My starting point this time around has been YouTube. Web search is a crapshoot these days, so I was hoping to find videos that are neither infantilizing nor a bullet-point list of “you might be autistic if” (and I specified midlife diagnosis, yielding results about kids and teens), but sourced so I can do further reading.
First complaint: Cut the fucking new-age “soothing” music and talk to me like I’m a functioning adult, instead of using diagrams a competent 5-year-old can understand. The last thing I need is to be patronized while trying to expand my understanding.
Second complaint: Making things a circular package deal (if you do X, you must also do Y and Z [already false], which explains why you do X [that’s handled with RAA]).
Third complaint: Excessive use of domain-specific terminology (e.g., “stimming,” “soothing”) instead of plain English. That’s fine for a seminar, but all it does for me is hit me over the head that these are terms I should use and cherish. Fuck that.
Fourth complaint: Assuming I can’t possibly be anything other than a complete mess (basically a combo of the first and second) if multiple people (most recently this weekend) have independently told me I’m clearly on the spectrum (all in the burner scene/commune members, but at different times – apparently, neurodivergence is wildly overrepresented in the circles I now run in).
I don’t need to be told I’m not broken. I’ve been surviving for 47 years with minor excursions, I’ve been married twice and had a career for two decades, and I don’t have a particular issue making friends if someone specific seems interesting. Do I have a strong distrust for authority and systems I don’t have direct control over? Sure. But no small part of that is decades of life experience with systems and authority failing to uphold their end of the bargain (“work hard, and you’ll get ahead”) while I’m nonetheless expected to expend time and money for no discernible benefit.
What I’m looking for is an overview geared toward the curious, not some sort of cheerleader who thinks I can’t use my words.
Just to be abundantly clear, I’m soliciting links to resources that would avoid these issues.
And there it is, stated directly:
Might as well say “you suck at being neurodivergent and are doing it wrong. Go away and leave us to brag about stimming.”
My sibling in tools.
If you do not like it, you do not need to do it. Entities talking about liking it is not an attack on you. Not stimming does not make you not neurodivergent. It is fine, stim or not as satisfies your values.
I’m not sure the extent of your experience with the sort of “sources” I ran into searching specifically for “midlife diagnosis.” Another user has pointed out the same sort of disjoint, so perhaps I’m being unclear.
These videos very strongly imply (stopping just sort of demanding) an affinity to all manner of behaviours as prerequisites for being allowed in the room to hear the conversation. The essential conclusion is “if hearing this doesn’t make you feel better and understand yourself more, you are neurotypical and invading our space.”
So I’m looked at oddly by society for not just accepting lies regardless of lived experience, and doing research on neurodiversity lands me as not being sufficiently neurodivergent and therefore not part of the community.
Schroedinger’s neurodivergence. Of course that’s going to piss me off more than just being attacked on a single front, so considering that reaction to be uncalled for strikes me as the sort of thing I get from “normal” people by the very people claiming that they can help me understand myself.