I’ve had this question in my brain for weeks and I don’t know where to put it. I guess I chose here because maybe someone else has had this same question and found answers. Maybe it’s a stupid question actually.
But what is it like to be Neurotypical?
I am not confident I have known a single Neurotypical person, at least not well. They are apparently the vast majority of people, but I think everyone I’ve ever been close to was ND. As a late diagnosed AuDHD person, I find myself now analyzing every human I interact with trying to figure out how they are different than me, or how they are similar. I feel like I see the ghost of Neurodivergence in everyone and can’t recognize neurotypicality when I see it.
What are the signs and symptoms of neurotypicality?
Probably not true about all ND traits, but many are things that exist in most people and are either magnified or muted in ND people.
I’ve never been diagnosed ND; though I had a psychologist suggest I might have Asperger’s at one point back when that was the language used, it was never followed up on. So maybe I’m ND? But I wouldn’t claim to be.
But no two people are neurally identical. Saying that someone is neurodivergent essentially has to mean that they’re far enough from the baseline/average to qualify as such.
I know there are specific diagnostic criteria, but those are largely based on determining how different someone is from typical and how it affects them. But almost every trait that is present with autism is present in neurotypical people as well, just to a different degree.
That’s not a universal statement or anything, just a vague generalization.
From psychology’s perspective it’s a common misconception that normal or typical is not diverse. Neurodivergent just means someone fits a minimum amount of clinical criteria that we think represents a minority group of humans. If someone was exactly what is catalogued as normal and typical in every way they would be the most unique research subject to ever exist.