This post isn’t to exclude anyone or anything, I’m just curious how people understand the term.
According to the Cleveland Clinic:
People who identify themselves as neurodivergent typically have one or more of the conditions or disorders listed below. However, since there aren’t any medical criteria or definitions of what it means to be neurodivergent, other conditions also can fall under this term as well. People with these conditions may also choose not to identify themselves as neurodivergent.
- Autism spectrum disorder (this includes what was once known as Asperger’s syndrome).
- Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). […]
I think, as someone who was diagnosed with ADD when young and Asperger’s in my 20’s, the term applies. But I’d much rather be called Neurodivergent than other labels, if I had to pick one.
I remember a similar discussion I had when an article labelled Kanye West as neurodivergent when he came out as bipolar. Part of it felt true, owning your mental illness as part of you is a part of labelling yourself neurodivergent. But I want to draw some separation between the symptoms and my personality. Plus I don’t want to glorify symptoms that cause a lot of people problems (including me). Having ADHD means I think differently than other people/have different life experiences and I like to see those as the main parts of neurodivergence.
My ability to hyperfocus is part of my ADHD but I feel like my ability to connect concepts in unlikely ways that other people don’t is part of neurodivergence. Also my ability to notice spiders on ceilings (it’s totally not cuz I’m looking all over the place). I just recommended a way for a student on how to take notes from videos because it’s something I struggle with so much and I notice where the difficulty is where other people miss it because it doesn’t affect them as much.