Normalize not being normal
#33 - Letters to the Rest of Us
Hey you,
One thing I can talk about for days (both IRL and professional life ) is neurodiversity-informed care. I’m sure you’ve seen the buzzwords of neurodivergent, neurodiversity, or neurodivergence but what does it actually mean?
There is one thing I can talk about for days without losing steam: neurodiversity-informed care.
This isn’t just a niche topic or a professional interest. It’s a lens. A way of seeing. A shift in how we understand brains, bodies, behavior, and belonging.
You’ve probably come across the words of neurodivergent, neurotypical, neurodiversity. Maybe in a podcast, a personal essay, a conversation with a friend, or one of those posts that shows up in your feed and stays with you longer than expected. These terms are gaining traction. They also hold something much deeper than trend. They name truths that many of us have felt all our lives but never had the language for.
Neurodiversity describes the natural variation in human neurology. In how we think, sense, feel, move, communicate, and connect. Some people move through the world with brains that line up with what society expects. These folks are often called neurotypical. ADHDers, Autistic people, dyslexic thinkers, Tourettic movers, and those with OCD perceive and process the world through different neurological rhythms. This is neurodivergence.
These labels are not absolute. They are contextual.
If ten ADHDers are in a room with two non-ADHDers, the ADHDers are not the outliers. Their timing, energy, and conversation style become the norm. This tells us something essential. Neurotypical and neurodivergent are not fixed categories. They shift depending on who is in the room, who holds the power, and what the environment expects.
The binary does not hold. What we call “normal” often just reflects what is most common, or most comfortable for those in control.
Some forms of neurodivergence are genetic and lifelong. They shape every part of how a person lives and relates. Others are acquired. Trauma, systemic oppression, chronic stress, or injury can rewire the nervous system in lasting ways. What we sometimes label complex PTSD is often a kind of neurodivergence. It may not begin in childhood, but it is still real. It still deserves understanding and care.
Behavior is never the full story. Two people might both struggle with focus, overwhelm, and emotional intensity. One may have been born neurodivergent. The other may be navigating a nervous system still locked in survival. Their support needs are not interchangeable. Trying to treat them the same way misses the point.
Neurodiversity-informed care is not about fixing people. It is about asking better questions. It is about creating the conditions where someone’s actual brain, not an imagined ideal, can be supported.
It means:
Understanding that medication can be helpful, though it is only one part of the picture. The rest includes nervous system regulation, daily rhythms, relationship repair, and environmental changes.
Seeing behavior as communication, rather than labeling it as attention-seeking or noncompliant.
Offering accommodations without forcing people to prove they deserve them.
Letting go of outdated labels like high- or low-functioning. These categories say more about how a person appears to others than how they feel inside.
My approach is integrative and functional. I look at the whole system - mind, body, relationships, history, and context. I use evidence-based tools, but I also draw from lived experience. I know what it is to sit in a room and try to make your nervous system behave in ways that make other people comfortable. I know what it is to feel like your needs are too inconvenient to name.
This work is technical. It is relational. It is deeply human. In practice, it often looks like 50 percent medication and 50 percent behavioral and environmental support. In spirit, it is about fit. People do not need to be reshaped. They need care that actually meets them where they are.
I do this work because I believe in it. Because I have lived both the harm and the healing. Because so many of us have been told we are too much, too sensitive, too disorganized, too emotional, too intense. We are not. We are different. And we are worthy of care that understands difference is not a disorder.
That’s the care I offer. Neurodiversity-informed, nervous-system-rooted, radically respectful care.
Erica
LOVED THIS.