[Redway]

As it says in the title. I’ve written thesis after thesis about this topic on here so I assume that by now my stance on it is pretty clear, but just for the sake of clarification, my personal argument is that people chalk up various conditions, tendencies and attributes (some of them normal personality-traits, not even a condition) to ‘neurodevelopmental divergence’ (which is what neurodivergence really is; no two minds are exactly the same, neurodevelopmentally or otherwise, so if it wasn’t circumscribed down to neurodevelopment in terms of more official ideology, everyone and their grandma would be on one neurodevelopmental spectrum or the other).

There’s also this tendency to identify as pan-neurodiverse in this day and age and in the case of ADHD vs. (neurodevelopmental, not schizoid) autism, that can just be patronising to, say, someone who perhaps has a touch of Asperger’s but in a very specific way (initiation of non-verbal communication) and renowned for their calming, steady outward presence and good focusing skills that’s fashioned because of rather than in spite of who they are. Patronising and below the ball when someone like that is seen as fundamentally much closer to a disorder stereotyped marked by hyperactivity and/or distractability than the average “neurotypical,” even-though that wouldn’t necessarily be the case at-all. It is possible to just be mono-neurodiverse and not have even the slightest trace of any other form of neurodivergence, just like it’s also common enough that things overlap. Just like not every black person will be pan-African in their approach to that continent, not everyone on one spectrum or the other is a walking caricature of the neurodevelopmental chapter of the DSM, especially when those other disorders are marked by things that are stereotypically the complete opposite of what they’re about (and for the record, I know ADHD can be just the attention-deficit and not hyperactivity, but together they feed a stereotype that’s very far-removed from the bearing of a quiet borderline-Aspie with social anxiety or a natural degree of introversion to boot). That nuance, IMO, has been lost from the amount of people who parade on TikTok calling themselves AuDHD, just like the separateness of neurodevelopmental divergence (and I would rather call it that, otherwise there’s the increasing temptation, which some have started to push out, to classify everything that could possibly fall under the DSM as a neurodivergence).

TLDR: I’m basically just giving my opinion about how I think this neurodivergence-culture has gone too far. I totally hold space for valid self-diagnosis, just to add, because some conditions (like misophonia, which is something I have, for what it’s worth) need to be carried that way and forward with a tremendous amount of self-advocacy (because the current diagnostic handbooks just haven’t caught up, let-alone your average GP, who knows nothing). But when it comes to ASD and ADHD, having a self-diagnosis carries a lot less weight, especially at this point.