Inborn/Acquired Binary

Some forms of neurodivergence are genetic and present before birth. Others are acquired by physical changes that occur in the body and brain. Others are developed and learned as a result of life experiences.

Or at least, that’s how we usually think about neurodivergence – but in reality, of course, they all intersect in everyone. Everyone is a combination of our DNA, our bodies, and our lived experiences. Every experience is experienced by the brains and bodies we already have. 

Popular “trauma-informed” discourse often frames experience and psychological traits like a reliable formula: This Experience plus That Experience equals This Psychological State. In my last post, I talked about the assumption that neurodivergence-causing experiences are inherently negative. But aside from the value judgment, there’s also the reality that this view of formative experiences just isn’t that simple. There are some broad correlations that people who have certain types of experiences tend… in general… to have certain kinds of responses. But it is not universal or definite. There is no way to definitively predict how someone with certain experiences will “turn out.” There is no way to look at someone’s behavior or mental state and know what kind of experience “made them that way.” Everyone’s responses to their experience is shaped by every other factor in their lives, their past experiences, their brains, their choices and values, and so much more. 

A manifestation of neurodiversity hierarchy is that some forms of neurodivergence are inborn, and those should be accepted, but other forms of neurodivergence come about from life experiences, and those should be prevented. This argument is used to exclude some neurodivergent people from the neurodivergent community. Experience and biology aren’t a binary. Everyone has both. And everyone deserves acceptance.

Reframing Acquired Neurodivergence

Some neurodivergent traits may be present from birth, while others are acquired as a result of one’s life experiences. A common umbrella category for the experiential factors contributing to acquired neurodivergence is “trauma.” 

Not all people who experience trauma are neurodivergent (and almost all, if not literally all, people have experienced or will experience some form of trauma at some point in their lives), but most forms of neurodivergence that aren’t explicitly known to be caused by genetic or biophysical or biochemical factors are commonly assumed to be caused, or exacerbated, by trauma. A common debate in discourse of mental differences is whether mental differences in general are caused by biophysical factors OR traumatic experiences, with many insisting that conceptualizing neurodivergences as caused solely by “trauma” is the more liberatory perspective (I’ve written about this in several previous posts). 

A traumatic experience is one that threatens someone’s sense of safety or well-being, which can induce negative emotions like pain, fear, despair, anxiety, depression, or panic (among others). “Trauma” is an extremely broad category for a range of experiences that can affect one’s mind, but the defining element of trauma is that it is a negative experience.
There is no terminology for positive experiences that cause or intensify neurodivergent traits. The conceptual framework doesn’t exist. Think about that for a minute.
If someone’s lived experiences contributed to their neurodivergence or Madness, the entire conceptual framework for that causal relationship presupposes that the experiences can only have been negative ones.

What would it look like to acknowledge neutral or even positive experiences that contribute to neurodivergence? What would it look like to reframe the experience of acquiring neurodivergent traits as not inherently negative?

Deinstitutionalization

 You've been lied to about deinstitutionalization. Getting rid of the institutions didn't lead to people with psychiatric disabilities experiencing higher rates of houselessness--austerity did, just like it did for many marginalized peoples. 

 "Recall that the large waves of deinstitutionalization occurred with the expansion of social welfare activities in the late 1960s and 1970s, particularly Medicaid, SSI and SSDI, housing programs, and food stamps. These programs provided the subsistence base essential for relocating patients to the community. This subsistence base was not maintained relative to the growing numbers of seriously mentally ill persons, and in many instances it substantially shrank. Federal and state governments faced with budget deficits tightened eligibility, benefits, and reimbursement in the Medicaid program so that by the 1980s, only two fifths of the poor were covered (Curtis 1986)." --Deinstitutionalization: An Appraisal of Reform by David Mechanic and David A. Rochefort