My personal theory is that the industrial revolution created more neurodivergence. The fact that stuff like computers and trains are common obsessions means that the development of technology is making life more neurodivergent friendly. My grandfather worked for Rolls Royce so I’ve got tech genes in me.
Alcoholics, Maniacs, Idiots, Shell Shocked, the Insane…
There was this baseline assumption of normality, and then there was this hyper-dramatized lunatic or raving drunk, and you weren’t supposed to really notice anyone in between. The idea of a high performing addict or adaptive neurodivergent was nearly non-existent. Two people with ADHD could be staring sideways at a third in disgust, simply because the third wasn’t well-socialized or required some amount of assistance to get around.
I’m 52 now… Probably about 10 or 15 so, I meet my kindergarten teacher (relatively small community) and she told me that she was among the first teachers that allowed children to be left handed.
Definitely have shitty left handed writing and ADHD!
Woah, I’ve never thought of this and want to see this. Anyone who’s left handed but forced to write with their right, who want to write the same sentence twice with either hand and attach a pic?
Then theres the flipside where you function too well to get any supports, but getting that level of functioning takes an insanely prioritized lifestyle that leaves you failing at basically everything, but not enough to get supports, but in order to fail enough to get supports you’d have to lose the little you have that you are desperately trying to cling on to
You gotta live in the world that exists, not the one you wish for.
But also, you gotta strive for the world you wish for while living in the one that exists.
There’s a big gray area between “being an asshole” and “refusing to constantly eat other people’s shit”, and a lot of what’s acceptable to ask for is merely what’s in vogue rather than what’s needed.
I have a middle aged cousin with severe, untreated autism and he had to learn to live alone, get a job, pay rent, etc.
My friend’s sister has Down’s Syndrome and she’s learning to walk again after breaking her ankle at the job that pays her less than subsistence, because that’s a thing you can legally do to people with Down’s Syndrome.
This is largely what I see as well. People who under any definition would largely fit under the umbrella of “normal” but got a diagnosis of autism, adhd, bipolar, etc. and use it as an excuse to shirk basic responsibilities. And I think this further stigmatizes the problem for people further down the tails of the spectrum who really do need assistance. In some of these mild cases its even been a parent who pushed for the diagnosis when the child was young simply to get them medicated and become less of a hassle. I often think especially with fuzzy definitions like an arbitrary point on a spectrum of behavior of normal on one side and pathological on the other ends up being interpreted universally wrongly for whatever purpose best suits the patient. Largely the same vibe as conversations about xenogender and stuff, labels can have negative utility. It also starts to set some really horrific logic in place for normalizing the use of mood stabilizers/adderall which is an implicit acceptance that the world is immutable and we must change to meet its needs rather than pushing against the ever encroaching walls the rich are erecting around us. I actually do expect people to suffer alongside me striving for a better future… and if you medicate yourself into a complacent coma, whether it be through weed/alcohol/adderall, I will hold it against you. But I also acknowledge that the root cause is a system we’ve created that is so hostile to humanity it requires medication to simply exist.
I agree with what you’re saying, though It can be difficult to tell from the outside how much help a person needs. I ‘act’ normal and feel like I have to pretend to be someone else, most people would probably assume I’m ‘normal’, this can make things complicated for friends and family that don’t see the level of internal struggle. Especially when my brain tells me I must not be seen as abnormal, I must do everything I can to maintain the image of being normal.
That’s part of what I was trying to get at with the second half of my comment. Forcing yourself to appear normal masks reality, pushes the definition of normal further towards homogeneity, reinforces the need for everyone to be medicated to accept reality. But I also think there is a problem with your definition of normal: literally everyone, even the genuinely happiest person alive, is filled to the brim with fear/uncertainty/doubt–that is literally life and its a choice to be happy and make positive connection with people in spite of the nihilism underneath existence. That isn’t something to medicate away, in some philosophical interpretations its the entire point of life. It’s a lifelong project to learn how to deal with these feelings, they tell us when there’s a problem that we need to spend energy to fix, they should be embraced. But I also recognize that the way things “ought” to be is not the same as what’s required to achieve that end result. If you need to medicate in order to help bring about a better future where you wouldn’t need medication… so be it.
Some people are always going to need medication though. That’s what having an executive function disorder means. Would you refuse a person with a broken arm to have medical treatment and pain killers because it’s natural to die from sepsis?
I agree with you, there isn’t truly a ‘normal person,’ we all do suffer from the affliction of life and having an intellect. I also agree that we should embrace the odd differences, how boring would a homogenous world be?
What I’m referring to is different than difficult emotional states though, my brain interprets the world in different ways and I have different and more intense responses to stimuli. I’ve learned to cope with the emotional aspect, but it is difficult to put into words the way my brain operates and how that affects my action.
It feels like I’m trying to walk with no legs sometimes, if I was actually wheelchair bound it would be clear, but it isn’t even clear to me what is happening internally.
I also forgot to mention my cousin was born and raised and lives in Central America, so a place without assistance, so his mom worked her ass off to make sure he was fit to take care of himself when she’s gone.
I equate it to my North American wife, who had a learning disability, and instead of pushing her to work hard and overcome it, her parents pulled her out of certain classes, and avoided teaching her anything that seemed “too complicated”. So once she moved out, she had no clue how to deal with anything. Took her forever to get accustomed.
Sounds like YOU gotta live in the world that exists, not the one you wish for.
Glad your cousin, a one-off individual that you know, got a job and could afford rent. I’ve worked myself to near death at plenty of jobs, and have never made enough to cover rent for myself. Let alone food, bills, etc.
Get down off your high horse and quit measuring our lives by your ruler.
Edit: This guy shows up, spouts some nasty judgement against ND folks, compared us all to their cousin who is “one of the good ones”, and I’m the one getting down voted? What the actual fuck?
They had all of it, they just lumped it all in with Down Syndrome and colloquially referred to any neurodivergent people as retards.
And they beat the shit out of these “retards”, and at the suggestion of doctors/principals the parents sent them to military school/boarding school/catholic school/mental institutions where they got the shit beat out of them. All they learned was how to hide their condition and suffer in silence.
That’s true to an extent, but maybe there’s more to it than that. The older people I know seem to have more, well, I’m not sure how to put it… Willpower? My psychologist is an elderly woman and she says that if she decides she ought to do something, she just does it. What she feels doesn’t matter. My older relatives act like that too. Their ability to endure emotional (and physical) pain and keep going is remarkable.
With ADHD it’s kind of technically true lmao, part of ADHD is a difficulty building the “willpower” to do basic daily tasks, at least in my experience. However what helps to build that is medication and/or therapy
My belief is that willpower isn’t something a person “just” needs - it’s one of most precious and hard to acquire things a person can have. It also doesn’t fix mental health problems, but it helps cope with them. I say that as someone who has just barely enough willpower to keep my own life from falling apart, even with medication and the help of my family. I don’t know how to get more of it so I’m not going to be dismissive of other people who also don’t have as much as they might want.
To some extent, the coping mechanisms we (the old people) had to figure out ourselves did work. Stuff got done. The cost? Depression, anxiety, all that good stuff.
Yes, most of us survived - but life would have been so much better (and more productive) if we could have gotten the right help at the right time.
So, yes: We made it, it SUCKED, let’s not make people go through this needlessly.
People are downvoting you, but I think you are on to something.
My parents and grandparents are/were quite similar to me, but never diagnosed. It wouldn’t surprise me if a few of them also have/had ADHD.
That said, without therapy or medication I noticed that they learned to just plough through. That was their coping strategy. It isn’t 100% successful, but it was what they had.
I also think the distractions of modern life don’t help. With smartphones, the internet, games and streaming services - there are just so many distractions that make life harder.
Perhaps “ploughing through” would work better without all the distractions.
I think you are right to an extent, but the philosophy isn’t healthy, though I don’t think you are wrong in pointing it out, you are just pointing to the cracks in the sidewalk. I think it’s more in line with the idea of being born without a finger or a hand. As you progress in life you adjust and learn to live with your disability. It’s the same for mental health, except that you can’t just point to your missing attention span and say, “it’s a disability.” People want proof, otherwise they think you are trying to take advantage (a problem that arose in the late 50s as a response to the Beat generation, and propagated by the government through Vietnam and onwards). The older generations have the same problems as us, but if they are old enough to be around to talk about it then they have learned to adapt. This is a dangerous way of thinking in the same way that it’s dangerous for a parent to tell a teen that life isn’t that difficult in high school. Sure, with more life experience it may be easier to cope, but that experience doesn’t mean fuck all to the teen dealing with bullying. Problems are problems, and ignoring your fellow human isn’t the cure, it’s just another disease. Be kind.
Let’s not forget the survivorship bias at play here. I don’t want to take this somewhere morbid, but the older people you know survived to make it to be old. There were people from their generation with undiagnosed issues that did not.
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