No, neurodivergence is not a trend
- Audrey Lessard
- Jul 6
- 3 min read
I guarantee you: if neurodivergence were a trend, we would be a lot more popular than this.
A trend is appealing. It comes with positive publicity, opening doors, and social capital. Neurodivergence, on the other hand, comes with diagnoses that sometimes arrive ten, twenty years too late, accommodations that must be negotiated, and glances that change when you utter the word. It's not a sexy "trend." But no matter what's said about it on social media, it doesn't change our reality.
Today, I want to decode what the phrase, "it's become a trend," really means to the people involved. Because, in my opinion, it's rarely discussed.
What the sentence really says
When someone claims that neurodivergence is the latest craze, listen carefully: they're not talking about you. They're talking about their own discomfort with something that has suddenly become apparent.
"There are far too many of them now" almost always means "before, we didn't see them." Neurodivergent people have always existed.
What has changed is access: to knowledge, to assessment tools, to the words to understand oneself. For example, women who receive a diagnosis at 35, 40, or 45 years old haven't "caught" a trend. They have finally obtained an accurate understanding of themselves, after decades of wondering why everything demanded more energy from them than from others: yet for the same meetings, the same days, the same conversations, but exhausting nonetheless.
What the accusation brings to life
Because let's be honest: saying that neurodivergence is a fad is accusing people, intentionally or not, of inventing their experiences. No one puts it that way. But that's the perception. And here's what it produces in the professionals I work with.
You justify yourself before you've even introduced yourself. You prepare your evidence as if your way of thinking were a thesis to be defended. I assume that no one asks a nearsighted person to prove that their vision is blurry.
You doubt your own diagnosis. Especially if it came late. "Maybe I'm exaggerating. Maybe I recognized myself in a video and got my hopes up." A healthcare professional, a neuropsychologist for example, spent hours evaluating you, but a Facebook comment manages to shake that. And if you don't have a formal diagnosis, because the evaluation costs thousands of dollars or the waiting lists stretch for years, this self-doubt hits even harder: you start to believe you don't even have the right to talk about it.
You downplay your needs. Asking for an accommodation becomes risky: what if they think you're "just riding the wave"? So you compensate silently, and it costs you energy that your colleagues don't even have to expend.
You're back to wearing a mask. After years of learning to work with your brain rather than against it, you're putting the mask back on. Because it's easier than being suspected of opportunism.
That's the real cost of the "fashion" discourse. Not a debate of opinion. Energy diverted, every day, from brilliant people who could use it elsewhere.
Reality, however, does not follow trends.
Whether the public debate heats up or fizzles out, your brain works the same way it does on a Monday morning meeting; it doesn't happen overnight. In an open-plan office that's too noisy or too perfumed. Faced with vague instructions that everyone seems to understand except you. When the priority changes three times in the same day.
You don't have to prove that your system exists. You have to understand it well enough to turn it into a strategy.
An important point to clarify: I do not work in diagnosis or therapy; that area belongs to healthcare professionals. And let's be clear: whether you have a formal diagnosis or not makes no difference to my work. You recognize yourself as functioning atypically, and that's what matters. My work is executive coaching in career development. I support atypical professionals in their career transitions: repositioning, interviews, and clarifying their market value. I start with how you currently function and we translate that into a clear career strategy.
Because difference, once understood, becomes a strategic strength.
Perfectly atypicals. Fiercely formidables.
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