7 Things I Wish People Knew About Neurodivergence (As a Therapist)
7 minute read
You’ve likely clicked on this article for a few possible reasons:
You’re neurodivergent (Hiiiiii) and looking to figure out more things about yourself from credible sources, and a therapist with neurodivergence seems like a good spot
You’re wondering what a therapist would say that’s different than what people out in the wild are saying, and if you’d agree with that
or
You’re neurotypical and looking to understand more about a neurodivergent loved one
Regardless of what brought you here, the reason I wrote this is because part of my job is taking clinical information, professional knowledge, and my lived experience to offer something that people can use in their daily lives to make things a little bit better. This list includes some of those things.
So let’s talk about neurodivergence (whether that’s autism, ADHD, or one of the many other divergent neurotypes) and what I wish everyone knew about it.
1. You Can’t Separate the Neurodivergence from the Person
A lot of how neurodivergence (and I’m talking primarily about autism and ADHD because that’s where I specialize, but this can apply to other neurotypes, too) is approached societally is that it’s something to treat. A disorder, or illness. Something to be fixed. A lot of research goes into finding causes and looking for cures. This leads to the idea that neurodivergence is something that can be altered or excised. That it’s separate from who we are as people.
The fact that it’s not, and we can’t, might hit hard for someone with a new realization of neurodiversity. There’s so much about how it’s presented that creates an expectation of a difference between a person’s neurodivergence and their identity - and that we “shouldn’t” allow one to affect the other. One of the many things we run into during our discovery journey is that it suddenly feels like everything about us is “the ADHD” or “the autism” or, or, or. How are we supposed to know who we are outside of our diagnosis if we’re suddenly pushed to consider that every habit, trait, way of thinking, preference, behaviour is our diagnosis and we lie somewhere beneath?
If that feels impossible, it’s because it really kind of is. Being neurodivergent means being a different neurotype than the one society identifies as the typical one, that means that we’ve followed a different neurodevelopmental trajectory - we’re wired differently. We know on a foundational level that the experiences of the neurotypical are not universal.
The image shows two characters from the show Kimmy Schmidt: Dong and Logan. Dong has a frustrated expression. The text reads “Your experiences are not universal”.
A label of neurodivergence feels like it impacts every aspect of our lives because it does. We are who we are because of and including our neurotype, not in spite of it.
What can feel easier is figuring out who we might have been if we’d had the support we’d needed - but that’s not actually removing our neurodivergence, just the way we were treated. And there’s my point - we don’t have to excise our differences, we need to make room for them (and so does society).
2. Everyone is Different
Even knowing our identities are heavily impacted by our neurotype, it’s also important to remember that we’re all still individuals. The way it shows up for one person isn’t going to be the way it shows up for another.
“You don’t look autistic”
“Everyone’s a little ADHD”
“There’s no way you can have that - I’ve seen you do/you don’t…”
If you’re someone reading this because you have a loved one with neurodivergence, these aren’t the reassurances or compliments you might think that they are. They hurt. They deny our reality and minimize our experiences. They operate on the assumption that everyone with a certain kind of neurotype experiences it the same way, to the same intensity in every aspect, and with no other co-occurrences that alter our experience.
Let’s think about autism specifically for a minute.
“If you know one person with autism, you know one person with autism.” - Dr. Stephen Shore
You might have come across this before. But what does it really mean?
We can break that down by talking about what we mean when we say spectrum. A lot of the time I see this conceptualized as a scale from “practically not autistic” to “super autistic”. However, it’s more accurate and useful to think of it as a wide variety of potential presentations across a series of aspects. While some of us might struggle more with cognitive rigidity and find things like small talk easy, others might really struggle with small talk and eye contact, but struggle less with their sensory profile. Some of us might have more trouble navigating our sensory sensitivities, or have very different sensory preferences or sensitivities than other autistics. The way we express how we process our different realities and what we find easy or hard are different from person to person.
That gets even more complex when you add in co-occurrences that change our experience and the way our neurodivergence manifests.
3. Co-Occurences Are Common
Speaking of co-occurrences, there are a lot of them that are very common with neurodivergence.
For instance, about half of people with ADHD have auditory processing disorder.
20-50% of people with ADHD also have autism, and 40-70% of people with autism also have ADHD. Yes, those are wide ranges (the literature may catch up eventually), but that’s a surprisingly significant overlap when you consider that it’s only been since the release of the DSM-V in 2013 that a dual diagnosis of the two at once could be given.
You’re more likely to have or develop an autoimmune disease and/or dysautonomia if you’re neurodivergent (and that’s a way more complicated correlation than can be boiled down to one easy statistic).
Autistics are more likely to have EDS (Ehler’s Danlos Syndrome). One study found that more than 50% of their participants that had autism, ADHD, or Tourette Syndrome had “elevated levels of hypermobility”, when the general population’s stat is around 20%.
50% of people with dyspraxia also have ADHD.
That’s not even close to comprehensive. It’s rare for someone to have “just” one condition or neurodevelopmental condition. It’s a different neurodevelopmental trajectory that can cause changes in our bodies as much as our brains. Some of those things give us strengths, some can be disabling, some require us to be able to do things a little differently.
4. Differences, Not Deficits
I am absolutely rocking my segues today. So, like I just said, even though certain aspects or co-occurrences can be disabling and hinder our day to day life, at its core neurodivergence is a different neurodevelopmental trajectory. There’s nothing wrong with that. It becomes more difficult for that to be seen as a difference and not a deficit when society is structured around catering to only one neurotype. A highly significant amount of the time, the things we struggle with most aren’t traits of our neurodivergence, but how society treats us because of it. We’re pressured to do things the “right” way (which might work against our wiring), and pushed into environments or interactions that are actively harmful to us.
So, it’s society’s fault. Okay - what are we supposed to do about that, then? We can’t just change society (by ourselves, that is. We’re working on it collectively; but that takes time). And it’s not sustainable for most of us to keep up the neurotypical charade.
5. Knowledge is Power
It’s a lot easier to give ourselves what we need or figure out less taxing ways to do things if we understand why it isn’t working.
When we can’t figure out why something is hard, or why we can’t do it, then we’re way more likely to end up saying
The image shows Taylor Swift pointing at herself with a big smile, with text that reads “It’s me, hi / I’m the problem / it’s me”
And that gets paired with all manner of way less nice things in much crueler ways, which - you guessed it - doesn’t make anything any easier.
But, if we know why we’re struggling, then it’s much easier to find ways to make room for it. To work with it, not against it. If you can’t get yourself to do a chore, because it’s so boring it hurts and making yourself do it is like pulling teeth while wearing those little babyhands, what’s easier: telling yourself you’re a lazy piece of slanderous dysfunctional bio-trash so that you can cry your way through doing the dishes? Or realizing that because you have ADHD, which is characterized by a dopamine deficiency (a deep dive for another time) if you give yourself a little treat first or put on a podcast to listen to, you can wash that pot without tears and maybe even a little dance? Or realizing that because you have autism, you have sensory sensitivities that have resulted in the idea of touching old food or getting your hands and sleeves wet while the rest of you stays dry absolutely unbearable, and you can put on an apron and some rubber gloves to make it through without gagging so hard you pull a back muscle fishing around in the sink for that fork?
6. It’s hard to articulate struggle with no frame of reference or understanding
Have you ever tried explaining to someone the taste of water? Or the colour chartreuse to someone who’s never seen it, but you can’t use the colours green or yellow because they don’t know those either, and they keep telling you it’s a French herbal liqueur, not a reflection of light with a wavelength frequency of 555.757?
That’s what it can feel like to try to explain some of the hurdles we’re running into while trying to navigate society as neurodivergents. We’re attempting to explain something for which we have no frame of reference to use to explain it, because we’ve a) grown up in neurotypical society and no one has given us language for what’s happening (that isn’t shaming, anyway) and b) quite often the people we’re explaining it to have no way to experience what’s happening because their brains work differently.
It can take empathy, consideration, and two-way, good faith communication to reach an understanding about experiences between neurotypes (honestly, between people. None of us can guarantee we truly know how someone else navigates the world).
But more than that, I want to ask you a couple of questions (my fellow neurodivergents struggling to explain their struggles, and my neurotypical readers working to understand their neurodivergent loved ones).
What if instead of trying to justify yourselves, or add enough context to feel like you’re bearable, you leaned into the vulnerability of trusting a loved one to care that you’re hurting, even if they don’t understand?
Why do you need someone to justify their pain before you can offer them empathy or support? Are there places where you have needs that aren’t getting met, that you haven’t allowed yourself to look after?
7. Making room for neurodivergence helps everybody
And there’s the rub - the reason the need for a neurodiversity movement at all makes no sense to me. When we make room for varying and diverse needs on a systemic level, it helps everyone. When we’re denying others the comfort and support and accommodation they need around the things that are difficult or painful for them, we’re ultimately denying that to ourselves, too. We’re normalizing and guaranteeing suffering, when we don’t have to.
Differentiating neurotypes between neurotypical and neurodivergent is an arbitrary (though currently highly necessary) and ultimately inaccurate categorization. There’s nothing wrong with those of us currently labelled deficient. Exclusion follows and highlights the arbitrary and deeply carved line society has embedded between those deemed worth support, and the rest of us. We all suffer for that, at some point.
Some sources
Here’s a quick list of links that support the stats I mentioned if you’d like to check them out:
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/adhd-and-auditory-processing-disorder
https://www.verywellmind.com/aspergers-vs-adhd-what-are-the-differences-5272258
https://www.attwoodandgarnettevents.com/blogs/news/autism-and-ehlers-danlos-syndrome
Condensed Thoughts
So, if I were to condense this down to what I really hope you take away, here it is:
You do experience reality differently. It is hard - but because of the way you’re treated, not the way you need to do things. You’re not broken, you’re not deficient, and you’re not alone. It’s not your fault. Societal norms are the obstacle, not you and who you are.
That doesn’t mean that there aren’t things you can do for yourself to make navigating this life easier. I encourage you to find as many of them as you can.
A drawing of a monstera plant in an orange and brown pot with text that reads “When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower”. This is a quote by Alexander Den Heijer
