A Matter of Degree
I’ve thought about this a lot lately: For every person that tells me some version of “You’re weird.” I get another who says “So? Everyone’s like that!”
This is regarding autism, ADHD, depression, and anxiety…
It’s also for dysphoria (the condition related to my gender stuff). Lots of people — not a majority mind you, but many — have replied to my musings about wishing I could be a girl or have girl parts with “Oh yea, who doesn’t?”
Perhaps it’s because until recently I only shared those feelings and thoughts with a few people I thought might understand, and that creates selection bias. 🤷
It makes me wonder: Are we all actually neurotypical but most of us are in denial or completely unaware? Or is it just much more common to be neurodivergent than we’re led to believe?
Right now I think it’s the latter, but I don’t know how we could ever really find out for sure.
Conversations
I’m not entirely convinced “neurotypical” people exist. There’s people who can suppress/mask, and people who can’t/no longer want to.
Anonymous (1)
I [also] wonder if what we call “neurotypical” is more from a flattening affect due to trauma response from unrelenting social pressure.
My abnormal psych class (disorders) had one question to answer the first day of class. What is abnormal? Then we had to answer it again at the end of the year. There’s no such thing.
Anonymous (2)
I think for a lot of people, it’s a matter of degree. Like, I think it’s totally normal for cisgender people to think for a minute that it would be cool to be the other binary gender, but where that makes someone trans is when that occasional daydream becomes a genuine and regular desire and/or a significant discomfort not to be that way.
Anonymous (3)
I think it’s normal for people who define themselves as “straight” to think for a minute what it would be like to kiss someone of their own gender, but where that becomes queer is where it becomes desire.
In terms of neurodivergence, everyone is a little forgetful or spacey sometimes, or likes a certain routine a bit, or feels like they don’t know how to handle social situations, but there’s a difference between that and a diagnosable condition.
So when people feel judgmental or judged for these things it’s more about “Your traits are not strong or frequent or [whatever] enough to warrant special treatment or accommodation” rather than, “This is part of the universal human experience in exactly the same way.”
Doesn’t really change the sting of the statements, but perhaps illuminates the nuance of it.