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  • GeePawHillGeePawHill@mastodon.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 1:19 AM

    Do you think you are neurodivergent?

    This is not a question about diagnosis. If you think you are, the answer is yes.

    As always, please boost.

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Replies

  • GeePawHillGeePawHill@mastodon.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 1:23 AM

    I am.

    *Definitely* I am.

    I don't fit in any of the usual categories, tbh.

    I am not autistic. I am not ADHD.

    I have stripes of OCD, but they don't, like, they don't quite add up to a diagnosis.

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  • GeePawHillGeePawHill@mastodon.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 1:36 AM

    I am a traumatized empath.

    I became the emotional adult of my family when I was just six years old.

    When I *see* pain, I *feel* it, and I have to process it.

    That is why I do not do encounters with more than four people, except pro forma, for my family encounters.

    It has been an oddly lucrative trait, cuz when you are a coach, seeing pain is very very important.

    I am, in fact, a world-class software development coach, with more actual field experience than all but a few.

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  • GeePawHillGeePawHill@mastodon.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 1:39 AM

    I am what you'd call a "success", really.

    But I am not well, and I never have been.

    And I am most definitely not neurotypical.

    I am *glad* for these labels, and *glad* for these diagnoses. I know how very much relief they give.

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  • GeePawHillGeePawHill@mastodon.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 1:43 AM

    To my neurodiverse associates, and to my neurotypical associates as well, I wish mostly that we could stop causing each other pain.

    "Normal" isn't actually a thing.

    In high-dimensional spaces, there really is no "average". That's mathematical, not polemical.

    But it's polemical, too.

    MORE SLACK. SEND MORE SLACK.

    This life is hard as fuck, and everyone around you is doing the best they can to manage it.

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  • Nomdebnomdeb@mstdn.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 1:25 AM

    @GeePawHill I have tendencies, and am very attracted to patterns and organization (sometimes compulsively) but I wouldn't have ever thought of myself as neurodivergent - or maybe many of us have parts of themselves that are?

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  • Random Geekrandomgeek@masto.hackers.town
    Oct 14, 2026, 1:25 AM

    @GeePawHill A diagnosis is not always useful. Each diagnosis evaluates a single facet of what is a multifaceted nature. Worse / better yet, there are plenty of facets that don't have names yet.

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  • Jade P.JadePlantMcKenzie@mastodon.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 1:57 AM

    @GeePawHill thank you, having distressing time with a family member who has very precise expectations about How People Ought To Act. And no. No, it doesn't work like that at all. I'm afraid my opinions are writ large on my face because I don't hide that kind of thing well.

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  • sleeper🔻somebody@circumstances.run
    Oct 14, 2026, 2:22 AM

    @GeePawHill Huge +1 for saying "normal isn't actually a thing". The reason for my "no" answer is simple: I don't think neurotypes exist in the same way Judith Butler doesn't think genders exist; which is to way, they're a reduction of the actual person that forces valuation of traits on Cartesian axes, which results in an intractible situation that brings you out to infinite axes and still no closer to apprehension of the preson. In other words, the quantitative judgment of a trait being more or less present is already a mistake in first principles, that is, there are as many types as there are individuals.

    What exists is truly qualities and events, and these qualities and events when interacting across and within people form a directed graph of sorts, which is not a quantity and no subgraph which is a quantity is a complete representation of a person. The seeming quantifiable traits are, at least in my mind, caused by schizmogenesis and a tendency for people to mimic each other in order to form groups that make them feel less alone. I see this all the time in in-groups, and things are invented constantly so we can all say "we're alike!" But this is the reaction to alienation, it doesn't bring us any closer to understanding each other or ourselves.

    In my mind the universal properties that commute across all these structures are pain and exaltation. We laugh and cry when we recognize these things alone, because they commute. At least in my observation, I have met many people who everyone swore up and down were totally unreachable, couldn't get any better from any therapy or any advice or even any material support or addiction treatment, nothing, but what actually did start to make a difference was empathy and mercy.

    A suffering soul is like a skeptic, made (traumatized!) by way of a betrayal, waiting for formal proof that the structures in them have a universal property that commutes across someone else before they declare it worthwhile to try. The only way to prove that is to strip away every single label and encounter them naked with no titles, deeds, diagnoses, masks, acts, or pretenses, a mere being. When you get down to the bottom of it, they're not made of a list of labels or a panel of switches. They're the center of a tangled knot of qualified attachments and harms.

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  • sleeper🔻somebody@circumstances.run
    Oct 14, 2026, 2:39 AM

    @GeePawHill This is going to be a bit of a tangent, but I guess I have never seen anything work more universally than actually exchanging your stories with someone, and I think a lot about how many secrets people in the modern colonized world carry to their graves. I think a lot about how self-loathing and violent the white man is, but it is especially pitiable and frightening in that he stands alone in wanting to try anything else before hearing someone's story, facing their pain.

    He hates his own history and his own attachments as much as he hates everyone else's. I feel like that that's why everything went this way where before it hadn't been too bad before he arrived. The truly depraved violence wasn't from the guns and the camps, that was just a warmup. It was in teaching a self-loathing that reproduces itself through repeated violence and alienation and corrodes a society he wishes to dominate from the inside out. People start saying: why bother? Nobody will believe me. Nobody will care. And the empathy drains out of them. A society that gets their stories from a spectacle, rather than from each other.

    In the modern world, people are so parched for an ounce of care that when you give it to them, they don't know what to do. But if you keep giving it to them long enough, miracles start to happen. That is I think part of why I think the proliferation of so many labels is happening. It's like an immune response to the alienation. Because in the white man's world, nothing about you can be believed unless you have your papers. So we scramble to find ways to encode who we are in the power signs of the dominant systems of control.

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  • Callistocallisto@disabled.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 1:51 PM

    @Bronwyn @GeePawHill True, but it's also a truism that there are no Autistic people *without* complex trauma, because of being forced to grow up in a world built to exclude us. And, Autistic people, especially BIPOC and AFAB people, are very often shunted off into misdiagnoses of PTSD, depression, anxiety and various personality disorders, by MH professionals untrained in neurodiversity.

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  • Bronwyn HarrisBronwyn@sfba.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 4:07 PM

    @callisto @GeePawHill absolutely and it’s such a complex and interesting topic!

    In my case, I am not autistic and I am not a marginalized group )except for being a woman) but childhood trauma has given me things like really interesting sensory issues and more that generally go with autism

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  • FranchescaFrantasaur@mastodon.ie
    Oct 14, 2026, 4:37 PM

    @Bronwyn @callisto @GeePawHill the sensory issues *are* the autism. Everything else is just (mal)adaptive strategies to deal with the consequences of that, and complex trauma due to being rejected by “normal” people because they subconsciously pick up on subtle differences in our range of facial expressions.

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  • FranchescaFrantasaur@mastodon.ie
    Oct 14, 2026, 5:01 PM

    @callisto @Bronwyn @GeePawHill I still feel that monotropism is an adaptation and not the core. I can be monotropic in some scenarios but if I have the bandwidth I’m going to dance through all sorts of things. I’m also dyslexic though so I feel that trait helps me navigate better.

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  • Callistocallisto@disabled.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 10:23 PM

    @Frantasaur @Bronwyn @GeePawHill Welp, I'm monotropic in every scenario I'm aware of, but I have only a few sensory issues, and none of them are so overwhelming as to stop me in my tracks.

    (And I am diagnosed, for whatever that's worth. I was already sure I'm Autistic and got assessed mainly to evaluate ADHD, which turned out to be a bust. "Features" not amounting to a full dx, IOW there isn't a well developed definition of AuDHD yet.)

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  • FranchescaFrantasaur@mastodon.ie
    Oct 15, 2026, 7:04 PM

    @callisto @Bronwyn @GeePawHill I feel like the AuDHD combo is the worst one to roll in terms of ND combos in this current society. It’s perfect for if you’re working in something outdoorsy and need to have something to hyperfocus on (tracking animals or caring for nature or farming or something like that).

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  • Su_GSu_G@aus.social
    Oct 17, 2026, 2:16 AM

    @GeePawHill
    I love what you wrote here, what you shared, and that you did this survey.. because it helps to prove that there’s no such thing as normal or average. 😀🙏🏻

    The ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics, the guys who do our national Census) did a thing after the last one where they compiled the characteristics of the ‘average’ Australian. It went something like: female, 34 years old, married with 2.4 kids, lives in postcode xxxx, etc. Then they looked for how many people fitted that description. Guess how many they found?
    None.
    😀

    I know this sounds apocryphal but it’s true. If the Internet/search wasn’t so broken I could have given a reference (will return to do so if/when I find it).

    #normal #average #noSuchThing #AustralianBureauOfStatistics #AustralianCensus

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  • GeePawHillGeePawHill@mastodon.social
    Oct 17, 2026, 2:30 AM

    @Su_G Not apocryphal for me. Because internet search is so bad, I can't give you a link, but look for Todd Rose, _The End of Average_. There's an excerpt of the first chapter from the Toronto Star, but it's paywalled.

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  • cmwcmw@dysfunctional.technology
    Oct 14, 2026, 6:05 AM

    @GeePawHill
    Does this still hold true on DSM-5/ICD-11? They vastly expanded diagnosis options. Things that traditionally didn't add ip to a diagnosis now might.

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  • GeePawHillGeePawHill@mastodon.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 6:10 AM

    @cmw The old terminology wrt depression I thought was pretty good, actually.

    "Situational" vs "clinical".

    As happens, I know a lot about depression, and my reaction to the new version was, well, I'm not a specialist or a pro, but, in my view, it was sketchy.

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  • cmwcmw@dysfunctional.technology
    Oct 14, 2026, 6:10 AM

    @GeePawHill
    Oh, yeah, very different topic, trust in the system.
    Same for ICD. -11 improved some things around mental health here in EU, or will have in another decade, when its finally properly rolled out. Under -10 I wouldn't have gotten my adhd diagnosis for example, as my flavor is less physically expressive. DSM-V helped there, to provide a basis

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  • GeePawHillGeePawHill@mastodon.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 6:12 AM

    @cmw Even now, tho, it's shot through with Cartesian dualism that *nobody* serious believes in.

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  • Gary AshGaryAsh@iosdev.space
    Oct 14, 2026, 1:29 AM

    @GeePawHill Probably, but first point me at a “normal” person. More than a few people have called me OCD but nobody with a degree in the psychological disciplines

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  • 🦇🕸️ Moxie the Macabre 🪦🥀moxie@moshpit.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 3:11 AM

    @GeePawHill Diagnosed ADHD. Thought that explained everything when it happened. But I am still very different to many people with ADHD, so I think something else is happening as well. Something they don't know about yet?

    The ADHD meds only soften my emotional issues (anger), but I've had therapy out the ass for that and they never figured it out beyond depression (which was ADHD in the end). I didn't meet the criteria for anything else.

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  • Tomtommoree@mastodon.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 12:38 PM

    @rombat @GeePawHill
    Not sure they’re unexpected given where the sample comes from. We’re a filtered population not a random selection.

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  • Tomtommoree@mastodon.social
    Oct 15, 2026, 8:22 AM

    @rombat @GeePawHill
    I don’t have (haven’t sought) a formal diagnosis but know I am neurodivergent. I have several diagnosed and undiagnosed neurodivergent people in my immediate family and close friends. I worked for many years allocating limited resources for accommodations for autistic people.

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  • Tomtommoree@mastodon.social
    Oct 15, 2026, 8:23 AM

    @rombat @GeePawHill

    I got to know many autistic and audhd people in my job. In my experience people rarely ask for accommodations that wouldn’t be useful, it’s more the other way, where people avoid asking because it’s too difficult dealing with services, and are left without support that they need.

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  • Tomtommoree@mastodon.social
    Oct 15, 2026, 8:24 AM

    @rombat @GeePawHill

    I have seen the positive impact on people’s mental health of realising that the difficulties they have had all their lives are actually about neurodivergence. Understanding what accommodations might help is useful and sometimes people can get to meet and make friends with fellow travellers.

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  • Tomtommoree@mastodon.social
    Oct 15, 2026, 8:24 AM

    @rombat @GeePawHill

    To me, self diagnosis is not just a trendy thing. It’s taken off because it gives people the validation and self understanding that we’re after, without medicalising our situation, and without having to deal with a system that can often feel hostile.

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  • Tomtommoree@mastodon.social
    Oct 15, 2026, 8:27 AM

    @rombat @GeePawHill

    I understand the fear that self ID will mean resources get taken up by people who don’t need them as much, but I don’t think it’s well-founded. The diagnostic process itself takes up huge amounts of resources. Unmet needs lead to mental health crises that require far more resources from services than accessibility adjustments. And in the UK adults don’t get resources based on diagnosis but based on their level of need as assessed by a Social Worker.

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  • ₵ⱧⱤł₴ ⱤØ₥₱ NZ6F 🇺🇦💪🏻🇬🇱❤️rombat@sfba.social
    Oct 15, 2026, 4:18 PM

    @tommoree @GeePawHill BC is having to move to level of need, which IMO makes sense because with the wider recognition of autism, more people are getting screened which leads to more diagnoses, naturally. They're having to be more strategic with support resources.

    To my earlier point, I think one could take a collection of autistic traits and plot them on a radar chart. Expressing some of them to some degree, or even having a spike or two may make one feel like they are "maybe autistic," but the number and severity combine to determine if someone actually is.

    That's not to say there isn't a benefit in borrowing strategies for self-help related to any individual trait on the spectrum.

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  • GanondalfWalruths@mastodon.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 3:43 AM

    @GeePawHill

    My perpetual bad/good/weird trait is that I'm subconsciously inconsistent at everything, even my tastes, preferences, where I sleep, what I eat. There's no pattern to anything. Chaos and variety reign supreme in my life. A new song is always better than an old one, a new soap is better than the last, a different color, left not right, side streets not the highway,... Why? It just is. Maybe I wanna see what happens. I crave it, tossing a wrench into everything.

    My 'usual', is chaos.

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  • econadseconads@mendeddrum.org
    Oct 14, 2026, 5:33 AM

    @Walruths @GeePawHill

    Same but maybe not as much. I'll pretty much always take the novel over the mundane, because why wouldn't you? Life is too be lived. I'm not sure that's what makes me ADHD (but the other things though most likely do).

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  • VANTABlackVANTABlack2000@mastodon.gamedev.place
    Oct 14, 2026, 4:19 AM

    @GeePawHill I feel like I am different, but don't know if I am enough to get a diagnosis. I can relate to neurodivergent people on some things at least.

    I voted yes just because I am weird socially, learn some things pretty slowly, and can be obsessed over art sometimes among other reasons I feel I am just different.

    Edit: I don't know if "different" is the best phrasing. This shows another thing I tend to do though which is obsess over whether something is rude or not AFTER sending.

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  • Deep Muddeepmud@mas.to
    Oct 14, 2026, 4:21 AM

    @GeePawHill I have a hard time with this question.

    I got super traumatized as a kid, and it did affect me. I'm also an intp. But I'm also an empath, which was really handy as a nurse and person taking care of animals.

    Every autistic person thinks I'm autistic. I'm very clumsy socially, but like I said, I had a super traumatic childhood.

    It's hard to pull apart

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  • FranchescaFrantasaur@mastodon.ie
    Oct 14, 2026, 4:42 PM

    @deepmud @GeePawHill is that why you emphasize the empathy? Like if it wasn’t for that you might consider yourself autistic? Hyper empathy is very much an autistic trait, and if autistic people keep hinting that you might be autistic, it’s something to consider. I know plenty of people on the spectrum who only know the “stereotype” and misinformation and therefore refuse to consider it.

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  • Deep Muddeepmud@mas.to
    Oct 14, 2026, 4:46 PM

    @Frantasaur I'm actually ok with being autistic. My best friend is autistic and I wouldn't trade him for anything.

    I just like to know things. And for me, this is hard to figure out. I prefer knowing to ambiguity.

    The empathy is potentially quite painful, but it's always been there for me. I have to protect myself a bit or I get vastly overstimulated

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