What's your positive affirmation

[Bayla123]

Autism/ADHD is what I have but it's NOT who I am!!

[cjnolet]

Sure it's who you are. What you don't need is people forming assumptions based on what they know about it or comparing you to others who might have it as well. I'm ADHD. I think the way I do because I'm ADHD. It's who I am. But everyone's ADHD is different, so people shoulnd't form assumptions on my genes any more so than they should form assumptions from my views on politics.

The reality is, though, that the human brain is very efficient in breaking down high quantities of details into smaller buckets and categories that general "gists" can be placed into. The problem is when people aren't necessarily aware or educated enough about the different buckets that exist so they end up putting two very different concepts in the same bucket, mostly from their ignorance. This could be due to lack of textbook knowledge or just lack of detail.

For instance, my mom thinks my sister in law looks snotty and has said that on several occasions. It turns out, my sister in law just has anxiety and doesn't know how to interact well with people she doesn't know well so this comes off as snitty. This is an example of my mom's brain putting someone's personality in a bucket because she doesn't have enough detail.

Another example is when I told my advisor in college that I had ADHD and that some medications I was taking at the time (Topiramate) were giving me really bad anxiety. He immediately consulted his wife, who is a kindergarten teacher, about ADHD. His ignorance to the textbook knowledge and reality of ADHD caused him to make some pretty presumptuous comments to me about his wife's experiences and things she had been told about ADHD by her peers (since it's unusual for a child of 5 years old to be diagnosed). My advisor was taking his ignorance and putting me, an adult with a specific ADHD presentation, in a bucket with school children with their own different presentations of ADHD and making assumptions on this bucket.

Such is human nature I suppose. I don't think there's going to be a cure for the political side of this anytime soon, but we could at the very least, begin to raise more awareness of ADHD (and autism) so that people understand how to categorize them. I don't think people do this out of evil or malice, I think it's done out of ignorance.

[Lovinit]

Today I’m saying “ doing small things with great love everyday.”