No Stupid Questions

Completely relate. Pretty normal… Except for… list pending.

1. Reduced stigma led to more diagnosis and less hiding
2. decreased socialization and internet escapism increased the percentage of the population exhibiting these symptoms and aided in self diagnosis
3. people like to make groups to simplify their world and feel a sense of belonging, see: astrology, personality quizzes, omegaverse, sports

Its a big complicated mess with no clear answer. We all do exhibit these feelings to a certain extent, the magnitude and ceiling for our ability to cope and adapt to them however feeds our definitions, yet everyone can look at this and feel a little but of ourselves.

I feel like online spaces like lemmy over represent some behaviors.

There's degrees to these things. At a certain point they're severe enough to be considered a problem beyond just "normal human foibles". I for instance don't like being outside at home because the HOA I live in doesn't allow privacy fences and your neighbors for 8 houses in either direction can see into each others back yards. It stresses me out to the point that I avoid it as much as possible and probably makes everyone else think of me as a weirdo (which also stresses me out). Whether that problem falls under autism or ADHD I'm not qualified to say but it's not normal behavior.

Typically the difference is that people with autism and or ADHD experience things more frequently or more intensely than others.

Yes, all these things are normal for most folks, but how often and the severity of these symptoms are diffrent.

For example, I have ADHD, and one of the symptoms of that is I'm easily distracted. For most people, this would sound fairly normal, but even when its something important, or something I want to do, my brain is moving on to a billion other things all at once rather than focusing on the task at hand. Medication helps immensely with this, but it still happens even on my meds at times. That is not normal.

Also the autism spectrum is a spectrum for a reason. Some people appear to cope better than others and some can't cope at all. Masking is normal but for someone with autism it can be exhausting because some people with autism never stop masking. They are constantly aware they aren't "normal" and it stresses them out.

Its hard to understand these kinds of feelings if you're Neurotypical. Our brains work differently from others, which might sound like "I'm special" but honestly, I'd rather not have ADHD. Shit sucks dude. I fucking hate not being able to do things like a normal person. Its a curse.

People ive met with ADHD or autism, its just nice to be seen and feel like were understood which is why these memes are often posted or are popular with those crowds.

Edit: a very good starter would be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1AUdaH-EPM

You have a scale of 0 to 100%. Mine is like 200 to 4000%. There is a lot of literature and research on autism. We work differently and the way your post starts made me feel very attacked. And suddenly completely out of energy, although I love informing about it.

I guess that's because exactly that is our daily struggle. To all the damaging things we experience add on top that we're accused of faking and also 'that's how it's for everyone'.

If you want to get into it but not start reading books I can recommend the book 'invisible differences' very much. There's a pdf on the internet floating around.

I know you wanted to ask innocently, however keep in mind asking about something and implicating something is not really a thing to people suffering massively exactly for that reason can be very hurtful.

Capitalism and consumer culture expects as all to be robots. Autism and ADHD labels help people feel more comfortable excusing their humans behavior so they self assign. Also because more people are ADHD and autistic so a mix

Without commenting on any specific meme (if for no other reason than that imgur is booked the UK and i can’t see the image) and without meaning to disparage OP in any way, because i believe they are asking an honest question, i think that sometimes it’s a question of framing. I think of it like this:

Say you’ve broken your leg and it’s painful for you to hobble around on crutches. You get to work and find that the lift (elevator for the yanks) is out of order. You work on the 20th floor and have no choice but to take the stairs. You talk about how unpleasant this is going to be for you, and a colleague says “yes, everybody hates taking the stairs”. Maybe they do, but it’s not the same thing.

Which again isn’t to suggest that everybody posting memes about neurodivergence is talking about real traits, just that the idea that “everybody runs out of social battery sometimes and therefore everybody is on the spectrum somewhere” isn’t really accurate. It can be the difference between deciding to skip a party because you’d rather curl up with a book and spending 4 months not exchanging a single word with another human being. Or the difference between having a favourite film which you say you’re “obsessed” with and spending 9 days straight watching it on repeat while only sleeping 4 hours a night because the other 20 are you watching the film.

A decade or two ago people used to say “everybody’s a little bit OCD”. That seems to have fallen out of fashion now. I’m reminded of the meme which goes something like one person saying “I’m a bit OCD, i arrange my books by colour”, and the second person saying “cool. I think that if I don’t flip the light switch 40 times all my family will die”.

Please do not call ADHD medication "speed". It is chemically different from what you would find on the street. (Methylphenadate != Methamphetamine)

Associating doctor-perscribed medication with illegal drugs perpetuates a stigma which creates many problems for people struggling with ADHD.

Are the images AI upscaled or purely AI-generated?

They're "normal human foibles" because it's perfectly fucking normal and human to have ASD qualities.

It's almost like the whole thing is a spectrum, where people that have it feel the same emotions as neurotypical people, but they feel them more intensely.

There's also something to be said for admitting 5hat if your child is neurodivergent then you as a parent are probably neurodivergent

People have stopped socializing, at least not in a real, meaningful way. Discord groups of other shut-ins feeding off each other's insecurity doesn't count.

The lack of socialization means a lack of social validation so to feel any value at all, we all have to figure out how to carve out new identities in a much more lonely and dark world. Self-diagnosis of conditions and syndromes can give you insulation from criticism and give you a sense of community and belonging, so less effort is placed on managing or treating the condition and more effort is placed on affirming and defending your condition.

I'm not saying the conditions aren't real, they exist on a large spectrum that almost everyone falls on to some degree, but what's changed is the view of the conditions or syndromes as an obstacle to life that needs to be managed or beat. Instead it's a badge of identity that people work to justify and preserve, often without realizing it.

I've been in and out of the mental health system for years, I've done it to beat depression, PTSD and anxiety and have made great strides by accepting the hard truths of the things I need to do to make it easier to live with problems outside my control. But these are tools I embraced because I wanted to go outside, meet people, be more social and have more opportunities.

Not a lot of young people want any of that, they've been disillusioned by the promise of the future because the internet just feeds them the bleakest picture of the world that it can, and people don't generally seek out balancing perspectives on their own, and even resist any attempt to tell them that there's a lot of important reasons you might want to stretch your mental and social muscles.

Nearly everyone I talk to under the age of 25 or so says they can't imagine living past 40, with many saying that they actively have plans to not live past 40, which blows my goddamn mind.

Every single one of you whiny, nihilistic shits out there is going to hit age 40 and say "Oh fuck, what have I done with my life?"

I was in denial about being autistic for around a decade after I first had suspicion because of exactly the reasoning you provide.

To provide some insight to my experience is that I had to manually decode all the non-verbal communication with logic while keeping track of the verbal stuff and monitoring my own expression back when I was masking. That shit is exhausting. Masking isn't just picking a personality to wear based on the occasion, it's doing that while it doesn't come naturally and consciously tweaking behavior. Jokes on us, we give of the uncanny valley vibes when do that because it "feels off".

If there's something loud around me I will intensely try to hear what people say to me but I just can't because the surrounding is louder.

I was so bad at throwing and kicking balls that I was made fun of despite actually practicing both football and handball.

I went to sleep scared for a long time because I imagined people breaking in because of slightest squeek in the house.

It's also hard to explain how easy it is to have conversations with other autistic people vs normies.

Everybody pees once in a while but if you do it 20 times a day something might be wrong. Every ADHD/‘tism/bipolar trait is experienced by neurotypical people, but not to the degree someone with an actual diagnosis do.

These things happening once in a while is normal.

These things happening all the time is an issue.

For a lot of symptoms of adhd, autism and others it's not what you experience, but the frequency at which you experience and how detrimental it is for you because of the frequency.

Like, everyone needs to piss and shit. But if you're going 10 times every 2 hours, something is wrong.

Yeah most of it is just human symptoms. I definitely have it more compared to my friends though who cant keep up in conversations with me because I go so fast and switch topics in a millisecond. Its fun when I meet someone who can also do this.

Also. A large amount of people online do have adhd because of the dopamine hits triggered by arguing and getting comment responses. Go in the real world. Bob at the tire store is probably normal.

Didn't you know?

On Lemmy, everyone is a trans-feminine lesbian autist communist.

/joke

But seriously, doctors appointments are scary and time consuming and like half of Lemmy are Americans without healthcare.

White college educated males were considered the default in a lot of early and mid 20th century experimental psychology due to the availability of test subjects and biases of people running the experiments. The definition of neurotypical behavior came from a subset of the population.

ADD and ADHD are known to hinder progression through the education system. So, the cohort of people on that part of the spectrum were underrepresented. The bounds for being normal were skewed.

Also, medical intervention is typically only looked at when the mental condition causes a reduction of quality of life. Over the past generation, the need for a formal collegiate education has become greater in developed countries due to shifts in economics. A kid which would be considered energetic and absent minded a few generations ago would have a far greater chance in being economically successful compared to now.

Social media in general attracts autistic people, because it’s much easier to socialize without being judged or excluded.

By definition Autism and ADHD are disabilities that negatively impact your life relative to other people.

It’s important to have a word to label what the issue is in a neutral way, because if you don’t use the word autism, you get called words like “weird,” “creepy,” “stupid,” or the r-word. When none of those things are true. Your brain just doesn’t intuitively understand things the way other peoples’ does.

The ADA defines a person with a disability as a person who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activity. Socialization is a major life activity. Loneliness is a major cause of depression of death, and not being able to socialize well impacts your ability to maintain employment. When these issues aren’t managed, your ability to function in society is significantly impaired.

To me, this post is no different from saying “You’re not dyslexic, you just needed to try harder in spelling class.” When people have an issue, telling them it doesn’t exist isn’t helpful.

I've come to the conclusion that everyone is somewhere on the spectrum.

The question of whether to get a diagnosis is more about handling any issues that come from it. Some people need medication, some people needs extra help with certain things and some people just needs to know about it - in order to function in the way that makes sense to them.

If you need those things to function, it will help to get a diagnosis, because it can make it a lot easier to get that help, especially if it's medical.

But, make no mistake. Everyone has something. It's only a question of whether you need to treat it.

In a perfect world where there was no prejudice, we could be screening all school children and hand out paperwork along the grades, so you'd get an 8 in Math class and a 4 in ADHD. You know, just to get a full picture of the person.

But joking aside, there's no reason why teaching can't be more inclusive of these issues and just teach everyone as if they have autism and ADHD, even if they do not have a diagnosis. More often than not it's only a matter of being allowed extra time for certain tasks or a slightly more pedagogical approach. Everyone can benefit from that, so it's completely wrong to place diagnosed kids in special classes, when what is really needed is better educated teachers.