Neurodiversity inclusion minimising difficulties

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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.

@SignOnTheWindow but sadly indicative of many professionals who should know better. Autism is a challenge for her but sadly still very much misunderstood - because she looks and sounds fine... until you look a bit closer. I was told by someone a few weeks ago that she couldn't be autistic because her speech and language is fine. By which they meant that she can talk clearly 🙄failed to notice that she doesn't understand as clearly...

Aw aren't we all so adorably quirky, and isn't everyone a bit autistic/ADHD/OCD/Tourettes/etc etc lol!?!

Ugh!! YADNBU, OP.

"Disorganised = Proactive"... I bloody wish!

Disorganised = Proactive? LOL.

I did realise I have a strength relating to being disorganised BTW. I am very very good at winging it probably at about 30-40% of my best performance. Not great but passable. I am fucking great when I'm on top of my game BTW. It's just a shame that is only about 5% of the time because I am so often forced to wing it. Unless there are really REALLY good structures for me getting organised in advance it aint gonna happen.

I would not in a million years class myself as proactive. Proactivity is exactly what the disorganisation robs from me.

And distracted = engaging? Surely they have that the wrong way around? I get distracted because the whole world is stupidly engaging to me but I don't think that makes me engaging to others. It tends to confuse them or piss them off.

I guess Difficult was a mistake. The positive flip side of difficult I would say is challenging, in the sense of challenging others to see new perspectives. It's difficult to word it into a positive in a single word. Provocative?

I think I agree
i have to be very open about my autism cos I am quite obviously autistic and work in the public sector so I help with working towards more inclusion of people like me
I have no acknowledgment this celebration week at all
I am disabled by my autism
I have intense meltdowns which means I need time off sick occasionally when I cannot keep it at home
i struggle to look after by my own since my dad died
I cannot take myself anywhere new so I miss out on lots of events organised by friends etc
part of me is looking at going to the drs soon cos I am almost sure a lot of my issues cannot “just” be autism when I see people managing to be normal but autistic?
I seriously starting to think I have some form of learning difficulties other than my diagnosed dyspraxia cos I really do no understand much of what goes on and the meltdowns are horrendous (currently sat here battered and bruised from a long one yesterday)
I struggle to speak up for myself as a lot of the time I cannot talk and even when I can it is scripted so to have what I call all these “clever” neurodivergent people making statements like autistic people are creative, think outside the box etc when it does to someone like me I can barely cope in day to day life
I had a good day today and got my smile back though 🙂

difficult = driven
The counselling service made a mistake in the initial poster so posted a new one.

Good to see many people agree. The post came from a local mental health service which is why I was questioning whether I was misunderstanding.

I see nothing wrong with celebrating the positives but attempting to reframe the negative wording of difficulties into positive words isn’t helping anyone. In this case the switching of many of the words don’t even make sense.

I'd like to hear some opinions on this, I've been really struggling to make sense of my thoughts.
Initially I kind of embraced the idea of neurodiversity - different but valid way of thinking and processing information. Judy Singers book says she meant it for HFA and Asperger's as was (she wrote her thesis coining the phrase in the 90s). So that's fine, sort of.
Also though, I see ocd and panic disorders added - twice today I've seen diagrams from fairly well followed places including them.
If ocd is treatable with medication and therapy, how can it be something to be celebrated? Especially when there would be a huge outcry if anyone suggested medication and therapy for autism.

Adding OCD is ridiculous. Noone who has experienced what it really entails could think of it as anything other than a seriously debilitating illness.

The poster is rubbish and does minimise things.

But I have found that educational and medical professionals do talk about my child in very negative ways that are focused on their experience of him as annoying/challenging/ difficult rather than his experience of the world. It might be nice if they reframed things a bit.

I sometimes have to say he isnt 'refusing to engage'. He isnt able to engage, he doesnt have the processing skills or more bluntly 'you are not engaging'. He isnt 'challenging' he is distressed. Im not sure if I am making sense. I wouldnt want to re-label 'distressed' as 'full of emotion, motion and sound" and make it sound great, but i would like things like his annual reviews to not be all about how difficult he is but how difficult he finds things.

Yes . At one stage I couldn't leave my room. I was exhausted and at the end of seeing any light.

This is very interesting. With my parent thinking, I worry that moving everything to a celebration will stop my child getting any help. But I can see that being misunderstood in this way is also depressing.

Yep that's as a PP said a very good example of toxic positivity, as well as being absolute nonsense.

I'm hardly any of the things on the "positive" side at the best of times.

Exactly! As if they think Autism is a wonderful gift that makes one become an amazing architect with a photographic memory, or able to break the bank of Monte Carlo by Card Counting.

It doesn't work like that for most people.

That Poster is nonsense.

I saw a diagram recently that had so many things under the umbrella of neurodiversity it ceased to be meaningful. I mean, they included 'cultural diversity'.

It's like the trans umbrella is now so wide that it no longer makes any sense. And I heard the term 'queering disability' which might sound funky but I'll bet doesn't make any disabled person's like materially better.

Yes the umbrellas I've seen appear to have a huge amount under them.

AHH, board,

Why be difficult when with a little more effort you (generic) can be downright impossible!

(Family saying)

Poor difficult. What did it do?

Spendonsend actually I think you have hit the nail on the head.

This is framing negative perceptions as positives, but actually they are often negative not only in the perception of a third party but in the neurotypical person's experience too.

We should be reframing "difficult behaviours" as difficulties the ND person is having coping with their environment or expectations. It doesn't make sense to pretend that these are just positives in disguise. This is how you jazz up a CV. Not address difficulties!

Thanks for this thread - you and others articulate a lot of my own discomfort about this messaging.

I have adhd, and I was diagnosed as a teen. There are some aspects of my adhd that meant I managed well during difficult times, but the end result of that is sky-high, debilitating anxiety, and racing thoughts that I compare to being stuck in a hamster wheel going 100mph. I seek dopamine in unhealthy ways, mainly eating sugar at the mo, and can't maintain routines or schedules. I set reminders and alerts and still forget to collect my dc from school. I am constantly forgetting something. The 'adhd tax' has cost me thousands this year alone. I feel pathetic a lot of the time, even though objectively I know I have achieved a lot and should be proud. I can't 'feel' it though. Thanks, emotional dysregulation!

I have a 'quirky' 9yo autistic daughter whose interception difficulties are so severe she can't tell when she needs a wee, or if she's hungry, or tired, or cold/hot. Her reading age is 15, she's obsessed with science, and would stay up all night reading, sitting in a puddle of her own urine. This is not something that can be spun into a super power, surely!

That’s bollocks
they missed of the bit where it’s a superpower
also bullocks

I really don't like the idea of it being a "celebration week". No doubt hijacked by those claiming that autism isn't a disability and is a superpower.

Definitely minimising challenges. My autistic DD is so anxious that it is ruining her life. Fidgeting is definitely not her being energetic. She is quiet because she struggles to express herself or lacks self belief. She is unfocused because her anxiety makes her feel overwhelmed. I don’t find this poster helpful either.

*interoception

I understand the intention behind the poster but it's very poorly executed. When we discuss neurodiversity it's almost always what somebody can't do. All of the negative things about them. Even when you live with it or live with somebody ND everyday, a diagnostic report can be quite jarring to read when everything "wrong" is all on laid out on one sheet of paper.

However, turning all of those difficulties into a positive doesn't help anybody. Calling traits a different name doesn't make them have a different impact. IMHO it just makes it more palatable to a NT society who already pretend that ND people don't exist or need accomodations.