Good post, ty. It's getting harder to navigate NT people lately, because of the awareness of how language is used to both dismiss and demonize our neurodivergence to keep us silenced and invisible.
This posts hits hard.
My sister and I were molested as young kids. We are close now and it was more traumatizing for her than it was for me and we have both mostly worked through it. But this kind of off-the-cuff theorizing about mental health by randos and pop-psychology nonsense is why I've made some major decisions in my life.
One of these pop-psychology "truths" you hear a lot is that child molesters where themselves molested as children. I mean, maybe it is true for some or even many but it doesn't make total sense if you think about it. It had to start somewhere where their was an adult who never experienced it as a child and then did it. So it's not necessarily true.
For this reason though I have extreme anxiety about this. I have never thought inappropriately about a child but that doesn't matter. What if it is true? What if one day it suddenly clicks in me? And this deep seeded fear implanted in me by society altered my life. Maybe in another life I'd be a father. Not in this one. I was sterilized by choice. I married an older woman and she doesn't/didn't want kids. We are both past childbearing age anyways at this point. As much as my abuser stole this prospect from me so did this nasty little idea that because I am a victim I'm just one baby-sitting evening away from becoming a predator and I have never been able to shake it. Never will. There will never be a moment in my life where I can be comfortable being alone with a kid.
I hate getting intrusive thoughts. I noticed I would sometimes voiced them to others as "What if (terrible thing) happened?"
I was told I think like a bad person and I ended up internalizing it for a long time.
Thinking about the potential for bad things to happen doesn't make you bad, and the reframing in the Tumblr post is comforting. I was voicing fears I had in the hopes of being reassured they wouldn't happen.
Ayup. 100%
Intrusive thoughts would give me major anxiety when I was younger, and I forget where I learned it from, but one of the strategies I used to help me with them was to mock them.
You should jump over this railing.
YoU sHoUlD JumP OvEr ThiS RaILinG.
This is a great technique!
It can be applied to many negative thoughts as a way to partially dispell or demystify them. Provide some distancing from them. Detangle the thoughts from being an assumed immutable part of one's personality.
Yeah, it's super effective! For anyone curious about trying it, you're basically trying to take that voice you hear and take away the feeling it gives you by modifying the different aspects of it. So like if you feel that voice coming from over your shoulder, move it to the tip of a finger or beyond. Then, if it's the voice of your mom, make it sound like SpongeBob or Goofy. If it's super loud, make it quiet and timid. Experiment, play around with it. If it's got a color, turn it grey. If it's got a shape, smoosh it. Etc. And if you need to visualize yourself a mechanism or story to make that manipulation happen, fucking go wild. The brain is all about narratives and storytelling is a kind of mental magick.
It's ADHD, Autism, OCD, schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, bi-polar, aspd, etc etc etc etc
“neurologically atypical patterns of thought or behavior”
So, it’s very broad, if you feel like it describes you then it does as far as we're concerned
1.) ableist language=post or comment will probably get removed (enforced case by case, some comments will be removed and restored due to complex situations). repeated use of ableist language=banned from comm and possibly site depending on severity. properly tagged posts with CW can use them for the purposes of discussing them
2.) always assume good faith when dealing with a fellow nd comrade especially due to lack of social awareness being a common symptom of neurodivergence
2.5) right to disengage is rigidly enforced. violations will get you purged from the comm. see rule 3 for explanation on appeals
3.) no talking over nd comrades about things you haven't personally experienced as a neurotypical chapo, you will be purged. If you're ND it is absolutely fine to give your own perspective if it conflicts with another's, but do so with empathy and the intention to learn about each other, not prove who's experience is valid. Appeal process is like appealing in user union but you dm the nd comrade you talked over with your appeal (so make it a good one) and then dm the mods with screenshot proof that you resolved it. fake screenies will get you banned from the site, we will confirm with the comrade you dm'd.
3.5) everyone has their own lived experiences, and to invalidate them is to post cringe. comments will be removed on a case by case basis depending on determined level of awareness and faith
4.) Interest Policing will not be tolerated in any form. Support your comrades in their joy!
Further rules to be added/ rules to be changed based on community input
RULES NOTE: For this community more than most we understand that the clarity and understandability of these rules is very important for allowing folks to feel comfortable, to that end please don't be afraid to be outspoken about amendments and addendums to these rules, as well as any we may have missed