“If all your friends jumped off of a bridge, would you do that too?”
You mean like bungee jumping? Well, no, because I live on the top floor of a highrise and cross over bridges pretty much every day, and I wouldn’t want to tempt myself to seek a recurring thrill. I’d be okay with my friends going, though, as long as they did so safely, and maybe I’d even go along to watch them, you know, cheer them on and take some photos.
And I know that’s not what you were asking; I merely find responding to common sayings as if I were taking them literally to be an amusing game in how far I can drag it. Or maybe it’s an autism thing, but that runs counter to your point. But I digress, as I always do, which also runs counter to your point.
"Neurodivergent", a word that seems to appear everywhere in my social circle at this point in my life, wasn't a thing when I was young. The conditions we most commonly put under this category currently were known at the time (autism, ADHD) but even then they were barely recognized, and only, from what I saw, in white boys with especially disruptive behaviour. With all the hindsight I've developed from learning more about these terms, hoo boy, there were many more kids left undiagnosed, including most of my closest friends. But culture has grown, language has evolved, and the kids who weren't listened to at the time can speak more clearly now as adults, so voices are being shared. Exposure to this has profoundly changed my inner world.
This is not the first area of my life, and most certainly won’t be the last, with a terminology turf war, where people argue about where the line is drawn in acceptable use of, or who lays claim to, a novel piece of language. In formal use, autism and ADHD are the core conditions coded into the word, although depending on the dimensions of the diagram you're presented with, you'll likely see other conditions such as OCD or processing disorders like dyslexia. They're ways our brains are shaped and our minds operate, by default of who we are, that are to some degree incompatible with operating in society.
Yet there are different ideas of how far that extends; one can debate the inclusion, for example, of neurological conditions like epilepsy (which I have and have written about), which are related to the function of the brain but are treatable and may not influence an individual's perspective or ability to engage in social environments as they are presently built. The same question is applied to kinds of mental illnesses, like depression or anxiety (both of which I also have, but that's another essay, another day), as they can be treated through medication (although some, like me, choose not to pursue that) that changes our thoughts. Synesthesia (another another essay, another day) also fits under some definitions but not others, perhaps because of its frivolous reputation as a party trick instead of affecting vital elements of existence like memory or emotional associations. Some specific signs of symptoms of these associated conditions, like social oddities or stimming activities or special interests , that are not accompanied by a diagnosis might simply be rejected as individual quirks instead of part of this larger picture, like only a checklist signed off by a "specialist" can connect the dots of simultaneous signs that something's going on.
But I, over time, have dropped my patience for this policing, and luckily many others have as well.
A significant issue with going by a checklist of criteria is: who is genuinely qualified to check your checklist? We're told to discuss these things with our doctors, and believing that was perhaps my first mistake in the process. Several years ago when I was getting tired of the number of trips I had to take to the store to remember to buy everything that I needed (even if I had written it down), or all the times I made coffee at home immediately before leaving for work but forgot to take it with me, or many other examples of daily distraction and frequent forgetfulness, I went to my doctor to ask about ADHD. As I had already been diagnosed with depression at an early age, my doctor shrugged it off and said that was probably it. After all, I hadn't lost a job due to lateness, or gotten lost by continuing to drive while my mind was drifting (note: I have never driven a car and my doctor knows that), so I wasn't experiencing the real symptoms of it. So, as I didn't want to start taking antidepressants, my doctor referred me to a counsellor. I went to a couple of appointments where the counsellor discussed the principles of CBT with me, which I already knew. I could recite what she was about to tell me before she got around to it. She gave me printouts of tools that I already knew about, and after two appointments said that there's not much more benefit for me seeing her. Great help that was.
(I really should not have been surprised, as for most of my life whatever new concerns I brought to a doctor have been lumped under depression or epilepsy, or simply blamed on a condition called Being Fat (another essay, another day).)
Around the same time (maybe? who’s keeping track of the timeline here), I learned of a friend's experiences on a similar problem. They had a hard time focusing and were diagnosed with depression. They were treated as such and went nowhere, and it took a breakdown in an emergency room to get a proper diagnosis. I didn't want to have to go through that myself, so I gave up. I do not trust a medical system that won't listen to me or give credit to my self-perception.
It's a tough bind for many people, because they need a diagnosis to get treatment or accommodations. I suppose that was part of my doctor's logic in telling me that these symptoms need to be ruining my life before she'll consider any further investigation. What was I looking to gain? Prescriptions for ADHD are not easily obtained, as they're typically strong stimulants that can be sought after by people who are addicted for "illegitimate" reasons or seeking short-term benefits like mental alertness or no need to sleep (and why would a doctor trust a patient with their own health?). While I pondered on how those may improve my day-to-day functioning, that wasn't the central point of seeking this diagnosis. I didn't need a note to bring to work to justify my performance and demand accommodations (in my job at the time, at least, which may or may not be another essay, another day), so what was even the point of getting a doctor who did not understand me to approve?
And after all...is it even an illness?
Being terminally Online – and having been so since my teens – has given me the good social fortune of finding similar people in larger numbers than I would have if I limited myself to my local population (though it may sometimes delude me into thinking these types exist in numbers outside my computer as well). It's also been a much easier way for me to express myself and get to know people, as I can read into textual tones and meanings more than spoken ones, as the dialogue is visually laid out in front of me with easily accessible context. Whether through coincidence or algorithm (on the social platforms where that's taken over the actual social element of its design), I have come across a lot of neurodivergent people, both those who have been diagnosed and those who have not been diagnosed for reasons similar to mine. Some of it seemed merely a coincidence, as I followed and interacted with people who seemed to be into my type of dialogue, and most of the ones that have lasted this long seem to have come to similar conclusions: not just ADHD, but autism as well.
It's a common pattern. Someone mentions a habit or challenge or oddity about themselves. A second person says "That's so [insert condition]." First person says "Wait, what??? I always thought I didn't qualify for that because [insert reasons]!" Then a third, fourth, perhaps even fifth or sixth person comes in and all say something along the lines of "WHAT???!?!?? SAME!!!!" And thus goes a days-long orgy of people sharing inner feelings and personal quirks and the difficulties they face in life that they thought were a defect or fault of their own. What becomes clearer to all participants in these interatcions is that the things that make us feel alone in day-to-day life aren't personal faults, but ways that society is incompatible with us. (By no surprise, this social circle is also very queer and leftist. (sorry, but this is also another essay, another day))
It's mostly this process that has led me to conclude, on my own authority and that of my peers (who are much cooler than doctors, and early studies on the matter suggest they’re sexier as well), that I am both autistic and ADHD, or AuDHD if you like that panda meme. I need to fidget or play with whatever physical objects around me can be held in my hands. I need to doodle on paper to better listen by ear in classrooms and meetings. I know a lot of little things about many subjects that all get tied in together somehow as my conversations go from tangent to tangent as I explain how everything comes down to the evolution of social constructs that influence reality without actually being real. (Even in my grade one report card, the teacher said I go off topic too much, though at the time it would not have been with such depth and/or half-baked sociology.) I observe social behaviours around me to learn them logically instead of feeling natural about it. Since hearing about spoon theory, as silly as it is to read it the first time and explain it to people after, I can't stop thinking about how taxing it is upon my patience and energy for interaction to have to engage in small talk or do social gestures for people. It is immensely easier for me to talk in social settings if there is a dog around. I overanalyze things that people insist are straightforward or seem to have an arbitrary answer because it's written down. I procrastinate things by having so many items pile up on a to-do list that in order to procrastinate some, I submit to working on others instead. I hit a wall when I'm 90% finished a task, including this essay.
While many people may consider these things awkward and simply habits that I need to get over, I have developed a profound sense of how natural they are to me, and thus they cannot ever truly be "corrected". My inclination to think about everything on a conceptual level, and the fact that my entire life I've seen the unwritten rules force me out of many of the elements of an acceptable life (guess what?! another essay, another day), understands how little weight these standards of behaviour actually hold without social institutions of power propping them up. Finding more people like me hals strengthened my conviction in a belief I already had.
This social circle of formidable misfits who generously enlighten me every single day has taught me so much of the terminology and thus empowered me with the language to more succinctly describe the preceding things (and more) that I already knew. "Neurodivergent" is not a narrow list of limited conditions, but the challenge of viewing and experiencing and interpreting the world in ways that are not compatible with social expectations. "Neurotypical" people aren't a uniform group of unthinking people, but are individuals who can easily engage within social rules. "Neurodiverse" is not a more polite way of saying neurodivergent, as is quite tragically done sometimes, but is the state of humanity that encompasses both neurodivergent and neurotypical people. And this growing way of looking at it, which fits in what's called the "neurodiversity paradigm" and has far more detailed and interesting pieces of writing about it elsewhere by smarter people who cite sources, is not just simply acknowledging that people are different, but reframing differences as valuable and acceptable as they are rather than flaws to be fixed or otherwise suffer consequences. This last point makes the pursuit of a diagnosis (which is part of the status quo "pathology paradigm" that labels these as illnesses or conditions to treat) irrelevant to identification.
And yet the pathology paradigm persists with predominance, both in the medical establishment and in many people's minds. Self-diagnosis is not going to get the same acceptance, even among some other neurodivergent people who resent it because they went to their doctor to get a real diagnosis and they may rely on that for special treatment and/or a sense of identity that must be gatekept (could be, but won't be, another essay, another day). But, much like queer communities (will definitely be another essay, another day), once you talk with your people it is starkly clear that the mainstream oppressors who tell you what you can and cannot be may outnumber individuals with direct experience living in that condition, but can't outpower them once the idea has been realized. I have found a far stronger community among neurodivergent people who feel free to self-identify than I ever felt among the people who told me what I'm not.