I'm somewhere on the spectrum, with many of the stereotypical traits (special interests, sensory sensitivity, social difficulties, emotional processing trouble, sensitivity to disruptions, you name it). It makes me good at some things and bad at others. It has, at times, made my life very hard, and it has at times made things that are very difficult for others trivial for me.
But that's not really any different from how people vary from one another in general. It just so happens that the way in which I vary is shared with many others and has a name.
I'd say the same about ADHD. I don't know if I have ADHD, specifically, but I certainly have some form of related executive dysfunction. It makes it very hard to focus on something tedious (I spent a solid hour trying to type up a few paragraphs of interview feedback for someone earlier while getting constantly pulled off onto other things). But it also means I temperamentally have to constantly be learning and growing because I'll wither and die if I don't. That has made some things (like doing repetitive daily tasks) hard, but it makes other things (like the fact that as a founder I have to do about seven different jobs at a time) fun and easy when they would crush many people.
I agree with you that we don't need to pretend that things that hurt us don't. The difficulties matter, in part because acknowledging and understanding them is a part of finding our own personal brands of excellence. But I also don't think we need to treat the ways in which we're different as a curse, either. It's just how we are, and we have to figure out the best way to live within those constraints, the same as anyone else. Sometimes that means tolerating the things that we can't change, sometimes that means routing around them, sometimes that means figuring out ways to make them work in our favor.
I can't speak for everyone, but I can say that my life has gone far better starting from the premise of "this is the way I am and I have to work with that while recognizing the realities of interacting with a world that operates on different rules from mine" than it has from the premise of "I'm broken and I need to fix myself so I'm like others". In that sense, I think that acceptance, and even celebration in the right ways, can be good. It's just a way to say "it's not wrong to be what you are, and you should try to be the best version of that thing, not the best version of someone else".
> I can't speak for everyone, but I can say that my life has gone far better starting from the premise of "this is the way I am and I have to work with that while recognizing the realities of interacting with a world that operates on different rules from mine" than it has from the premise of "I'm broken and I need to fix myself so I'm like others".
One may accept without either self-hatred or celebration. This is the way things are, this is what there is. No need to embellish either negatively or positively. I think either path leads to poor outcomes societally.
I might sound like a stoic, but I am definitely not one. The reason is that I spent a lot of my life trying to pretend I was above my emotions, unperturbed by such forces in my higher realms of logic. This...uh, wasn't true. I was feeling as much as anybody, and my actions were being guided by my feelings as much as anybody. I just wasn't listening to my feelings or aware of how much they were dictating about my life.
Emotions are as essential a part of a person as cognition is. The Universe doesn't prescribe any particular things as good or bad, praiseworthy or evil, interesting or boring. In the world of pure logic, there is no difference between me deciding today to not drink any water and dying in a few days versus me living a long, full life of rich goodness to my fellow man.
The problem is not having emotions, but confusing them with beliefs. Emotions aren't there to tell us what's a good idea, they're there to tell us what's a fun one. Both are important. So we use our reason and our emotional regulation to make better decisions about how we may have the most fun (where "fun" here is standing in for whatever broader notion of personal utility you might choose). Even the literal Buddha was pretty clear on the idea that there's not much value in depriving oneself of one's human pleasures - only in not being controlled by those impulses.
And I would say that taking satisfaction in the positive traits you have is a pretty basic human pleasure.
Can't speak for GP, but I have similar feelings... some things are dramatically harder, others easier... for the most part I just develop coping mechanisms for as much as I can and try to accept other pieces. Not a matter of self-hatred or celebration so much. Though I have dealt with a lot of depression in my life from a general difficulty in interaction.
One can reason their way through a lot of things, even a lot of the why's of emotion over time. To recognize when you are going into a state of reacting on emotion over reason. It's hard.
My daughter faces a lot of similar issues and it's harder for her than it was for me. The best I can do is try to instill a sense of drive to adapt and overcome as opposed to just giving up and/or wallowing in things. I wish my parents were better equipped to do this for me. I was close to 40 before a lot of things started to fit together. A few years ago, working with someone that had similar personality issues dialed to 11 so to speak that a lot of things became much more clear.
I can recognize a lot of what you wrote to be true for myself,although my diagnostic was made very recently. The most difficult part for me is to be understood and accepted for who I'm, probably because it was hard for me to accept who I am. For years, I've been fighting to be like "anyone else" which eventually led me to be rejected, misunderstanding and considered "sick" (sic) by others, especially the most significant ones in my life. This is one of the trait of my life which is difficult to handle and makes me sometimes feel miserable.
But that's not really any different from how people vary from one another in general. It just so happens that the way in which I vary is shared with many others and has a name.
I'd say the same about ADHD. I don't know if I have ADHD, specifically, but I certainly have some form of related executive dysfunction. It makes it very hard to focus on something tedious (I spent a solid hour trying to type up a few paragraphs of interview feedback for someone earlier while getting constantly pulled off onto other things). But it also means I temperamentally have to constantly be learning and growing because I'll wither and die if I don't. That has made some things (like doing repetitive daily tasks) hard, but it makes other things (like the fact that as a founder I have to do about seven different jobs at a time) fun and easy when they would crush many people.
I agree with you that we don't need to pretend that things that hurt us don't. The difficulties matter, in part because acknowledging and understanding them is a part of finding our own personal brands of excellence. But I also don't think we need to treat the ways in which we're different as a curse, either. It's just how we are, and we have to figure out the best way to live within those constraints, the same as anyone else. Sometimes that means tolerating the things that we can't change, sometimes that means routing around them, sometimes that means figuring out ways to make them work in our favor.
I can't speak for everyone, but I can say that my life has gone far better starting from the premise of "this is the way I am and I have to work with that while recognizing the realities of interacting with a world that operates on different rules from mine" than it has from the premise of "I'm broken and I need to fix myself so I'm like others". In that sense, I think that acceptance, and even celebration in the right ways, can be good. It's just a way to say "it's not wrong to be what you are, and you should try to be the best version of that thing, not the best version of someone else".