Neurodivergence doesn't inherently mean there's a problem. A neurodivergent person living in an environment suited to how their brain works may experience no problems at all. The difficulties arise from mismatch—when a neurodivergent brain encounters systems, expectations, and structures designed for a different neurotype.

That's a crucial distinction. The "problem" isn't the neurodivergence itself; it's the friction between the person and their environment.

Someone who is neurodivergent in a workplace or school designed for their way of thinking? No problem. Someone neurodivergent forced to operate in a mismatched system? Then friction emerges—but that friction is the system's failure to accommodate, not an inherent flaw in the person.

This gets at why the term "disorder" can be so misleading. It centers the neurodivergent person as defective rather than the system as inflexible. If we reframed it entirely—recognizing neurodivergence as simply a different way of processing and interacting with the world, with its own inherent strengths—the conversation changes entirely.