By Soumini Menon | Developmental & Counselling Psychologist
Every year, conversations around autism and neurodivergence become more visible.
We see more language of acceptance, more representation, more acknowledgement.
And yet, something fundamental often remains unchanged.
The burden of adaptation still largely rests on the neurodivergent individual.
In therapeutic, educational, and professional spaces, support is frequently framed as skill-building and
improving communication, increasing social appropriateness, enhancing emotional regulation.
These are not inherently problematic goals.
But they become worth examining when we ask:
What assumptions are they built on?
As Nick Walker articulates through the neurodiversity paradigm,
the difficulty often does not lie within the individual, but in the mismatch between the person and their environment.
And yet, many interventions continue to focus on helping individuals align with dominant norms and
norms that are rarely questioned in themselves.
For instance:
- Why is eye contact considered essential for engagement?
- Why are certain communication styles labeled as more appropriate than others?
- Why is emotional expression expected to follow a particular rhythm or form?
Writers and advocates like Devon Price have explored how these expectations often lead to masking where neurodivergent individuals suppress or reshape their natural ways of being in order to be accepted.
Masking, in this sense, is not simply a skill.
It is frequently a response to environments that make authenticity costly.
Autistic advocate Kieran Rose describes this cost in terms of burnout — a state that is not just individual exhaustion, but a reflection of prolonged misattunement between person and context.
When these norms remain invisible, support can unintentionally become a process of normalization.
A subtle shaping of individuals to fit environments that remain structurally unchanged.
This is where a neurodiversity-affirming and narrative lens offers an important shift.
Instead of locating the problem within the individual, we begin to see difficulties as arising in the relationship between the person and their context.
The question is no longer:
“How do we help this person behave differently?”
But rather:
“What is it about this context that makes their way of being difficult to sustain?”
This shift is not just theoretical—it has practical implications.
It might mean:
- Designing spaces that allow for sensory variation
- Expanding what counts as valid communication
- Redefining participation beyond verbal or socially normative expressions
- Recognizing masking not as a marker of progress, but often as a survival strategy
Advocates such as Chloé Hayden and Paige Layle have played an important role in making these lived realities more visible and accessible and not as abstract ideas, but as everyday experiences.
Importantly, it also requires us the practitioners, educators, organizations to sit with discomfort.
Because questioning norms means questioning power.
It means acknowledging that what we have long considered “neutral” or “standard” may in fact be exclusionary.
As Monique Botha reminds us through her work, whose experiences are centered and whose are overlooked, also shapes how neurodivergence is understood.
This becomes especially relevant in contexts like India and the Global South, where conversations around neurodivergence are still emerging and often filtered through Western frameworks.
Collectives like Neurodivergent Labour India are beginning to shift this conversation toward rights, access, and workplace inclusion but there is still much that remains unheard.
Awareness, in this sense, is only a starting point.
What follows is the more difficult work of accountability and of rethinking systems, redistributing effort, and making space for difference without demanding its dilution.
Neurodivergence does not need to be made more understandable by making it more familiar.
It needs to be met with a willingness to expand what we consider human, valid, and enough.
Soumini Menon is a developmental and counselling psychologist with over 15 years of experience. She works with children, individuals, families and communities. Her work draws on narrative and arts-based practices to support people in making sense of their stories, especially around trauma, identity, and relationships.