Some good insights into neurodivergence from some writers online:
First, from Apis Necros:
I don’t feel that I suffer because of my mannerisms, my posture, or my speech patterns. I feel that I suffer because I live in a world that doesn’t play by the same rules as I do.
I suffer though, because it made clear to me every day that a significant portion of the population, at least my nation’s population, simply do not think the same. To me, the rules of the road are sacred. Go the speed limit. Use your turn signal. Do not cut other people off. These are all rules that we (should) all know. Yet I can’t drive two miles without seeing at least one of these rules being ignored, forgotten, or even worse, intentionally broken. America’s thought process for driving rewards breaking the laws, and this simply wears on me. Why do other people care so little for the safety of those around them? I do not understand, and this hurts me.
I suffer because people can’t drive “correctly”. I suffer because people dawdle around in a grocery store aisle, ignoring that people are trying to get by them. I suffer because people gladly take away others’ rights, and then pat themselves on the back for being “heroes”. I suffer because I am very aware the actions of those around me, and how it affects other, and those these keen observations may be because of my autism, I would argue that it is not the fault of the autism, but rather the fault of the actions of those around me.
I actually do hold a self-flagellating view of my autism. I have long held the belief that, “I am different from everyone else. It is my job, and my job alone, to conform to society.” To this day, I do still largely stand by that principal. But, is it truly healthy?
Bending over backwards for society has served me well. I have a nice career going for me. I have friends at work with whom I can have “normal” conversations with. I have an apartment, and pay bills. All “normal” things, that I have worked hard to maintain. All “normal” things, that “normal” people can supposedly just do, and never think twice about.
I’ve been told before that it’s so impressive what all I’m capable of; how much I’m capable of keeping up with. But all of that is in despite of society. All of that is hard work that is made hard, not by myself, not by my own shortcomings, but by the world at large forcing me, and other ND people, to work harder than the rest.
I have known a handful of people in my short time on this planet who simply cannot remember some things. Be it facts about friends you might expect someone to remember, dates and places of upcoming events, or even facts about their own lives. No matter what effort they make, the information just leaves their heads shortly after hearing about it. Now, a key point is in whether they make an effort to remember. Whether you as an outside party can see this effort is not relevant. Only the individual can truly know how much effort they put into something. With that said, I would say that it is stigmatizing behavior to tease, scold, or otherwise belittle some such person for consistently forgetting things. I would argue that, after so many incidents, the onus is on you to know that this person will forget things.
From the post by Mark Dominus, that inspired the above reply:
For me the ADD really is a part of my identity — not my persona, which is what I present to the world, but my innermost self, the way I am actually am. I would be a different person without it. I might be a better person, or a happier or more successful one (I don’t know) but I’d definitely be someone different.
Depression is not something with upsides and downsides. It is a terrible illness, the blight of my life, the worst thing that has ever happened to me. It is neither an adorable character trait nor an annoyance to be managed with medical treatment. It is a severe chronic illness, one that is often fatal. In a good year it is kept in check by medical treatment but it is always lurking in the background and might reappear any morning. It is like the Joker: perhaps today he is locked away in Arkham, but I am not safe, I am never safe, I am always wondering if this is the day he will escape and show up at my door to maim or kill me.
Mentally ill people will still be mentally ill, but at least they wouldn’t be stigmatized. Mentally ill people are unhappy because they’re mentally ill. But they are also unhappy because people treat them like crap.
But when the world has been willing to let me what I can do in the way that I can do it, the results have been pretty good. When the world has insisted that I do things the way ⸢everyone else⸣ does them, it hasn’t always gone so well. And if you examine the “everyone else” there it starts to look threadbare because almost everyone is divergent in one way or another, and almost everyone needs some accommodation or other. There is no such thing as “the way everyone else does”. I can do some fine things that many other people can’t.
From the original post by Freddie deBoer:
This is what it’s actually like to have a mental illness: no desire to justify or celebrate or honor the disease, only the desire to be rid of it.
We might, then, have the courage to say that mental illness sucks, that there’s nothing good about it, that the efforts to bend it into some superpower of greater creativity or deeper living is sour grapes from those who can’t escape. We might help people like Eloise, rather than celebrating them as self-actualised girlbosses. We might have the wisdom to ease her suffering, while we patiently tell her that there’s nothing beautiful about it.