The Upside of Deviance
How having a “disorder” can come with unexpected superpowers.
Is being left-handed wrong? Of course not! And yet, during my parents' lifetime, in U.S. and U.K. teachers routinely tied the left hands of these children behind their backs to “correct” them. Now we understood as a normal neurological variation, yet historically it is viewed as deviant or even sinful. Less than a century ago, being a woman on her cycle could earn you a diagnosis: hysteria.
Just a few decades ago, behaviors we now understand as grief, sensitivity, or neurodivergence were routinely pathologized as weakness or instability.
In actuality, "giftedness" and certain "disorders" are often two sides of the same coin. Something I plan to dive into in a future newsletter -> sign up here so you don’t miss it.
Both remind us that definitions of “normal” shift and that sometimes what we call disorder is simply difference misunderstood.
The Weight of the “D” Word
Recently, I’ve been turning over that “D” word - disorder - and the quiet heaviness it carries.
It doesn’t just describe a condition; it assigns wrongness.
I’m not a clinician, and I deeply respect the value of a diagnosis. According to the National Academies of Sciences (2016), diagnosis can bring clarity, reduce blame, unlock workplace and academic support, and connect people to effective care. It can also offer self-understanding - transforming confusion into compassion.
Labels can help and protect. But they can also define, sometimes in ways that narrow what it means to be human.
My quarrel isn’t with people seeking help. It’s with a system that too often assumes that being outside the statistical “norm” means being less than.
Who Defines the Norm?
Norms are never neutral. They’re created by whoever has the microphone, and historically, that’s been a small subset of humanity: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies, known as "WEIRD samples" perspectives.
When deviation from that narrow frame becomes “disorder,” we risk medicalizing difference itself.
The Lewin Equation: Environment Matters
Psychologist Kurt Lewin - whose quotes have long donned my walls - viewed the environment as a critical component of his field theory, which posits that
[ B = f(P, E)]
where Behavior (B) is a function of the Person (P) and their Environment (E).
Put simply: it is never the person alone, but the environment they are in - socially, emotionally, physically - that shapes how they think, feel, and ultimately behave.
Maybe the World Is What’s Out of Alignment
We live in an age of relentless pings, shrinking attention, and collective fatigue.
Our children are asked to sit still for hours while our devices demand constant motion. The planet itself signals distress; fires, floods, heat waves, yet we expect ourselves to remain calm, focused, and “well-regulated.”
In that context, is it really “deviant” to feel anxious, distracted, or overwhelmed?
Or are these natural human responses to an environment that’s drifted far from what our bodies and minds evolved to handle movement, kinship, nature, rhythm?
Maybe deviance is data — a signal that the context, not the person, is the problem.
We must find a way to embrace, rather than reject, the “disorder” in our lives because disorder isn’t chaos out of bounds; it’s feedback from a system out of sync. By welcoming disruption, we open ourselves to deeper learning, resilience, and creativity.
When we ask whether the “world” is in disorder, maybe we’re referring to the “Western world” instead. The UK and Australia are outperforming us in this space; meanwhile, the Eastern world has long embraced, welcomed deviance as part of nature’s balance.
This reframing matters. It suggests the root isn’t you; the root is the system. Change the system, you change what’s “normal.”
Designing for the Whole Spectrum of Being Human
If we shift the frame from deficit to design, we open possibility:
Depression may deepen empathy and reflective insight.
Anxiety may heighten vigilance, planning, and accountability.
Autism may bring pattern recognition, honesty, and sustained focus on complex systems.
ADHD may foster divergent thinking, creative problem-solving, and adaptability.
These aren’t guarantees, they’re potentials that flourish under the right conditions. The environment mediates whether these traits become strengths or suffering.
Design Moves
Design for modulation, not uniformity.
Create environments that flex — zones for stimulation and refuge.
Center lived experience.
Co-design with neurodivergent, disabled, and historically pathologized voices.Shift from “fit” to “flourish.”
Instead of forcing people to adapt to rigid norms, let design adapt to human diversity.Normalize sensory variety.
Light, acoustics, texture — treat these as options, not corrections.
Reflection Questions
Where in your environment do you feel most yourself, not performing, not regulating, just being?
How does your workplace, home, or city reward conformity over authenticity?
What might change if we saw “deviant” reactions as intelligent feedback from bodies under stress?
How could you, as a designer, leader, or citizen, make space for difference to thrive rather than just be tolerated?
D is for…
Deviance – stepping outside the line.
Distress – a human response to systems out of sync.
Design – our collective chance to realign the two.
Want more? Read and listen to my conversation with Sara Hendren here, and sign up for my bi-weekly newsletter - so that even if platforms change, we’ll stay connected!
“Without deviance from normality, there can be no progress.” — Frank Zappa
If history taught us anything, it’s that what society calls disorder often says more about the system than the person.
Maybe the real task of this century isn’t to fix human variation, but to design a world expansive enough to hold it.
