Neurodivergent or Neuroexpansive
We are seeing a disturbing trend in our society. In the 2000’s everyone was diagnosed with Bipolar disease, in the 2010’s everyone was a Narcissist and in the 2020’s everyone is toxic and needs to be cut off, and all people who are intelligent are on the spectrum. What is going on?
The short answer, we’re living through a cultural era where psychological labels have become stand‑ins for language we don’t yet have.
The long answer is more interesting. Each decade’s “diagnosis trend” reveals what the culture was afraid of at the time.
2000s – Bipolar – An era was defined by instability, economic swings, tech acceleration, and identity fragmentation. People felt up and down, so the culture grabbed the closest label.
2010s – Narcissist - This was the decade of, social media, self-branding, curated identity. People suddenly saw “self-absorption” everywhere, so the narcissism label exploded.
2020s - Toxic / Cut-off culture - This decade is about, boundaries, burnout, collective overwhelm. People are exhausted, so the language of “toxicity” and “cutting people out” became the shorthand for self-protection.
And now - “Everyone intelligent is on the spectrum” - People are trying to understand why some minds operate differently, so “the spectrum” becomes the catch-all.
The internet turned everyone into an amateur diagnostician.
Not because people are malicious, but because:
TikTok made symptoms into trends
Instagram made boundaries into slogans
YouTube made personality disorders into entertainment
Memes made complex psychology into one-liners
People are trying to understand themselves and others with tools that were never meant for mass use. The language of pathology is being used to describe evolutionary thresholds. We’re using psychological labels to describe spiritual, emotional, and evolutionary processes.
People aren’t more bipolar, narcissistic, toxic, or autistic. They’re more activated, overstimulated, unmasked, and uncontained. When we slap a label on something our desire to understand our own expansion stops. We are back in control. A label is not an insight; it’s a shutdown switch. Labels are not about understanding. Labels are about avoiding understanding. They are the ego’s emergency brake.
Labels are like gossip in the 50’s. It’s behavioral pattern repeating itself across generations. Once a story was circulated it instantly became truth. Gossip reduced a whole human life into a single storyline. Gossip and labels both create social safety through exclusion. In the 50s, gossip bonded people through shared judgment. In the 2020s, labels bond people through shared diagnosis. Both operate on the same mechanism - “We are safe because they are the problem.”
In the 1950’s people were trying to find a new structure in the post-war era that had disrupted our lives and placed everyone in new roles they would not have chosen for themselves. They were inventing a new normal because the old one had been obliterated. The psyche had been cracked open.
In the 2000s are the same pattern - Instead of a world war, we had, a global pandemic, economic upheaval, technological acceleration, identity dissolution, relational fragmentation, nervous system overload, collective disorientation.
The pandemic taught us everyone was physically toxic and it was not a leap to emotionally toxic.
Here’s the thing, when our emotional resources are strained, our psyche doesn’t break – it opens. Not because something is wrong, but because something bigger is trying to come online. Emotional strain weakens the ego’s grip, but emotional strain drains the ego’s resources. When the ego is tired, its ability to keep the doors closed weakens. Behind that door is our innate intelligence, intuitive, perceptive, multidimensional, and unfiltered.
Spontaneous activation occurs when we reach a point that can no longer keep the doors of our own wisdom closed. The psyche cracks open because the system needs more capacity. When life demands more from us than our current identity can handle, the psyche does something extraordinary - it upgrades. Many clients come to me when a sudden or prolonged period stress brought about an activation, and they find themselves with expanded abilities. Spontaneous activation is not random; it’s a release of suppressed intelligence. Activation feels like crisis only because the person has no map.
People are not breaking. They are opening. They are not losing control. They are losing the illusion of control that kept their abilities dormant. The truth is that activation is a return; it is not an acquisition. People think they’re “developing new abilities.” The reality is that they are returning to the abilities they were born with. It is the moment where a human being stops living inside their managed self and starts living inside their true self.
As a person with an above average intelligence of course I am neurodivergent or more accurately, neuroexpansive. To be neuroexpansive is means we take in more data, process more layers, feel more nuance, sense more subtlety, perceive more dimensions, connect more dots, hold more complexity. To be neuroexpansive means that we have a mind that exceeds the standard operating range. We are the ones whose nervous systems, perceptual systems, and intuitive systems are evolving ahead of the collective curve. We are not divergent from humanity; humanity is divergent from its potential.