![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Dec. 16th, 2020 06:32 amI 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.
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.
