Neurodivergence - Capacity, “Excuses” and Internalised Ableism
I keep hearing people talking about neurodivergence being an excuse.
Recently, I’ve had two separate conversations with people, both neurodivergent, who said something very similar.
They both said they don’t want their neurodivergence to become an excuse for not doing things.
They’re worried that disclosing it will be seen that way. Or that they’ll start using it as a reason not to do the 'thing'.
Because, as they put it, you still have to function in the world and get stuff done.
Two words… internalised ableism.
And yes. Of course, we do need to get stuff done.
But, and here’s the thing I want to make very clear...
Neurodivergence isn’t a question of ability.
It’s a question of capacity.
And yes, we have to function in the world… but the world is still very heavily weighted towards neurotypical brains.
Now, before I go any further, I want to clear something up.
You cannot be a little or a lot neurodivergent.
That isn’t how it works.
It isn’t linear.
It isn’t a scale.
And it's definitely not as simple as that.
And while we are on it (mini rant incoming)... not everyone is on the spectrum.
I have to take a deep breath every time I hear someone say,
“oh but we are all on the spectrum, aren’t we?”
…uhhhh… no. We are not.
It doesn’t go from neurotypical to neurodivergent.
It is a neurodivergent spectrum, start to finish.
This is where the idea of spiky profiles comes in to explain it better.
🧠 Science Snack - Spiky Profiles
Spiky profiles model how neurodivergent brains actually develop and function.
Neurodivergent people don’t show a smooth, even pattern of skills and difficulties.
We show an uneven profile across areas like attention, processing speed, sensory sensitivity, working memory, emotional regulation and communication.
So instead of a neat “average”, you get peaks and dips.
That’s why it doesn’t make sense to say someone is a little or a lot neurodivergent.
Becuase it depends which traits are spiking, which are dipping, and how those spikes interact with the world around them.
Those traits also shift with age, hormonal changes, mental health, and big life changes like parenthood, grief and significant life changes.
It’s also why two people with the same diagnosis can look completely different day to day.
👉 Get your Spikey Profile Mapper here.
Support Needs, Not Functioning Labels
So instead of thinking “low to high”, it’s more that different people have very different patterns of strengths, traits and challenges.
Some things are much harder.
Some things are much easier.
And it varies wildly from person to person.
Which is also why you’ll hear the language shifting away from things like high functioning and low functioning, and towards low support needs and high support needs.
But even as someone who would usually be described as low support needs (and I would include myself in that), there are still days when my neurodivergence is genuinely disabling.
And there are days when I need a lot of support from the people in my life.
We’re getting there with language and understanding. But there is still a way to go.
Our traits and challenges are as individual as a fingerprint.
Which is why this phrase still holds true...
If you’ve met one neurodivergent person… you’ve met one neurodivergent person.
We are all different.
Capacity, Hormones and Co-Occurring Conditions
And then there are the other layers.
It’s very common to have co-occurring conditions.
Autoimmune conditions and chronic conditions are over-represented in neurodivergent communities.
Things like chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, Ehlers–Danlos, hypermobility and Crohn’s disease.
I personally have ulcerative colitis.
And that further reduces capacity.
It’s a bit like a Kinder Surprise. You never quite know what combo of challenges someone is carrying.
Let me give you a very real example.
I’m currently in the Alps for the month, snowboarding.
It’s something I love. And it’s something I’m good at.
But I used to have more capacity for it.
Partly because I was younger.
And partly because perimenopause hadn’t got her hooks into me yet.
Now, being a little older and a lot more hormonally charged, I notice that it flares my neurodivergence and means I naturally have less capacity.
That’s normal for all humans.
We all become more self-protective as we get older.
Our spoons naturally reduce with age.
But add my spicy in and, by the end of the day, I am now noticeably more frazzled. The processing of information coming at me at high speed wears my nervous system.
And you could say, “yes, but everyone would feel tired after a day snowboarding down a mountain.”
Yes. That is true.
Neurodivergent traits are human traits.
But it’s the degree to which they impact you that separates spicy from non-spicy brains.
So the other day, riding on the bus back home, I knew I had pushed myself to keep going long after I was tired.
Everyone was tired.
But my nervous system decided to deal with this with a public display of tears on the bus.
There was nothing I could do to stop it.
Like a pan boiling over, the overstimulation needed somewhere to go and, unfortunately for me, that always seems to be in a stream of hot tears… in the most inconvenient places.
And this shows up just as loudly without hormone wobbles.
I can run a brilliant workshop, hold complex conversations, think strategically and quickly, and connect dots with ease.
But put me in a day with back-to-back meetings, constant task switching, and no recovery time, and by the end of the day, I’m a puddle.
Not because I can’t do the work.
But because the cost of doing all of the work, all at the same time, is too high.
So yes. I can still do the thing.
We can still do the things.
But we need accommodations and adjustments.
And they change as we change.
Which can be particularly humbling.
And the bar neurodivergent peeps are usually being measured against is still our allistic and neurotypical friends and colleagues.
That’s the unspoken comparison most of us are held to.
A big part of being neurodivergent is constantly working out how you are going to spend your energy.
Because energy costs more.
If you think of energy like currency, this isn’t about not doing the thing.
It’s about finding ways to reduce the energetic cost of doing the thing.
In other words… accommodations.
Productivity, Motivation and NICE
Which brings me back to that original conversation (of course, there were a few side quests en route).
They said…
“But I still have to be productive.”
Friends. You know I hate that word.
Not because doing useful, meaningful things doesn’t matter.
But because productivity is the wrong metric.
Productivity is only the end result of being properly motivated.
And motivating factors are very different for neurodivergent brains.
One of my favourite acronyms for ADHD brains is NICE.
Novelty
Intrigue
Challenge
Emergency
When a task hits one of those motivation points, it becomes significantly easier to start and to sustain.
So the real equation is this…
The right accommodations + the right motivation = productivity.
Productivity is a by-product.
Declaring your neurodivergence is not a cop-out. And accommodations are not about giving people an easier ride.
They are simply a small but necessary tweak to systems that are still heavily weighted towards neurotypical and allistic brains.
This is not a failure.
It’s just a shift in how we design work and expectations, so that people actually have the conditions they need to do their job.
Our neurology isn’t an excuse.
It’s simply a different operating system that sometimes needs to take a slightly different route to get to the same place.