Diagnosis of ADHD is extremely freeing, but then going into the neurodiversity umbrella, a term coined by a sociologist in the 90s, has been massively eye-opening.
I have watched the space for a while, I’ve had to learn a lot about something so foreign being something I always had.
I realised a few things.
I don’t like labelling people ‘neurotypical’ for one.
Having this view led to me leaving a community group on Twitter for neurodiverse people because there was a pile on for my different view and it got too exhausting explaining my stance on it.
When I explained that those we label ‘neurotypical’ don’t get a say in this, but it opens the door to resenting them if we don’t keep our self-awareness in check, quite a few said it that I was aligning to the whole ‘saying cis-gendered is a slur’ mentality; which I didn’t know was a thing.
I was also told I was pandering for ‘neurotypical approval’.
Just like another time when I said I didn’t think all white people were racist, I was told that ‘I could never be white’ or ‘I was pandering to the overlords’.
If we look, we are told the world was made for men and we had it bad as women, but the rhetoric often overlooks the struggle men encounter too.
If you take a step away from all of this labelling and language across all of these scenarios, you tend to see a pattern emerging around creating a villain whom you end up resenting because ‘the world was made for them’.
Everyone reacts differently to their circumstances.
I apparently do too.
I don’t expect everyone to agree with the stance I have as everyone comes to these things with their own worldview.
But I do know everyone has their unique struggle.
Black, White, Asian, neurotypical, neurodiverse, trans, cis-gendered, rich, poor, man, woman…
Everyone.
How we go about asking for space and understanding is as much our responsibility as it is our right.
And working on self-awareness is massively important.
Otherwise we’ll create villains out of our friends.
Diagnosis was freeing, but incredibly eye-opening too.