to be a research article. It's more of a thought piece about the language we use to understand the rainbow of ways that we humans inhabit this world.
I recognize, and deeply appreciate, that there are endless ways to understand neurodiversity, neurodivergence, and the experiences that fall under this enormous umbrella. That includes people who may disagree with some of my musings. Neurodiversity is, after all, as vast and diverse as the humans within it.
The Canary in a Coal Mine
I've been thinking a lot about the metaphor of the canary in a coal mine.
Historically, miners would bring canaries underground because they were more sensitive to dangerous gases. If the canary became distressed, it could be a warning that something in the environment wasn't safe.
I'm not suggesting that neurodivergent people are canaries. But I do find myself wondering about the metaphor.
What if, sometimes, the person who struggles most visibly within a system, isn't necessarily the person who is broken? What if they're responding to an environment that isn't working particularly well for them? What if the discomfort is information - possibly just for that canary, but also possibly for everyone else too? The canary has an important role.
The story of the canary includes the minors appreciating the bird, being fond of it and protecting it. They protect the bird, while the bird protects them.
Sometimes we ask, “Why is this person struggling?” without asking, “What is this environment asking of them?” or "What can we listen to and learn from this struggle?" While this metaphor isn't meant to be a direct comparison, I appreciate the lesson of how the sensitivities experienced by neurodivergent people can at times be signals to everyone something that we all need to pay attention to.
Language & Labels
While none of us are the same, we all have unique combinations of gifts, challenges, traits, stories, needs and ways of moving through the world. In many ways, I think often what is good for neurodivergent folks is good for everyone.
Not because we all need the same thing. Quite the opposite. We all need different constellations of things to live healthy and fulfilling lives.
Imagine a world where accommodations could be provided with care rather than treated as an inconvenience. A world where people could have more flexibility around sleep, movement, learning, communication and work. A world that wasn't quite so committed to the idea that everyone should fit neatly into the same 9-to-5 box.
When we create environments and systems with more flexibility and room for difference, more people benefit.
And when barriers are reduced, there may also be less opportunity for unnecessary distress, shame and trauma to accumulate.
When communities create accommodations, people are then more able to shine, because there is finally enough room for them to be themselves.
The People I Meet in My Online Therapy Room
As a therapist, I've noticed over the years that a significant number of the people I work with are neurodivergent.
Could that be because neurodiversity is one of my specialties?
Probably.
Could it also be because neurodivergent people can experience significant misunderstanding, invalidation, exclusion and other difficult experiences?
Definitely.
Could it be that the lines between “neurotypical” and “neurodivergent” are more blurred than we sometimes imagine?
Maybe.
More and more people are unmasking. They're learning about themselves, finding language for experiences that previously felt confusing, and recognizing that they may need accommodations or support. They are deepening self-compassion, self-acceptance, and even self-celebration.
Sometimes someone isn't discovering that they're suddenly “different.” They're finally discovering the language for a difference they've felt their entire life. And learning that "different" is not synonymous with "bad."
The Complicated Gift of a Label
As a neurodivergent person myself, I recognize the power of labels.
Labels can be incredibly helpful. They can provide language, community, validation and a sense of belonging. They can also be complicated.
I grew up in a school program in Ontario, Canada where we were all given a particular label that set us apart from other students in the school. This label was both helpful and gave access to resources, and was also incredibly damaging as it was inadequate, and came with pressures and expectations that were too much for the kids labelled as such.
I now identify as AuDHD (autistic and ADHD) and dyslexic, and I wear these identity labels with pride.
But they didn't come without periods of grief, confusion, self-doubt, curiosity and passion. Sometimes finding a label feels like finally being handed a map. Like I've found scattered puzzle pieces over my whole life that have been disjointed until now, where the picture finally came together.
At other times, I wonder whether the map can become another box. While for myself, I've re-examined previous stereotypes I had around these labels, and have re-negotiated to a point where I am proud of them, I recognize that there is still so much stigma in society, mis-information, and also harmful attitudes and behaviours to people with all sorts of disability, including the labels I hold. And while I have the privilege of passing as not having a disability, there are also challenges of having invisible disabilities.
This looks different for all of us. In the work I do with clients through online therapy and modalities such as EMDR, we support the various challenges that can come up surrounding advocacy for individual needs, accommodations, safety, and more.
Who Decided What “Typical” Is?
This is where the word divergent gets interesting to me. “Divergent” suggests that something has moved away from a baseline.
But who decided what the baseline was?
“Typical” can be a complicated word. It can quietly suggest that there is a standard way of being human, and that some of us have somehow wandered away from it. At the same time, neurodivergent people have reclaimed this language in deeply meaningful ways, and I use it myself.
So I'm not arguing that the word is bad. Because again, difference is important to understand too. I'm just wondering about the word "typical."
Because a perceived concept of normativity can be powerful. The expectation that there is one correct way to communicate, learn, work, socialize, regulate, move, rest and exist can become its own source of prejudice and assumption.
What If Difference Is Part of the Design?
I find myself curious about how we'll understand these labels decades from now.
What will we think about the categories we use today? How will our understanding of the brain and body change?
I wonder about the ways some of the things we currently place into separate diagnostic boxes may be more interconnected than we currently understand. I think about conditions and experiences such as OCD, IBS, chronic fatigue, POTS, trauma and different personality diagnoses, and I wonder about the relationships between them. Particularly with the often high overlap of some of them with Autism, ADHD, and other forms of neurodivergence.
I'm not suggesting that they're all the same. They're not. I'm simply curious about whether the categories we have today are the final word. Maybe they are maps that tell a story, and are more interconnected than we currently realize. Maybe.
What If Being Unique Is Just as Typical as Being the Same?
Everything in the universe seems to exist in some relationship between stability and nuance. Calm and chaos. Consistency and creativity. Predictability and surprise.
Our systems need both. Nature needs difference. Evolution depends on variation.
And yet so many of our human systems are built around sameness. Same schedules. Same classrooms. Same productivity measures. Same communication expectations. Same definitions of success.
What if being unique is just as typical as being the same?
What if the world doesn't actually need all of us to function in exactly the same way? Maybe difference isn't a deviation from humanity. Maybe difference is humanity.
The Cost of Trying to Fit
I think about the people who have spent years trying to become easier for other people to understand. The child who learned to stop moving. The teenager who studied everyone else's social cues. The adult who rehearses conversations before having them. The employee who spends the entire workday performing competence and then collapses when they get home. The person who learned to ignore their sensory needs because having needs felt inconvenient. The person who became incredibly good at appearing okay.
From the outside, they may look like they're functioning beautifully.
Inside, they may be exhausted.
This is one of the reasons I'm interested in the relationship between neurodivergence, masking, trauma and therapy.
Often the question isn't, “How do we help this person fit better?” Sometimes it's, “What has it cost them to fit this well?”
It Takes a Village
None of us are entirely self-sufficient, even though our culture often celebrates independence as though it is the ultimate goal.
Every human being relies on other people. On relationships. On communities. On support. On the people who understand us. On the people who make room for us. It takes a village.
And perhaps creating a healthier world isn't only about teaching every individual person how to become resilient enough to survive whatever environment they're placed in. Maybe it's also about creating environments worth living in.
Environments where difference isn't automatically treated as a problem.
Where support isn't something we have to earn by becoming sufficiently distressed. Where accommodations aren't moral or ability failures. Where people don't have to hide themselves to belong.
I suspect that if we make these changes we will see a drastic decrease in both mental and physical illnesses, decreased crime, decreased relationship trauma, improved systems overall.
So, Is Neurodivergence Really That “Divergent”?
Maybe. Maybe not.
Perhaps it depends on what we're comparing it to.
If we define “normal” narrowly enough, almost everyone will eventually fall outside the lines. Human beings aren't standardized products. We're wonderfully inconsistent, messy, creative, sensitive, intense, quiet, restless, analytical, emotional, predictable and unpredictable.
We're all combinations. Some need more tangible support than others, but that isn't a bad thing. We all have something to learn from that and gain from being in communities that hold each other up.
And maybe the more interesting question isn't: “How divergent are you?” Maybe it's: “What do you need to thrive?” And then: “What kind of world would make room for that?”
Because I don't think the answer is a world where everyone becomes the same.
I think the answer is a world where there is enough room for all of us to be different. And enough care that we don't have to do it alone.
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