Scott, thanks for putting words to the knot so many of us are wrestling with — how to celebrate neural variety without diluting the very signal that unlocks real-world support.
Where your argument really resonates:
If every quirk becomes a clinical badge, HR budgets and public-school IEP funding will evaporate; labels lose their power to trigger accommodations.
Reduced stigma is a gift. Late-diagnosed adults I coach often say the label finally let them swap “What’s wrong with me?” for “How do I work with my wiring?”Where my work in companies adds a nuance:
Trait × Context = Impairment. An ADHD engineer in a flow-friendly scrum team may need zero formal supports; the same brain in an open-plan help-desk can burn out in a week. Severity isn’t just biological, it’s environmental.
Self-diagnosis alone rarely unlocks anything at work—legal accommodation processes still hinge on formal evaluation—yet many gifted/ND adults hesitate to disclose at all. We often coach them out of internalised ableism, not victim-performance.
What keeps the term useful is tying it to design levers, not identity politics.
Universal tweaks everyone loves (clear agendas, camera-optional meetings) + opt-in personal adjustments (noise-cancelling stipend) = no one has to prove they’re “ND enough” for basic humanity, while resources remain targeted.
So maybe the next evolution is: “We’re all neurologically unique; some of us need system tweaks to hit the same outcomes.” That keeps the label actionable while honouring the spectrum within the spectrum.
Would love your thoughts on how this trait-context framing might translate in education settings, where the resource crunch is even sharper. Always appreciate your willingness to tackle the messy middle ground.
Well said, everyone being neurodiverse is the same as everyone being ‘a little bit on the spectrum’. Those with a clinical diagnosis, and subsequent challenges, have their experiences minimised because ‘everyone is neurodiverse’.
If a person falls into a fire and suffers third degree burns, we don’t compare the time we lit the gas stove and singed our eyelashes to their experience.
Everyone being neurodiverse is a barrier to widened understanding of how exhausting and difficult it is to navigate the neurotypical world.
Without understanding, where is the motivation for consideration and accommodation.
Scott, I also came across that paper, and like you, thought long and hard about it. In fact, I raised it with an Aussie colleague who happens to be an expert in adult neurodiversity. She's a clinical psychologist and married to one of my dear coaching psych teachers at USYD. As you so masterfully explored in this article, I also find it uncomfortable to hear folk saying that everyone is neurodivergent.
I just came back from an intensive international 9-day training program, known as IIT, in non-violent communication (NVC), developed by the late Dr Marshall Rosenberg. He studied under Carl Rogers. Whilst at the IIT, I felt deeply motivated, nay moved, to design and share a group exercise to compassionately advocate for my needs. To say that it landed well is an understatement...it shifted the remaining program to a higher level of collective consciousness in the group, including organisers, trainers, event hosts and interpreters (it was a bilingual event in English and Spanish)!
I've been asked to publish it with the Centre for Non-Violent Communication. It's very simple but I'm designing it as a shareable infographic. I'd love to also share with you here and on LinkedIn - if you accept my connection invite!
Thanks for your work. Our conversations in San Diego 2 years ago (at the IOC Leadership in Healthcare Conference) stayed with me. Especially meaningful as I'd recently lost my husband.
It’s bothered me time and time again when I get asked “well doesn’t everyone have ADHD or on the spectrum somehow?” Because it completely diminishes other people’s truly difficult experience to navigate this world, including my own. When that question arises, I can’t help but shut down a little knowing I’m having a conversation with someone who probably doesn’t care in the first place.
This bugs me too. EVERYBODY can't be "diverse." That would be like saying everybody is above average. In my community, ADHD is a very common diagnosis, and it's still stigmatized: kids feel bad about their ADHD and feel as if there's no way to "fix" themselves. But the kids I've tutored who are diagnosed with ADHD seem fairly normal to me. Maybe their minds move faster than the minds of us adults. That's sometimes all it is. I can see why this would be frustrating for teachers in a classroom situation, but it's not a problem in a more normal situation like me and that kid making something together.
About the autism diagnosis: That is probably more rare than ADHD in actuality, but some adults I know are self-diagnosing as autistic merely because they sometimes say things that other people find strange or off-putting!
While I believe that high-functioning autistic people really do have a different kind of mind than most people, I believe that they can learn to function is such a way that their lives work better. It should not be an excuse for being entitled or exploitative. Everybody needs to learn to pitch in at home, thank people who serve them food, pick up after themselves, take the trash out, etc. Saying you can't remember to do these things because you're on the spectrum is not ok.
Well said. We’re a movement of UK ND family doctors and / or those interested in ND. Many of us have been grappling with this article too, and you’ve aligned it perfectly to the whole identity politics issue. Thank you.
This is such a complicated topic, so thanks for writing about this. This is very timely.
I have been thinking about this quite a lot, because I'm an orchid/HSP, and I've recently written a fictional novel for teens, where the main character is an orchid. However, I've intentionally described the secondary characters as dandelions and tulips, because I want to help bring awareness to the entire spectrum of sensitivity. Currently, the world tends to stigmatize people who are HSP and singles them out as "abnormal." Even the term HSP creates a sense of other/difference. And I think this language can be problematic.
Part of my mission is to help get more people (especially in mainstream media) talking about the entire spectrum of sensitivity, instead of only singling out HSPs. Because the truth is - we all have a nervous system and we all fall somewhere along the spectrum of sensitivity. I think when we only talk about HSPs in isolation, it does more to stigmatize them, whereas I want to help educate everyone about how they experience their own nervous system.
I think when we all understand ourselves better, we can also understand other people better. I want to help people understand orchids, AND dandelions AND tulips. Because I want to normalize wherever we fall along the sensitivity spectrum. Yes, as an orchid I have very specific challenges. As you know, it's not an easy experience. But I'm absolutely not a victim and I don't whine about it. I just try to educate people about the biology of sensitivity, to understand themselves better.
I've had many conversations with people over the last two years about sensitivity. And everyone I've talked with - especially parents and teachers - has appreciated understanding all three types of flowers, because they can identify themselves as one of the three... everyone feels included. What's interesting is that other people have then applied the term of "neurodiverse" to me and I'm personally ambivalent about it.
I say I'm an orchid, because I have a highly sensitive nervous system. And then I provide them resources where they can go watch videos or read books to learn more about sensitivity.
So thank you for everything you've done to help educate people and stimulate informed thinking. Your work is very much appreciated.
Great article. It’s one frustration I have with the DSM -V. The definition of ASD now is soooo expansive, and the combination of ADD and ADHD into a single umbrella will necessarily lead to an increase in diagnosis - regardless of incidence rate. Between that and the reduction of stigma and the accessibility of information (not always helpful), I’ve found the ASD diagnosis to be almost meaningless in some cases - especially when it is often co morbid with other disorders and/or disabilities.
We have become way too comfortable and dependent upon identifying ourselves through our statuses as victims or oppressed.
For these reasons I don’t like the term neurodivergent and refuse to use ASD or ADHD as an adjective. My son isn’t ADHD or ASD. He HAS or more accurately HAS BEEN DIAGNOSED WITH (I leave room for subjectivity) ASD and ADHD inattentive type.
The latter gives him much more agency in his progress and outcome.
Wonderful post that is spot-on, Scott. If everyone is "______diverse", then is that the new normal? I've spent many decades working in this changing space. The increase in diagnosis and self-diagnosis can decrease stigma but it also can lead to people championing behaviors that are far outside of the norm. Shared widely, as you note, this makes information accessible but the professional lens for understanding it is pretty blurry, traded for the lived experience version. I'm so interested to know what you think the forward trajectory of this might look like.
this stems from the loss of tribal-ethnic-clan affiliation and culture due to colonization, whiteness, imperialism, etc. essentially the oppression of animism, and all those animist cultures that had place-specific explanation, medicine and meaning for all neuro-diverse folks in that hyperlocal community.
now, we have the internet, the most anti-cultural innovation ever before in humankind, accelerating the human mind far beyond its many millenia-long evolutionary path.
when one has no relations, then identity and identitarianism becomes the new religion.
One aspect that seems fuzzy in this post is positioning. Are you coming into the conversation from the medical model (the fact that the first mention of the word “disorder” is in quotation marks tells me that perhaps yes, but not entirely?) or the social model of neurodiversity?
This matters because it shapes how we view needs, self-identification, and support - in other words, whether we place a value judgement (right/wrong, normal/disordered) on them or not.
Another aspect that becomes vague in many discussions (not necessarily in the text here) is the use of language. The social model of neurodiversity acknowledges a naturally occurring variation in our nervous systems. So yes - we are all neurodiverse - because our nervous systems differ from one another. We are not all neurodivergent, though. Being neurodivergent means experiencing persistent patterns of differences from the dominant ways of processing, communicating, learning, relating and sensing the world. (I am purposely using the word “dominant” instead of “normal in everyday society” because the latter phrasing fails to account for cultural differences and intersectional matters.)
I would also argue that conflating ongoing patterns of neurodevelopment differences with the presence of personality traits or isolated experiences of masking dilutes the conversation about neurodivergence. Neurodivergent patterns often lead to friction within standardised environments (like the educational system or traditional workplaces).
Two assumptions I want to address:
- that people who self-identify a) demand resources and b) actually receive them
- that self-identification is a fast track to self-victimisation
Neurodivergent self-identification isn’t necessarily about accessing resources. For many, it’s about understanding themselves better and finally having language for experiences that have gone unnamed possibly forever.
As for the young people and social media, the same applies. It’s a big reach to assume self-victimisation. Teenagers, as the rest of us, are trying to make sense of themselves in the world, and finding resonance in shared experience is a very human way to understand and build identity. The search for belonging and the desire to be seen are essential human needs, after all. Concern about the supposed trendiness of neurodivergence implies there is one "correct" or “serious” way to be neurodivergent - usually anchored to a formal diagnosis or visible struggle, and that anything outside of that is performative. And this brings us back to the medical model, doesn’t it?
If we understand neurodiversity as a lens, not a label, the conversation becomes less about who qualifies and more about how we create contexts where different ways of being can find belonging. The aim should be to help people develop self-knowledge and explore what supports them—not to dismiss self-reflection as attention-seeking.
That said, where I do see a reason for caution is the uncritical use of labels without deeper reflection on how neurodivergence shows up for an individual. Labels tend to cloud nuance and we should be wary of using them as a catch-all terms (especially in educational settings). Spiky profiles, where strengths and challenges exist alongside each other, offers a more meaningful way to understanding and supporting people.
I think a reason for this is because people want to talk about the genuine issues they are facing in their life but are limited by a lack of language. Psychology has always focused on those that are unhealthy and ignored those that are simply "meh". Many people who feel "meh" are functional citizens of society, have basic capacities for relationships, but struggle to experience higher or deeper connections, and still experience many real issues and problems in life.
These diagnosises help them put a word to their struggles - even if they're not as bad as those faced by people who really suffer with ADHD. The solution then is to invent a language and a framework - similar to Elaine Arons term Highly Sensitive Person. We should talk about MDPs! Moderately Distracted People, or MEPs - Moderately entitled people. (Mini-narcissists). The idea is that we give people something to relate to and connect and talk about, without creating a "diagnosis".
People who identify with ADHD want to talk about their issues with distraction, decision making, regardless if they actually meet the criteria of the diagnosis, because to them, these are real issues impacting their life, and the only term they know for it is ADHD. Pair it with how people hope this diagnosis will offer their kid genuine and real support in a school system that has been underfunded for too long. But in doing so, they're also undercutting the kids that really need support.. Something has to change. That's for sure.
Thanks for your work and looking forward to read your book!
Scott, I like your point. Here's the problem, which I see frequently in psychology -- you don't have clear operational definitions.
Without a definition for neurodiverse, your argument goes in circles.
Define neurodiverse=diagnosed autistic, then you have an answer - 1 in 31 people today match that definition.
I think it's a pretty good guess that no consensus measurable definition for neurodivergent will emerge, in which case the only response is to shrug and move on
BTW agree with you 100% that victimhood is toxic, but what are you going to do -- criticize young people for adopting that attitude? They are in defensive mode from information overload. The only thing I can think of is to prescribe them nature -- go climb a mountain. No victims out there!
Once we begin measuring an attribute more precisely, only two-thirds will be within one standard deviation of normal. Add to this the multi-attribute nature of neurodivergence and the impact of varying stress levels. It is a multispectral world. But we can still say that half the people are "tall."
As children we recognize that individuals differ enormously. Both ourself and , for example, a boy who claimed of his rather extreme tics, which, with psych background i now recognize as a significant Tourette's compulsion, were just something he "had" to do.
I had thought my own upbringing, with a brutal father, intermittently present, during which times gor Fs in school, and avoided coming home until after midnight, adjusting bedroom window to allow silent glass removal, in contrast to all As in the semester or year when he was absent, was also normal.
I discovered as an adult that parents played with offspring bybecoming shocked at my disbelief at what i was seeing at age 30. I was seeing happy intimate communication and play, while very consciously disbelieving what i was seeing.
Unable to understand the complete rejection by opposite sex from first social attempts at age 18 throughout adulthood, now having observed marked departures from norms, i periodically take NPI and other inventories to see if i have persistent variation from norms. It is the social norms which apear Alien to me. ( i tend to score in bottom 4-6% of NPI, yet constantly worry and ruminate over my extreme social anxieties, and avoid intimate social interactions. I DO realize that the enormous self-medication of others with GABAergic alcohol, cannabis, and other drugs, which i cannot countenance, as they literally make me MORE inept and stultifyingly conscious of it, are "normal" behaviors and choices to you all.
I am completely socially isolated, for years, while still accepting and feeling normal.
My gaffes eat at me, even as they occurred in early adolescence, arising to consciousness, causing blockage of verbal response and long pauses, unable to converse.
This all, i know, is artifact of coldly religious and immensely explosive parents. The world you claim as normal was never my familial experience. Some cultures are worse, insofar as i can detect as sometime witness.
Scott, thanks for putting words to the knot so many of us are wrestling with — how to celebrate neural variety without diluting the very signal that unlocks real-world support.
Where your argument really resonates:
If every quirk becomes a clinical badge, HR budgets and public-school IEP funding will evaporate; labels lose their power to trigger accommodations.
Reduced stigma is a gift. Late-diagnosed adults I coach often say the label finally let them swap “What’s wrong with me?” for “How do I work with my wiring?”Where my work in companies adds a nuance:
Trait × Context = Impairment. An ADHD engineer in a flow-friendly scrum team may need zero formal supports; the same brain in an open-plan help-desk can burn out in a week. Severity isn’t just biological, it’s environmental.
Self-diagnosis alone rarely unlocks anything at work—legal accommodation processes still hinge on formal evaluation—yet many gifted/ND adults hesitate to disclose at all. We often coach them out of internalised ableism, not victim-performance.
What keeps the term useful is tying it to design levers, not identity politics.
Universal tweaks everyone loves (clear agendas, camera-optional meetings) + opt-in personal adjustments (noise-cancelling stipend) = no one has to prove they’re “ND enough” for basic humanity, while resources remain targeted.
So maybe the next evolution is: “We’re all neurologically unique; some of us need system tweaks to hit the same outcomes.” That keeps the label actionable while honouring the spectrum within the spectrum.
Would love your thoughts on how this trait-context framing might translate in education settings, where the resource crunch is even sharper. Always appreciate your willingness to tackle the messy middle ground.
Hello SBK,
Well said, everyone being neurodiverse is the same as everyone being ‘a little bit on the spectrum’. Those with a clinical diagnosis, and subsequent challenges, have their experiences minimised because ‘everyone is neurodiverse’.
If a person falls into a fire and suffers third degree burns, we don’t compare the time we lit the gas stove and singed our eyelashes to their experience.
Everyone being neurodiverse is a barrier to widened understanding of how exhausting and difficult it is to navigate the neurotypical world.
Without understanding, where is the motivation for consideration and accommodation.
Scott, I also came across that paper, and like you, thought long and hard about it. In fact, I raised it with an Aussie colleague who happens to be an expert in adult neurodiversity. She's a clinical psychologist and married to one of my dear coaching psych teachers at USYD. As you so masterfully explored in this article, I also find it uncomfortable to hear folk saying that everyone is neurodivergent.
I just came back from an intensive international 9-day training program, known as IIT, in non-violent communication (NVC), developed by the late Dr Marshall Rosenberg. He studied under Carl Rogers. Whilst at the IIT, I felt deeply motivated, nay moved, to design and share a group exercise to compassionately advocate for my needs. To say that it landed well is an understatement...it shifted the remaining program to a higher level of collective consciousness in the group, including organisers, trainers, event hosts and interpreters (it was a bilingual event in English and Spanish)!
I've been asked to publish it with the Centre for Non-Violent Communication. It's very simple but I'm designing it as a shareable infographic. I'd love to also share with you here and on LinkedIn - if you accept my connection invite!
Thanks for your work. Our conversations in San Diego 2 years ago (at the IOC Leadership in Healthcare Conference) stayed with me. Especially meaningful as I'd recently lost my husband.
"The majority is divergent" seems a little bit like "the straights are gay".
It’s bothered me time and time again when I get asked “well doesn’t everyone have ADHD or on the spectrum somehow?” Because it completely diminishes other people’s truly difficult experience to navigate this world, including my own. When that question arises, I can’t help but shut down a little knowing I’m having a conversation with someone who probably doesn’t care in the first place.
This bugs me too. EVERYBODY can't be "diverse." That would be like saying everybody is above average. In my community, ADHD is a very common diagnosis, and it's still stigmatized: kids feel bad about their ADHD and feel as if there's no way to "fix" themselves. But the kids I've tutored who are diagnosed with ADHD seem fairly normal to me. Maybe their minds move faster than the minds of us adults. That's sometimes all it is. I can see why this would be frustrating for teachers in a classroom situation, but it's not a problem in a more normal situation like me and that kid making something together.
About the autism diagnosis: That is probably more rare than ADHD in actuality, but some adults I know are self-diagnosing as autistic merely because they sometimes say things that other people find strange or off-putting!
While I believe that high-functioning autistic people really do have a different kind of mind than most people, I believe that they can learn to function is such a way that their lives work better. It should not be an excuse for being entitled or exploitative. Everybody needs to learn to pitch in at home, thank people who serve them food, pick up after themselves, take the trash out, etc. Saying you can't remember to do these things because you're on the spectrum is not ok.
Well said. We’re a movement of UK ND family doctors and / or those interested in ND. Many of us have been grappling with this article too, and you’ve aligned it perfectly to the whole identity politics issue. Thank you.
Thanks Sarah, glad you found it helpful!
This is such a complicated topic, so thanks for writing about this. This is very timely.
I have been thinking about this quite a lot, because I'm an orchid/HSP, and I've recently written a fictional novel for teens, where the main character is an orchid. However, I've intentionally described the secondary characters as dandelions and tulips, because I want to help bring awareness to the entire spectrum of sensitivity. Currently, the world tends to stigmatize people who are HSP and singles them out as "abnormal." Even the term HSP creates a sense of other/difference. And I think this language can be problematic.
Part of my mission is to help get more people (especially in mainstream media) talking about the entire spectrum of sensitivity, instead of only singling out HSPs. Because the truth is - we all have a nervous system and we all fall somewhere along the spectrum of sensitivity. I think when we only talk about HSPs in isolation, it does more to stigmatize them, whereas I want to help educate everyone about how they experience their own nervous system.
I think when we all understand ourselves better, we can also understand other people better. I want to help people understand orchids, AND dandelions AND tulips. Because I want to normalize wherever we fall along the sensitivity spectrum. Yes, as an orchid I have very specific challenges. As you know, it's not an easy experience. But I'm absolutely not a victim and I don't whine about it. I just try to educate people about the biology of sensitivity, to understand themselves better.
I've had many conversations with people over the last two years about sensitivity. And everyone I've talked with - especially parents and teachers - has appreciated understanding all three types of flowers, because they can identify themselves as one of the three... everyone feels included. What's interesting is that other people have then applied the term of "neurodiverse" to me and I'm personally ambivalent about it.
I say I'm an orchid, because I have a highly sensitive nervous system. And then I provide them resources where they can go watch videos or read books to learn more about sensitivity.
So thank you for everything you've done to help educate people and stimulate informed thinking. Your work is very much appreciated.
Great article. It’s one frustration I have with the DSM -V. The definition of ASD now is soooo expansive, and the combination of ADD and ADHD into a single umbrella will necessarily lead to an increase in diagnosis - regardless of incidence rate. Between that and the reduction of stigma and the accessibility of information (not always helpful), I’ve found the ASD diagnosis to be almost meaningless in some cases - especially when it is often co morbid with other disorders and/or disabilities.
We have become way too comfortable and dependent upon identifying ourselves through our statuses as victims or oppressed.
For these reasons I don’t like the term neurodivergent and refuse to use ASD or ADHD as an adjective. My son isn’t ADHD or ASD. He HAS or more accurately HAS BEEN DIAGNOSED WITH (I leave room for subjectivity) ASD and ADHD inattentive type.
The latter gives him much more agency in his progress and outcome.
Wonderful post that is spot-on, Scott. If everyone is "______diverse", then is that the new normal? I've spent many decades working in this changing space. The increase in diagnosis and self-diagnosis can decrease stigma but it also can lead to people championing behaviors that are far outside of the norm. Shared widely, as you note, this makes information accessible but the professional lens for understanding it is pretty blurry, traded for the lived experience version. I'm so interested to know what you think the forward trajectory of this might look like.
Thanks Sherri, I know you've done a lot of great work in this space.
this stems from the loss of tribal-ethnic-clan affiliation and culture due to colonization, whiteness, imperialism, etc. essentially the oppression of animism, and all those animist cultures that had place-specific explanation, medicine and meaning for all neuro-diverse folks in that hyperlocal community.
now, we have the internet, the most anti-cultural innovation ever before in humankind, accelerating the human mind far beyond its many millenia-long evolutionary path.
when one has no relations, then identity and identitarianism becomes the new religion.
This topic merits a more layered consideration.
One aspect that seems fuzzy in this post is positioning. Are you coming into the conversation from the medical model (the fact that the first mention of the word “disorder” is in quotation marks tells me that perhaps yes, but not entirely?) or the social model of neurodiversity?
This matters because it shapes how we view needs, self-identification, and support - in other words, whether we place a value judgement (right/wrong, normal/disordered) on them or not.
Another aspect that becomes vague in many discussions (not necessarily in the text here) is the use of language. The social model of neurodiversity acknowledges a naturally occurring variation in our nervous systems. So yes - we are all neurodiverse - because our nervous systems differ from one another. We are not all neurodivergent, though. Being neurodivergent means experiencing persistent patterns of differences from the dominant ways of processing, communicating, learning, relating and sensing the world. (I am purposely using the word “dominant” instead of “normal in everyday society” because the latter phrasing fails to account for cultural differences and intersectional matters.)
I would also argue that conflating ongoing patterns of neurodevelopment differences with the presence of personality traits or isolated experiences of masking dilutes the conversation about neurodivergence. Neurodivergent patterns often lead to friction within standardised environments (like the educational system or traditional workplaces).
Two assumptions I want to address:
- that people who self-identify a) demand resources and b) actually receive them
- that self-identification is a fast track to self-victimisation
Neurodivergent self-identification isn’t necessarily about accessing resources. For many, it’s about understanding themselves better and finally having language for experiences that have gone unnamed possibly forever.
As for the young people and social media, the same applies. It’s a big reach to assume self-victimisation. Teenagers, as the rest of us, are trying to make sense of themselves in the world, and finding resonance in shared experience is a very human way to understand and build identity. The search for belonging and the desire to be seen are essential human needs, after all. Concern about the supposed trendiness of neurodivergence implies there is one "correct" or “serious” way to be neurodivergent - usually anchored to a formal diagnosis or visible struggle, and that anything outside of that is performative. And this brings us back to the medical model, doesn’t it?
If we understand neurodiversity as a lens, not a label, the conversation becomes less about who qualifies and more about how we create contexts where different ways of being can find belonging. The aim should be to help people develop self-knowledge and explore what supports them—not to dismiss self-reflection as attention-seeking.
That said, where I do see a reason for caution is the uncritical use of labels without deeper reflection on how neurodivergence shows up for an individual. Labels tend to cloud nuance and we should be wary of using them as a catch-all terms (especially in educational settings). Spiky profiles, where strengths and challenges exist alongside each other, offers a more meaningful way to understanding and supporting people.
Hi Scott,
I think a reason for this is because people want to talk about the genuine issues they are facing in their life but are limited by a lack of language. Psychology has always focused on those that are unhealthy and ignored those that are simply "meh". Many people who feel "meh" are functional citizens of society, have basic capacities for relationships, but struggle to experience higher or deeper connections, and still experience many real issues and problems in life.
These diagnosises help them put a word to their struggles - even if they're not as bad as those faced by people who really suffer with ADHD. The solution then is to invent a language and a framework - similar to Elaine Arons term Highly Sensitive Person. We should talk about MDPs! Moderately Distracted People, or MEPs - Moderately entitled people. (Mini-narcissists). The idea is that we give people something to relate to and connect and talk about, without creating a "diagnosis".
People who identify with ADHD want to talk about their issues with distraction, decision making, regardless if they actually meet the criteria of the diagnosis, because to them, these are real issues impacting their life, and the only term they know for it is ADHD. Pair it with how people hope this diagnosis will offer their kid genuine and real support in a school system that has been underfunded for too long. But in doing so, they're also undercutting the kids that really need support.. Something has to change. That's for sure.
Thanks for your work and looking forward to read your book!
Scott, I like your point. Here's the problem, which I see frequently in psychology -- you don't have clear operational definitions.
Without a definition for neurodiverse, your argument goes in circles.
Define neurodiverse=diagnosed autistic, then you have an answer - 1 in 31 people today match that definition.
I think it's a pretty good guess that no consensus measurable definition for neurodivergent will emerge, in which case the only response is to shrug and move on
BTW agree with you 100% that victimhood is toxic, but what are you going to do -- criticize young people for adopting that attitude? They are in defensive mode from information overload. The only thing I can think of is to prescribe them nature -- go climb a mountain. No victims out there!
Once we begin measuring an attribute more precisely, only two-thirds will be within one standard deviation of normal. Add to this the multi-attribute nature of neurodivergence and the impact of varying stress levels. It is a multispectral world. But we can still say that half the people are "tall."
As children we recognize that individuals differ enormously. Both ourself and , for example, a boy who claimed of his rather extreme tics, which, with psych background i now recognize as a significant Tourette's compulsion, were just something he "had" to do.
I had thought my own upbringing, with a brutal father, intermittently present, during which times gor Fs in school, and avoided coming home until after midnight, adjusting bedroom window to allow silent glass removal, in contrast to all As in the semester or year when he was absent, was also normal.
I discovered as an adult that parents played with offspring bybecoming shocked at my disbelief at what i was seeing at age 30. I was seeing happy intimate communication and play, while very consciously disbelieving what i was seeing.
Unable to understand the complete rejection by opposite sex from first social attempts at age 18 throughout adulthood, now having observed marked departures from norms, i periodically take NPI and other inventories to see if i have persistent variation from norms. It is the social norms which apear Alien to me. ( i tend to score in bottom 4-6% of NPI, yet constantly worry and ruminate over my extreme social anxieties, and avoid intimate social interactions. I DO realize that the enormous self-medication of others with GABAergic alcohol, cannabis, and other drugs, which i cannot countenance, as they literally make me MORE inept and stultifyingly conscious of it, are "normal" behaviors and choices to you all.
I am completely socially isolated, for years, while still accepting and feeling normal.
My gaffes eat at me, even as they occurred in early adolescence, arising to consciousness, causing blockage of verbal response and long pauses, unable to converse.
This all, i know, is artifact of coldly religious and immensely explosive parents. The world you claim as normal was never my familial experience. Some cultures are worse, insofar as i can detect as sometime witness.