Neurodivergence

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All things neurodivergent and relating to the broader neurodivergent community (and communities).

See also this community's sister subs Feminism, LGBTQ+, Disability, and POC

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I am autistic, an autist, not a “person with autism” (beehaw.org)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I don't like being referred to as a "person with autism". I can't just set it down, it's not something I can remove. It is fundamental to the way I interact with the world, right down to how stim enters my brain. If my brain has types of inputs no allistic person can even approach, and methods of processing inherently different, it is an existence no allistic person can reach. There is no version of me that is not autistic.

A "cure" is the same as shooting me and replacing me with someone else.

The type of person I am is autistic. I am autistic.

I know it is a big trend in anarchist spaces to use person first language, but in many situations that just sounds like eugenics to me. Personhood is not some distinct universal experience. There is no “ideal human mind” floating out there in the aether for them to recognize in me.

I get that person first language helps some people recognize that thoughts happen behind my eyes, but if the only way they can do that is by imagining I’m them, I don’t care.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago

A skilled therapist will be able to assist anyone to use CBT or other modality as a tool, even if they don't have training or experience specific to that person's needs.

Nobody here needs to be told that finding such a therapist is far from a given, and engaging one who is not helpful (or worse) tends to make it hard to convince oneself to try with a new therapist. Run through a few, and the reluctance compounds into aversion.

That said, I do feel that CBT attracts therapists who have a strong preference for an unreflective practise, and who are more comfortable with very straightforward & commonplace anxieties.

It doesn't help that many health services, whether publicly or privately funded, push short courses of CBT as the predominant or sole psychological therapy. Even a highly skilled therapist will struggle to arrive at the point of being of assistance to those whose difficulties don't map so closely to those most commonly found in the general population, if they have just six 45 minute sessions to work with, and even more so if the person comes to them undiagnosed.