le-munchkine:

hebrewgay:

queeranarchism:

I’m disappointed in a lot of the conversations about neuro-normativity in inter-personal interactions, mostly because of how absolutist they tend to be and how useless that is in most real life interactions.  

A lot of conversations ignore that you can’t be sure you’re not talking to another non-neurotypical person but more to the point they also overlook the fact that ‘neurotypical’ people (which I sometimes think is more a society wide enforced ideal than an a human reality anyway) can be emotionally hurt, triggered, sensory-overloaded, extremely exhausted or emotionally fragile in some other way. Neurotypical people have meltdowns and panic and moments when they are so so fragile. 

So when someone doesn’t respond well to your non-neurotypical behavior, maybe they’re a huge ableist asshole, or maybe their needs are incompatible with yours in that space, maybe your bouncing leg is pushing their sensory overload over the edge or your directness is something they are too emotionally vulnerable to deal with, or your uninterrupted talking is speeding up their panic attack, etc. Maybe their melt-down is as unavoidable as yours. 

Like, maybe it’s just me, but a lot of my bad experiences seem to come from incompatible neuro-needs, like when my partner really needs to hear that one song to calm down and I really need to not hear it to calm down, when I really need clean uncluttered spaces to relax and a friend really needs company in their own home, which is a cluttered space. Our needs clash, and the language or neuro-normativity in the ‘you are ableist, I am not’ absolutes doesn’t cover our situations well. We can’t use the language of privilege vs. oppression to handle these moments. We need tools about neuro-diversity that work from a place of mutual understanding and assume that we are both vulnerable and we are both doing the best we can.   

I have adhd. I can’t sit still. I bounce my leg, tap my pencil, and always have to be moving. a girl in my class (also w/adhd) glares at me whenever I do them because she can’t focus. we both have adhd, maybe different types, and react to distractions differently. that doesn’t mean we’re ableist, we just have different needs. 

I’ve got major depressive disorder and ADHD and possibly aspergers and my partner has Bipolar 1 and is hyperempathetic. There are times we *absolutely cannot* be near one another. Because our conditions aggravate one another if we both happen to be having bad days at the same time. We care about one another but we also acknowledge that at times we need time apart for Sanity’s sake. Neither of us are ableist or bad people, neither can we help our afflictions. But we accommodate one another and try to address issues from a place of mutual understanding.