Neurodiversity inclusion minimising difficulties

[Stickysnail]

It’s neurodiversity celebration week so many positive messages are popping up on social media at the moment.
I saw the one below about changing the narrative- in my view this type of thinking minimises the difficulties and stops people getting the support they need.
For example fidgety turns to energetic. To me it’s not about being energetic , it could be being over stimulated or uncomfortable with a situation.
Quiet changes to thoughtful. It’s important to look at why someone is being quiet, why aren’t they making themselves heard. Stating they are thoughtful brushes over the underlying difficulties.

I am happy to accept I’m wrong if I am, perhaps I am looking at this the wrong way.

what a load of rubbish

(Not you @Stickysnail )

That poster is bollocks.

I have ADHD and that poster is absolute crap.

in my view this type of thinking minimises the difficulties and stops people getting the support they need.

Yes, you are absolutely right.

Agreed. Who in the world thought that nonsense a good idea?

Totally agree with you. Unfortunately its the unintended effect of trying to make positive disability.

Difficult = difficult?

It’s the problem with the increasing tendency for the spectrum of neurodiversity being reduced to and represented by those who are what used to be called “high functioning” - the ones who are most capable of making their voices heard. I doubt any parent of a profoundly autistic child sees many of their child’s difficulties which will prevent them from ever living independently as worthy of celebration.

There has been a lot of concern among clients and professionals too about the spectrum element. It doesnt seem to work for anyone as a diagnostic tool or even descriptor.

My feeling is that people are trying to use language to turn ND traits into NT traits.

If I see one more cheesy thing about how neurodiversity is like a superpower... I will scream.

ASD, ADHD, Dyslexia.

I'm dyspraxic. I wonder what way they'd rephrase "clumsy as fuck"?

High pain threshold?
Did you really like that mug anyway?

Acrobatic 😆

Yes - it's a 'you're not doing neurodivergence properly' thing.

I do stuff in spite of those things. And whilst sometimes thinking differently can help with all.e problem solving, that's just some of the time.

Sometimes I am overloaded and need to rest, away from people. I am not being thoughtful, I'm trying to mitigate overload!

There's a very interesting and balanced episode of the podcast "antisocial" talking about exactly this on BBC sounds at the moment.

I also think people then lose understanding of how disnaling aspects of these conditions can be, in a world that is absolutely not geared for ND people.

There was a good piece from Christine McGuiness highlighting how many young, autistic women are sexually assaulted/ abused/ taken advantage of. Which is the stuff we should be looking at.

I'm what some would consider 'high functioning' I can do some things very well, that others may struggle with (not 100% sure how much is down to ND though - I've worked bloody hard to get good at my job over decades). But then fail to see how I simply cannot do other tasks that most people find super easy.

Argh. I despair when I hear the term "high functioning" used to describe certain people on the spectrum.

"High functioning" referred to language acquistion, not capability. (I'm pretty sure that this category has now been folded into the umbrella diagnosis autism in the DSMV.

If I'd been born with a differently shaped arm, it might have made me stronger in many ways. I would be proud of that, and certainly not ashamed. I'd also be really annoyed by people minimising both my challenges and achievements with posters telling me that actually, let's reframe having half an arm and 2 fingers as 'able to reach into small spaces'.
Or if anxiety was now 'preparing yourself for the whole range of outcomes'.

But apparently we have to live with this stuff. It's often shared by a small group of people who really really like to talk about being neurodivergent - almost all self-diagnosed, of course.

Appreciate that diagnosis can be difficult as an adult and missed as a child, but by definition, most of the people who haven't been diagnosed (or self-diagnosed) until adulthood have had life less disrupted by being ND.

As someone who has been diagnosed after some very clear challenges from childhood, and the parent of a child who is the same, I find it incredibly frustrating to hear 'Neurodiversity is my Superpower!' and the like. It can be. Part of the reason I'm good at my job is undoubtedly neurodiversity. It's also been a massive challenge in my life. It's cost me friends, opportunities, jobs, so much money. If I don't track it, my 'talks out of turn' is not 'passionate' it's 'overwhelming amount of data, delivered incomprehensible speed'. My child's 'quiet' is often not 'thoughtful' but 'totally overwhelmed and disassociating'. This fluff doesn't help us celebrate our strengths and achievements or get the right accommodation for our challenges.

Given my dd's consultant diagnosed her with 'she has asd but it doesn't affect her' I am not sure the general public have much hope of understanding...

The fuck?! That's really bad.

Yup! It's bullshit. I'm brilliant at my job and a big part of that is my neurodiversity. But, and this is a big but, there are times I really struggle. Last week, I had access removed from some software I use every day that's vital for my role. It had been done in error. Cue my getting stressed, anxious and melting down. I'm really lucky that my line manager gets it and helped me enormously.

This is what happens when half an instagram claims they are ADHD and make it into cute "superpowers" ffs

As if I am engaging when I am distracted. Fuck no. I am somewhere on a beach fighting giant squid because I added calamari to my shopping a day before

This is exactly what happens when the net for diagnosis is cast so wide. There was a thread about this today but it's been deleted by MNHQ.
What used to be personality quirks and difficult periods in people's lives is now a diagnosis.
It's made people more comfortable to talk about it but actually it's only comfortable when someone is NT passing and the ND behaviours are just quirks.
We need levels for this.

Yeah, it's like people saying being autistic is a super power or a gift. It's only said by people with seemingly no clue.