Are we unintentionally perpetuating the stigma around neurodivergent labels?

Something that regularly frustrates me in conversations about neurodiversity is how many people hesitate to seek an assessment, for themselves or their children. Often it’s because of fear of being “labelled”, or uncertainty about whether their challenges are serious enough to warrant a diagnosis.

That uncertainty is actually quite easy to understand.

Think about how many of us struggle to take a sick day, book a GP appointment, or admit we need help at all. When your experience is your normal, it’s hard to judge it by any other standard. If this is my brain, my life, my baseline, how can it be “serious enough” to need a diagnosis?

But what’s harder to unpack is why our labels have become so toxic.

What makes confirming a suspicion, that you might be ADHD or autistic, feel so threatening that not knowing feels safer than finding out? I can’t think of many other clinical contexts where people resist naming what’s going on quite so strongly, especially when that naming can unlock self-understanding and access to targeted support.

In my experience, this resistance usually comes down to three things:

Internalised ableism

Many of us have grown up absorbing the idea that needing support is a personal failure, and that difference should be hidden, minimised, or “overcome”. Even when we consciously reject those beliefs, they can still shape how shameful or dangerous a label feels.

Stigma fuelled by political and public narratives

Neurodivergence and disability are too often framed as burdens, costs, or risks to be managed. When public discourse centres on “overspending”, “overdiagnosis”, or “system strain”, labels stop feeling like tools for understanding and start feeling like liabilities.

Fear of being treated differently

There’s a very real concern that once a label is attached, people will see you through a clinical lens, lowering expectations, pathologising behaviour, or making assumptions instead of seeking understanding. That people will see you differently and somehow less than you were before you received the diagnosis.

So what?

What frustrates me most is that, as a community, we can unintentionally reinforce this cycle. When we avoid labels altogether, we risk strengthening the stigma that made them feel unsafe in the first place. Shame, secrecy and silence become normalised, and neurodivergent experiences feel even harder for those coming after us to claim openly.

This is where extraordinary comes in for me, as a way of holding difference without shame. A reminder that we can be different and remarkable at the same time.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Does this ring true with you?

How do we break this cycle?