#i say this as a neurodivergent person

[cashthecomposer]

Guys, I can't believe I have to say this, but *please* learn how to have a conversation. Don't just give one word responses with no prompt to the other person, there should be an equal give and take. That doesn't mean a constant barrage of questions; it means that every response you give needs to be open ended enough to prompt a response from the other person, without them having to do all of the work.

For example:

"I love the earrings you're wearing!"

"Thanks."

This just falls flat. Instead, add an addendum:

"Thanks, I bought them from that little indie place downtown, huge fan of glittery stuff like that."

"Thanks, they were a gift last Christmas, from an old student of mine."

"Thanks, and ditto for your hat!"

Literally anything works, to continue a conversation. Even if you are asked a question that has a boolean answer, you'll find that giving a little context or returning with a question in kind will help create a strong connection, and a conversation that moves.

Don't use being neurodivergent or otherwise atypical as an excuse to be a bad conversation partner. It's just selfish not to learn to talk to people. And guess what? You are rarely if ever obligated to conversation- if you don't want to talk, say so, rather than being an irritating dialogue. Only shit people will get mad at you for being honest- but everyone involved will be rightfully frustrated if you continue in a conversation where you clearly don't want to be there.

[justurtypicalinternetnerd]

bruh this mind control plan would never work. You know how many people in this world are neurodivergent? This would just straightup strengthen us tbh

The world has been taken over by mind-controlling aliens. You, however, are not neurotypical and are immune to the mind-control. 

[boyczar]

The phrase “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all” has done irreparable damage to the human race. We have not learned how to acceptably criticize others and we have not learned how to gracefully accept it from others. It reeks of codependency. We need to make maximal effort to undo the damage that may have been inflicted upon us in childhood. If we equate a criticism of our BEHAVIOR as an attack on OURSELVES, then we have some work to do. If this notion that we are separate from our actions makes you uncomfortable, you need to do some reflecting, and that’s not me “coming for you”! We also need to stop just throwing around criticism when we are heated or feeling resentful. Criticism is a tool that we all NEED. Desperately. In order to change for the better. But we need to know how to wield it. If you have a genuine criticism of someone’s choices (someone you care about) learn how to tell them calmly, so that they might be able to take your concern to heart and use it for the better. The goal should never be to cause pain. Learn this before it’s too late.

[dailymanners]

Always use "excuse me" if you have to get into someone else's personal space.

Someone at the store is standing in front of the shelf where there's a can you want to grab? Don't just reach into their personal space without warning, say "excuse me" or "pardon my reach" first so that they at least have a warning that someone is about to reach into their personal space, and most importantly, so that they have a chance to move before you get into their space.

Or if someone is standing on a walkway or in a doorway you need to get through, don't just silently shove past them or squeeze past them, say "excuse me" so that they have a warning that a someone is about to squeeze or shove into their personal space, and they have a chance to move out of the way before you do you.

People deserve a fair warning if someone is about to squeeze or shove or reach into their personal space. A lot of people are not okay with having someone, but especially a stranger, randomly shove or squeeze or reach into their personal space without warning. They also deserve a chance to move out of the way first for the sake of their comfort.

Try to avoid just staring at people who are in your way and expecting them to read your mind that you want them to move. Most people cannot, in fact, read minds, so having someone stand in front of them and stare at them often only leads to making them feel uncomfortable and frustrated.

But also more importantly, if you are standing somewhere someone needs to get to, and they say excuse me, you should move aside for them even if just temporarily, so they can avoid the discomfort of having to reach into your personal space or squeeze past you.

If someone is saying "excuse me" it's because they would like you to move because they don't want to have to get into your personal space, whether it's out of respect for you, or just because they themselves are not comfortable getting in your personal space.

All of this goes double for people with trauma and/or people who are neurodivergent. If someone has trauma related to abuse or assault they may find it more upsetting or possibly triggering to suddenly have someone shoving or reaching in their personal space without warning.

Or, many types of neurodivergence can make it especially disturbing and unpleasant to have someone else in your personal space, especially without warning.

You can never be 100% sure who is and isn't traumatized and/or neurodivergent, so always practice respecting other's personal space by giving them a fair warning with "excuse me" or "pardon my reach" before getting in their personal space, and moving aside when you hear those magic words. Or, even if someone isn't traumatized nor neurodivergent, it's still fair to not like someone in your personal space without warning and not being given the opportunity to move first.

[everythingwasnormalhere]

There's so much wrong with "everyone is a little bit autistic"

Yes, allistic people might know a lot of facts about the things they like. Yes, allistic people might get a bit overwhelmed or underwhelmed sometimes. Yes, allistic people might not get an expression sometimes, mostly if it's the first time they hear it.

That doesn't make them autistic.

Those traits only make someone autistic when they become disabling. Because, big shock, autism is a disability. Yeah, even if someone is low support needs, because that doesn't mean they don't need any support at all.

Saying "everyone is a little bit autistic" is like saying "everyone struggles with this, so suck it up, you have no right to need help". Which is just pure ableist bullshit. It denies the fact that autistic people have higher support needs than NTs, no matter where in the autistic spectrum they are. We're not "neurospicy", we're disabled, and denying this fact is denying us the right to get the help we need, we deserve, to have a good life.

(yes, this rant is just because I made the awful decision of listening to "neurospicy (interlude)" by Jax. honestly I'd rather be called a slur than listen to that shit again.)

[cashthecomposer]

Quick note: when neurotypical folks don’t understand a joke, it is 100% ok for them to ask for an explanation, and for you to provide one, this doesn’t just go for neurodivergent folks, and noting that it’s a normal thing for all types of people will make people feel less awkward both asking and explaining.

Explaining the joke does not ruin the joke, that is just what became popular in place of two actual points of humor: belaboring the point ruins the joke, and explaining an unfunny joke wont save it. When explaining the joke it is very easy to accidentally do both of these. So people will say "don't explain the joke, it ruins it" when that is actually a lie. What you don't want to do is tell a joke, get a negative reaction, and then try again but worse by ruining the timing with explanatory bits.

It doesn't help that comedians, especially bad ones, hide behind "don't explain the joke" when people call them unfunny, which perpetuates the "rule".

However, explaining a good joke to someone who didn't get some key part of it will save their enjoyment of the joke. Perhaps even more key, being the only one who doesn't get to participate in the group humor is really isolating. Explaining your jokes when necessary is good, just do it right. They key is knowing how and when to explain a joke. For example, when someone asks you to, or in the tags of your post.

Also when the very premise of the joke assumes that people who read it understand something vital and unique about the joke itself or very esoteric knowledge related to the punch line. Goncharev is actually the perfect example of this, you have to know it is fake to even understand a joke is being made. Explaining the joke does not ruin it, it makes the joke possible. (on a side note, insisting the joke not be explained in this and similar cases is not funny, it just makes you an asshole.)

Most important of all, the explanation is not part of the joke and is delivered straight, not as part of the bit. Which is why explaining jokes in the tags works so well, it separates it from the bit.

So stop being assholes and explain jokes when ND people ask you to.

[cryptcatz]

question: do ppl ACTUALLY say things they don’t mean when they’re angry? or is that just an excuse after letting something true slip? i wouldn’t ever say something i don’t mean in anger, so the concept confuses me.

but something was said to me that is bothering me, though apparently was said in an argument and wasn’t meant. but i don’t rlly believe it wasn’t like, deep down true thoughts/feelings??? anyone have any insight? anyone say things they don’t mean in anger?

EDIT: this was a hastily worded post that i didn’t expect to get notes. this is a genuine question asked in good faith that i got a lot of amazing answers to!

also re: the many ppl saying “OP is lying about not saying things they don’t mean in anger because everyone does it”— i genuinely have never done that. if i say something mean while angry, i meant it. that’s literally why i asked this question and why the concept confuses me, because i wouldn’t do something like that so i wanted perspective from people who do it. idk why y’all can’t believe that lmao not everyone is as prone to anger and outbursts

[spacerockband]

[conjectureand-gloom]

so let’s get something straight: if i cover my ears because i cannot stand the sound of someone chewing, im being rude. so i don’t cover my ears and instead end up in tears, and im being dramatic and im an attention seeker. so i move away from whoever it is who is chewing, and im being disrespectful and making that person feel bad, so clearly im a horribly selfish person. so i blast music to drown out the sound of somebody chewing, but its rude to listen to music at the dinner table, so obviously i have no manners and im a horrible person. how can i win this???

[autisticlee]

"just be yourself" has always been one of my most hated things to hear from someone. it may sound simple and easy to you, but when you grew up never able formed a single solid personality (because you grew up autistic or for some other reason) and/or have always felt more like 20 different personalities in a trench coat who fight over who is supposed to be in charge, that "simple" advice is so much less simple.....it can even seem impossible.

[stars-n-spice]

Ugh.

Sometimes I remember that Bad Batch gave us this badass Black woman who was a liberator of ancient wonders and was like Indiana Jones but fucking cooler and witty, charming, and FUN and so so so nice and caring and understanding and she befriended the Bad Batch and gave them a safe place in the galaxy to call home and then made her the love interest of the heavily autistic coded white-washed Maori man and thus made them an interracial couple

AND THEN-

they killed off Tech and then used Phee as an uber driver for s3 and didn't give her any closure or anything for his death.

[trans-axolotl2]

Fuck the DSM. Seriously, fuck the DSM.

The DSM is and always has been used primarily as a method of rationalizing mistreatment of the people it labels as "deviant." When you look at the history of psychiatry, it becomes clear that things like drapetomania, protest psychosis, hysteria, and homosexuality as a disorder were not just thrown into there randomly. Rather, it showcases the power of the DSM: labeling and categorizing ways of being as mental illness opens up new paths of incarceration, social control, and curative violence. I need people to understand that the modern DSM still works like this: these classifications of madness/mental distress/neurodivergence into psychiatric labels encourage society to treat madness/mental distress/neurodivergence with the apparatuses used to eradicate "deviance." Diagnosis is not neutral.

As mad/mentally ill/neurodivergent people, we deserve access to more explanatory models of madness/mental illness/ neurodivergence than what the psychiatric language of normalcy and disorder offers us. Whether this looks like rejecting diagnosis, embracing varying cultural understandings of mental experience, or any million different ways of interpreting our bodymind, we deserve the option to move beyond clinical language that tries to convince us not to trust ourselves. We deserve to view ourselves wholly, leaving room for all our experiences of madness/mental illness/neurodivergence--the meaningful, the terrifying, the joyful, the exhausting. We deserve to have our own relationship with our madness, instead of being pushed to view ourselves as an inherent "danger to self or others" simply by existing as crazy.

Here's another truth: I hate the DSM, and I still call myself bipolar, a diagnosis that came to me through psych incarceration. While I wholeheartedly reject the DSM and the system intertwined with it, I simultaneously acknowledge and believe that many of the collections of symptoms that the DSM describes are very, very real ways of living in the world, and that the distress that they can cause are very very real. When I say fuck the DSM, I don't mean "Mental distress, disability, and neurodivergence aren't real." Rather, I mean that the DSM can never hold my experience of what it is like to be bipolar, the meaning I derive from experiencing life with cyclical moods. The DSM can't hold within its pages what it's like to see my mood cycle not as a tragedy or disaster, but instead as an opportunity, a gift, to grow and shift and go back to the same place over and over again, dying in winter and blooming again in spring. The DSM can't hold the fact that even though I experience very, very real distress due to those mood cycles--they're still mine and I claim that as something that matters to me. I call myself bipolar as a shorthand to tell people that I experience many things both extreme high and low, but I do not mean the same thing when I say "bipolar" as a psychiatrist does.

When we build community as mad/mentally ill/neurodivergent people, I want us to have room to share, relate, and care for each other in ways that isn't calling to the authority of a fucked up system with strictly defined categories. I don't want us to take those same ways of thinking and rebrand it into advocacy that claims to fight stigma, but really just ends up reinforcing these same ideas about deviance, cure, control, and danger. I dream of the day when psychiatry doesn't loom as a threat in all of our lives, and I think part of that work requires us as mad/mentally ill/neurodivergent people to really grapple with and untangle the ways we label and make meaning of our minds.

ok to reblog, if you want to learn more about antipsychiatry/mad studies check out this reading list.

[andoutofharm]

i have a special kind of annoyance for people who say fall out boy (or any band!) look “sad” or “bored” because they’re standing still while playing or have a serious expression like. just say you know nothing about them and also have zero respect for neurodivergent people and/or people who’ve had surgeries that restrict their movement and go

[twinstxrs]

the gorgug-porter conversation is interesting to me because like. yea for the overwhelming majority of the conversation porter’s being shitty & trying to fit gorgug into a box that gorgug just does not fit into by trying to make gorgug’s relationship with his rage more focused on the aggression aspect of it. but then there’s also this specific thing that brennan brought up again in the ap, which is that gorgug’s relationship with his rage is wholly “this is a tool i use to protect my friends.” which isn’t a bad thing! but that’s his Whole relationship with it, & gorgug seems to place next to no value on his rage in relationship to himself. which is problematic, because it’s first & foremost his rage.

being raised in a household with a sort of toxic positivity largely meant that, whether or not it was his parents’ intention, gorgug internalized the message that more traditionally “negative” emotions such as anger are the wrong response to something. part of the reason he prioritizes his artificing is probably because it’s “fixing” things. in comparison to being a barbarian, which gorgug associates with “breaking” things. good vs. bad behavior, in his eyes.

it’s a totally unacceptable bar to measure a 16 y/o by, but i do think part of porter’s reasoning for not letting gorgug multiclass is him recognizing that gorgug generally does not value anger as a valid emotional response to something, at the very least for himself. & that directly conflicts with what being a barbarian is, because whether you like it or not, that rage is what fuels you. but again, barring a kid from pursuing something they deeply care about in part (not entirely, porter has a lot of more bullshit reasons) because of their fundamental values & world outlook is crazy.

so yes, 98% of porter’s reasoning is pretty shitty, immature, rife with a toxic view that there’s only one proper way to access rage, & generally not a good thing to do as a teacher, but also within that reasoning is the 2% of ‘there is a fundamental part of yourself that you only value if you can use it to take care of other people & you need to accept that as something that can take care of you, too.’ but that’s something to discuss with a therapist or a guidance counselor, not something that should hugely impact gorgug’s academic future.

[autismcultureis]

Autism culture is getting annoyed at your partner sometimes for really liking your special interest. Like GET AWAY, that is MY THING!!! Feeling possessive of your special interests is so tough.

!!!!

[transrevolutions]

disappointed but not surprised at the number of posts saying snow's moral depravity is because of his apparent low empathy and not because he. yknow. supports and upholds a fucking fascist regime.