I see this on Imgur and Bluesky as well. Here’s a great example, and the one that prompted me to finally ask. My daughter has autism and ADHD. She takes speed to slow down. Best friend is ADHD, same deal. But they’re basically “normal” people. I’m truly sorry is this comes off as insensitive.
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It’s normal to be aware of how people perceive us. We are apes. Need I elaborate?
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We ALL mess up more when someone is watching. Forget the word, but it’s a well-known psychological tic.
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Yes, we all conform and hide parts of ourselves in public, doesn’t mean you can’t “be yourself”. Want to see someone who doesn’t mask at all? Trump.
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If you’re not aware of threats, Darwin would like a word. And yes, many things we perceive as threats are dumb monkey perceptions. We’re all silly in this way.
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Uh, I double check my door locks. Not paranoid, but my situation in America makes that a simple, smart move. Some people live around lots of strangers, checking your private space is a normal thing.
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We all hate being stared at. That’s a monkey threat. We evolved that way.
The “suspicious sounds” thing is the only part I’d pick out as a bit strange. But who hasn’t jumped when the ice maker kicks in? I’ve often thought someone crawled in the dog door. (A bear did one time, a hybrid wolf another, so let me slide on that one.)
I can go on /c/autism and pick 100 other memes for examples. Almost every single thing I see there, “Yeah, we all go though that/feel that way/do that thing.” Here’s one:
https://piefed.cdn.blahaj.zone/posts/6k/Lb/6kLbDigyQuftk4k.jpg
Doesn’t everyone do that now and again?! I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
Serious questions:
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Does lemmy have an above normal number of autistic/ADHD people?
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Is this perception a way for young people to feel special and different?
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Maybe young people don’t realize just how fucking weird growing up is and think they have a problem?
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Do people not realize that even after adulthood, we all have weird foibles?
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Are people so socially isolated that they think their weird thoughts are uncommon?
Just want to start the discussion. Help me understand.
It’s normal to pee. It’s not normal to pee 200 times a day.
Apply that to any ADHD symptom and you’ll understand.
Girls used to be 16x less likely than boys to be diagnosed, now only 3x less likely, because traditional ADHD criteria excluded girls and women from their studies. Girls are sociallized differently and thus present different symptoms. Girls are also more heavily penalized for typical ADHD symptoms and are forced to learn to mask better.
A lot of the backlash against women speaking about their ADHD symptoms on social media is due to misogyny and gatekeeping. When women present their experiences, it’s often seen as attention seeking behavior and not treated as an account of how the medical system has once again failed women.
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”.
Because ever since 2016, the Great Societal Meltdown of the World (moreso America), everyone became armchair psychologists, scientists, researchers and therapists. Where, we just toss that bundle of word salad around, play label games and guesstimate who has what. There is no longer a thing such as ‘normal’ because everyone has to have something with them.
Quite frankly, we’ve gotten too fucking bored as a species.
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.
This. Everyone experiences these feelings at some point, but when they start having an outsized impact on your life, there might be a cause such as Autism/ADHD.
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
Completely relate. Pretty normal… Except for… list pending.
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.
That is starting to make sense. Yet I’ve never met a human that experiences these things non-stop. My daughter can be “off” sometimes, but she’s mostly not. And yes, I understand it’s a spectrum, there are degrees.
Have you also thought of the idea that maybe she’s masking some of those symptoms around you? A lot of the language in your post seems judgmental, if just ignorant. It could be she’s willing and able to internalize those symptoms around you or other people in order to make her life easier - lots of us do it around family because a LOT of parents wind up coming out of the gate sounding like you, and it’s easier to just go “look I’m fine” rather than have to justify our diagnosis constantly.
Autism, especially what used to be considered “high functioning” autism like Asperger’s, isn’t always a “constant” feeling of these symptoms anymore than an average schizoaffective person or someone with BPD or someone with bipolar is constantly experiencing their own symptoms. You have good days, you have bad days, and you have triggers and sometimes you can nut up even on the bad days and go to work or school or whatever. Autistic people aren’t constantly Rainman-ing their way through life, or constantly reenacting Sheldon from Big Bang Theory or whatever your popular conception is.
You’re already saying “she’s mostly not off”, so why is it so hard to believe that she has this disorder, or that it’s hard to take the next step and say “huh, she says that the medicine really helps and makes it easier for her, so I’ll believe her on that.”. I understand wanting the best and worrying about things like chemical dependency, but her doctor should be - and almost certainly IS - monitoring for this at regular checkups.
Intensity is also important. One symptom of autism for me is compulsive tendencies. The things on the shelf have a correct order and it bothers me if they aren’t in that order. Food has a correct order to eat it in and I don’t go back and forth between things or mix things together. Various daily tasks have to be done in a certain order.
I don’t have OCD. The difference is that I can still function if these things are done wrong, it causes anxiety and agitation but not beyond a level that I can deal with. Someone with OCD might have the exact same tendencies but not be able to move forward without “fixing” whatever is wrong even if fixing it causes them injury or prevents them from dealing with more important things. Everyone wants to wash their hands sometimes. People without strong compulsions stop before their hands bleed.
“Popular” definition of autism changed from actual disorder to anything “on the spectrum” and since everyone is on the spectrum somewhere everyone can say they have autism now. It’s like saying you’re gay because you don’t find all men disgusting.
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.
Dude with autism chiming in here. I often compare it to being “born without a user manual”. Ever since I was a kid it was like everyone around me just knew what to do without being told while I had to have even the most basic things explained to me. This is far worse in social situations because sometimes there are feelings on the line and often people just don’t think enough about social cues to properly explain them.
I’m the kind of autistic that can pass as neurotypical with relative ease, but getting there was a real trial and error kind of process and I can’t really say it was great for my mental health. The comment I’m responding to talked about how you never stop masking and how your constantly aware your not normal. That’s what’s fucked me up historically. “You’re not normal so figure out how to at least pretend” was the bat I used to beat myself with and among neurodivergent folks that’s probably depressingly common.
Sometimes when I talk to folks about this they’ll say something along the lines of “well if masking takes so much effort just stop doing it, I don’t mind”. And man do I wish I could sometimes. But when you learn how to do that basically from the start “masking”, or at least some of the tools and behaviors associated with it, become fundamental to how you interact with the world. This isn’t just something we can turn off or on like a lightswitch. This is something that we’re constantly locked into. Sometimes it feels like just existing takes effort. And when that’s your baseline? There’s just not space for a lot else.
Like Bluefruit said, it’s a matter of degrees. You can be neurotypical and feel this way sometimes too. At it’s core, none of these feelings are special or inherently neurodivergent. It’s the degree to which we feel them that’s different. That and frequency. Everyone’s had to preform for a job interview or something. But having to preform constantly, even for loved ones? It can get to be pretty rough.
It’s a pretty common thing nowadays to self-diagnose. Some understandably want an answer to why they are how they are, while others want to feel like they’re original and unique.
However, getting an actual diagnosis from a licensed psychiatrist is paramount to understanding and managing one’s behavior, emotional state, and well being. Self-diagnosis is dangerous to these same things.
Being autistic isn’t cute. It’s not silly and quirky. For many, it’s hell. And having ADHD doesn’t excuse poor decisions and bad behavior like a lot of people seem to assume it does.
Having said this- many people who self-diagnose try to see normal human behavior as being neurodivergent behavior when it’s not. Anyone who knows better would have learned this back with the basics when they were diagnosed by a professional.
I’m living with undiagnosed Adhd for all of my life. My son got a diagnosis when he was 6 or 7 - thus I know the symptoms, and frankly I know too much of the diagnosis method now to get myself an honest diagnosis. (I know how to answer to get the results I want). And I don’t need it anymore, I adjusted my life to play more into my strengths and less into my weaknesses. (And the last 10 years - in my 50s - I feel like symptoms are getting milder)
The complicated thing is: Every single symptom of adhd is being experienced by the majority of normal people. It’s just being “more” of that statistically.
It feels like setting the difficulty level on a video game, you’ll see the same things, you’ll see the same bosses. You play on hard while the guy how got to play life in story mode tells you how lazy you are because you didn’t fight all the bosses, yet.
A big part of dealing with adhd is accepting that my challenge is mine and is different from yours.
And that probably is why “being neurodivergent” is so “attractive”. It gives us the freedom of not being seen as lazy or stupid, and that’s something that I think should really apply to every single fucking human on this world.
We all have our challenges. You are OK as you are. You are worthy of love. And yes, life is hard, you’re not lazy.
If seeing people like this were the norm, “neurotypical” people wouldn’t need to see themselves as divergent. People just use “adhd” or “autism” to say “look, I have my challenges, too”.
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.
Some of us are just sitting here nodding along to 90% of the memes and struggling continuously with basic daily function but also past puberty and thus completely unable to even get checked for any kind of diagnosis due to a crumbling and outdated healthcare system.
The only thing in this list that I relate to is the masking, so I’ll address that
Yes, we all conform and hide parts of ourselves in public, doesn’t mean you can’t “be yourself”.
As I understand it, when a neurotypical person is hiding parts of themselves, it’s something like “I don’t want anyone to know I’m into Taylor Swift”. So just don’t talk about it. It’s that simple. For me, I have to think about every word I say because no one interprets things literally. If someone asks me whether or not I like Taylor Swift and I want to answer in the affirmative, can I just say yes? Or do I need to take note of the day of the week and say no while gesturing wildly with my left hand when it’s a Monday or look 15º to the left from Wednesday to Friday? When we talk about masking, it’s that, applied to every single sentence coming out of your mouth. Comparatively, never talking about Taylor Swift is a trivial task.
Masking is also exhausting because it takes so much energy to focus and process these things. If you are completely drained after every, even short, casual social interaction, that’s a sign there’s something going on. The diagnostic criteria apply when things that everyone experiences in some form are so overwhelming it is disabling.
The same way not everyone who gets sad has depression or not everyone who gets nervous has anxiety
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.
