(no subject)

[adrienmundi]

I find myself lately quite annoyed with how much I have in common with ADD and autism folks, and I don't quite understand it (the annoyance). A fair number of my friends are one or both of these types of people (some with medical diagnostic history, some without), so my data set is based both on personal experience as well as an interested layperson's occasional research.

A cleverly insightful friend has pointed out that it's hard to pick up on my own possibly validating symptoms because my masking game is quite strong (said friend is very aware of much of what I'm masking: my social deception game precedes primary school). A large part of my active personality is made up of layers of overlapping coping strategies.

I don't get annoyed with ADD/autistic/neurodivergent people in general, I don't think. I do get annoyed at the mass media/advertising driven watering down of diagnostic categories to be effectively meaningless (ex. see "migraine" adds for OTC acetaminophen + caffeine "cures) and/or include everyone who ever gets distracted, hyperfocused, or socially awkward. I also get annoyed with people who say "Since I have xxxxx, I can't do yyyy" as a fait accompli, rather than the beginning of a conversation about mitigation and frustrations around it.

Example: driving home from voting yesterday, I decided to stop at a local responsible liquor store to pick up some whiskey and gin. Their pandemic strategy is to block their door, and you tell someone what you want so they ring it up and bring it to you, maintaining social distance. I recited my list over and over in my head, feeling a bit like the Sesame Street kid sent to the store, only my list was "Bunnahabhain scotch, Writer's Tears Irish whiskey, Suntori Toki if one of the first wasn't available, and then either Hendricks Orbium or Drumshanbo Gunpowder gin."

The first thing out of my mouth was, "Drumshanbo scotch..." to which the clerk furrowed their brow and asked for clarification.

I get acutely embarrassed with mental/linguistic faux pas like that. While I don't recall, I was probably pulled into attention and/or made fun of as a child for similar things (which triggers my intense frustration with still being actively impacted by my childhood this many decades later). Many of my autistic friends have assured me recitation of conversation in advance may be symptomatic; for me I think of it as "something that I've often done", a part of normal life.

This isn't to list some symptoms I have in common with neurodivergent folk, because I think the symptoms are things everyone experiences from time to time; it's the frequency and associated distress/dysfunction that carry weight. Rather, I'm not sure why I'm so annoyed by my own overlap, and that makes me more annoyed.

Comments

[ouranophobe]

Query: are you venting/seeking supportive responses, investigating/seeking responses in the "helpful" range, or something else?

[adrienmundi]

I'm rarely seeking the hollow "You go, girl!" affirmation upon which a fair portion of the internet runs, particularly if I'm writing on this platform. I think I'm interested in perspectives other than my own, particularly if I've thunk myself into a corner.

I appreciate the asking, which strengthens my suspicion that you could almost certainly follow your intuition on this and be quite all right.

[ouranophobe]

Noted, and I will endeavor to keep that in mind. I trend toward a sort of thinking that is not always welcome, so I have learned to ask. I have three threads of thought on this. NB: I am very much neuroqueer, and neurodivergent along multiple axes.

Also, apologies in advance, this has gotten rather long.

First, examining the annoyance:

Query: to what degree might the annoyance stem from you not having a diagnosis that explains the traits in question, your having been, to use your words, pulled into attention and/or made fun of as a child for these traits, and the neurodivergent people with whom you're noting similarities being "allowed" to be thus?

What brings me to ask this is from the complete opposite side... I wasn't diagnosed with ADD until I was 31. Living with undx'ed ADD and being held to NT standards (which I could not possibly meet in such state) led me to have what, it turns out, are unreasonable expectations of the way NT folx brains work. I've (rather recently) learned that I get terribly vexed when NT people forget things, have executive function issues, don't/can't pay attention, lose track of time and/or are late for things, and so on. I have been rather harshly criticized for these traits for as long as I can remember, which caused me to think that these were things with which Other People™ did not have issues. (As an aside, I do not take it that my dx gives me an excuse / allows such, rather it gives me some insight into the things I need to do to mitigate my issues, presenting me with a framework of already-extant research into solutions to apply to help me interface with a world that requires such things.)

My experience on that side of it makes me wonder if, perhaps, from your side of it, you might see people (to some degree or another) getting slack for things for which you get/have gotten none? I could see that being annoying on that deep level childhood at which trauma often operates. Anyway, that's just a stab in the relative dark.

Second, regarding neurodiversity and the watering down of diagnostic categories:

It may be helpful to consider that a fundamental point of neurocosmopolitainism is that neurodivergence v. neurotypicality is a false binary. Rather, neurocognitive function is simply another form of biodiversity.

ADD and Autism are not the only forms of neurodiversity (despite the people who insist that "neurodivergent" is, basically, the politically correct term for "Autistic"), and, frankly, "neurotypicality" is far more narrow a band of neurocognitive function than calling it "typicality" implies. Which is to say that diagnostic categories for an umbrella term like "neurodivergent" are rather meaningless. Autism is Autism, AD(H)D is AD(H)D, Sensory Processing (or Integration) Disorder is Sensory Processing (or Integration) Disorder, but they're all forms of neurodivergence. So is (clinical) depression, (clinical) anxiety, bipolar, HSP, and on and on. Heck, so is being "giftie". Or aphantasic. Or, or, or.

This is not simply postmodernism (or Mad Theory) run amok, but honestly, this comment has gone on well past long enough and I still have another point to make.

Third, regarding the overlap you are noting:

There's lots of overlap between HSP and Autism, AD(H)D and Autism (to the point that some people want to say AD(H)D is on the spectrum, but I'd argue contra), HSP or SPD and AD(H)D or Autism... HSP and SP(I)D can be quite hard to tell apart from the outside, on and on. My point about this (and the previous point) being that while you may not be autistic or have AD(H)D, you may have some other form of neurodivergence (that may or may not be considered clinical/"disordered" *spit*) that has overlaps with the forms of neurodivergence to which you refer.

That is, it is well within the realm of the possible that you are neurodivergent, even if you're not autistic and don't have AD(H)D.

Anyway, hopefully some of this rambling is in some way useful.

[adrienmundi]

Long form suits you, as well as the topic at hand: no need for apology or self-restraint funneled through externalized expectations as far as I'm concerned.

With regard to diagnoses, I've not been a fan for decades. I suspect this is an upshot of my own trans and queer identities refusing to be contained within the binary structures that would make the gatekeepers and majoritarians comfortable (this is probably a topic for many future posts).

I think my frustration comes, rather, from the fear that diagnoses, even if not clinically generated, would be constraints rather than frameworks to assist me (I've realized for ages how lucky I was that ADD wasn't in the cultural zeitgeist when I was a child because my mother would have had me on speed-for-kids in a heartbeat; so much easier to throw a ready made, authority sanctioned solution at a problem of a child than to help them develop unique, generative practices).

Whether accurate or not, I've come away with interactions from some diagnosed ND people with the feeling that a diagnosis is static, unchangeable, and an immobile marker of accommodation expected in future dealings. Ungenerous, perhaps, and it could be that I encountered people not at their best, recently post-diagnosis, and did not give them the time to blossom into something larger, less constrained and unique.

WRT so-called NTs and their majoritarian shortcomings, I think you may be quite on the mark. My frustration with people who don't have to manage multiple distractions, ennui, tristitia, usw. are well documented and nigh-overwhelming. When I can herd my attention and thought processes in the same direction, I want to go fast, and having to continually slow down and explain the 101 shit when I really want to talk about the 603/803 level stuff, is maddening.

Second point: you had me at neurocosmopolitanism (really, any cosmopolitanism). I reject binaries wherever I encounter them, up to and including NT/ND. I think this goes back to my fear of diagnoses (in any arena) being limiting: the solidification of a position in relation to the "standard" being an endpoint, a fixity, rather than a permeable membrane that can drift, expand and contract.

I think that blends into your third point: I am exploring the idea of identifying as ND (I occasionally see, less frequently, hear things; based on solipsistic empiricism, my mind appears to work differently than most; I am always running 'least bad disaster models' for social situations in my head; I anticipate how my signal transmissions are received and interpreted by the (paltry) lexical models of others, usw.), while at the same time worrying that not having a diagnosis makes me a tourist in territory in which others live, while simultaneously wanting to resist yet another set of bonds and limits on my experience of self and the world.

[ouranophobe]

I have a long history of making gatekeepers and majoritarians uncomfortable, and I look forward to reading any posts you opt to share on that topic in future.

I don't know how much you read in the realm of Mad Studies, but there are a significant number of mad folk who explicitly eschew diagnosis because of the foreclosure of possibilities that often accompanies a clinical diagnosis. For example, AD(H)D is classified as a "learning disability" when it is honestly more of a "learning-style mismatch" with what Paulo Freire terms the "banking model of education." There are those who use diagnoses as heuristics for specific collections of "problems" and respond to the disclosure of a diagnosis by expecting those problems, whether or not they manifest in the specific case. This is one of the primary reasons I never registered my diagnoses with the Disability Resource Centre at any college or university I've attended.

I take the diagnostic criteria for my clinical forms of neurodivergence as a toolset to help me understand neurotypical expectations in those areas. For example: the "inattentive" criterion "Does not seem to listen when spoken to directly" tells me that NT folk need some sort of outward performance of attentiveness, which may vary by observer. That sort of thing. Any tool, after all, is only as useful as one makes it.

Of course, I write all of this from the perspective of having sought diagnosis for myself as an adult, and my diagnoses being of a sort that rarely results in the imposition of involuntary treatment protocols when one is an adult. I've never been forcibly medicated and/or institutionalized. I choose when I take the drug that best helps me mask my ADD during those times I want to mask, and I choose when to work with my ADD, instead of against it. My antidepressant is not nearly so flexible, but I am lucky enough to have been prescribed one that works very well for me with no-to-minimal side-effects. I am exceptionally lucky and recognize that my case is uncommon.

All of those to say that, at the end of the day, I think the question of whether to seek a clinical diagnosis is one of weighing the tools such may provide and what value you may find in them.

Coming back to your original post, is any of this helping to shine a light on the specific aggravations you have? What I am gathering from what you've written thus far is that a major source of aggravation might be the oversimplification and reduction involved with neurocognitive norms and standards, as well as the choice made by some to take diagnoses as an excuse to make demands on others, rather than as a tool for self-knowledge and growth. Have I parsed your intended meaning correctly?