Embed Notice

OK, so I basically have undiagnosed ADHD, and my life is organised to accommodate that, so I have no real interest in a diagnosis.

But I found myself wondering about this weird hypocritical thing that a lot of neurotypical people do, and that's regarding conversations. Neurotypical people will talk over each other constantly and interrupt, and so if you, as a neurodiverse person, have something useful to contribute, you too have to interrupt because if you wait for a gap, it will never come.

But while they allow interruptions from each other, they don't allow them from us. They'll stop for each other, bit for us they'll keep going too, until we shut up.

So I tried searching online for insight about why this happens, and I kept finding articles written by neurotypical people that were all along the lines of, "Hey ADHD people, here's how to stop interrupting us!"

And my response was, "you absolute, totally self-unaware, fucking hypocrites!"

And then I finally found something that explained it.

When neurodiverse people talk to each other, we generally have two goals:

1. Information exchange
2. Mutual enjoyment

Turns out that when neuro "typical" people talk to each other, information exchange is usually not actually that important, and they're doing something that we basically don't in these situations: they're setting and reinforcing social status.

We, of course, simply do not play this game, largely because IT'S COMPLETELY FUCKING STUPID AND PATHETIC, which means we are automatically awarded a "game" score of zero, and therefore do not get to speak.

And if we try to speak, we are "interrupting" and "being rude", even if we supply information which is relevant to the alleged topic, and even if we're literally the most qualified person in the room on it.

This explains why we can have conversations with other neurodiverse people just fine. We aren't playing the stupid rutting game.

I am honestly shocked by this revelation. Like, it's barely one step removed from picking ticks off of each other and eating them. I'm also massively fucking depressed, because this utter obsession that the neurotypical world seems to have with comparative status if a massive reason why we can't have nice things. They treat the world like it's pie, and they have to have a bigger piece than everyone else, even if that means their piece is far smaller than if they'd just cooperated to bake a bigger pie, and share it fairly.

Anyway, bit of a revelation to me. Shit one, but there we are.