To think a very high percentage of people are Neuro divergent?

[Marshmallow4545]

I have just spoken to yet another friend who suspects that they may be Neurodivergent. They are not interested in seeking a diagnosis for various reasons but this means they will never be picked up in the statistics. Anecdotally, this isn't unusual amongst my friendship circle and I now suspect that a very large percentage of the population believe they may be ND even if they have no diagnosis and have never seen a professional about this. So out of interest please vote:

YABU: if you think you are Neurotypical
YANBU: if you believe you are Neurodivergent, even if you don't have a diagnosis

What kind of support would you like?

I understand where you are coming from but the majority of people who 'know' or suspect they are neurodivergent may not need any additional support. It's in the 'good to know' list so they understand themselves and the world around them better.

Also a higher percentage of ND people are probably likely to have clicked on the thread when they saw the title.

But could it also be that NT is actually not the norm and it is normal to some extent to be ND?

And there it is.

Yes, a lot of parents I know believe their children are ND. I am slightly torn about it. Their behaviour does diverge from what is expected of a NT child but it doesn't seem abnormal when you compare them to their peers. This again is why I wonder if a lot of what we currently consider ND is within the realms of normal human behaviour. So the parents aren't wrong to think their child is ND using current definitions and tests but is this helpful when so many kids fall under the umbrella? I don't know ..

I feel like existing in the modern world is a major factor in increased diagnosis/identification of neurodiversity. If you were born in the 40s or 50s and only expected to do fairly basic schooling and leave to start a manual labour job at 14 or 15yo, get married and just work and raise kids... no constant feed of ever-updating global information, no staying connected at all times, so social media, no computer games, not even television for most people. Or even earlier - if you were a family who subsistence farmed, and you married someone from the next village and started your own farm, how often did you need to interact with anyone outside your immediate neighbourhood and family. You were toiling in fields or on spinning wheels or tanning hides or processing a slaughtered pig for 8 hours a day. Fairly straightforward in terms of mental processing.

Everyone is different, I have no idea what is considered 'normal' and what is 'divergent', I suspect like everything else it is a spectrum. I find most people don't think like me, is it me that's odd or them?

Are you (op) neurodiverse? We tend to subconsciously seek each other out, so if it's a common theme amongst your friends, that could be why they're friends with you.

In contrast, there are also friendship groups that are almost exclusively neurotypical, so the NT people within those groups will be seeing an entirely different demographic to you. This is why anecdotal evidence doesn't tend to be reliable.

I've also always found Mumsnet quite an autistic friendly form of social media (quiet, reading based, no distracting light or colours), which is one of the reasons I use it over other platforms. If others are the same that is also like to bias the answers you get here.

I am bog standard average boring normal but I believe my partner would score highly on any ND test and I fully suspect loads of people in his industry would too.

As my DC and GDC all have a diagnosis, it has become obvious that most of the previous two generations should have had one too.

I agree. I don't believe there is any such thing as 'NT' and I say this as someone with a diagnosis that is now recognised under the 'ND' umbrella.

As @KateMiskin says we have pathologised perfectly normal feelings and behaviours.

Those of us without a diagnosis of some kind shouldn’t be labelled “NT” when no one has actually asked us whether we are or not. And if there are more ND humans then NT, then surely ND is the default and it is NT people who should feel out of step?

Human beings are diverse, and sticking labels on quirks of normal human behaviour has (I believe) done us immense harm. Practically all of DH’s family consider themselves autistic and/or ADHD. All it has done is make them less able to live full and happy lives because they consider themselves to have an inbuilt disadvantage, such that when times get tough they don’t soldier on, they give up and blame their “disability”. DH moved away from where they live a long time ago, and I think that’s what has saved him from going down the same route (he has many traits that make his life harder, which I genuinely believe he cannot help, but he doesn’t give up in the face of them).

For me, it is grossly insulting to people profoundly affected by autism (and their families/carers) to pretend they have anything in common with those who self-identify as ND.

ND people aren't a completely different species, we're all human and all have a variety of traits.
Lots of people might have sensory difficulties. Other people don't.
Or they might have problems with social interaction. But some people are great socially.
Other people are very rigid in their thoughts or behaviour. Some are really flexible.

For someone to actually be diagnosed with autism though for example, they will have significant impairment in social communication, sensory processing and rigid/repetitive behaviour.
It's not just being shy and having a special interest.

Literally everyone in the world:
Feels like an outsider
Doesn't fit in
Thinks other people don't like them.
This existential loneliness is part of the human condition. Doesn't necessarily mean you are ND.

What do you interpret Neurodiverse to include? I was told at about 15years ago that ND included dyslexia, dsypraxia, ADHD and autism. And since then it's seems to be even broader. Given dyslexia alone is estimated at 10 to 20% of humans, it's a significant proportion of people in the ND grouping, making the term almost meaningless.

I understand this but even autism isn't binary. There is a cut off point where someone with traits will be considered to have it and someone who only exhibits slightly less strong traits won't. So the person who just misses out on a diagnosis may well feel ND and for all intents and purposes they have more in common with someone that has just 'scraped' a diagnosis than a completely NT person (if they even exist).

Hmm..

I don't think its as rare as has previously thought - and I do think some of what we're describing as ND is in fact perfectly normal for humans.

What I think is happening:

• We live in a world that is extremely busy and overstimulating
• ND people will gravitate toward other ND people and of course, reproduce with them
• Higher rate of DX and higher awareness of the differences
• Change in classification of ND conditions

40 years ago, 'autism' was really used for the non-verbal, apparent inability to learn anything, extremely high care needs folks only.

I strongly believe that is a very different thing, I don't think we know what causes that level of disability in every case nor do we actually know what to look for AND theres a long history of just slapping an 'autistic' label on that and not looking any further. I suspect there are a wide range of genetic fubars that cause such symptoms and most have absolutely fuck all to do with what people commonly refer to as 'ASD'.

I think what most people are being dx with or self dx'ing with, called 'ASD' or ND... is well within the range of 'normal' for humans - but where our natural environment meant that was an advantage (or at least not a disadvantage), our environment has now changed to the point where it is often a huge disadvantage.

The people who find an overly stimulating, 'always on', bright, loud, busy, heavily populated environment perfectly ok and easy to navigate would not have been the norm at one point (but how would we know.. mm) ... I don't actually think they are the norm now, but we haven't really got any choice!

I suspect we've always had two types of people (very very broadly speaking) - those we currently call ND and those we currently call NT, and the environment favoured one kind in the past, and now favours the other kind.

I see so much undiagnosed ND among my friends/family/colleagues (myself included) that I no longer thing NT is actually “typical” or that ND is actually “divergent” from the norm in any way. It seems to me that we’re all just somewhere along the spectrum.

It's just the way people's brains work it may be a generally good thing or a bad thing, it just means someone's brain works in an atypical way, but then no two brains work the same anyway! If it causes problems it may become some sort of a diagnosis.

I think a lot of people struggle into the very narrow way of the world. The way it's been set up, who it benefits, how it benefits, societal expectations. For a lot of things it's one way to do things - how many of us later in life found that we didn't hate x subject at school, it was just taught in a very rigid way?

My brother has what they used to call Aspergers while my niece and nephew are also neurodivergent. My daughter meanwhile is very typically mainstream as was I but she ALSO has some very very similar traits to my nephew in particular and I share many with my brother. Who knows how that might pan out in the future? For some people they have quite extensive support needs but for other it's fairly minor and it's society that needs to adjust from it's rigidity.

It's called personality.

It's not exceptional, it doesn't make you special, it's just a personality.

The spectrum bandwagon has gone too far.

It's typical to have a range of personality traits though.

But how many people really have brains that work in a 'typical' way? I also think almost everyone has 'quirks' that detriment them significantly. I look at children with extreme shyness, those that can't sit still and have propensity to mess around, the overly serious and anxious kids etc etc. Honestly I would say that only a few of my children's friends don't have issues that impact them in a significant way, whether it be socially, academically or just emotionally. There are obviously a few extreme cases but the majority are definitely not insignificant.

Can you provide a checklist of what makes someone NT so I know what I'm measuring myself against?

Does I have to meet all of those requirements to be NT?

What if there's one description that I don't meet? Does that mean I then have to put that I'm ND?

I have a feeling that the NT people (whatever that means) will soon be the ones classed as being Diverse because the current description of what makes someone ND is actually the 'norm' for a lot of people.

I think there’s confusion about the difference between neurodiversity and neurodivergence. We are all neurodiverse, we all have our own unique ways of processing information, understanding the world and making sense of interactions based on our life experiences and personalities. The idea that neurotypical individuals are one homogeneous group is false.

However the premise of neurodivergence is that it is divergent from the statistical norm (based on clinical testing and assessment), therefore we can’t ‘all’ be neurodivergent as that would mean we would therefore all be typical. For an ND diagnosis, there also needs to be a significant impact on functioning. I think the sudden increase in diagnosis is mainly due to increased awareness and diagnostic routes, however the misinformation spread on social media can be very unhelpful and lead to people being very fixed on wanting a diagnosis. I think there’s several reasons for this, just having a ‘label’ can be extremely validating and help people make sense of themselves. There can be access to more support and community. I think people feel less shame being diagnosed as neurodivergent than having mental health difficulties, as there is still so much stigma around mental health. There is so much diagnostic overshadowing with autism, ADHD, trauma, emotional dysregulation and anxiety that it can be difficult to ascertain what is going on. This is why comprehensive assessments with appropriately qualified professionals is so important.