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Comment by lukeify | Hacker News Reader

Is there value to people constantly self-diagnosing themselves or seeking clinical diagnoses for neurodivergency? I don't mean this in a disparaging way; but surely constantly seeking to remind both yourself and society of your neurodivergency and any shortcomings you have with that seems almost like a crab bucket mentality that you are enveloping yourself with.

I don't have a problem with people looking inwards, but surely to maintain any kind of rationality you need to balance it by also reminding yourself to look outwards.

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I got more things done in one week on ADHD meds than in the three months before that. And the only reason I went out to get a diagnosis was an ADHD meme community that constantly made me go "haha, that is so me".

If I got diagnosed 10 or 20 years earlier, I wouldn't have dropped out of university and my life would have been profoundly different and better.

Maybe you would have developed much different but still interesting and useful skills if you didn't take the meds. The meds were good for the work you needed to do, but maybe without the meds you would develop into other kinds of work?

Productivity is not the most important thing to me— because it’s too easy to get the wrong things done.

It’s not really about productivity. Consider productivity an unintended benefit of the medication.

Extreme ADHD is a constantly shifting quest for volatile stimulation. This results in poor diet (extreme sugar cravings all the time), short term memory loss, failure to achieve basic tasks, obsessive behaviors, poor social framing, and more. For these extreme cases medication provides clarity that allows for more rational control of basic cognitive decisions.

My son is on such medication and he swears by it.

I suffer from ADHD, probably-- enough that I wrote a book about how I couldn't abide school and can't force my brain to think about arbitrary things. I developed ways of dealing with it. I don't want to take any drugs for it, because I like being me and it is part of me.

Yes. It tells you to stop trying to fit in with the NT world and get on with being who you are. It could save you from a neurodivergent breakdown in your 40s that could take years to recover from. I trivialise because my wife is pressuring me to get of hn and drive her somewhere.

For me I just kind of ignore the fact that I am neurodivergent, it really doesn't matter. I always refused in school to get any help for it since it really bothered me that I should be treated different. I haven't even gotten diagnosed since I wouldn't take any medications anyway.. But to answer your question it's extremely obvious if you are neurodivergent, it's not really a question that you have to ask yourself. If you need to research or seek answers you are probably pretty normal, there's things you notice in your day to day life that people around you do not have and over the course of your childhood you will have a pretty good understanding of it.

Obviously, this is a sample of 1 so take it with a grain of salt. I am just naturally stubborn which helped me learn to deal with these problems on my own.

Yes. We seek answers to why we feel so different or out of place socially living in a society. It has nothing to do with reminding ourselves of our shortcomings (although some do find humor in self-deprecation), but with the ways that society constantly reminds us that our brains are not wired the same way as everyone else. Frankly to even consider neurodivergency as shortcomings or a crab bucket mentality only furthers the narrative that neurodivergency is inherently a negative trait, when that is categorically false. It is much closer to feeling like a square in a world full of circular holes and the desire for diagnosis lies in understanding that.

Some folks won't get it, no matter how well you explain it, because they do not seek to understand in the first place. For them, being reminded that there is somebody out there that is somewhat different from them is already an annoyance, even before they realize they don't even understand you.

Whether you are neurodivergent, LGBTQ, or you get around on a bicycle, they treat you with the same derision and lack of sincere curiosity. Lindsay Gibson has written about these sorts of folks.

Why do you think this person is self diagnosed?

Depending on your context professional diagnosis might be expensive and out of reach and more importantly not incentivized. It's a space where self-diagnosis is more often than not the only path to diagnosis and understanding.

I'm myself bipolar (diagnosed) and very likely autistic (undiagnosed) and having a base understanding on the why and how my brain works has been a significant improvement.

> people constantly self-diagnosing

Is this actually happening widely, or just in some spaces and it blows it out of proportions?

> constantly seeking to remind both yourself and society of your neurodivergency and any shortcomings you have with that seems almost like a crab bucket mentality

Is this what's happening or what you believe is happening? To me, it however looks like much more people are getting the help and support they need for this, compared to when I was a teenager. To me it's not learned helplessness or what it is you're trying to describe, but learning how to navigate society, and society being more aware of other's struggles. In the same vein that learning about structural racism isn't about disparaging people, but lifting everyone.

"Shortcomings" may even be the wrong word, as for many it's just different, not worse or better. Hence educating people like you is good.

Some can be improved with meditation. For example there is a roughly 60% comorbidity of ASD and ADHD and the ADHD portion can be improved with certain nonstimulant medications. Another example is that some disorders like psychosis and schizophrenia could pose harm that demands intervention.

I wouldn't put ADHD and psychosis in the same bucket.

Some is being different to various degrees(with having more problems to adjust to modern life without medication), the other is having a mental illness where most cannot perceive reality undistorted anymore.

They are not similar yet it’s all neurodivergence.

I'm 42. Autism as it applies to me wasn't really on the radar for most of my life. I have always had to deal with the majority of people thinking different to me. Knowing the label gives me access to tools and research, so I'm not just one weird individual.

This appears to assume that seeking diagnosis is somehow self-limitation instead of functional troubleshooting.

In practice, understanding one's neurotype can provide the foundation necessary towards addressing friction, dealing with environments developed exclusively for a radically different baseline, and getting the support and care necessary to have a reasonable quality of life.

The alternatives often lead to massive dysfunction, especially since it compounds with systemic gaslighting and being told that the hell you're experiencing is normal and that it's a character flaw to have any difficulties or differences.

The satire of ISNT frames the very real negative framing that was already deeply pervasive 28 years ago.

Neurodivergence does not require a diagnosis. https://sherlocksflataffect.tumblr.com/post/121295972384/psa...

And looking outwards is exactly what it does since it references societal neuronormativity. It’s not about the “shortcomings you have”.

> Neurodivergence does not require a diagnosis.

It does if you require to be treated specially.

If you're looking outwards merely just to look inwards again, then you're missing the point of what I'm trying to say.

What does your point look like when you remove the presumption of shortcomings? I feel that it’s you who might have missed the point of the original post, unless you were just making an unrelated point because neurodivergence happened to be mentioned.

> Neurotypical individuals often assume that their experience of the world is either the only one, or the only correct one. […] NTs are often intolerant of seemingly minor differences in others. When in groups NTs are socially and behaviorally rigid, and frequently insist upon the performance of dysfunctional, destructive, and even impossible rituals as a way of maintaining group identity.

What’s your point? I also don’t get it. Neurotypicality is by definition outward, neurodivergence is defined by your relation to the overall society expectations

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