First of all, you are in excellent company if you worry about this. 🙂 This thought comes up for most people thinking about adult ADHD, Autism, or any other grouping from the big buffet table of neurodivergence — aka the collection of hundreds of differences in how people’s neurology can develop.
The word “diagnosis” can feel very loaded and brings its own new context and added meaning. It invokes feelings of brokenness, the idea that something is wrong with you, and the diagnosis will finally confirm that.
You’ve probably spent a lot (or most) of your life being told (or telling yourself) that you just need to try harder, be better, and for the love of all things holy, stop being so difficult. The last thing you want is confirmation that something is, indeed, wrong with you.
It is natural that you resist the idea that you need fixing.
But the good news is, a neurodivergent diagnosis is a bit more than just confirming that, yup, you are a Grade A 100% Weirdo. (Which, if you are, you are still in excellent company, if I do say so myself. <3)
Historical baggage
No doubt, this whole field carries centuries of baggage. ADHD and Autism still have a stigma of being something to fix, to make go away, the main goal being that we neurodivergent people don’t bother the neurotypicals so much.
Neurological differences have for hundreds of years been considered a wide range of labels from ‘mental illness’, ‘deliberate disruptive behaviour’ and ‘anti-social lifestyle choice’ to being ‘eccentric’ or ‘weird’.
The medical ‘disorders’ that provide the current framework of official diagnosis sadly get their focus not from people’s personal experience, but rather identifying groups of traits based on how externally visible and/or uncomfortable they have been for society at the time.
At the same time, we’re seeing the emergence of a completely new understanding of neurological divergence, or neurodivergence. And we find the seeds of this at the intersection of the research and the personal experience of people diagnosed in the past 30-50 years.
Traits are not all negative & not all superpowers either
It looks something like this: every neurodivergent person’s experience of themselves will be an individual mixture of non-typical neurological traits. These will include:
- traits they feel positive about,
- neutral differences in ways their brain works,
- differences they’d be fine with, but their current society considers unacceptable,
- differences because of which their society actively disables them, and
- difficulties in some form of functioning that they need support with.
Over half a century of advocacy work by hundreds of thousands of people worldwide has been slowly pushing neurodivergent conditions out of the ‘ways to point out how some people are less than others‘ category. We’re currently a good way towards the more neutral-sounding ‘conditions‘, with the possibility of ‘neurotypes‘ on the horizon.
But redefining things of this size is quite like rolling a massive old stone across muddy grasslands, hoping that maybe later it can be made into some nice-looking bit of henge.
So as you find yourself walking up to the field to see what this massive boulder is that everyone’s pushing along, it’s all nice and fine that we can tell you we’re in a land of transition towards a modernised, more nuanced, more experience-based model. But this won’t help you immediately. You’ve still gotta figure out what you want to do with this whole thing now.
If you’re neurodivergent, you are already neurodivergent whether you get diagnosed or not. The assessment doesn’t will it into existence.
The purpose of a neurodivergent diagnosis is not to make the neurodivergence go away.
Even with medical treatments and support, you will remain neurodivergent. Nothing will make it “go away”, “fix you” or “cure you”.
Sadly, for many newly diagnosed adults, having proof that they are neurodivergent is only just another stick to beat themselves with. “Finally, I know what to fix about myself and how to suppress it even more!”. But that’s still adhering to neurotypical expectations and trying to fit the mould.
Your neurodivergence is not an “infection” you need to get rid of, or a kidney stone you need to pass. It is part of who you are; though you are way more than just how your brain is wired.
But to answer your worry directly: no, getting a diagnosis won’t fix you. It can’t, and also, you are not broken. What it can do is give you a new framework to understand how your brain works, what you need and how to support yourself in a way that is actually helpful for your specific inner workings.
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