#neuratypicality

[xazz]

As someone who's autistic and has ADHD here's the #1 tip I can give neuratypicals when dealing with those people

STOP MOVING OUR STUFF!!!!

'Oh I was just tidying up' 'I was cleaning it up'

THEN PUT IT BACK EXACTLY WHERE YOU FOUND IT or next to it!

Once you move it we can't find it! In my home by myself I know where all my things are. When people visit and they go 'oh where's X?' I know exactly where X is. AND THEN THEY MOVE IT!!! Well guess what??? Now I don't know where it is. And it's usually my dad moving my shit around and he's 75 and has a bad memory so he doesn't remember either!

STOP. MOVING. MY. STUFF!!!

[mostlyscrambledbrains]

Gonna throw in my coins in here, just in case some folk find it useful:

CBT as a sole form of therapy - just plain "rethink your thoughts" etc. is focused on changing what keeps you from being able to change, which is often enough your thoughts.

Hooowever, if like @faggy--butch and a whole slew of others you suffer of generic shit-life-syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shit_life_syndrome that is a whole other story. In this case the feeling of being gaslit by yourself emerges very fucking quickly because CBT forces you to reconsider your perception. Now, variying on where you're located this can also include a therapist suggesting any shape or form of "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" and so on. Not helpful and definetely not furthering the person in their care on their way to a better mental state.

This does not discount the validity or effectiveness of CBT as a whole though! What it does is to merely show, where therapy and the compatability to neurospicy folk diverge.

As OP stated, one of the troubles to shoot is the fact, that one's life might be shit. If you struggle with low-wage employment due to not having generationally accumulated wealth no amount of "think calm thoughts" is going to help. What will help is "This is how you structure your daily life in a way that allows you to have more energy and capacities to care for your self, when you have a bad day."

A bad day might include: (emotional) flashbacks, whacky body things, random pains, chronic pains, just sudden stressors, politics, bad food experinces, just people in general.

Learning to regulate your physiology to be able to use your brain is what CBT inadvertently does with neurotypical peeps. The other side of the spectrum (highly traumatised peeps, neurodivergent folk ect.) often enough simply don't know a form of "normal" to come back to. In very, very short terms: if your brain registers, that your situation is not normal but you do not provide your body with an outlet and an opptortunity to feel calm, no amount of therapy will help. This all goes hand in hand.

Please don't discount CBT as a neuratypical person, just because it felt weird, off or you couldn't make it work for you. CBT is a great ressource if considered as a part of a system that works as a whole.

HOw the frick does one go about it and what does it mean? You ask?

Firstly if you do have a diagnosis (and this one varies grately, dependeing on your location) you absolutely need to figure out, what your main goal is, that you want to work towards. Don't just go to therapy because some shithead said so and you're actually happy with your life. Have a goal, have a general timeframe and then speak to your caregiver / therapist / doctor about how achievable this is. Start very, very small. Example: "I noticed, I am unable to keep up my studies consistent and I would like to be able to better structure my days around my anxiety. This would include accomodateing my weird sleep scedule because I work better at nighttime." Now you have named your obsitcles, what is important to keep and one of the possible reasons this might be difficult to achieve.

The second step would be to find out in therapy what might be thoughts that acutally limit you. (Look up the amazing Heidi Priebe for that. Read "The body keeps Score" and "CPTSD - from survivin to thriving", yes everyone should read these. The overlap between neuroatypical and traumatised is .. there.)

Thirdly: Keep modifying what you do. No one-size fits the rest of my life thingies. You're human: your character changes, as do your body, your thoughts, your enviorenment, your ideals and most importatntly: your priorities! If having work to have food is a priority then work with(!) that. If having a stable relationship with yourself because you were raised in a way that doesn't allow for that is a priority: work with that. This includes all matter of things! Sports, arts, food, textures, sound etc. Find What-Bothers-Me and try to figure out, where at which point it might have helped you. Work with that and find out where it does not help anymore.

In conclusion: self gaslighting is a thing, you should not inflict that on yourself via therapy. Being uncomfortable is a good thing, in a supervised, careing and supportive envoirenment - it can be growth and differentiation from experiences you had before. If you feel as though you lie to yourself always ask why. Have a constant dialouge with yourself, all of the parts (yes, even the weak, dispicable shabby, mean and shameful ones, I do mean all!). Do not consider any type of therapy the one and done solution. Ask around about EMDR and other methods. Try different things with the consideration that you can stop at any given time and ask for different approaches at any given time. Be accountable for what you do (and don't, we all know evading tactics of "I don't want to this feels weird") and why you do or don't. Therapy is meant to make you feel safe, be able to grow and be able to live your best life as yourself. With yourself, no amount of "normal" can top that.

EDIT:

The goal of therapy is also not to absolutely rely on your therapists' opnion. The goal is to broadly understand what is generally considered a "good enough" situation and where one might be off in one or the other direction compared to that. Combined with the notion and skills to understand what is furthering to oneself to feel a health amount of "feeling well and feeling uncomfortable". The latter would in an ideal situation be transmitted to oneself by a caring and safe envoirenment in childhood and young adulthood. If none to little of your caregivers were able to contexutalise the WORLD for you, this is what (good, necessary, healthy) therapy is for. It teaches you, that things are one way AND another way. That you're allowed to feel one way, think another way and feel in your body a third. That discrepancies and difficulties are normal and a part of life AND that one can overcome them. It's all about the "yes-and" approach. Expand your view of the world, don't limit yourself by trying to be "black and white normal".

dang therapists really have one move and it's always cbt. girl I live under the poverty line, changing my way of thinking isn't going to fix my money issues. It's not gonna fix bigotry. A coping skill that will help me in the moment isn't going to fix my chronic anxiety then they turn around and hit you with the "Maybe you aren't trying hard enough" maybe you need a new job

[maretriarch]

I think hannibal would have benefited HUGELY from autistic and other neuratypical writers that uh...just....clearly weren't in the room LMFAO like almost ever it seems. it would add a whole other layer. mental illness is such a huge part of the show, imagine it in capable hands.

[lesbianladyeboshi]

Y'all: this character is a strong queer poc female woman....

Me, an intellectual: she's black lesbian.

[drdemonprince]

luciferlesbian replied:

hey sorry, it's nothing to do with the pint, but is there a difference between using "neurodivergent" and "neuroatypical?"

ooh to be honest I’m not sure there is? I think maybe people use them to refer to the same groups of people, but with slightly different connotations? like neurodivergent is a bit more diversity-minded I think, frames people with mental illness and mental disabilities as just, like, on a path that diverges from what society expects or requires. whereas neuratypical has a bit of an implication of like, being odd or rare or unusual. like, the former seems more empowering and the latter a bit more... essentialist? but that is like, really putting a fine point on it, and i use both interchangably. 

i’d love for other people to weigh in!!! 

[arco-pluris]

I see that the usage of neurodiversity encompasses both neuro-atypical and neuro-typical people, plus "mental health" and antimanicomial fight (superclass of mad pride). But neurodivergency/neurodivergence seems to be the most accurate of the three (-a/typical, -divergent, -diverse). I agree with @welcome-to-the-petting-zoo here. Once I created diversephrenia, phrenidivergent and phrenidiverse, from an etymological sense that psych- and neur- are separated things to be encompassed be phreni-/-phrenia, which means mind/mentality, going beyond psyche/psychology (immaterial) and neurality (physical/corporeal).

I don’t think that many people understand that Neurotypical isn’t a thing. EVERYONE has mental illnesses or issues. It just means that some are better than hiding or just don’t want to share. I have been yelled at for being “neurotypical” when, in fact, I’m not. I have ADD and that makes me not “neurotypical”. I’ve had friends who seem “neurotypical” but are actually severely depressed, extremely anxious, or have some other type of illness that they are medicated for. NOBODY is normal. So please stop using this word people because it discounts those that are taking meds to seem normal and those that are trying their hardest to not share their issues because it makes them uncomfortable.

[genderwitchbitch]

lmao my experimental psyc group eval is partly based on how often we made sustained eye contact like what an apt depiction of psychology as a discipline lmaoooooooo

[transmasculineselfielove]

To angry anon: when you get a huge volume of submissions it can be hard to edit each one appropriately.

That’s true, though mostly I wasn’t giving my full attention to what I was doing and I should have been.

Though, I got a couple of angry or preachy asks from anons about it, and maybe you folks out there could just stop a moment and give a person the benefit of the doubt that it was an accident.  Like, you can send a message saying “hey can you tag this post.”  I understand that the post has shocking stuff in it and that it can be easy to be angry when you’ve been sidelined with content like that.  But I also got an anon lecturing me for not caring about neuratypical people.  Like, I’m autistic and mentally ill, I’m trying my best to make the blog accessible with the limited time I have to work on it.  Try giving people a heads up about stuff before you lecture them on a topic.

[sol1056]

Since a statement is out of the question bc of franchise stuff, what is something you think DreamWorks could do that would show that they understand what went wrong and *why* people are upset, and are planning on doing better in the future? The JDS letter was a start, but it wasn't really enough, and seemed to be based on some fundamental misunderstandings about the nature and origin of our objections. What would be something we could ask for that would actually be realistic?

I want action items, with a plan and explicit goals. 

I want a follow-up letter from JDS (co-signed by the staff) to make clear that now they’ve realized they can do better, that they will do better. And I want specifics.

I want JDS to state explicitly he realizes his first letter implied our community’s pain was for his benefit, and to clarify that he recognizes that doing better is on him, not us.  

I want JDS to affirm the fandom’s anger was motivated by more than one character’s death and a single malicious trope. I want him to acknowledge the depth and breadth of the audience’s objections as valid and justified. I want to him to recognize that while progress moves slowly, he’s not bound by that, and there are things he can do in the meantime.  

I want JDS to give us his plan. I want to know what he – and everyone on his team – has formally pledged that they’ll do in all future projects.

I want JDS to say that part of the pledge includes volunteering with ERGs*. Help with outreach, like assisting at a design camp for at-risk kids in the community, or volunteering with a local non-profit. Something. Anything, but not distanced. Get out there and meet the people they were trying to represent. 

[* An ERG is an Employee Resource Group, organized by employee-members and employee-allies of a particular community, such as disabled, Black, female, LGBTQIA+, Latinx, Indigenous, non-white, etc. Comcast and NBC both have ERGs. Dreamsworks should, too.]

I want JDS to tell us he’s held — and to actually hold — open and honest self-critiques. That the team worked with ERG facilitators to understand the fandom’s critiques of the story, and where their story-choices disrespected the characters and the audiences that identified with those characters. 

I want him to acknowledge examples such as Lotor as an abuse survivor; Keith and Lotor as mixed-race; Allura as a non-white woman; Shiro as disabled, neuroatypical, and queer; Pidge as nonbinary/agender; Coran and Allura as survivors of genocide; Lance as a non-white man; Hunk as an indigenous man. I want JDS to acknowledge the story has not lived up to its promises of respectful and inclusive characters.  

I want action: from now on, when they have a character with a disability, that they’ll reach out to that community and ask for input and insight from someone who’s lived it. Same with a character who’s queer, or of color, or female, or some other definition that the writers haven’t personally experienced. 

I want JDS to acknowledge that a significant factor was the ethnic, gender, and cultural uniformity in the writer’s room. That he and the team looked at shows like B99 and recognized a lot of the staff’s blindspots could’ve been prevented if they’d had diversity behind the scenes, and not just on-screen. 

I want JDS to pledge that from now on, he’ll aim for some percentage of women and some percentage of non-white, and that the minimum must be two, not a lone token. I want JDS to pledge he’ll actively seek out and empower non-male, non-white, non-straight, non-abled writers to be part of his team. 

I want that action to extend to the production team, too. 

I want it co-signed by the entire production staff and writers staff. 

And that brings me to Dreamworks. 

I want a public statement from Margie Cohn, co-signed by Robert Winthrop at minimum, that the recent season of VLD has regretfully fractured and hurt one a community that’s also one of their dedicated fanbases. I want them to state that while they cannot go back and undo what happened, they can make damn well sure it never happens again. 

I want DW TV to acknowledge its audiences cut across all classes, ethnicities, sexualities, ages, genders, abilities, and creeds, and that it promises to work harder at representing the breadth of that audience with fairness and respect.

(Go ahead, let them shift the impetus onto JDS for spearheading it. I don’t care anymore. I just want to see something change, and if that’s what it takes, fine.)

I want DW TV’s leadership to affirm JDS’ statement and extend it beyond one particular production. That DW TV from now on will expect every project to increase diversity behind the camera as well as in front of it, and to make connections with – and listen to – those communities they’re seeking to represent on-screen. 

I don’t want platitudes about teaching some vague life lesson. If we got stuck being their teaching moment, then tell me what’s on the final exam. I want to know the standards by which DW TV can say it’s preventing any repeat.

And while we’re at it, I want DW TV to make its diversity pledge public, on its site, with its outlined action items. My company’s got one, and I assure you, we’re big enough to make Dreamworks look like a mom-and-pop shop. If we can do it, so can Dreamworks. 

I want a designated place for complaints from a community. When a show fails at a level like VLD, we shouldn’t have to scream into the void on twitter or tumblr or facebook. Open those lines of communication. If DW wants to use us in its stories, have the decency to give us a place to speak out. If that happens, I want DW TV to hold up its end and listen to us. 

Will that take effort and time and money on DW TV’s part? Of course it will. Is that worth it? As opposed to, what, simply dismissing all audience members that are neuratypical, abuse survivors, queer, disabled, non-white, or female? 

Is it going to be hard to increase the PR/communications team, shift the budget, establish the processes, and open those lines of communication? Of course it is, but what’s the alternative? Having the Dreamworks brand dragged across twitter, tumblr, instagram, facebook, and a number of news outlets? 

Change is hard. It always is. But DW TV failed to supervise its projects and catch offensive material before it reached the screen, and that brought us to this point. DW TV needs to see it’s time to change, to acknowledge it’s aware, and to do something concrete to get there. 

Or DW TV stays the same, and we all choose some other animation company as the recipient of our time, loyalty, and money.

[fyeahjanevillanueva]

i’m sorry but i really do have to explain my frustration over this post (i’ve seen another version that got over 200 notes, this is a newer one but it’s the same thing)

this scene isn’t meant to be portrayed as some funny #relatable post. jane is getting therapy after suffering panic attacks after the death of her husband. it’s not for people (especially neuratypicals) to laugh at, it’s not meant to be portrayed lightly. this is a woman taking serious steps to take care of her mental health, and of course it’s meant to reach out to people who can connect to jane and sympathize with her, but there are a thousand other jokes on this show that you can screencap and tag with some cutesy ‘same’ caption. this is not one of them. 

[justndthings]

Is it okay for me to use a fidget spinner if I'm not officially diagnosed as neurodivergent (and I am not 100% confident in my self-diagnosis)? I didn't planned on buying one because I'm kinda pissed by neuratypical who use it just because it's a trend. But someone gave one to me, so i began using it and idk I just really love the sensation, it's really reassuring. But I don't want to upset people by using it even if I don't really... "need" to? (sorry if it seem stupid, have a great day anyway!

Hi anon! We don’t usually answer questions but I feel strongly about this one. 

Of course you can do that. After all, everyone stims, neurotypical or not. I too have been frustrated by people treating fidget spinners as a trend, but maybe if you’re able to speak up it can be a learning moment, a way of explaining that stimming is healthy and normal and being respectful of it really helps everyone, especially nd people. But if you’re not, that’s okay too. It isn’t your job to educate people or destroy ableism. 

Just please remember that competing access needs exist and are valid. Some nd people (hi) really hate the sound, and it can be distracting during tests, etc. 

Take care.

Mod B

[irisbleufic]

On Gotham & Folklore

Since I mentioned it in a private conversation I’m having with @thebloggerknownasgeeknip at the moment, this might be the juncture at which to talk about a major underlying theme in When You Find It, Run that’s not quite blatant enough to call a crossover or a fusion, but that I've been using from the start and didn’t intend to bring up until end-notes on the project looked like they were in sight.

I’ve been treating it as not only a (partial, given 3x17 will be where I stop pulling and adapting anything reminiscent of canon) retelling of Gotham S3, but also as a retelling of Tam Lin.  That’s one of my favorite pieces of folklore, if not my absolute favorite.  The more mercurial and wild Ed grew as I watched the 3x07-14 stretch for the first time, the more I thought—In a version of things where they get into a relationship at the point it would have made sense for them to do so, what happens if Oswald is faced, like Janet in the many versions of the ballad, with the challenge of holding onto Ed through all of his twists and changes?  By the time you get to 3x15-17, his actions have spun so breathtakingly out of orbit that it’s even easier to imagine.  

Of course, Ed isn’t immortal.  Neither is he cursed, but his compulsions and his antics toward a need for attention function in a similar narrative fashion (to the situation in which Janet’s fey-trapped/possessed lover finds himself) with respect to how they affect those around him.  This isn’t so much a key to understanding the story as it is a piece of background trivia for any other folklore-slash-fairytale nerds who may be reading.  Oswald’s origins and trappings make him a natural candidate for a fairytale setting; Ed’s make him a natural candidate for the cursed lover or sentient monster.  I use these term monster cautiously and metaphorically as a neuratypical writer who’s made a priority of handling his neuroatypicality in (hopefully) a more nuanced fashion than canon.

This isn’t the most focused essay I’d be capable of producing on the subject, but it’s TL;DR enough for me to wrap it up.  I’ve noticed a trend toward fairytale associations in this fandom, and who wouldn’t be inclined to do that, what with all of those resurrections and otherworldly abilities in the mix.  The relationship between comic books/graphic novels and fairytales is already well established.  I love the instability of borders between various forms of speculative fiction, past and present—and, despite my frustrations with the show, the themes present in Gotham are no exception.

[justanotherdreamingthought]

For me, as someone with adhd, I get into meditation via stretching, yoga, singing, etc. Meditation doesn't have to mean "sit still and do nothing", there's loads of types that can work.

Once you can do moving or singing mediation for half an hour a day, you might find you can then meditate by sitting still and breathing. Or you might not, and simply keep singing or moving to reach that headspace.

Website: in order to help build focus, you should try meditation!

Me, a Very Tired ADHD: so you’re saying that in order to be able to sit still for long periods of time, I should sit still for long periods of time. Wack

[mark-gently]

i know it’s not at all the same thing, but the discourse i’ve heard recently about the word “queer” makes me think maybe we neuratypicals should try to “reclaim” (i don’t think this is quite the word i want to use... maybe “destigmatize”?) the word “weird”

personally, in conversation, i almost always treat "weird” as having an implicitly positive valence (almost as a synonym for “interesting”)

[rivaiin]

its thinking about how much the adults in my life failed me as a child hours lads

[scfoxjdqueenbee]

What distinguishes us from neurotypicals?

It’s a brainstem type. Every brainstem, be it neurotypical or neuratypical, is different – unique – which backs up the saying that if you’ve met one Aspie, you’ve met one Aspie.

No one is really a litmus test for anyone else, and we Aspies like what we like, and pay attention to little else.

That can help us in pursuing an education, because it guides us through the learning process, allowing us to ignore learning methods that don’t work for us while finding and using those that do.

Brainstems have connectors that branch off and connect to the lobes of the brain, allowing access to it.

Brains have sections that, among other things, are devoted to memory, data storage, and social interaction, also known as intuitive reasoning.