Why "Everyone is a Little Bit Neurodivergent" Dismisses Real Experiences

“A perspective on living with ADHD, Autism, and the harm of casual comparisons”

"Everyone is a little bit neurodivergent." If you're AuDHD—living with both ADHD and Autism—you've probably heard this phrase more times than you can count. It's usually said with good intentions, meant to be reassuring or inclusive. But here's the reality: this statement minimises and dismisses the profound ways neurodivergent people navigate the world differently.

Being neurodivergent isn't about having quirks or occasional struggles that everyone experiences "a little bit of." It's about fundamentally different neurological wiring that affects every aspect of daily life—from how we process information to how we interact with our environment and other people.

The Reality of Executive Function Challenges
Let me paint you a picture of what executive dysfunction actually looks like. It's knowing exactly what you need to do but finding yourself completely unable to start. It's not laziness or lack of intelligence—it's a genuine neurological barrier that can make the simplest tasks feel insurmountable.
For those of us who are also 2e (twice-exceptional)—both gifted and neurodivergent—this creates a particularly painful gap between potential and performance. You might excel in complex theoretical discussions but struggle to remember to pay a bill or start a basic household task. The frustration of this disconnect is something most people never experience.
Do you ever feel so overwhelmed by a task that you don't know where to start? For many AuDHD individuals, this happens almost daily, even with routine activities. It's not about the complexity of the task—it's about the neurological overwhelm that can occur when trying to initiate action.

Memory: A Study in Contradictions
Neurodivergent memory processing is bewilderingly inconsistent. I can recall minute details from conversations that happened years ago, but I might forget what you said to me five minutes earlier. This isn't selective hearing or defiance—it's how my brain actually processes and stores information.
This memory inconsistency follows us from childhood. Many of us were labeled as "not listening" or "defiant" when we genuinely couldn't process or retain what was being said to us in the moment. The shame and confusion from these early experiences compound over time.
Imagine the daily frustration of misplacing things constantly or struggling to remember names and important details. When this happens every single day, life becomes an exercise in managing chronic frustration and self-doubt.
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Attention: All or Nothing
ADHD attention isn't just "getting distracted sometimes." It's living in extremes—either hyper-focusing so intensely that you forget to eat, drink, or acknowledge the world around you, or being unable to focus on anything at all, even things you desperately want or need to do.
This isn't a switch we can flip on and off. The intense focus (hyper-focus) and the scattered attention both happen without our conscious control. Most people can modulate their attention to some degree—we often can't.

Sensory Overwhelm: When the World is Too Much
Sensory processing differences aren't just "being sensitive." They're about having a nervous system that processes sensory input fundamentally differently. Sounds, lights, textures, and other sensory information can become genuinely overwhelming—not just annoying, but physically and emotionally distressing.
My hearing, for instance, doesn't have the typical filtering mechanism most people have. In a crowded restaurant, I don't hear one conversation while filtering out others—I hear ALL the conversations simultaneously with equal clarity. The longer this exposure continues, the more overwhelming it becomes, like turning up the volume on something irritating until it becomes unbearable.

Social Interaction: Decoding an Endless Maze
Every social interaction requires conscious effort and analysis. Am I smiling at the right time? Did I ask appropriate follow-up questions? Am I following the unspoken social rules correctly? Should I make eye contact now or is that too much?
After social interactions, many of us replay conversations for days, analysing whether we said the right things or made social mistakes. It's not just social anxiety—it's the exhausting reality of having to manually navigate social situations that others handle intuitively.

Emotional Processing: When Feelings Hit Different
Emotions don't just pass through us—they hit hard and linger longer than what's considered typical. Sometimes we can't even identify what emotion we're experiencing, just that it's intense and persistent.
Being told we're "overreacting" throughout our lives doesn't change the neurological reality of how we process emotions. It just adds shame to an already overwhelming experience.

Decision Fatigue: When Choices Become Mountains
Every decision, no matter how small, can feel enormous when you're already overwhelmed. It's not indecisiveness—it's the neurological reality that decision-making itself can be overwhelming and exhausting.
Something as simple as choosing what to eat can become so stressful that many of us will choose to eat nothing rather than face the decision. This isn't dramatic—it's a genuine neurological response to overwhelm.
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The Exhaustion of Masking
Perhaps most significantly, the constant effort required to appear "normal" in a neurotypical world is profoundly exhausting. This masking—suppressing natural behaviours and forcing ourselves to present as neurotypical—takes tremendous energy.
There's growing recognition of the connection between this chronic exhaustion and conditions like ME/CFS and fibromyalgia, which appear at higher rates in neurodivergent populations. The physical toll of constantly adapting to a world not designed for our neurotype is real and measurable.

Why "Everyone is a Little Bit Neurodivergent" Hurts
When someone says "everyone is a little bit neurodivergent," they're dismissing the profound differences in how we navigate the world. They're reducing our daily struggles to universal quirks that everyone experiences occasionally.
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Yes, everyone gets distracted sometimes. Everyone feels overwhelmed occasionally. Everyone has sensory preferences. But living with ADHD, Autism, or other neurodivergent conditions means these experiences are constant, intense, and significantly impact daily functioning in ways that casual, occasional experiences simply don't.

Moving Forward with Understanding
Instead of minimising neurodivergent experiences, we can acknowledge them as real, valid, and significantly different from neurotypical experiences. We can recognise that neurodivergence involves both challenges and strengths, but that the challenges are genuine disabilities that deserve accommodation and understanding, not dismissal.

Understanding neurodivergence means recognising that our brains work fundamentally differently—not just a little bit differently, but in ways that affect every aspect of how we process and interact with the world. This understanding opens the door to genuine support, appropriate accommodations, and a more inclusive society for all neurotypes.

The next time you're tempted to say "everyone is a little bit neurodivergent," consider instead listening to and validating the experiences of those of us who are actually neurodivergent. Our differences are real, significant, and deserving of recognition—not minimisation.