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  • WalterBongjammin [they/them,comrade/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Yeah, for sure there are forms of ND that seem to be more or less stigmatised. I think partly it's because people feel like they can relate to stuff like depression and anxiety more than they can to ASD, schizophrenia, etc. - plus they haven't been fed a bunch of media that tells them that depressed people are going to murder them. Contemporary capitalism (at least in the imperial core) also demands a lot of affective labour that helps create structural hierarchies that can fuck over people with certain disorders (e.g. schizophrenia, ASD) more than others.

    People's 'tolerance' and acceptance for the less obviously stigmatised forms of neurodivergence is often pretty shallow though. For example, it's become pretty clear that some people I know think that social anxiety is the equivalent of them just not wanting to do some social event or something and think I'm just being lazy and nervous in the way that they feel sometimes. Instead of it being something that is often totally overwhelming, will consume all of my energy and thoughts in the days before, make me feel like I'm going to die during, and then plunge me into depression for days after as I run over how fucking humiliating it feels having badly disguised panic attacks in front of a bunch of people I barely know. Even those that are more sensitive to the reality of things like depression and anxiety aren't always perfect, because its hard to understand mental illness and ND if you don't experience it. I don't really blame people for that, it's just a failure of imagination, but it does fucking suck.

    Anyway, all the best in your struggle against internalised ableism. I know I feel it too.