Is ADD Neurotypical

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I spent the last several months trying to explain my AS symptoms as ADHD. Now I'm trying to undo that. I'd already established one set of assumptions and now I have to correct the wrong ones.

I'm also not sure I have a lot of faith in observing myself because I assumed that how I thought/acted was normal and I just couldn't pull everything together. Trying to examine things I took for granted and question my assumptions about them?

I've been thinking that yes, autism/AS is the primary disorder and ADHD is comorbid. That explained a lot for me that I couldn't explain before.

I wonder if neurotypicalism is an illusion and if anyone is really truly neurotypical? Maybe neurotypicals just think they are neurotypical when really they aren't.

My theory is that no one knows me more than me and the so-called 'professionals' barely have any clue of the conditions I have anyway, so they are hopeless.
I suppose I look at ADHD with the main symptoms and all the similar behaviour I attribute to autism. I have the most non-NT behaviour you can get.


That's why I don't like the whole brain disorder thing to describe it.
I see the people who are all about their friends and fashion and talking about celebrities as NT, even if they have an axe sticking out of their head.
My brother when he was younger was typical AS with his curiosity and brilliant long term memory, but he doesn't do that anymore. He works in banks and takes vacations to different areas around the world. He is also socially successful. He thought his family spending Christmas at home meant that we were doing nothing.
My sister has AS traits but like I said, she is the epitome of an NT. She bullies me because she can see my difference. She has a lot of friends but still acts like a jerk. She's into fashion, celebrities, she always goes out, and talks about people a whole lot.

Some people think of neurotypical as an attitude or culture...examples would be people interested in friends and status and how what they do and who they are with will affect their social life while others see neurotypicals as being everyone who doesn't have something that alters their neurology from what is a "typical" neurology.
I tend to think of neurotypicals as people who fit the first example...ones who are very concerned with social status and what will make them more popular. It's more a state of being than neurodiverse.
So, if someone is convinced they are neurotypical, they believe they are the "cool" ones who can only be seen with person A but not person B because of the potential for being ridiculed or ostracized. They could be completely neuro untypical but they would never know it because they are so wrapped up in their social standing and connecting with the "right" people.

I think that's both true and untrue.

On the one hand, there really are people who are pretty much normal, average, in how their brain works.

On the other hand, there's sometimes this idea that normal is a point. A discounting of variation. I just recently read something that said someone's lung function was 89% of normal. From the context, we (readers) were clearly supposed to take that to mean the person had poor lung functioning. Yet, for me, it was just a meaningless statistic. What's the range of normal? Is 89% of "normal" within normal range? Well outside normal range? Apparently, the person writing took "normal" to be a point. All healthy people are exactly alike. A bad assumption, in my opinion.

The idea that people are all alike unless there's something wrong with them is an illusion. Or the idea that all normal people are alike.

But the idea that there's this normal way of thinking, of how the brain works, that most people more or less share, even with individual variation, but which some people depart strongly from, that, I think, is quite real.

This is exactly what I think. I love this explanation. If only some people on WP (who think AS is the only diversity) would realise this! And I like the way you put ''neurodiverse''. That has made me feel so much better about myself, as an Aspie.

The term neurotypical is a lot like the term global warming. Someone decided to use that definition for a complex matter and people tend to define it within narrow terms and not see that there's really a lot more involved than the simple term would imply. People with AD(H)D have brains that don't work in a neurotypical manner so they are therefore not NT. Definitions are meant to evolve to encompass reality.