Edit: I just learned from a comment on another post here that it’s literally the only rule for this community. Thanks @[email protected] for taking out the trash.
I just ran into several comments all saying this. If you’re going to be policing this community for “normal human behavior” you’ve certainly got a lot of work cut out for yourself. Almost everything about ADHD is an exaggeration of normal human behavior, we don’t randomly tweet like birds or wear silly hats, it’s the exaggeration that makes it a disorder.
It’s also really invalidating and it’s the same gaslighting crap that we’ve had fed to us by jerks our whole lives.
But what about the other side of the spectrum, where everyone is going around saying “yeah, I’m a little OCD” and it undermines people trying to actually talk about their actual life-impairing OCD.
Surely, we don’t want to downplay the severity of symptoms by just accepting “omg I’m so ADHD bc I got bored of this thing”
I genuinely don’t believe anyone anymore when they say they have ADHD
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I dated a woman with OCD. It is not at all like what pop culture thinks.
It’s also hard to verify whether they actually have OCD or not, since OCD lies not only on a spectrum, but also differs in terms of the subjects being obsessive compulsive over.
I myself am lucky to only have a mild form of OCD that I had to learn to live with throughout my younger years. My OCD fixations are 1. having to do something an even number of times (can’t just have one dumpling or three, gotta have two or four; can’t just click my mouse like a normal person, gotta find some empty space to do another click to even it out, or spam it till my lizard brain is satisfied) and 2. having to go back the way I came (even if it meant walking a longer route), and if I don’t satisfy those, I get extremely anxious.
Those fixations were quite severe when I was young and it got me into a lot of trouble. Over the years, though, I’ve managed to suppress most of it and learn ways to deal with the rest, and I am very grateful to even be able to do that. Seeing other people living with their OCD is a humbling experience.
(To be clear, I’ve never been diagnosed. I come from a culture that basically tells you to suck it up and deal with it, and “mental illness” just basically meant “insane” to my people, so me saying what I have is OCD is based off of personal experience and a bunch of self-research; it might even just be a different mental disorder, like how Jon Richardson found out his “OCD” was actually OCPD, but I don’t know for sure. I’m not worried, though.)
I agree, and it drives me crazy when people say that about OCD. But I think there’s a gap between the extremes, and if I have the potential to be wrong, I’d rather be wrong by being validating.
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(not arguing, just pondering) Actually now that I think about it, I don’t think it’s the opposite end of the spectrum at all, I think it’s actually the same thing. If you think about it both are coming from not understanding that the disorder is (in my awkward words) the exaggeration of normal human behavior, specifically the exaggeration. Being able to relate to it isn’t enough perspective alone.