Hello! Hoping anyone that comes across this could share their thoughts as well, but I was curious if you consider personality disorders on their own as neurodivergent? Why or why not? Thank you
they absolutely are neurodivergent!
i think a lot of people’s introduction to the concept of neurodivergence is through the autistic and adhd communities, and that leads people to assume neurodivergence only includes things you’re born with, but that’s not actually the case.
here’s how i would explain neurodivergence:
the social Powers That Be in our current (Western, capitalist, etc) society have designated certain ways of thinking, feeling, perceiving, and so on as the Correct Ways of Existing.
most of our world is built on the assumption that everyone’s brains will work that way, because that’s the way they “should” work. when people’s brains don’t work that way, it’s assumed that the solution is to find a way to “fix” them or get rid of them.
as a result, people whose brains do work in that way have an easier time navigating the world and are generally treated better by it, while people whose brains deviate from that expectation in some way have a more difficult time navigating a world not built with them in mind and are treated as “wrong”/“bad”.
people in the first group, who can navigate the world with very little added stigma or difficulty as a result of the way their brains work, would be considered neurotypical.
people in the second group, who do face added stigma and barriers to functioning as a result of the way their brains work, would be considered neurodivergent.
so, if you want to determine if something makes someone neurodivergent, you can ask yourself a few questions:
does it have to do with their psychology/neurology?
does it affect their thinking, emotions, perceptions, or other brain functions in a way that is considered “abnormal” by current social norms?
does it carry a stigma and make them more likely to be mistreated?
does it cause them extra difficulty with navigating and functioning in the world?
if the answers to those questions are yes, chances are it’s a form of neurodivergence!
so, if we look at those questions for personality disorders:
this is the easiest answer — yes!
personality disorders are classified as “mental illnesses”, put in the dsm, and generally assumed to be under the jurisdiction of psychiatry, so i think we can pretty safely say that yes, personality disorders are seen as “abnormal” forms of brain functioning according to current social norms.
personality disorders and their traits are incredibly stigmatized — pwpds are assumed to be violent, abusive, generally bad people, and so on. this is most visibly true for cluster b pds, but stigma against the other pds and against the personality disorder category in general is also very real. so this one’s a yes — pwpds are very frequently mistreated on the basis of our brains being “wrong”.
personality disorders, by definition, come with some sort of functioning difficulties, and the world isn’t built to accommodate those differences in functioning. as an example, think of the high expectations of emotional regulation (not “too” emotional but not “cold” either) and social capability in professional spaces, even ones where emotions and social interactions don’t affect a person’s ability to do the job well. that makes this one a yes too; a society that took pwpds into account would seek to accommodate the areas we struggle with and ensure that there’s a place for us, and that definitely isn’t happening right now.
so yeah, according to my own personal understanding of neurodivergence, personality disorders absolutely count. we diverge from the assumed norms of psychological/neurological functioning, so we count as neurodivergent, even those of us who aren’t also neurodivergent in other ways.
on a personal level, i can say i feel no real difference in how i internally experience being audhd vs how i experience my personality disorders — they both just feel like my brain doing its thing, sometimes in ways that are unpleasant/difficult for me to deal with and sometimes in ways that just feel totally fine and unremarkable from my point of view. i also rarely notice a difference in how neurotypical people treat them — they usually don’t know the difference between audhd “weirdness” vs avoidant/narcissistic/schizospec/dissociative “weirdness”, it’s all just one big blob of Weird And Bad And Wrong to most people. the only time they’re ever really treated as different is when certain other neurodivergent people try to separate the two.
trying to draw lines between neurodivergence and “mental illness” (which is usually what’s happening when people say pds aren’t a form of neurodivergence) doesn’t actually help anyone. in my opinion, it’s basically just a way for certain people to try to get ahead by putting other people down — it says “accept us because we’re different in the good way, not in the bad way! we’re not sick like those people!” and that kind of attitude doesn’t do anyone any good. sure, the experiences that come with having a since-birth neurodivergence can be different from those that come with having an acquired neurodivegence, but people within those groups also have different experiences because everyone’s experience is going to be unique, we’re all different people in different circumstances! diversity of experiences among neurodivergent people is to be expected and is honestly a good thing, not a reason to avoid associating with each other.
in my experience, the people who insist that pds aren’t true neurodivergences are usually pretty damn sanist toward pwpds - they exclude us because they don’t want to be associated with us, they want to be accepted but they don’t think we should be so they try to make us seem totally different from them. in reality, neurodivergence is a broad umbrella and there’s room under it for all of us.
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