I’ve had this question in my brain for weeks and I don’t know where to put it. I guess I chose here because maybe someone else has had this same question and found answers. Maybe it’s a stupid question actually.
But what is it like to be Neurotypical?
I am not confident I have known a single Neurotypical person, at least not well. They are apparently the vast majority of people, but I think everyone I’ve ever been close to was ND. As a late diagnosed AuDHD person, I find myself now analyzing every human I interact with trying to figure out how they are different than me, or how they are similar. I feel like I see the ghost of Neurodivergence in everyone and can’t recognize neurotypicality when I see it.
What are the signs and symptoms of neurotypicality?
One thing NTs have is an indirectly acknowledged (sometimes unacknowledged) hierarchy of power. They’re constantly aware of this hierarchy and their position in this hierarchy. The majority of their behaviors are related to this hierarchy. Since many autistic people aren’t even aware of this hierarchy, we violate it often and upset the group. I argue that this is why we get diagnosed as the broken/wrong person: we disagree with the very structure that defines what is broken/wrong.
/c/austim’s helpful resources has a link to a book written by an autistic person that studied NTs and explains what they are like to us. The book is A Field Guide to Earthlings: An Autistic/Asperger View of Neurotypical Behavior. It’s free at the link or you can purchase it in a more convenient format. I found it highly insightful.