Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/1496639
WHAT IS NEURODIVERGENCE? Neurodivergence is not a medical term; instead, it's an umbrella term used to describe people using words other than "normal" and "abnormal." According to the Cleveland Clinic, neurodivergence refers to "people whose brain differences affect how their brain works. That means they have different strengths and challenges from people whose brains don't have those differences." 2 That's important because there's no single definition of "normal" with respect to how the human brain works. It's important to note that neurodivergence refers only to neurodevelopmental differences, not intellectual impairments. Although these can sometimes co-occur, auditory, visual, speech, and social difficulties should not be conf lated with intellectual deficits. Along the same lines, it's important to not compare neurodivergent people and traits to one another. Many traits are present across multiple conditions, and no two people with the same conditions have the same set of traits that manifest in an identical manner. To borrow and tweak a great phrase from the autism community, "If you've met one neurodivergent person, you've met one neurodivergent person." Fibromyalgia is an apt massage-related analogy for this. Not all fibro patients have the same tender points, pain patterns, set of pain-f lare triggers, or length and intensity of a pain f lare. Apply that to the brain, and you'll start to understand neurodivergence. For this reason, it's bad form to compare one neurodivergent person to another. We've learned a lot about neurodivergence over the last few decades, and diagnostic criteria have changed drastically to ref lect that knowledge. For instance, did you know that when I was a kid in the 1970s, autism was not its own diagnosis? It was listed as part of childhood schizophrenia. Experts at the time thought attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was something you grew out of. Because of this, there are a lot of undiagnosed and self-diagnosed neurodivergent people out there. Most are elder millennials and older. They're known as the "lost generation," and some of them are probably your clients. So how can you tell which clients are neurodivergent and which are not? You can't. You can't even ask them to check the neurodivergent box on the health history form, because many in the lost generation don't know they're neurodivergent; they just know they've struggled with certain things their entire lives. Understanding neurodivergence means making fewer assumptions about your clients, and also recognizing how every aspect of a massage appointment—from booking to checkout—might affect them. Lucky for you, most massage spaces are well-suited for many neurodivergent people, but chances are good you may need to make some tweaks or offer an occasional accommodation to best serve this population. Let's find out how. 56 m a s s a g e & b o d y wo r k m ay/ j u n e 2 0 2 3 "Why do we need labels? I treat everyone as an individual." Labels are very important, especially for late-diagnosed individuals (i.e., those diagnosed as adults). First, someone's neurodivergence isn't simply a piece of who they are . . . it's literally the way their brain processes the world. It is who they are. To deny the importance of their label(s) is to not only deny their experience, but to also deny the wholeness of their humanity. A diagnosis/label is often the first time they can give themselves some grace when they struggle with "easy" things. You may see them as perfectly "normal" (whatever that is), albeit a little quirky. What you don't see is the incredible amount of energy they expend as they attempt to act in a way that neurotypical people expect. A label also normalizes neurodivergence and makes it easier to ask for, and receive, the accommodations they may need.