Adapting or Belonging? The Core Ethical Dilemma in Modern Psychology and Neurodiversity

⚠️ Editor’s Note / Disclaimer This article reflects the lived experiences and frustrations of some neurodivergent individuals who have encountered or perceived therapy primarily aimed at normalization rather than empowerment. It critiques dominant patterns often reported across online communities, personal testimonies, and first-hand accounts. While it highlights systemic issues and ethical concerns within mainstream psychiatric frameworks, it does not claim that all therapists or therapeutic approaches operate this way. Some professionals work with compassion, nuance, and a deep respect for neurodivergent identity. This text chooses to focus on the recurring structural patterns that continue to affect many of the neurodiverse population, rather than on ideal or exceptional practices. The editor considers this an important and underrepresented perspective worth publishing.

Modern psychiatry and psychology is often praised for its advances in understanding mental health, yet it remains entangled in a profound ethical dilemma: Should therapy and treatment aim to help individuals adapt to society so that society feels better - prioritizing societal comfort over individual authenticity and well-being even when that society is unjust or exclusionary - or should it strive to empower individuals to reshape their environments, or find or create spaces where they are naturally accepted and supported? In some cases the question is simple to answer when people pose an immediate threat to others. But this question becomes especially spicy in the context of neurodiversity, where the standard therapeutic framework is often designed around the former approach, implicitly invalidating the neurodivergent mode of being instead of embracing it as equally worthy of flourishing.

Contemporary society often frames mental health through the lens of appearance, not substance. When individuals express distress or struggle with neurodivergent traits, the common response is not to address the root causes - the structural, sensory, or social misalignments - but to suggest therapy with the implicit goal of making the individual more palatable to the norm. This reinforces the idea that the core issue is how the individual appears to others, rather than what they are enduring.

Such responses shift the burden onto the individual: society’s discomfort is treated, not the individual’s suffering. The aim becomes to make the person functionally or aesthetically acceptable - and ultimately invisible - so that no one has to care or be confronted with the discomfort of their presence. This is done without touching the underlying injustice that causes harm in the first place.

We see this pattern clearly in how society treats depression. The most common reaction is to urge therapy or medication, not out of deep concern for the person’s inner experience, but to make the symptoms invisible. Rarely does anyone engage with the reasons behind the suffering - isolation, meaningless work, systemic pressure, rejection, or chronic invalidation. Instead, there is a fatalistic shrug: “This is just how society is,” as if majority norms are immovable and beyond critique. The person must adapt; the world remains unquestioned.

• The Dominant Therapeutic Paradigm: Adaptation to Norms
• Invalidating Existence: When Therapy Becomes Assimilation
• A Moral Imperative: Building Spaces, Not Masks
• The False Binary: It Doesn’t Have to Be Either/Or
• Conclusion: Ethical Psychology Requires a Paradigm Shift

The Dominant Therapeutic Paradigm: Adaptation to Norms

Mainstream therapeutic models, especially within Western psychiatric and psychological traditions, operate on the implicit assumption that the allistic mode of functioning represents a kind of healthy norm. Therapy, therefore, becomes a process of training, conditioning, or guiding individuals toward behaviors and thoughts that align with the majority standard.

For autistic individuals, ADHDers or generally those with sensory processing differences, therapy frequently centers on reducing outward signs of divergence. Social skills training, behavioral modification, and medication adherence often aim to reduce “symptoms” primarily because they deviate from allistic expectations - not necessarily because they cause suffering for the person themselves.

This model, at its core, frames the individual as the problem.

Invalidating Existence: When Therapy Becomes Assimilation

When therapeutic goals are structured entirely around conformity to societal norms, they communicate - implicitly and sometimes explicitly - that deviation is wrong. This can lead to what many neurodivergent people experience as existential invalidation: the sense that who they are, at a fundamental level, is broken and must be fixed.

Such therapeutic practice is not neutral. It is a moral stance, one that prioritizes the comfort of the majority over the dignity and autonomy of the individual. It says, “You must adapt to a world not designed for you,” rather than solving the question “Why is the world so unwilling to adapt to difference - and why is therapy not focused on helping the individual shape or find a world they can truly exist in, rather than shape themselves into a form that appeases the world?”

This approach risks doing psychological harm, not healing. It creates a therapeutic double-bind: the patient must suppress their natural way of being in order to be accepted, even though this suppression often leads to anxiety, depression, and burnout - outcomes that the therapy supposedly seeks to avoid - but seeks to avoid from the point of view of majority society, which does not want to witness or be confronted with these expressions of suffering, rather than from the internal reality of the individual themselves.

This externalized perspective of suffering also plays a central role in the collective silence around suicidality in neurodivergent populations. Society avoids facing the harsh truth that its rigidity, exclusion, and refusal to accommodate difference are significant contributors to such despair. Instead, the blame is shifted entirely onto the individual, pathologizing their pain as a personal defect, rather than recognizing it as a rational response to chronic invalidation and systemic harm.

A Moral Imperative: Building Spaces, Not Masks

Instead of adaptation as the therapeutic ideal, a morally just psychology would have to acknowledge that many neurodivergent traits are not inherently pathological but are rendered disabling by hostile environments and rigid social expectations. Sensory sensitivities are not a problem in a world that respects sensory needs. Communication differences are not a deficit in a world that allows alternative modes of expression - not only in generic social interactions, but also in close private settings where mutual understanding and trust should not be conditional on allistic norms.

From this perspective, the therapist’s role is not to change the person to fit the world, but to help them:

• Discover and build environments that honor their needs - not as separate, segregated spaces that isolate or marginalize them (such as designated ‘autistic communities’ or the often patronizing advice to ‘find an autistic partner’), but as genuinely inclusive contexts where neurodivergent individuals can live fully and authentically without having to mask or shrink themselves to fit in.
• Advocate for structural changes that enable inclusion - and crucially, recognize that such changes must come from society itself, not from the individual, who should not bear the burden of singlehandedly adapting to or reforming an unaccommodating world.
• Process the trauma of being misunderstood and pathologized.

This is not merely a question of therapeutic strategy - it is a question of justice and fairness. And crucially, this responsibility cannot be externalized to therapeutic institutions or left to the individuals themselves. It is the duty of society as a whole to change the conditions that cause harm and exclusion in the first place.

The False Binary: It Doesn’t Have to Be Either/Or

Of course, many neurodivergent individuals seek therapy to learn how to navigate a world that may never be fully accepting and to discover and validate one’s own experience. Therapy is often the first meaningful opportunity to begin uncovering one’s true self, after years - or even decades - of masking, self-suppression, and trying to conform to social expectations that never truly fit. Skills to manage sensory overload, social conflict, or executive dysfunction can be empowering tools. But these tools must be offered as choices, not demands. Therapy must not become a gateway to erasure.

The difference lies in framing:

• “Let’s help you behave normally” versus “Let’s help you suffer less and live fully as you are”.
• “How can you fit in?” versus “How can the world meet you halfway?”

However, even the phrase “meet you halfway” is often misused. Neurodivergent individuals usually already invest the majority of their energy trying to adapt - through masking, pre-planning, managing overstimulation, and suppressing their natural responses. In contrast, many allistic individuals resist even minimal changes: avoiding phone-based communication, reducing reliance on synchronous meetings, loosening rigid scheduling demands, allowing clothing differences, disabling humming lights, reducing the frequency of social exposure, limiting social demands or supporting quieter and less socially overwhelming environments. What is framed as a mutual compromise is often a near-total burden placed on the neurodivergent person - once again prioritizing the comfort of the majority over the needs of the individual.

Conclusion: Ethical Psychology Requires a Paradigm Shift

The foundational question of therapy - adapt or transform - must be re-evaluated. As long as psychology assumes that deviation from social norms is the pathology, it will continue to perpetuate harm under the guise of help.

True therapeutic care, especially in the context of neurodiversity, begins with the recognition that being different is not the same as being disordered. It demands an ethical commitment to dignity over discipline, and liberation over normalization.

The task is not to fix people. The task is to stop breaking them and fix society.

This article is tagged:

• Society
• Autism
• Asperger
• Psychology
• Opinion