WEBVTT
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Welcome to the Neuro Rebel Podcast, where brains of all kinds don't just survive.
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They thrive, sparkle, and occasionally throw glitter bombs at the status quo.
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I'm Anita your host, and whether you're tuning in from your morning commute, your favorite reading chair, or taking a break between meetings, imagine we're sharing a spaced.
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Designed just for us.
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No judgment, no pressure, just real conversation about what it means to be neurodivergent in a world that assumes everyone, thinks, learns, and processes, information the exact same way.
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Get comfortable.
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Settle in wherever you are.
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You know that feeling when you find a conversation that makes you think differently about something you thought you understood.
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That's our vibe here.
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Now, before we dive into today's topic, let me ask you something.
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Have you ever felt like you're playing a video game where everyone else got the strategy guide, but you are stuck trying to figure out if you're holding the controller upside down?
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Like you're trying to dance to a rhythm everyone else hears in perfect four, four time, but your brain insists on throwing in some jazz improv and maybe a little interpretive movement if that hits different, and I bet it does.
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Then welcome home community.
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You're exactly where you need to be.
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Today we are tackling the neurodiversity paradigm.
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Now paradigm might sound like academic jargon, and honestly, it kind of is, but the idea behind it is beautifully simple and incredibly powerful.
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It provides a fundamental shift in how humanity understands brains like ours.
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The neurodiversity paradigm is about the language we use to define what's normal, what's valuable, and what's possible for human minds.
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And why start with something that sounds like theory.
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Because language isn't just how we talk about neurodivergence, it's how we think about it and ultimately how we treat it.
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Every word carries a worldview disorder carries a belief that different brains need fixing.
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Neurodiversity carries the belief that different brains need understanding.
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These aren't just vocabulary choices.
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They're competing blueprints for how to build schools, write policies, and see one another.
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Their belief systems masquerading as medical terms.
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So we start with language because once you see the beliefs hidden in the words, you can't unsee them, and that's when real change begins.
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It's 3:00 AM I'm Googling.
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Why does everything hurt for the hundredth time this month?
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Why can't I just make my brain do the things it used to do?
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Fluorescent lights feel like daggers, small talk feels like calculus and my brain.
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This brain that was supposedly high functioning and had it all together suddenly can't figure out how to navigate a simple encounter without wanting to crawl under the table and cry.
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The search results are useless.
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Try meditation.
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They say, maybe it's stress.
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Just get over it or try this or that medication.
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Nothing worked.
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But then buried on page four of some obscure forum, I find a word that changes everything.
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Autism.
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I'm 52 years old and I've just discovered that my brain isn't broken.
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It's just been speaking a different language this whole time, and nobody, not therapists, not psychiatrists, including me.
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Knew how to translate that.
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Discovery didn't just change my life.
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It sent me down a rabbit hole that revealed how a handful of autistic people typing.
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In 1990s chat rooms sparked a linguistic revolution.
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That's rewriting policies, paychecks, and possibilities for millions of minds worldwide.
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Hey, community, and welcome to the episode one of Informed Neurodiversity.
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Here's what you need to know about me.
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I'm autistic gifted and spent my entire professional life collecting achievements like they were Pokemon cards, degrees, tenure publications, a Fulbright.
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All while feeling like I was wearing an ill-fitting human suit that everyone else seemed to find perfectly comfortable, but feeling spectacularly at being human autistic burnout and depression finally forced me to step away from academia, but plot twist, it also led me to the most important discovery of my life.
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Understanding my neurodivergence didn't just explain my past.
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It revolutionized my future.
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And now I'm here building this podcast from Mexico where I volunteer with autistic adults because I'm passionate about one thing, making sure nobody else has to wait 50 years to understand their own brain.
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Today we're deep diving into the neurodiversity paradigm, and trust me, this isn't your therapist's medical model.
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We're going to explore how the words we use to describe different brains literally changes laws lives, and who gets to thrive versus barely survive.
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Whether you're neurodivergent love someone who is work with different minds or are just curious.
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Why your coworker needs those noise canceling headphones to function.
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This is for you and for those tuning in from Buenos Aires to Miami, from Mexico City to Madrid.
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We're building a global conversation here because different minds exist everywhere.
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Even if the language to describe us is still catching up, ready to flip everything you thought you knew about being normal on its head.
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Let's do it.
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Let's start with a thesis that might scramble your circuits.
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The way we talk about different brains isn't just semantics.
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It's the scaffolding that determines who gets support versus stigma.
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Who gets accommodated versus alienated, and who gets to define the narrative of their own minds.
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But first, let me give you some context.
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For over a century, the world has understood autism, A DHD, dyslexia and other neurodevelopmental conditions through what we call the medical model.
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This is the framework that shaped how doctors, educators, therapists, and society at large have approached neurological differences.
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The medical model sees these conditions as medical problems residing within individuals that is disorders to be diagnosed, treated, and ideally cured, or at least managed to minimize their impact under the medical model.
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The goal is to help people with these conditions become as normal as possible.
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It's the reason why for decades the focus has been on eliminating autistic behaviors, medicating A DHD to reduce symptoms and intensive interventions to help dyslexic kids read the right way.
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Let me paint you a picture of how this plays out.
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Picture this, I.
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Little Maria is in third grade.
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She reads at college level, but she can't tie her shoes.
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She notices that leaves have exactly 37 veins, but misses that her classmate is crying.
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During recess, she catalogs cloud types while other kids play tag.
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Under the medical model, the dominant framework for the last century.
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Maria has deficits.
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She needs social skill training, occupational therapy, and interventions to make her appear more, um, normal.
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But here's the thing about the medical model that nobody talks about at cocktail parties.
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It assumes there's one correct way for a brain to work, and any deviation is a bug to be fixed rather than a feature.
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To be understood, enter the neurodiversity paradigm stage, left wearing a cape and possibly stemming the neurodiversity paradigm emerged in the 1990s as a radically different way of understanding the same neurological differences.
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But instead of seeing them as disorders or deficits, it views them as natural variations in human neurology, part of the normal spectrum of human biodiversity.
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the neurodiversity paradigm says, wait a minute, what if Maria's brain isn't broken at all?
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What if she's part of the natural variation in human neurology?
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Like how some people have brown eyes and others have blue.
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Some are night owls and others are morning larks.
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Nobody sends left-handed people to therapy to become right-handed anymore.
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Why don't we diagnose blue eyes as a pigmentation deficit?
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So why do we still treat neurological differences as disorders to be fixed rather than variations to be understood?
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The neurodiversity paradigm gets it.
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Neurological differences can create real struggles.
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I struggle every day, but it asks a different question, are you struggling because something's wrong with you?
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Or because the world around you only works for one type of brain, let me translate that with a story that'll make you want to flip tables in the best way possible.
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I once had a colleague, a brilliant researcher, a published prolifically.
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Students loved her, but she struggled in meetings, needed written agendas and processed information differently.
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She took notes and colors that looked like rainbow explosions.
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The university's response.
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Send her to communication workshops, suggest she try harder to quote, fit in.
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Nobody asked.
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What if we just gave her written agendas?
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Let her take rainbow notes.
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Recognize that her different processing style was exactly what made her research innovative.
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She left academia.
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The university lost a brilliant mind.
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All because they were treating her differences as defects rather than designing an environment where different minds could thrive, this is what the neurodiversity paradigm challenges.
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Instead of asking how do we fix the person it asks, how do we fix the environment?
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Now I can already hear some of you thinking, but Anita, what about people with significant support needs?
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What about real challenges?
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Great question.
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Hypothetical listener with excellent critical thinking skills.
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The neurodiversity paradigm isn't about pretending challenges don't exist or that everyone's needs are the same.
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It's about recognizing that disability happens at the intersection of individual differences and environmental barriers.
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Think about it this way.
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A person who uses a wheelchair isn't disabled by their legs.
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They're disabled by the stairs.
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The disability rights movement taught us to build ramps.
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The neurodiversity paradigm is teaching us to build cognitive ramps and change the language we use to describe neurodivergent people and our struggles.
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Here's the key distinction.
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Neurodiversity refers to the fact that human brains vary.
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It is a biological reality.
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Like biodiversity.
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Neurodivergent describes individuals whose brains diverge from typical pattern.
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We are all part of Neurodiversity.
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We are all neurodiverse, but not everyone is neurodivergent.
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Got it.
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Good.
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Because this distinction is about to matter in ways that affect everything.
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From insurance codes to identity information, Here's today's million dollar thesis.
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Language isn't just how we describe reality, it's the tool we use to construct it.
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And when it comes to neurodivergence vocabulary literally shapes policy funding and whether kids get support or stigma, it matters.
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Language matters.
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Let me tell you a story about bureaucratic absurdity.
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That's like trying to cancel a gym membership through a maze of automated phone menus, and it would make your insurance company nervous once upon a time.
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1980 to be exact, autism was classified as infantile autism in the DSM three.
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Infantile as in only for infants, as in apparently autistic kids magically transform into neurotypical adults at midnight on their 18th birthday, like some reverse Cinderella situation.
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Trust me, autistic adults exist.
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And why is this important?
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Because the DSM is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Psychiatry's Bible, the big book of official diagnoses that every mental health professional uses.
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When your therapist says you have a DHD or your kid gets an autism diagnosis, they are using the DSM criteria insurance companies worship this book.
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If it's not in the DSM, good luck getting coverage or even diagnosed.
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If it's not there, it doesn't exist.
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Insurance companies looked at the word infantile and made a business decision.
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Autism is a childhood disorder.
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No adult coverage needed.
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Fast forward through decades of autistic adults being misdiagnosed with everything from schizophrenia to just being difficult.
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In 2013, the DSM did something revolutionary.
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They officially said, Hey, autism doesn't end at age 18.
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That single update changed everything.
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Adults could finally get diagnosed instead of being told that they were too old to be autistic, insurance had to pay attention, services had to grow up with their clients.
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In 2022, the ICD 11 reclassified autism as a neurodevelopmental condition rather than a disorder.
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The ICD 11 is the World Health Organization's Diagnostic Manual.
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It's what most of the world uses for medical billing codes, which means it directly controls what treatments get covered and for diagnoses of all health conditions, tiny word change, but massive implication shift billing codes exist for accommodations, not just treatment support tools, environmental adaptations, not just individual fixes.
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The linguistic mathematics are staggering, change disorder to condition, and millions of dollars in different services are unleashed.
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Change treatment to support and fundamentally different approaches to help appear change, deficit to difference, and it completely transforms self concepts for actual human beings.
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But here's where it gets juicy enough for Netflix to option.
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The insurance companies didn't make these changes from the goodness of their actuarial hearts.
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They were forced by something unprecedented.
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Autistic people who learn to speak fluent bureaucracy.
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The neurodiversity movement's greatest innovation wasn't just claiming that different wasn't deficit, it was learning to translate that truth into the language of power, policy papers, diagnostic manuals, and insurance codes.
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Let me paint you a picture of how this plays out in real life, beyond the spreadsheets and committee meetings.
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Meet Jamie, not their real name, but their real story.
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Diagnosed A DHD at 35.
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Their insurance covered medication to make them less a DHD end of coverage story.
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Then their therapist, one of those radical rebels who actually listened to the neurodivergent people, gets creative with coding.
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And instead of treating A DHD, they're now supporting executive function differences and providing environmental adaptation strategies.
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Suddenly insurance covers noise canceling headphones for sensory accommodation task management apps for cognitive support and flexible work schedules for environmental modification.
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Same brain, same challenges, different words, completely different life outcomes.
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This is linguistic alchemy.
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Turning the lead of pathology into the gold of accommodation, one vocabulary shift at a time.
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But, and this is crucial, language doesn't just change systems.
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It changes souls when you grow up hearing your brain described with words like disordered, deficient, impaired.
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Those words don't just live in diagnostic manuals, they move into your self concept set up shop and redecorate with shame curtains.
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I spent 50 years thinking I was a broken neurotypical person, desperately trying to pass as functional.
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I thought I came from another planet and had lost all hope to ever fit in, or that someone, anyone would understand me.
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The day I learned the language of neurodiversity, that I was a perfectly valid autistic person who'd been playing in the wrong rule book.
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Everything shifted.
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There was an identity transformation.
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The neurodiversity paradigms vocabulary doesn't just describe different experiences.
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It provides the language people need to understand and advocate for themselves.
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My executive dysfunction became different.
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Processing needs.
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My sensory overwhelm became environmental sensitivity.
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Requiring accommodation, my inability to engage in small talk became a communication difference, not a deficit.
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Same brain, same me.
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Revolutionary new user manual.
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Ready for the wildest plot in this history of the language and neurodiversity the internet.
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Yes.
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That same internet where people argue about pineapple and pizza became the underground railroad for the neurodiversity movement, and autistic people were the conductors.
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1993, the internet sounds like R 2D two having an existential crisis.
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Most people are still trying to figure out what the at symbol means.
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But in obscure corners of cyberspace, something revolutionary is brewing.
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For the first time in human history, autistic people can communicate without the sensory overwhelm of face to face interaction.
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No eye contact required.
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No real time processing pressure.
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No fluorescent lights, just text time and the radical possibility of finding others like you.
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Neurological Diversity.
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Batman.
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Did they find each other?
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Wait, you rehearse conversations too?
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You mean everyone doesn't need a recovery day after they go grocery shopping?
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Hold up.
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You are telling me organizing my books by the color spectrum and publication date isn't standard.
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These weren't just random internet conversations.
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These were identity forming moments happening at 4.4 kilobits per second.
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Enter Jim Sinclair, who dropped what I consider the neurodiversity Movements Declaration of Independence in 1993.
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The essay don't mourn for us core revolutionary statement.
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Autism isn't something a person has, it's a way of being.
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It is not possible to separate the person from the autism the medical model just got served dial up style.
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What followed was the most quietly radical revolution you've never heard of.
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International organizations like Autism Network International started hosting online conferences, not conferences about autistic people conferences by and for autistic people.
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The paradigm shift was real.
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For the first time, autistic people weren't case studies or patients or subjects.
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They were the experts on their own experience building community and theory in real time.
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But here's where it gets spicy enough to trend on whatever social media platform the kids are using these days.
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The online autistic community, didn't just find each other.
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They started comparative analysis.
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They realized.
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Those sensory issues that the doctors wanted to eliminate.
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Actually, it was a crucial self-regulation strategy.
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Those obsessive interests that needed moderating.
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They are often the source of deep expertise and career paths.
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The social deficits requiring intensive intervention.
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Might actually be cultural differences between neurotypes.
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When autistic people started comparing notes online, they didn't just build a community, they crowdsource a complete reframe of what autism really and actually meant.
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Let me give you my favorite example of this paradigm shift in action, and that's stemming.
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For decades, the therapeutic goal was to eliminate stereotyped behaviors, hand flapping, rocking, spinning, And that was to make autistic kids indistinguishable from their peers.
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That is to transform them into neurotypical kids.
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Quiet your hands still, your bodies.
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Then the online autistic community compared notes and went, wait a minute.
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Stemming helps us regulate sensory input, process emotions, maintain focus, express joy, manage anxiety.
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Stopping Stimming wasn't helping.
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It was like forcing someone to hold their breath.
00:25:51.682 --> 00:25:54.795
Sure, they could do it for a while.
00:25:54.795 --> 00:25:56.625
But at what cost?
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Research confirms what autistic people knew all along.
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Stemming is adaptive, not pathological, suppressing.
