Neurodiversity: Us vs Them?
When Judy Singer created the term “neurodiversity,” she never intended for it to become a dividing term. She wanted to conceptualize brain differences as normal. In that regard, she saw everyone as being neurodiverse — we’re all different in our own ways.
Today, neurodiverse (or neurodivergent), has become a dividing term. It’s used to signify that a person’s brain is different from a neurotypical person’s brain. In this divide, “neurotypical” means the average human. This is something that Judy Singer would take issue with. There is no “average” human.
To make matters more complex, the definition of neurodiverse is ever expanding. At one point, neurodiverse was used to refer to people with different brain functioning, such as autism, ADHD, Tourette’s, and dyslexia. Many people are now arguing that post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, and more qualify people as neurodiverse. The argument is that these conditions alter the normal functioning of the brain. They’re not wrong. They do alter the way a brain functions.
The only issue with starting to include trauma, depression, anxiety, and other common conditions (or what the DSMD-5 likes to call disorders), is that neurodiverse expands to include almost everyone. Almost every human I meet will deal with trauma, depression, or anxiety at some point in their life.
