6 ms·

This bizarre romanticization of autism is frustrating for those who are or have loved ones who are nonverbal, stim all day, etc.. I almost wonder if nerfing au

This bizarre romanticization of autism is frustrating for those who are or have loved ones who are nonverbal, stim all day, etc.. I almost wonder if nerfing autism to the point where it's a fun thing to talk about having on tiktok is a way to demonize effective interventions so insurance companies won't have to pay for them.

imbnwa 2y ago
Actual Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a crippling pathology
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
esskay 2y ago
It's been a similar pattern with ADHD, it feels like its almost been turned into a trend. Although that being said we've had a number of people at our place been diagnosed with ADHD, Autism and in some cases both, all developers, all within the last 3-5 years, and you know what, they're absolutely correct diagnosis. It's a mix of romanticization and a change in acceptance and understanding of the two, and they do often go hand in hand as we've seen. But things like the tiktoks mentioning "My Ausistic brain" or "My ADHD brain" are a bit over the top and are making it feel like it's being treated as a 'cool thing' to have. For me personally I knew I had some sort of autism or ADHD decades ago. It was only when I started having massive issues focusing on work a couple of years back, combined with stimming and an increase in sensory issues that I decided it was time to investigate and sure enough, diagnosed with both. Out of the ~20 developers at my workplace a good 2/3 of them are either diagnosed with one or the other, or exhibit strong signals that would indicate they've likely got at very least ADHD.
- rustyboy 2y ago
  as someone who spent a few years really addicted to stims but eventually got clean, when I started having problems at work with focus and attention, I decided that I didn't want to get diagnosed because - at some fundamental level - stims honestly feel like everyone should be on them. Like everything is better: studying, talking, moving... I've spent a lot of time trying to avoid things that challenge my attention span, mediating and journally, and trying really hard to use organizational tools/apps. With some pretty decent success. I really struggle with knowing when disorder is just code for anti-human (or anti-your personality) work.
  - hyperadvanced 2y ago
    In this case stimming refers to repetitive movements used as self-soothing, not stimulants
- CalRobert 2y ago
  My sister didn't say her first word until she was almost 5 and would bang her head against the wall. Hearing people say that autism "isn't a disability, it's a differentability lol!" or "oh I must be autistic because I'm awkward", or worst of all "don't try to treat people with autism it's cruel!" (aka don't force insurance companies to cover ABA, which is the only reason my sister can even talk now) is really upsetting.
  - advael 2y ago
    With autism but really any neurological variation in humans, it's often said but seldom fully grasped that most variations exist as spectra. This is hard for people to reason about because thinking in hard-line categories seems like it's more intuitive to most people. Still, I think it's useful to remember that whether you think of it as difference or disorder, there are always degrees There are two competing pressures in psychopathology that are essentially incompatible with each other. On the one hand, healthcare administration and especially the nightmare that is the privatized and insurance-driven US healthcare system puts pressure on justifying needs. Since insurance really tries its absolute best to never help you if it can get away with it, people with extreme divergences are incentivized to insist that only the most extreme manifestation of something is real, everyone else is faking it, and that makes them bad. If something starts to be "not a disorder" in the public perception, insurance companies will use this to try to weasel out of providing necessary support. Basically every point on a given spectrum exists in some living person though. I'm close to someone who probably couldn't get diagnosed with autism as he can speak fluently and mostly take care of himself, as well as socialize among some circles of people, but certain kinds of social pressure just completely break his brain, and on top of that he has pretty extreme and disabling reactions to certain kinds of overstimulation, including reverting to hitting his head on walls, a behavior he had to pretty meticulously train himself not to do. I would definitely describe him as autistic. I think he's a less extreme case than people who are nonverbal. People like him might not need or want or benefit from medical intervention or navigating the other insane bureaucratic nightmare of disability benefits, but also might not be able to function in society. Specifically, I think he'd have been screwed if not for finding circles where people are aware of these traits, structure their social norms to not function as a minefield for people who are like that, and treat him with compassion. This comes from recognition that autistic people exist and may not be completely categorically obvious, and people like him have to push back against gatekeeping "real" disorder because doing that means people bicker about that and accuse you of stealing valor and then conclude it's too much effort to try to understand the nuances and who's allowed to call themselves what, and in this situation, most people will just throw up their hands on understanding and do what comes naturally to them: Exclude and ridicule people they find weird I think we could solve both of these problems if we provided more paths to success for people without strong social skills, didn't exert so many conformity pressures on people in every context, didn't put amoral paperclip maximizing bean counters in charge of crucial services like healthcare, and didn't have the neoliberal dogma that most people who say they need help are faking it and thus we need to torture people with hoops to jump through if they want any hope of getting it Mental disorders are real. They're also made up. We choose what differences are salient and how to cluster them. We set a threshold of difference that's adequately disabling because the rules say we need one. We try to see what we have in common with people different from us, and try to describe them and empathize with them. When it's apparent someone is "sort of weird in the vague direction of spaciness" it makes sense to both assume this might be what we call ADHD but milder, and even if you don't think that's literally neurologically true or whatever, we often describe things in directions or by analogy. I think it's impossible to get this right. I still want to make private insurance illegal. I still think we should do less harm to people for not learning to politic well. I still think that the internet made everyone so obsessed with words that they have holy wars about the true meaning of several of them. Rather than get drawn into them, I think we should solve the problems that make them feel like important battles, because words are at the end of the day mostly just attempts to communicate. Besides, we're many of us programmers here. We all know most names are fungible
- 7bit 2y ago
  Almost? I constantly see (at least couple weeks back) videos about how they behave a certain way because they have ADHD, or what ADHD people prefer to do in certain situations. Most of them are populistic and factually complete bullshit. They do people with ADHD a disserviceall Uhr Maisinformation they spread. And why? Because somehow it's hip zo say zo have ADHD.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  It just seems to be the way of things. There's an inherent value in being yourself without feeling the need to hide, and via the process of de-stigmatization, more people are comfortable coming out and expressing that they are what they are, and because of the de-stigmatization effort, those people are uplifted. And in turn, other people who want to feel special and want more social capital will either imitate it or try to get diagnosed themselves. The "my ADHD brain" stuff isn't my thing, though I am pretty sure I have an ADHD thing that's so mild it doesn't quite qualify for the second D, but I have a heavily ADHD spouse, and she likes them. I think it makes her feel less crazy/dumb for doing the admittedly sometimes amusingly boneheaded things she does, like bashing her arms and legs into things or making tea and forgetting it a moment later. But also she has grappled with how that content flattens ADHD into, her words, "quirky ditz syndrome" and much rarely goes into the darker aspects she struggles with, like being completely unable to accomplish a basic task for hours on end and getting increasingly frustrated with herself, or her "zombie hours" when she gets absolutely stuck in her phone (I eventually helped her setup parental controls on iOS to boot her off after awhile, but even that being couched in things called "parental controls" is humiliating for her).
- lawlessone 2y ago
  I had a very similar experience to yourself. Didn't investigate and get treatment until it imploded my career... The people that think it's trendy are young, they often live at home with parents so I think it's a case of their ADHD / austism not yet having serious repercussion's.
  - lazide 2y ago
    Also - ADHD and Autism both appear to be very inheritable, so if someone is at home with their parents chances are they spend all their time around at least one person who is also ADHD/Autistic, and anyone else who is there or coming around is very used to being around ADHD/Autistic people. So they’re ’normal’ in that environment.
mhluongo 2y ago
For many autistic people, they prefer it this way. Eg avoiding person-first language and being out on social media and also part of this "romanticization", right?
lukan 2y ago
It is a complicated topic. But I rather see people relaxed with the topic, than freaking out. There was a case of a australian immigrant doctor, who was denied immigration, because his child had autism. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/23/outcry-after-sydney-doctor-faced-with-deportation-over-autistic-child https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/23/outcr... (after the outcry, the decision was reversed) But yes, it is a serious condition and feeling awkward is not in the same basket.
- candiodari 2y ago
  [dead]
harimau777 2y ago
I think that there's a big difference between high functioning and low functioning autism. It's not surprising that people with high functioning autism want it romanticized in order to help protect themselves against discrimination or being thrown away for not being useful.
- mwigdahl 2y ago
  For sure there is a significant difference between what is referred to as "high functioning autism" and traditional ("low functioning" autism). But I feel that if those folks want to differentiate then it would be much smarter to come up with a different term and romanticize that. The only reason to appropriate the term "autism" and associate with that condition is to medicalize one's psychology and obtain funding and services that previously were reserved to "low functioning" autistics (before that term was even necessary). (edited to clarify)
hoseja 2y ago
Well then let us undo the work of Hans Asperger.
trustno2 2y ago
My relative has an autistic daughter. At 7 years old, she has mental capacity of 2 year old. With the right help, she can be somehow functioning, but surely won't get into STEM. Being "weird nerd" is pretty orthogonal to being actually autistic.
itsoktocry 2y ago
>This bizarre romanticization of autism is frustrating for those who are or have loved ones who are nonverbal, stim all day, etc.. Look at every thread about the subject on these boards: it's filled with people claiming to be "on the spectrum" (aren't we all?). >nerfing autism...is a way to demonize effective interventions so insurance companies won't have to pay for them What a bizarre conspiracy. Are treatments even expensive?
- lazide 2y ago
  In some cases yes, they are expensive - years of person on person specialized therapy, and specialized environment/education. Depending on how much difficulty they have functioning. It’s much easier to pretend it’s all a scam and not do anything, or penalize/force people to ‘act normal’. At least for insurance companies, teachers, employers, and often parents. Which is why a lot of folks with ‘actual’ ADHD/Autism have a lot of PTSD from their childhoods. (And no, not a joke.) Severe, triggering, legit PTSD. Objective, causes the same physiological symptoms as those in war zones type PTSD. Except for it being around ‘weird’ things like school, childcare, interactions with their parents, teachers, peers, instead of when their buddy got blown up by an IED. To make things even more complicated, persistent and repeated traumatic events that a person is powerless to prevent (usually in childhood, but not required) tends to cause Complex PTSD - which has a lot of overlap with ADHD and Autistic symptoms. Like 80-90% depending on which set of definitions one uses. A really good way (in my experience) to get Complex PTSD is to be around someone like a parent/caregiver/partner with Antisocial Personality Disorder/NPD/BPD and suffer repeated adverse events because of it that they can’t escape. Something that if it’s a Mother doing it, Society will actively prevent someone from escaping. Fun times, eh? As to how to stop or get out of this? Who knows. A big underlying problem (and why society defers to the Mother in most cases here) is that there is no chance there will ever be enough resources to actually figure out the underlying truth for most of these situations. That is because the real problem cases fundamentally work via manipulation and hiding abuses, so good luck. It would require an objective, unbiased expert (if such a thing is even possible) to follow the kid around 24/7 to see what is actually occurring. For months, or even years. And frankly, in my experience a large portion of scientists, engineers, medical doctors, nurses, police, special forces, and firefighters have backgrounds like this. So maybe this kind of thing is actually essential for society to function. And regardless, solving this may be like solving the obesity crisis by getting everyone to run on treadmills and get fit or the like. That just ain’t happening.
AbstractH24 2y ago
I've never understood this. Even assuming that someone is a high-functioning autistic person - now what? As far as I know, there is no course of treatment that can cure it. Is it just about wanting a label for one of many reasons (to find a tribe, evade responsibility, get accommodations of one form or another, etc) Don't know anything about the topic and am kind of curious.

imbnwa 2y ago

Actual Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a crippling pathology

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

esskay 2y ago

It's been a similar pattern with ADHD, it feels like its almost been turned into a trend. Although that being said we've had a number of people at our place been diagnosed with ADHD, Autism and in some cases both, all developers, all within the last 3-5 years, and you know what, they're absolutely correct diagnosis. It's a mix of romanticization and a change in acceptance and understanding of the two, and they do often go hand in hand as we've seen. But things like the tiktoks mentioning "My Ausistic brain" or "My ADHD brain" are a bit over the top and are making it feel like it's being treated as a 'cool thing' to have. For me personally I knew I had some sort of autism or ADHD decades ago. It was only when I started having massive issues focusing on work a couple of years back, combined with stimming and an increase in sensory issues that I decided it was time to investigate and sure enough, diagnosed with both. Out of the ~20 developers at my workplace a good 2/3 of them are either diagnosed with one or the other, or exhibit strong signals that would indicate they've likely got at very least ADHD.

rustyboy 2y ago
as someone who spent a few years really addicted to stims but eventually got clean, when I started having problems at work with focus and attention, I decided that I didn't want to get diagnosed because - at some fundamental level - stims honestly feel like everyone should be on them. Like everything is better: studying, talking, moving... I've spent a lot of time trying to avoid things that challenge my attention span, mediating and journally, and trying really hard to use organizational tools/apps. With some pretty decent success. I really struggle with knowing when disorder is just code for anti-human (or anti-your personality) work.
- hyperadvanced 2y ago
  In this case stimming refers to repetitive movements used as self-soothing, not stimulants
CalRobert 2y ago
My sister didn't say her first word until she was almost 5 and would bang her head against the wall. Hearing people say that autism "isn't a disability, it's a differentability lol!" or "oh I must be autistic because I'm awkward", or worst of all "don't try to treat people with autism it's cruel!" (aka don't force insurance companies to cover ABA, which is the only reason my sister can even talk now) is really upsetting.
- advael 2y ago
  With autism but really any neurological variation in humans, it's often said but seldom fully grasped that most variations exist as spectra. This is hard for people to reason about because thinking in hard-line categories seems like it's more intuitive to most people. Still, I think it's useful to remember that whether you think of it as difference or disorder, there are always degrees There are two competing pressures in psychopathology that are essentially incompatible with each other. On the one hand, healthcare administration and especially the nightmare that is the privatized and insurance-driven US healthcare system puts pressure on justifying needs. Since insurance really tries its absolute best to never help you if it can get away with it, people with extreme divergences are incentivized to insist that only the most extreme manifestation of something is real, everyone else is faking it, and that makes them bad. If something starts to be "not a disorder" in the public perception, insurance companies will use this to try to weasel out of providing necessary support. Basically every point on a given spectrum exists in some living person though. I'm close to someone who probably couldn't get diagnosed with autism as he can speak fluently and mostly take care of himself, as well as socialize among some circles of people, but certain kinds of social pressure just completely break his brain, and on top of that he has pretty extreme and disabling reactions to certain kinds of overstimulation, including reverting to hitting his head on walls, a behavior he had to pretty meticulously train himself not to do. I would definitely describe him as autistic. I think he's a less extreme case than people who are nonverbal. People like him might not need or want or benefit from medical intervention or navigating the other insane bureaucratic nightmare of disability benefits, but also might not be able to function in society. Specifically, I think he'd have been screwed if not for finding circles where people are aware of these traits, structure their social norms to not function as a minefield for people who are like that, and treat him with compassion. This comes from recognition that autistic people exist and may not be completely categorically obvious, and people like him have to push back against gatekeeping "real" disorder because doing that means people bicker about that and accuse you of stealing valor and then conclude it's too much effort to try to understand the nuances and who's allowed to call themselves what, and in this situation, most people will just throw up their hands on understanding and do what comes naturally to them: Exclude and ridicule people they find weird I think we could solve both of these problems if we provided more paths to success for people without strong social skills, didn't exert so many conformity pressures on people in every context, didn't put amoral paperclip maximizing bean counters in charge of crucial services like healthcare, and didn't have the neoliberal dogma that most people who say they need help are faking it and thus we need to torture people with hoops to jump through if they want any hope of getting it Mental disorders are real. They're also made up. We choose what differences are salient and how to cluster them. We set a threshold of difference that's adequately disabling because the rules say we need one. We try to see what we have in common with people different from us, and try to describe them and empathize with them. When it's apparent someone is "sort of weird in the vague direction of spaciness" it makes sense to both assume this might be what we call ADHD but milder, and even if you don't think that's literally neurologically true or whatever, we often describe things in directions or by analogy. I think it's impossible to get this right. I still want to make private insurance illegal. I still think we should do less harm to people for not learning to politic well. I still think that the internet made everyone so obsessed with words that they have holy wars about the true meaning of several of them. Rather than get drawn into them, I think we should solve the problems that make them feel like important battles, because words are at the end of the day mostly just attempts to communicate. Besides, we're many of us programmers here. We all know most names are fungible
7bit 2y ago
Almost? I constantly see (at least couple weeks back) videos about how they behave a certain way because they have ADHD, or what ADHD people prefer to do in certain situations. Most of them are populistic and factually complete bullshit. They do people with ADHD a disserviceall Uhr Maisinformation they spread. And why? Because somehow it's hip zo say zo have ADHD.
ToucanLoucan 2y ago
It just seems to be the way of things. There's an inherent value in being yourself without feeling the need to hide, and via the process of de-stigmatization, more people are comfortable coming out and expressing that they are what they are, and because of the de-stigmatization effort, those people are uplifted. And in turn, other people who want to feel special and want more social capital will either imitate it or try to get diagnosed themselves. The "my ADHD brain" stuff isn't my thing, though I am pretty sure I have an ADHD thing that's so mild it doesn't quite qualify for the second D, but I have a heavily ADHD spouse, and she likes them. I think it makes her feel less crazy/dumb for doing the admittedly sometimes amusingly boneheaded things she does, like bashing her arms and legs into things or making tea and forgetting it a moment later. But also she has grappled with how that content flattens ADHD into, her words, "quirky ditz syndrome" and much rarely goes into the darker aspects she struggles with, like being completely unable to accomplish a basic task for hours on end and getting increasingly frustrated with herself, or her "zombie hours" when she gets absolutely stuck in her phone (I eventually helped her setup parental controls on iOS to boot her off after awhile, but even that being couched in things called "parental controls" is humiliating for her).
lawlessone 2y ago
I had a very similar experience to yourself. Didn't investigate and get treatment until it imploded my career... The people that think it's trendy are young, they often live at home with parents so I think it's a case of their ADHD / austism not yet having serious repercussion's.
- lazide 2y ago
  Also - ADHD and Autism both appear to be very inheritable, so if someone is at home with their parents chances are they spend all their time around at least one person who is also ADHD/Autistic, and anyone else who is there or coming around is very used to being around ADHD/Autistic people. So they’re ’normal’ in that environment.

mhluongo 2y ago

For many autistic people, they prefer it this way. Eg avoiding person-first language and being out on social media and also part of this "romanticization", right?

lukan 2y ago

It is a complicated topic. But I rather see people relaxed with the topic, than freaking out. There was a case of a australian immigrant doctor, who was denied immigration, because his child had autism. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/23/outcry-after-sydney-doctor-faced-with-deportation-over-autistic-child https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/23/outcr... (after the outcry, the decision was reversed) But yes, it is a serious condition and feeling awkward is not in the same basket.

candiodari 2y ago
[dead]

harimau777 2y ago

I think that there's a big difference between high functioning and low functioning autism. It's not surprising that people with high functioning autism want it romanticized in order to help protect themselves against discrimination or being thrown away for not being useful.

mwigdahl 2y ago
For sure there is a significant difference between what is referred to as "high functioning autism" and traditional ("low functioning" autism). But I feel that if those folks want to differentiate then it would be much smarter to come up with a different term and romanticize that. The only reason to appropriate the term "autism" and associate with that condition is to medicalize one's psychology and obtain funding and services that previously were reserved to "low functioning" autistics (before that term was even necessary). (edited to clarify)

hoseja 2y ago

Well then let us undo the work of Hans Asperger.

trustno2 2y ago

My relative has an autistic daughter. At 7 years old, she has mental capacity of 2 year old. With the right help, she can be somehow functioning, but surely won't get into STEM. Being "weird nerd" is pretty orthogonal to being actually autistic.

itsoktocry 2y ago

>This bizarre romanticization of autism is frustrating for those who are or have loved ones who are nonverbal, stim all day, etc.. Look at every thread about the subject on these boards: it's filled with people claiming to be "on the spectrum" (aren't we all?). >nerfing autism...is a way to demonize effective interventions so insurance companies won't have to pay for them What a bizarre conspiracy. Are treatments even expensive?

lazide 2y ago
In some cases yes, they are expensive - years of person on person specialized therapy, and specialized environment/education. Depending on how much difficulty they have functioning. It’s much easier to pretend it’s all a scam and not do anything, or penalize/force people to ‘act normal’. At least for insurance companies, teachers, employers, and often parents. Which is why a lot of folks with ‘actual’ ADHD/Autism have a lot of PTSD from their childhoods. (And no, not a joke.) Severe, triggering, legit PTSD. Objective, causes the same physiological symptoms as those in war zones type PTSD. Except for it being around ‘weird’ things like school, childcare, interactions with their parents, teachers, peers, instead of when their buddy got blown up by an IED. To make things even more complicated, persistent and repeated traumatic events that a person is powerless to prevent (usually in childhood, but not required) tends to cause Complex PTSD - which has a lot of overlap with ADHD and Autistic symptoms. Like 80-90% depending on which set of definitions one uses. A really good way (in my experience) to get Complex PTSD is to be around someone like a parent/caregiver/partner with Antisocial Personality Disorder/NPD/BPD and suffer repeated adverse events because of it that they can’t escape. Something that if it’s a Mother doing it, Society will actively prevent someone from escaping. Fun times, eh? As to how to stop or get out of this? Who knows. A big underlying problem (and why society defers to the Mother in most cases here) is that there is no chance there will ever be enough resources to actually figure out the underlying truth for most of these situations. That is because the real problem cases fundamentally work via manipulation and hiding abuses, so good luck. It would require an objective, unbiased expert (if such a thing is even possible) to follow the kid around 24/7 to see what is actually occurring. For months, or even years. And frankly, in my experience a large portion of scientists, engineers, medical doctors, nurses, police, special forces, and firefighters have backgrounds like this. So maybe this kind of thing is actually essential for society to function. And regardless, solving this may be like solving the obesity crisis by getting everyone to run on treadmills and get fit or the like. That just ain’t happening.

AbstractH24 2y ago

I've never understood this. Even assuming that someone is a high-functioning autistic person - now what? As far as I know, there is no course of treatment that can cure it. Is it just about wanting a label for one of many reasons (to find a tribe, evade responsibility, get accommodations of one form or another, etc) Don't know anything about the topic and am kind of curious.