I’m a new subscriber bc of this essay. :) I have a lot of thoughts on this topic but I don’t have time to write them all out right now so I’ll stick with: this really spoke to me as someone diagnosed as Autistic as a child who often feels alienated by the dominance of adult dx/self dx voices in the neurodiversity movement (this is not a statement against the accuracy of their diagnoses only about my own feelings)
thanks! okay, I'm gonna try and verbalize some of my thoughts here.
First thought: you're using productivity to discuss labor and employment. My friends and I, when we discuss "wanting to be more productive" and share articles and tips about productivity, use this as shorthand for "I want to be of more assistance with household/life tasks that are necessary for such reasons as Health and Safety (or simply because they show other people that we care about them) because the other people in my household ALSO all have similar brain wiring and so can't be expected to routinely pick up any slack on my behalf." It's always a trip to me when I'm having a conversation with other people about a topic concerning my mundane personal life challenges and then I find out that most people use the phrasing we're using in a work related context instead. It makes me wonder how many articles I've read online that were supposed to be about work when I just wanted to get help not forgetting that I put food in the oven.
Second thought, you're the first person who has ever responded to my complaint about feeling alienated who didn't immediately get defensive about how late dx people suffered so much and I just didn't understand so I appreciate it. I'm sure that being late dx is hard, but it's also hard to have been The Weird Autistic Kid where even the nerd spaces treated you like you were a freak ("can you talk?" "why is she acting like that?" "why is she having a meltdown, she's too old to behave that way") only to have all the same nerds come to you decades later saying "actually I'm Autistic too" or the gifted kids who sneered at anyone in special ed now going "hey, you know the disorder that was the reason you struggled in school? anyway, I'm the same!! it's the reason I was just so much smarter and better at school than everyone else."
I accept that they have the same diagnoses and I accept that they needed support they didn't get and that they have struggles I don't understand but at the same time it's a combination of disorienting and infuriating to have them not only now under the same umbrella, but also dominating the conversation (in part - the people with the highest support needs sometimes get attention, but only if their parents are speaking for them. the high support need activists, though? they're not nearly as compelling, I guess, as talking to a 50yo professional who wants to explain about how they're just so good at pretending to be "normal" am I bitter possibly a little bit
Third, I started using neurodivergent partly as a response to the explosion in late dx Autistic and ADHD adults, and partly as a response to the information coming out about the complicated genetic relationship to Autism and ADHD and OCD and Schizophrenia etc. I figured that there wasn't a particularly accurate term to encompass what I meant, after all - but I agree with you that the highest performers also fall under neurodivergent, regardless of whether or not they have or desire any particular diagnosis and I agree that people use neurotypical in a way that's kind of useless. Going back to my first thought, when I see people saying that neurotypicals should accommodate them by reminding them so they won't be late or help them more around the house and I think that's a big assumption that the people they're asking to do that are "neurotypical" or if someone says they don't believe in ADHD, as an example, people who say "my parents don't believe in ADHD and say everyone has this struggle. Neurotypicals don't understand us" as if there isn't a perfectly good explanation of "your parents also struggle with these things, which is why they think it's normal"
Anyway, here's a research paper called "Temporal Changes in Effect Sizes of Studies Comparing Individuals With and Without Autism" which is only tangentially related but I wanted to link it anyway because I felt that you still might find it interesting https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6704749/#yoi190046r56
Increasing diagnoses over time are a hard one. Controls are like impossible :p
The way that diagnoses are going, I'm guessing that there will eventually be new categories/diagnoses developed to push those most in need of aid further to the edge. I'm always of two minds about this stuff, like do you want to narrow the diagnoses for better communication around treatment but suffer in research funding as a result, or do you want to keep the diagnoses under one big umbrella to be able to use money liberally across the spectrum of severity in research?
Thanks for pointing out that not everyone is looking to do knowledge work and that some people just want help on day to day life things, I think I was coming after the video a bit too hard and feeling frustrated, went off a little half cocked ha.
I really like your point about affected parents normalizing behavior between generations and general ambiguity around dx. I had a lot of angry people calling me neurotypical when I posted this, which I found a little funny. I think that there's a big difference between people who experience these disorders to the degree that they literally are life-ruining, and people who have mild symptoms but really like the aesthetic of the identity. It's great to feel like you are helping advance a cause, but if you end up shouting over those who need serious help, what's the deal? Of course there are vocal people with severe symptoms, but they are few and far between. Not everything can be a superpower, and it smacks of ignorance when people insist it can to those who have suffered greatly due to symptoms.
I'm not sure what the best categorization would be, either, which I guess is okay since nobody is going to ask my opinion whenever re-categorization inevitably happens. I thought the dimensional approach was an interesting one, but I'm pretty sure it needs a lot of refinement to work even if broader society was willing to adopt it. With Autism specifically I think it would be useful if the Autism self-advocacy movement would embrace the Broad Autism Phenotype, which is a concept used within Autism research to denote people who are sub-clinical (typically when looking at family members of Autistic people vs people who have no Autistic people in their family) but alas, the current line is "you are Autistic or you aren't." Autism and ADHD are the only two disorders I can think of where there's been that push to broaden who is included. Whenever I see research papers come out about how mother's of Autistic children display the Broad Autism Phenotype, the reaction from the public is "mothers of Autistic children are also Autistic!!!" but I've never seen anyone pass around research about how family members of people diagnosed with BPD have an increased incidence of BPD traits trying to claim that all of those people are actually BPD and just weren't diagnosed.
For a pragmatic day to day approach, however, I strongly favor Dr. Ross Greene's "lagging skills and unsolved problems." He doesn't believe in diagnostic labels at all (importantly, he is not anti-psychiatric medications. he just doesn't think the labels are helpful for figuring out what would help any given individual, which is absolutely correct.) His work is with children, and the most troubled of them at that, but I've found his concepts carry over into adult life fairly well.
Also, as much as it pains me to defend the people with less impairment, I don't actually believe they're in it for Aesthetic, or at least not primarily. There might be some of that, but that's not how I would characterize them on the whole. I think the bigger issue is that society doesn't readily accommodate people unless they fight tooth and nail for a "good enough reason" to require it, and having a label gives them more legitimacy. Of course, ableism being what it is, that isn't a guarantee of much. Maybe it's more that they need to FEEL like they have a "good enough reason" to ask more than that other people will actually acknowledge it. Anyway, I think your larger point about the cult of productivity and efficiency and inherent human value is especially important in this context and that's one of the reasons I loved this essay so much.
I also don't think you went too hard! You weren't discussing day to day life things, which you make very clear. My bringing it up was only me musing on a tangent which you can probably tell are a weakness of mine.
I always err on the side of assuming that anyone who is online enough to run a blog is absolutely NOT neurotypical, but that's my biases talking I guess. My initial reaction is surprise anyone would be angry, and then realizing oh, no, you criticized the people with more moderate symptoms and they make up the bulk of internet activity on this topic so of course they were angry about it. In their defense, which again I can't believe I'm defending them, but a lot of them are probably reacting out of insecurity because they had to fight to get a diagnosis, or they're questioned a lot, or they doubt themselves. I think that's why they don't listen when I complain, too, as frustrating as it is. Additionally, a lot of the late DX people are new to this and think that neurodivergent is anything that they personally struggle with and neurotypical is anyone who finds that annoying or intolerable. Most of them will eventually realize this is a vast oversimplification.
I remember some Discourse at one point about ADHD and punctuality and the gist was that people who can't tolerate someone being late are ableist and also neurotypical (obviously.) I cannot stand people being late. I can accept that it is something someone else struggles with and possibly can't control, but I'm going to spend the entire time I wait for them panicking about whether or not I'm in the right place or if I got the date or time wrong. Am I being ableist by being upset if they roll in late after I've spent an hour panicking and trying to contact them? Are they being ableist by being late when I'm going to suffer distress from it? I don't think reality is so straightforward.
I think there are valuable contributions a lot of the less impaired NDs make to awareness. I genuinely like a lot of them. But they do tend to talk over people, and to not share anything by anyone who isn't one of them. You have to be a certain TYPE of Autistic person, and to agree with the neurodivergence movement's opinions, and I find that...baffling given some of the diagnostic criteria, tbh. If there was a cure I would take it, and I'm not even one of the people who has apraxia or intellectual disability. I function better now than I ever thought I would when I was younger, but I also would take a cure in a heart beat. I wouldn't tell someone else they had to take a cure, but I do not love losing the ability to speak when under stress, or my emotions completely hijacking my brain and turning off the self-control mechanism so that I have serious regrets once the emotions have passed. I have managed, as an adult, to configure my life such that I have the ability to remove myself from situations before that happens but I am very very lucky to be able to do that. And I would rather not have to think "hm I can feel myself getting tense, better take myself to time out now so I can lose my shit without scaring someone else, or worse, saying something hurtful I won't even remember saying bc my brain nearly shuts down all my senses and my entire world is confined to BIG EMOTION" Just saying, it would be very awesome and cool to feel like I had more self control and maturity than that.
Neurodevelopmental diagnostic categories have subjective boundaries. What else could they have, when the criteria isn't just that you have XYZ trait but also that it causes you significant impairment and/or distress? At the milder end that's going to mean whether or not you even qualify for a diagnosis depends on your circumstance. I remember seeing a paper once about that, actually, where they followed children at the border of the Autism diagnostic threshold on either side, and over several years found that they slipped in and out of qualifying for a diagnosis. Which to me makes perfect sense. Even which diagnostic category you fit in isn't stable (I bookmark everything I come across on this because I've decided apparently that my life work is to throw links at everyone when this topic comes up.)
Last, I will give the Former Gifted Kids/Milder Late DX cases this - I think that I am genuinely better off than them in some ways. Specifically, most of them seem to care a LOT about what other people think of them. The first time I saw people talking about Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria as an Autistic phenomenon I was so taken aback, because when I was a child I was told that a very big part of the diagnostic criteria was being impervious to peer influence and not caring what other people think about you. Of course, I prefer people to like me than to dislike me, and I don't relish conflict. But I don't relate to the way late DX people discuss their anxiety around rejection or the agonizing over whether or not someone secretly hates them. People can dislike me if they want. I only get upset about it if they're responding NOT to something I said or did, but to some weird distortion of what I said or did. If they're going to dislike me it better be because they correctly understood me.
Also, I apologize for spamming monologues in your comment section here. I just really loved this essay and also it's on a topic I have strong feelings on and I'm very excited that you responded so thoughtfully so now I'm rambling. I'm slowly going thru your other essays, though, and I should probably focus on that instead of blabbing about this. but I'm excited! And also very annoyed on your behalf that anyone was angry about this very excellent and IMO important essay. I saw you call this essay a failure in your post yesterday and I am so sorry, because NO THIS IS A GREAT ESSAY. Other people may not see it, but they're clearly wrong. I know that my personal opinion probably doesn't outweigh in your mental tally however many other people disagree with me, but I hope I provided a small shift, at least, because it's a crime that the response to this essay has been anything other than "oh. YES. what excellent points are being made about how we all have different capabilities and that this is FINE and we should be more accepting of these differences in capabilities among ourselves and others."
please DO NOT apologize for monologuing- I'm enthralled reading; you've obviously thought on this a lot- you make excellent points that are a lot more considered on both sides than my own. You have a real talent for handling positions less thoughtful than your own with patience and empathy (for example, you changed my mind on the aesthetic point- I was being shallow). I think your point about the double-coincidence of rudeness in being late and responding to it is a great illustration of how each conflict in this issue can and should be approached from both sides. You've got so much empathy for the late DX crowd that is ostensibly on the opposite side of your opinion, it's really inspiring- normally people online aren't so good at methodically stepping through all the angles. I think your advice and personal experience (especially surrounding BIG EMOTION) are relatable and valuable for the new-to-the-scene DX crowd you've discussed.
Have you thought about writing on it? If not on your own I'd really love if you did a guest post here!
And thank you for the kind words on the failure front, I definitely mean failure in an odd capacity in which failure is good- it sucks to catch hate but that's the game. I've avoided going to look at the more thorough counterarguments up to this point just to give it some time to cool off emotionally, I'll probably go back next week and pick through them to get the juicy feedback meat inside the anger clams.
Oh, my, thank you! You know, when I was young I was told many times that I suffered from rigid black and white thinking and from a deficit of perspective taking, and once I was old enough to understand what that meant I white knuckled my way through trying to improve on both of those.
Although - and this is something that just now occurred to me - I suppose this is another benefit of having an early DX. Up until now I've always found it very annoying when someone says "oh, I didn't get diagnosed until I was middle age because I'm so good at masking" and then proceeds to be worse than me at taking another person's perspective. But I guess that I'm lucky that I was given very specific feedback, while the people who weren't as obviously behind were given the much vaguer feedback of "IDK you're just doing something wrong"
I also had the benefit of this being one of the values my mom successfully imparted to me - she is very churchy, and while I no longer am, she impressed upon me that "Love your neighbor as you love yourself" ought to be interpreted as "you know how even when you know you made a bad choice you have the benefit of knowing your motivations and extenuating circumstances? Give other people the most charitable interpretation of their bad choices, too." and you need to know how to perspective take to properly apply this. This is such a hard value to live by, though. I fail at it often, and I have to fight the urge to simply hiss at people I don't agree with instead of engaging with their actual actions and beliefs or considering what circumstances might have brought them to their conclusions.
Glad to have changed your mind on the aesthetic point. A lot of people express a similar belief, which I understand - "they're in it for aesthetic/identity" is correctly assessing "these people are insecure and want a sense of belonging" - I just don't think it's fair. I do not like the fact that late DX people talk over other people, but I don't actually wish them to NOT have support. I've encouraged several people I know to get assessed despite my personal disgruntled feelings about the movement and culture and all of them were SO full of doubt about whether or not they deserved to do so. They needed support, and needed to be validated in their need for support. I can hold this to be true while also being annoyed when they send me memes that do not at all apply to me. Or, you know, when they want to educate me about something they recently learned. I try to remind myself this is the same impulse that children have when they learn something, they want to share it with a parent and the parent may already know but needs to applaud them anyway.
I have NOT ever considered writing on this in any capacity beyond comment sections or IM conversations. It has never occurred to me that this is something I could actually do. I've never run a blog or written any guest posts anywhere, how do guest posts work? Turning my thoughts into a coherent essay sounds like a fun challenge, though.
Oh, right. I read your manifesto on failure as the means to personal growth. I even agree with that sentiment, and yet here I am framing it as "failure is bad" smh. Totally fair on needing time to cool off! You can't properly engage with other people's point of view if you're too emotionally off-kilter. I'm sure some of them will make some solid points, and at least disagreement gives you a good chance to refine your thoughts. You have such a good attitude about this, I love it.
I just read your comment and wanted to pitch in. I'm also sorry that you have to experience that. It sucks big-time. I'm probably one of the guilty parties, although I try very hard to stress the point that "this is complaining on a high level, there are people who _aren't_ high-functioning and you're here giving _me_ shit for asking for consideration? Can you stop being a jerk, or do I have to wait until age puts you in a wheelchair before you get it?" It's usually all so clear in my head.
If it's any comfort, I also think that these "high-privilege" complaints are raising the bar in terms of accommodation. The more people who are normal-passing talk about their struggles, the more the idea of "everyone struggles with this" will become commonplace, and once it reaches common consent, then maybe we can finally start being nice to each other? I don't know. People are jerks.
I also share your absolute bafflement about RSD as a symptom of autism. The way I grew up taught me that being disliked is a guarantee and the best I can hope for is to be admired at the same time. I'm not sure if those who are affected are doing autism wrong /lh /j
Where practical advice for not forgetting the food in your oven is concerned (you probably know this by now): I found that labeled alarms on my phone are invaluable, and I'm mad that they don't teach kids at school. I have few ideas how to fix this, other than (gently) reminding the high-functioning beans with the huge reach that they're at the fortunate end of the spectrum and if they'd please signal boost a voice who isn't.
You're perhaps right that people will take things more seriously the more people talk about their complaints. I also should probably in the interest of being completely fair to you add that I really truly don't think y'all are faking your struggles or shouldn't share the same label. I feel like the current diagnostic system is probably not correct, but that's more about theory that I'm not even qualified to actually have an opinion on and not about which currently existing labels any given person ought to have. My rational person thoughts on this are: if the treatment and/or accommodations are working then you have the correct label.
I'm pretty sure that one of the reasons later dx people are more active in activism is - and please forgive my comparison - similar to the reason people who convert to a religion or who come back to it after a period of not practicing are usually the more devout worshippers than the people who grow up in a faith and remain. There's more effort that had to be put into converting or, in this case, receiving a diagnosis. Any effort my parents had to make to have me assessed is still not effort that *I* had to make. I know that y'all aren't actually trying to talk over anyone, and are mostly just happy to have finally found something that makes sense of your problems.
Which leads to a confession. Some of my anger is definitely misplaced, and I really should be better about handling it. Ugh. Now I have to figure out how to put this. It was very easy to accept late dx people when I only ever met one or two at a time because it felt like welcoming someone into my clan. But in the last couple of years there's been an increase (at least, in my own encounters) to a point where more people than not in my social circle are Autistic. Now, clearly they did not suddenly acquire Autism, but this is requiring a huge rewrite of my understanding of reality because it is super weird to go from "why are you so WEIRD? oh, you're Autistic, that explains everything" to "everyone here is Autistic, actually" and I'm very annoyed at myself that this use of labels can actually cause me such a huge issue bc I'm still me and they're still them, it's not like anything actually changed, and yet I still feel like I'm having to adjust to falling into a parallel universe in some respects.
This is also causing a bit of an identity crisis. Because if the reason I was given for struggling so much is also shared by people who didn't struggle to the same extent (not that they DO NOT struggle, but not as uh obviously to everyone else around them - especially when the neurodivergence as gifted kid discourse comes up) then part of me wants to say "oh, no, I should have willpowered my way through my struggles better." I know that this isn't actually how it works, but I don't know it at the same time, you feel? I can say of course that's not how it works, and also other people now having the same label doesn't negate any of my own experiences, but my feelings don't necessarily agree. It's not logical at all, and I'm very annoyed at myself given these are insecurities I thought I had gotten over years ago but it's resurfaced a lot more.
Anyway, my point is, I'm pretty sure that part of the reason I feel talked over is because neurodiversity related conversations have become straight up unavoidable online, which is how I do way too much of my socializing, and I haven't successfully rebuilt my world view to be in line with reality so encountering the conversations is a reminder that I need to finish updating already. And none of that is actually the FAULT of late dx people or people who have milder traits than I do, and it's not fair of me to direct my emotions at y'all as a target. That was all very embarrassing to admit to.
Lol thank you for the tips! You know what, I have an alarm app and yet somehow when I stick something in the oven it never occurs to me that this is something that could use an alarm...on my phone....instead of the microwave alarm, which I may or may not hear depending on where in the house I wandered off to....so remarkably and embarrassingly, no, no, I didn't know this by now. I've seen so many people talk generally about using alarms for tasks and YET. This was also very embarrassing to admit to.
At first, it sounded to me as if you were advertising against the use of "neurotypical" and "neurodivergent" in general, but then the second half sounded as if it was the conflation with the productivity fetish that you were going against?
Anyhow, in case that wasn't the case, here's why I disagree:
I do like the term as a catch-all label for people who aren't gear-shaped like the rest of society, and I think that it's important to have something to rally under, just because of how (mentally) damaging it can be to grow up with a brain that functions differently from everyone else's. This here comes to mind: https://twitter.com/danidonovan/status/1318651281448251393
(I know I only comment here on the related topics, but I promise that it's not part of my identity other than being a nifty shortcut to describe how my brain works.)
I'm not arguing that people on the far end of e.g. the autism spectrum are infinitely worse-off than I am (I'm high-functioning, as long as I have the right pills, without them, I'm still more or less functioning). But that's what "disability" is for - right?
Let's look at something physical, since it's more clear-cut.
17 years ago, I had an almost-complete hearing loss (92%) in my left ear. Given that there were 8% left, I wasn't disabled enough to get any slip of paper - however, the disadvantages are real. (Anyone who thinks it's no big deal: grab the good ear plugs, make sure that one of your ears doesn't receive sound, and now have fun going out, or eating in a busy restaurant, or trying to follow a conversation in a noisy environment, or participating in traffic. The loss of 3-dimensional hearing is a real problem - once, I was almost hit by an out-of-control car because I couldn't spot which direction the screeching tires and the honking was coming from. I also predict that you will tire a lot faster, simply because you can't filter out unimportant noises anymore.)
However, my other ear is in supreme condition and is actually compensating for the hearing loss. In addition, I have developed a sort of tremor/pressure sense that is pretty useful sometimes when it comes to spotting disturbances, but it also makes it impossible to ignore women in high heels walking past, even if it's on the other side of a closed door. Once, I've worked in a huge corporate office - I couldn't focus for more than five minutes, because inevitably, someone would walk past with heels that made noises/vibrations that people with "normal" hearing possibly just tune out.
All this puts me in a position that's worse than that of people with two working ears, and infinitely better than that of people with 92% (or even 100%) hearing loss in both ears. I can participate in phone calls, I can watch movies or play games without subtitles, if the house is on fire, I will hear the alarms - and I don't need assistant tech to do any of that. Compared to someone who can't hear (or the severely autistic individual from your example), I'm hardly disabled! Among the blind, the one-eyed person leads...
Now, how about bats (the neurodivergent people at the upper end of the scale)? I'd assume that they have problems as well when it comes to navigating noisy environments. Maybe they perceive sounds as painful that aren't a problem for people in the middle of the bell curve. But until it becomes a problem, they'd never talk about it - maybe they aren't even aware of the fact. High-functioning bats will be like "IDK, I just have very good hearing :))" and proceed as they were. The bats with sensory processing disorders will probably sit with the hearing-impaired crowd, because at least they understand how it is to have sound-related issues.
Imagine someone with an IQ in the top 5% who did terrible at school because their attention refused to stay at the given task, and everyone told them "you're so gifted! If you'd only put in a bit more of an effort..." When they looked at themselves, they saw that it was true; they saw how everyone else just... did the things? Classmates who couldn't count to 20 without taking their shoes off had better grades at maths!
That person (me, in case that was unclear) lived in a hell of their own making, driving themselves into burnout over their bachelor thesis because "if you'd only put in a bit more of an effort..."
I can't possibly describe how liberating it was to get the first diagnosis and to be told "it isn't your personal failure, your brain is simply working differently from everyone else's". (I went to my professor and told him "I got an autism diagnosis, btw" and he was like "oh, you too?", restructured my working schedule, and I got a bachelor in computer sciences in as little time as bureaucracy would let me get away with.) I've repeatedly see people being completely mindblown when they meet others who have made the same experiences, who can tell them "It's not your lack of grit/self-control, it's not that you just have to pull yourself together, it's a real thing and others have it too".
If you shoot at the label, how should those people find each other? The system sure doesn't help them.
The problem is not the neurodivergence. The problem is that autistic individuals with well-established preferences are put into classes that they don't care for, being driven into buffer overflow instead of sitting in a corner, happily becoming the next von Neumann. The problem is that the ADHD kids are being told "if you'd only pull yourself together" instead of having a school system that actively captures their interest (have you seen an ADHD person who's interested in something? It's beautiful!)
TL;DR: The problem is the productivity economics, not the people with capitalism-incompatible brains.
Hi, Sorry it took me so long to get back to you here. I received a lot of hate online for this post and gave myself a window of time before I'd interact with the stuff people said. I think you've got a good point, and the point of the post is to say that people with capitalism-incompatible brains need to be recognized rather than forced to conform to unrealistic standards. I'm not really shooting at the terms, just saying they've lost usefulness due to no longer being descriptive. I want MORE descriptive language, not no language at all.
I'm sorry that you had to put up with the hate. It's sad that people can't have a civilised disagreement anymore these days, and I hope you're okay. I enjoy reading your stuff, even if I don't agree with some of it. But everything is about identity these days, and people get defensive so quickly...
That being said, I (civilised-ly) disagree with the terms having _lost_ usefulness. I'm not sure for whom the term was useful for before it became fuzzy, and I've given the matter some thought. It's probably similar to the LGBTQ#ETC++ identity thing: If people with PTSD or anxiety disorders are neurodivergent, how is that fair to me as someone who was born with a different cerebral architecture?
The solution, I think, is the same: it's not a zero-sum game. If we are considerate and treat each other decently, there won't _be_ losers (except for capitalism, which I consider a net win). We'd have to finally take steps towards utopia and stop fighting each other for that to be true, which I don't think is likely to happen any time soon, but I'm willing to do my best.
Agreed! Treating things like they are zero sum serves only to increase divisions, though it seems days that is what a lot of people WANT. I don't get it, but I'm glad there are people out there like you who are working in the opposite direction.
I have to be honest with you, you missed the point of that video by so so much.
Here's what I feel like is the reason: You viewed it through a certain lens.
If you look at it as a corporate video to do work to make richer people more rich, then yeah, that is the right way to interpret it.
However it is about ADHD.
That video helps me with cleaning my room.
Or writing a story, learn how to play a complicated game.
The common ways to tackle something don't work if you have ADHD, and it affects all parts of life.
One thing I noticed in your post was that you are also heavily using negative words.
The video you are complaining about uses uplifting language, talking about how people with ADHD may fail at things, and that's ok.
And lastly, it's funny how you both end up with the same conclusion in different words.
Change the world and make it a better place.
You may fail at times, and that's something that happens, but persevere and continue.
And as a final thing, ADHD does cause suffering even if the world was a perfect place.
Strategies to mitigate that are something needed as it has a huge impact on motivation and other things.
TL;DR, because it seems like you don't know much about that condition, it's a reduced amount of various brain hormones, like Dopamin (happiness, motivation, creating memories), Serotonin (the chill hormone you need to relax), Melatonin (the stuff you need to get tired).
And if you don't have enough of the hormones, the things they do work less.
I’m a new subscriber bc of this essay. :) I have a lot of thoughts on this topic but I don’t have time to write them all out right now so I’ll stick with: this really spoke to me as someone diagnosed as Autistic as a child who often feels alienated by the dominance of adult dx/self dx voices in the neurodiversity movement (this is not a statement against the accuracy of their diagnoses only about my own feelings)
I'm glad you're here and that you felt represented! Welcome to the newsletter!
thanks! okay, I'm gonna try and verbalize some of my thoughts here.
First thought: you're using productivity to discuss labor and employment. My friends and I, when we discuss "wanting to be more productive" and share articles and tips about productivity, use this as shorthand for "I want to be of more assistance with household/life tasks that are necessary for such reasons as Health and Safety (or simply because they show other people that we care about them) because the other people in my household ALSO all have similar brain wiring and so can't be expected to routinely pick up any slack on my behalf." It's always a trip to me when I'm having a conversation with other people about a topic concerning my mundane personal life challenges and then I find out that most people use the phrasing we're using in a work related context instead. It makes me wonder how many articles I've read online that were supposed to be about work when I just wanted to get help not forgetting that I put food in the oven.
Second thought, you're the first person who has ever responded to my complaint about feeling alienated who didn't immediately get defensive about how late dx people suffered so much and I just didn't understand so I appreciate it. I'm sure that being late dx is hard, but it's also hard to have been The Weird Autistic Kid where even the nerd spaces treated you like you were a freak ("can you talk?" "why is she acting like that?" "why is she having a meltdown, she's too old to behave that way") only to have all the same nerds come to you decades later saying "actually I'm Autistic too" or the gifted kids who sneered at anyone in special ed now going "hey, you know the disorder that was the reason you struggled in school? anyway, I'm the same!! it's the reason I was just so much smarter and better at school than everyone else."
I accept that they have the same diagnoses and I accept that they needed support they didn't get and that they have struggles I don't understand but at the same time it's a combination of disorienting and infuriating to have them not only now under the same umbrella, but also dominating the conversation (in part - the people with the highest support needs sometimes get attention, but only if their parents are speaking for them. the high support need activists, though? they're not nearly as compelling, I guess, as talking to a 50yo professional who wants to explain about how they're just so good at pretending to be "normal" am I bitter possibly a little bit
Third, I started using neurodivergent partly as a response to the explosion in late dx Autistic and ADHD adults, and partly as a response to the information coming out about the complicated genetic relationship to Autism and ADHD and OCD and Schizophrenia etc. I figured that there wasn't a particularly accurate term to encompass what I meant, after all - but I agree with you that the highest performers also fall under neurodivergent, regardless of whether or not they have or desire any particular diagnosis and I agree that people use neurotypical in a way that's kind of useless. Going back to my first thought, when I see people saying that neurotypicals should accommodate them by reminding them so they won't be late or help them more around the house and I think that's a big assumption that the people they're asking to do that are "neurotypical" or if someone says they don't believe in ADHD, as an example, people who say "my parents don't believe in ADHD and say everyone has this struggle. Neurotypicals don't understand us" as if there isn't a perfectly good explanation of "your parents also struggle with these things, which is why they think it's normal"
Anyway, here's a research paper called "Temporal Changes in Effect Sizes of Studies Comparing Individuals With and Without Autism" which is only tangentially related but I wanted to link it anyway because I felt that you still might find it interesting https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6704749/#yoi190046r56
What a great reply! Thank you :D
Increasing diagnoses over time are a hard one. Controls are like impossible :p
The way that diagnoses are going, I'm guessing that there will eventually be new categories/diagnoses developed to push those most in need of aid further to the edge. I'm always of two minds about this stuff, like do you want to narrow the diagnoses for better communication around treatment but suffer in research funding as a result, or do you want to keep the diagnoses under one big umbrella to be able to use money liberally across the spectrum of severity in research?
Thanks for pointing out that not everyone is looking to do knowledge work and that some people just want help on day to day life things, I think I was coming after the video a bit too hard and feeling frustrated, went off a little half cocked ha.
I really like your point about affected parents normalizing behavior between generations and general ambiguity around dx. I had a lot of angry people calling me neurotypical when I posted this, which I found a little funny. I think that there's a big difference between people who experience these disorders to the degree that they literally are life-ruining, and people who have mild symptoms but really like the aesthetic of the identity. It's great to feel like you are helping advance a cause, but if you end up shouting over those who need serious help, what's the deal? Of course there are vocal people with severe symptoms, but they are few and far between. Not everything can be a superpower, and it smacks of ignorance when people insist it can to those who have suffered greatly due to symptoms.
I'm not sure what the best categorization would be, either, which I guess is okay since nobody is going to ask my opinion whenever re-categorization inevitably happens. I thought the dimensional approach was an interesting one, but I'm pretty sure it needs a lot of refinement to work even if broader society was willing to adopt it. With Autism specifically I think it would be useful if the Autism self-advocacy movement would embrace the Broad Autism Phenotype, which is a concept used within Autism research to denote people who are sub-clinical (typically when looking at family members of Autistic people vs people who have no Autistic people in their family) but alas, the current line is "you are Autistic or you aren't." Autism and ADHD are the only two disorders I can think of where there's been that push to broaden who is included. Whenever I see research papers come out about how mother's of Autistic children display the Broad Autism Phenotype, the reaction from the public is "mothers of Autistic children are also Autistic!!!" but I've never seen anyone pass around research about how family members of people diagnosed with BPD have an increased incidence of BPD traits trying to claim that all of those people are actually BPD and just weren't diagnosed.
For a pragmatic day to day approach, however, I strongly favor Dr. Ross Greene's "lagging skills and unsolved problems." He doesn't believe in diagnostic labels at all (importantly, he is not anti-psychiatric medications. he just doesn't think the labels are helpful for figuring out what would help any given individual, which is absolutely correct.) His work is with children, and the most troubled of them at that, but I've found his concepts carry over into adult life fairly well.
Also, as much as it pains me to defend the people with less impairment, I don't actually believe they're in it for Aesthetic, or at least not primarily. There might be some of that, but that's not how I would characterize them on the whole. I think the bigger issue is that society doesn't readily accommodate people unless they fight tooth and nail for a "good enough reason" to require it, and having a label gives them more legitimacy. Of course, ableism being what it is, that isn't a guarantee of much. Maybe it's more that they need to FEEL like they have a "good enough reason" to ask more than that other people will actually acknowledge it. Anyway, I think your larger point about the cult of productivity and efficiency and inherent human value is especially important in this context and that's one of the reasons I loved this essay so much.
I also don't think you went too hard! You weren't discussing day to day life things, which you make very clear. My bringing it up was only me musing on a tangent which you can probably tell are a weakness of mine.
I always err on the side of assuming that anyone who is online enough to run a blog is absolutely NOT neurotypical, but that's my biases talking I guess. My initial reaction is surprise anyone would be angry, and then realizing oh, no, you criticized the people with more moderate symptoms and they make up the bulk of internet activity on this topic so of course they were angry about it. In their defense, which again I can't believe I'm defending them, but a lot of them are probably reacting out of insecurity because they had to fight to get a diagnosis, or they're questioned a lot, or they doubt themselves. I think that's why they don't listen when I complain, too, as frustrating as it is. Additionally, a lot of the late DX people are new to this and think that neurodivergent is anything that they personally struggle with and neurotypical is anyone who finds that annoying or intolerable. Most of them will eventually realize this is a vast oversimplification.
I remember some Discourse at one point about ADHD and punctuality and the gist was that people who can't tolerate someone being late are ableist and also neurotypical (obviously.) I cannot stand people being late. I can accept that it is something someone else struggles with and possibly can't control, but I'm going to spend the entire time I wait for them panicking about whether or not I'm in the right place or if I got the date or time wrong. Am I being ableist by being upset if they roll in late after I've spent an hour panicking and trying to contact them? Are they being ableist by being late when I'm going to suffer distress from it? I don't think reality is so straightforward.
I think there are valuable contributions a lot of the less impaired NDs make to awareness. I genuinely like a lot of them. But they do tend to talk over people, and to not share anything by anyone who isn't one of them. You have to be a certain TYPE of Autistic person, and to agree with the neurodivergence movement's opinions, and I find that...baffling given some of the diagnostic criteria, tbh. If there was a cure I would take it, and I'm not even one of the people who has apraxia or intellectual disability. I function better now than I ever thought I would when I was younger, but I also would take a cure in a heart beat. I wouldn't tell someone else they had to take a cure, but I do not love losing the ability to speak when under stress, or my emotions completely hijacking my brain and turning off the self-control mechanism so that I have serious regrets once the emotions have passed. I have managed, as an adult, to configure my life such that I have the ability to remove myself from situations before that happens but I am very very lucky to be able to do that. And I would rather not have to think "hm I can feel myself getting tense, better take myself to time out now so I can lose my shit without scaring someone else, or worse, saying something hurtful I won't even remember saying bc my brain nearly shuts down all my senses and my entire world is confined to BIG EMOTION" Just saying, it would be very awesome and cool to feel like I had more self control and maturity than that.
Neurodevelopmental diagnostic categories have subjective boundaries. What else could they have, when the criteria isn't just that you have XYZ trait but also that it causes you significant impairment and/or distress? At the milder end that's going to mean whether or not you even qualify for a diagnosis depends on your circumstance. I remember seeing a paper once about that, actually, where they followed children at the border of the Autism diagnostic threshold on either side, and over several years found that they slipped in and out of qualifying for a diagnosis. Which to me makes perfect sense. Even which diagnostic category you fit in isn't stable (I bookmark everything I come across on this because I've decided apparently that my life work is to throw links at everyone when this topic comes up.)
Last, I will give the Former Gifted Kids/Milder Late DX cases this - I think that I am genuinely better off than them in some ways. Specifically, most of them seem to care a LOT about what other people think of them. The first time I saw people talking about Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria as an Autistic phenomenon I was so taken aback, because when I was a child I was told that a very big part of the diagnostic criteria was being impervious to peer influence and not caring what other people think about you. Of course, I prefer people to like me than to dislike me, and I don't relish conflict. But I don't relate to the way late DX people discuss their anxiety around rejection or the agonizing over whether or not someone secretly hates them. People can dislike me if they want. I only get upset about it if they're responding NOT to something I said or did, but to some weird distortion of what I said or did. If they're going to dislike me it better be because they correctly understood me.
Also, I apologize for spamming monologues in your comment section here. I just really loved this essay and also it's on a topic I have strong feelings on and I'm very excited that you responded so thoughtfully so now I'm rambling. I'm slowly going thru your other essays, though, and I should probably focus on that instead of blabbing about this. but I'm excited! And also very annoyed on your behalf that anyone was angry about this very excellent and IMO important essay. I saw you call this essay a failure in your post yesterday and I am so sorry, because NO THIS IS A GREAT ESSAY. Other people may not see it, but they're clearly wrong. I know that my personal opinion probably doesn't outweigh in your mental tally however many other people disagree with me, but I hope I provided a small shift, at least, because it's a crime that the response to this essay has been anything other than "oh. YES. what excellent points are being made about how we all have different capabilities and that this is FINE and we should be more accepting of these differences in capabilities among ourselves and others."
please DO NOT apologize for monologuing- I'm enthralled reading; you've obviously thought on this a lot- you make excellent points that are a lot more considered on both sides than my own. You have a real talent for handling positions less thoughtful than your own with patience and empathy (for example, you changed my mind on the aesthetic point- I was being shallow). I think your point about the double-coincidence of rudeness in being late and responding to it is a great illustration of how each conflict in this issue can and should be approached from both sides. You've got so much empathy for the late DX crowd that is ostensibly on the opposite side of your opinion, it's really inspiring- normally people online aren't so good at methodically stepping through all the angles. I think your advice and personal experience (especially surrounding BIG EMOTION) are relatable and valuable for the new-to-the-scene DX crowd you've discussed.
Have you thought about writing on it? If not on your own I'd really love if you did a guest post here!
And thank you for the kind words on the failure front, I definitely mean failure in an odd capacity in which failure is good- it sucks to catch hate but that's the game. I've avoided going to look at the more thorough counterarguments up to this point just to give it some time to cool off emotionally, I'll probably go back next week and pick through them to get the juicy feedback meat inside the anger clams.
Oh, my, thank you! You know, when I was young I was told many times that I suffered from rigid black and white thinking and from a deficit of perspective taking, and once I was old enough to understand what that meant I white knuckled my way through trying to improve on both of those.
Although - and this is something that just now occurred to me - I suppose this is another benefit of having an early DX. Up until now I've always found it very annoying when someone says "oh, I didn't get diagnosed until I was middle age because I'm so good at masking" and then proceeds to be worse than me at taking another person's perspective. But I guess that I'm lucky that I was given very specific feedback, while the people who weren't as obviously behind were given the much vaguer feedback of "IDK you're just doing something wrong"
I also had the benefit of this being one of the values my mom successfully imparted to me - she is very churchy, and while I no longer am, she impressed upon me that "Love your neighbor as you love yourself" ought to be interpreted as "you know how even when you know you made a bad choice you have the benefit of knowing your motivations and extenuating circumstances? Give other people the most charitable interpretation of their bad choices, too." and you need to know how to perspective take to properly apply this. This is such a hard value to live by, though. I fail at it often, and I have to fight the urge to simply hiss at people I don't agree with instead of engaging with their actual actions and beliefs or considering what circumstances might have brought them to their conclusions.
Glad to have changed your mind on the aesthetic point. A lot of people express a similar belief, which I understand - "they're in it for aesthetic/identity" is correctly assessing "these people are insecure and want a sense of belonging" - I just don't think it's fair. I do not like the fact that late DX people talk over other people, but I don't actually wish them to NOT have support. I've encouraged several people I know to get assessed despite my personal disgruntled feelings about the movement and culture and all of them were SO full of doubt about whether or not they deserved to do so. They needed support, and needed to be validated in their need for support. I can hold this to be true while also being annoyed when they send me memes that do not at all apply to me. Or, you know, when they want to educate me about something they recently learned. I try to remind myself this is the same impulse that children have when they learn something, they want to share it with a parent and the parent may already know but needs to applaud them anyway.
I have NOT ever considered writing on this in any capacity beyond comment sections or IM conversations. It has never occurred to me that this is something I could actually do. I've never run a blog or written any guest posts anywhere, how do guest posts work? Turning my thoughts into a coherent essay sounds like a fun challenge, though.
Oh, right. I read your manifesto on failure as the means to personal growth. I even agree with that sentiment, and yet here I am framing it as "failure is bad" smh. Totally fair on needing time to cool off! You can't properly engage with other people's point of view if you're too emotionally off-kilter. I'm sure some of them will make some solid points, and at least disagreement gives you a good chance to refine your thoughts. You have such a good attitude about this, I love it.
Hey,
I just read your comment and wanted to pitch in. I'm also sorry that you have to experience that. It sucks big-time. I'm probably one of the guilty parties, although I try very hard to stress the point that "this is complaining on a high level, there are people who _aren't_ high-functioning and you're here giving _me_ shit for asking for consideration? Can you stop being a jerk, or do I have to wait until age puts you in a wheelchair before you get it?" It's usually all so clear in my head.
If it's any comfort, I also think that these "high-privilege" complaints are raising the bar in terms of accommodation. The more people who are normal-passing talk about their struggles, the more the idea of "everyone struggles with this" will become commonplace, and once it reaches common consent, then maybe we can finally start being nice to each other? I don't know. People are jerks.
I also share your absolute bafflement about RSD as a symptom of autism. The way I grew up taught me that being disliked is a guarantee and the best I can hope for is to be admired at the same time. I'm not sure if those who are affected are doing autism wrong /lh /j
Where practical advice for not forgetting the food in your oven is concerned (you probably know this by now): I found that labeled alarms on my phone are invaluable, and I'm mad that they don't teach kids at school. I have few ideas how to fix this, other than (gently) reminding the high-functioning beans with the huge reach that they're at the fortunate end of the spectrum and if they'd please signal boost a voice who isn't.
Hello,
You're perhaps right that people will take things more seriously the more people talk about their complaints. I also should probably in the interest of being completely fair to you add that I really truly don't think y'all are faking your struggles or shouldn't share the same label. I feel like the current diagnostic system is probably not correct, but that's more about theory that I'm not even qualified to actually have an opinion on and not about which currently existing labels any given person ought to have. My rational person thoughts on this are: if the treatment and/or accommodations are working then you have the correct label.
I'm pretty sure that one of the reasons later dx people are more active in activism is - and please forgive my comparison - similar to the reason people who convert to a religion or who come back to it after a period of not practicing are usually the more devout worshippers than the people who grow up in a faith and remain. There's more effort that had to be put into converting or, in this case, receiving a diagnosis. Any effort my parents had to make to have me assessed is still not effort that *I* had to make. I know that y'all aren't actually trying to talk over anyone, and are mostly just happy to have finally found something that makes sense of your problems.
Which leads to a confession. Some of my anger is definitely misplaced, and I really should be better about handling it. Ugh. Now I have to figure out how to put this. It was very easy to accept late dx people when I only ever met one or two at a time because it felt like welcoming someone into my clan. But in the last couple of years there's been an increase (at least, in my own encounters) to a point where more people than not in my social circle are Autistic. Now, clearly they did not suddenly acquire Autism, but this is requiring a huge rewrite of my understanding of reality because it is super weird to go from "why are you so WEIRD? oh, you're Autistic, that explains everything" to "everyone here is Autistic, actually" and I'm very annoyed at myself that this use of labels can actually cause me such a huge issue bc I'm still me and they're still them, it's not like anything actually changed, and yet I still feel like I'm having to adjust to falling into a parallel universe in some respects.
This is also causing a bit of an identity crisis. Because if the reason I was given for struggling so much is also shared by people who didn't struggle to the same extent (not that they DO NOT struggle, but not as uh obviously to everyone else around them - especially when the neurodivergence as gifted kid discourse comes up) then part of me wants to say "oh, no, I should have willpowered my way through my struggles better." I know that this isn't actually how it works, but I don't know it at the same time, you feel? I can say of course that's not how it works, and also other people now having the same label doesn't negate any of my own experiences, but my feelings don't necessarily agree. It's not logical at all, and I'm very annoyed at myself given these are insecurities I thought I had gotten over years ago but it's resurfaced a lot more.
Anyway, my point is, I'm pretty sure that part of the reason I feel talked over is because neurodiversity related conversations have become straight up unavoidable online, which is how I do way too much of my socializing, and I haven't successfully rebuilt my world view to be in line with reality so encountering the conversations is a reminder that I need to finish updating already. And none of that is actually the FAULT of late dx people or people who have milder traits than I do, and it's not fair of me to direct my emotions at y'all as a target. That was all very embarrassing to admit to.
Lol thank you for the tips! You know what, I have an alarm app and yet somehow when I stick something in the oven it never occurs to me that this is something that could use an alarm...on my phone....instead of the microwave alarm, which I may or may not hear depending on where in the house I wandered off to....so remarkably and embarrassingly, no, no, I didn't know this by now. I've seen so many people talk generally about using alarms for tasks and YET. This was also very embarrassing to admit to.
Wow no way.
At first, it sounded to me as if you were advertising against the use of "neurotypical" and "neurodivergent" in general, but then the second half sounded as if it was the conflation with the productivity fetish that you were going against?
Anyhow, in case that wasn't the case, here's why I disagree:
I do like the term as a catch-all label for people who aren't gear-shaped like the rest of society, and I think that it's important to have something to rally under, just because of how (mentally) damaging it can be to grow up with a brain that functions differently from everyone else's. This here comes to mind: https://twitter.com/danidonovan/status/1318651281448251393
(I know I only comment here on the related topics, but I promise that it's not part of my identity other than being a nifty shortcut to describe how my brain works.)
I'm not arguing that people on the far end of e.g. the autism spectrum are infinitely worse-off than I am (I'm high-functioning, as long as I have the right pills, without them, I'm still more or less functioning). But that's what "disability" is for - right?
Let's look at something physical, since it's more clear-cut.
17 years ago, I had an almost-complete hearing loss (92%) in my left ear. Given that there were 8% left, I wasn't disabled enough to get any slip of paper - however, the disadvantages are real. (Anyone who thinks it's no big deal: grab the good ear plugs, make sure that one of your ears doesn't receive sound, and now have fun going out, or eating in a busy restaurant, or trying to follow a conversation in a noisy environment, or participating in traffic. The loss of 3-dimensional hearing is a real problem - once, I was almost hit by an out-of-control car because I couldn't spot which direction the screeching tires and the honking was coming from. I also predict that you will tire a lot faster, simply because you can't filter out unimportant noises anymore.)
However, my other ear is in supreme condition and is actually compensating for the hearing loss. In addition, I have developed a sort of tremor/pressure sense that is pretty useful sometimes when it comes to spotting disturbances, but it also makes it impossible to ignore women in high heels walking past, even if it's on the other side of a closed door. Once, I've worked in a huge corporate office - I couldn't focus for more than five minutes, because inevitably, someone would walk past with heels that made noises/vibrations that people with "normal" hearing possibly just tune out.
All this puts me in a position that's worse than that of people with two working ears, and infinitely better than that of people with 92% (or even 100%) hearing loss in both ears. I can participate in phone calls, I can watch movies or play games without subtitles, if the house is on fire, I will hear the alarms - and I don't need assistant tech to do any of that. Compared to someone who can't hear (or the severely autistic individual from your example), I'm hardly disabled! Among the blind, the one-eyed person leads...
Now, how about bats (the neurodivergent people at the upper end of the scale)? I'd assume that they have problems as well when it comes to navigating noisy environments. Maybe they perceive sounds as painful that aren't a problem for people in the middle of the bell curve. But until it becomes a problem, they'd never talk about it - maybe they aren't even aware of the fact. High-functioning bats will be like "IDK, I just have very good hearing :))" and proceed as they were. The bats with sensory processing disorders will probably sit with the hearing-impaired crowd, because at least they understand how it is to have sound-related issues.
Imagine someone with an IQ in the top 5% who did terrible at school because their attention refused to stay at the given task, and everyone told them "you're so gifted! If you'd only put in a bit more of an effort..." When they looked at themselves, they saw that it was true; they saw how everyone else just... did the things? Classmates who couldn't count to 20 without taking their shoes off had better grades at maths!
That person (me, in case that was unclear) lived in a hell of their own making, driving themselves into burnout over their bachelor thesis because "if you'd only put in a bit more of an effort..."
I can't possibly describe how liberating it was to get the first diagnosis and to be told "it isn't your personal failure, your brain is simply working differently from everyone else's". (I went to my professor and told him "I got an autism diagnosis, btw" and he was like "oh, you too?", restructured my working schedule, and I got a bachelor in computer sciences in as little time as bureaucracy would let me get away with.) I've repeatedly see people being completely mindblown when they meet others who have made the same experiences, who can tell them "It's not your lack of grit/self-control, it's not that you just have to pull yourself together, it's a real thing and others have it too".
If you shoot at the label, how should those people find each other? The system sure doesn't help them.
The problem is not the neurodivergence. The problem is that autistic individuals with well-established preferences are put into classes that they don't care for, being driven into buffer overflow instead of sitting in a corner, happily becoming the next von Neumann. The problem is that the ADHD kids are being told "if you'd only pull yourself together" instead of having a school system that actively captures their interest (have you seen an ADHD person who's interested in something? It's beautiful!)
TL;DR: The problem is the productivity economics, not the people with capitalism-incompatible brains.
Hi, Sorry it took me so long to get back to you here. I received a lot of hate online for this post and gave myself a window of time before I'd interact with the stuff people said. I think you've got a good point, and the point of the post is to say that people with capitalism-incompatible brains need to be recognized rather than forced to conform to unrealistic standards. I'm not really shooting at the terms, just saying they've lost usefulness due to no longer being descriptive. I want MORE descriptive language, not no language at all.
Hi,
I'm sorry that you had to put up with the hate. It's sad that people can't have a civilised disagreement anymore these days, and I hope you're okay. I enjoy reading your stuff, even if I don't agree with some of it. But everything is about identity these days, and people get defensive so quickly...
That being said, I (civilised-ly) disagree with the terms having _lost_ usefulness. I'm not sure for whom the term was useful for before it became fuzzy, and I've given the matter some thought. It's probably similar to the LGBTQ#ETC++ identity thing: If people with PTSD or anxiety disorders are neurodivergent, how is that fair to me as someone who was born with a different cerebral architecture?
The solution, I think, is the same: it's not a zero-sum game. If we are considerate and treat each other decently, there won't _be_ losers (except for capitalism, which I consider a net win). We'd have to finally take steps towards utopia and stop fighting each other for that to be true, which I don't think is likely to happen any time soon, but I'm willing to do my best.
Agreed! Treating things like they are zero sum serves only to increase divisions, though it seems days that is what a lot of people WANT. I don't get it, but I'm glad there are people out there like you who are working in the opposite direction.
I didn't get it either, until a joke that put it in context for me.
A banker, a blue-collar worker and an immigrant are sitting on a table with ten cookies.
The banker takes nine of them and then tells the blue-collar worker: "Be careful, the immigrant wants your cookie!"
I have to be honest with you, you missed the point of that video by so so much.
Here's what I feel like is the reason: You viewed it through a certain lens.
If you look at it as a corporate video to do work to make richer people more rich, then yeah, that is the right way to interpret it.
However it is about ADHD.
That video helps me with cleaning my room.
Or writing a story, learn how to play a complicated game.
The common ways to tackle something don't work if you have ADHD, and it affects all parts of life.
One thing I noticed in your post was that you are also heavily using negative words.
The video you are complaining about uses uplifting language, talking about how people with ADHD may fail at things, and that's ok.
And lastly, it's funny how you both end up with the same conclusion in different words.
Change the world and make it a better place.
You may fail at times, and that's something that happens, but persevere and continue.
And as a final thing, ADHD does cause suffering even if the world was a perfect place.
Strategies to mitigate that are something needed as it has a huge impact on motivation and other things.
TL;DR, because it seems like you don't know much about that condition, it's a reduced amount of various brain hormones, like Dopamin (happiness, motivation, creating memories), Serotonin (the chill hormone you need to relax), Melatonin (the stuff you need to get tired).
And if you don't have enough of the hormones, the things they do work less.