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ADHD @lemmy.world
isaacd @lemmy.world

If I had a nickel for every time someone says "this person's being a huge jerk to me but I think they might be neurodivergent"

Regular reminder that being an asshole is not a symptom of any form of neurodivergence. (You can replace “neurodivergent” with depressed, anxious, bipolar, etc. and the diagram works equally well)

ETA: social faux pas, awkwardness, and genuine symptoms of neurodivergence don’t make you an asshole. I shouldn’t have to say this? An “asshole” is someone who enacts a pattern of abusive, controlling, harassing, and/or harmful behavior with no remorse or concern for how other people are affected.

137 comments

  • I'm direct and highly value honesty, but I've learned that's no excuse for lacking tact. Being a minimal degree of kind and polite to neurotypical people isn't particularly difficult, it's just learning to interface with someone whose emotional drivers you may not completely share. It's easier than learning to interface with a nonverbal species like a cat or a parrot.

    • How did you learn? I'm asking because that's not something I'm seeing discussed here.

      I don't even think most of the commenters here have given it any thought.

      It's kind of important to the topic because at least part of the problem is that education is lacking both in NT and ND people as far as how we both developed healthy boundaries to mitigate "being an asshole".

      If nobody tells you your behavior is not acceptable in a way you can comprehend then it's a communication issue and and education issue. If it's that then we should discuss that.

      • I started by reading "How to Gain Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie. It's a bit dated but was required for a college course. It helped me realize there were certain actions/routines that would give me consistently okay results with most NTs. Not great, just okay, but okay was a huge improvement.

        That helped alleviate the often crippling anxiety I felt in many social situations with new people. Free to actually think when around NTs who weren't charmed by my ND data dumps, perplexing eye contact, and random obsessions, I was able to actively observe social interactions between myself and others. From there, it was a matter of trying different things and learning to lick my wounds when I blew it. My standard apology for doing something that made someone uncomfortable was along the lines of "I'm so sorry, that came across wrong. What I was trying to convey is (X). I'm not the best communicator sometimes, but I'm working on it. Can we start over? " with direct eye contact and a strong, chagrined, "practiced in the mirror" smile.

        That's the jist of it. Getting over the basic skills and confidence hump is the hardest. Once you have those, it's really no different that practicing a sport or playing a game. It's learning to act but for the purpose of being genuine with those who might not understand your natural inclinations.

  • Reminds me of once when a friend told me a story how someone watched his dick when he was peeing. When he got angry someone calmed him by sayong "Don't worry, he is just gay."

    Yeah, why does this make sexual harasment any better?

  • To an extent ya. You need to take responsibility for yourself. But also if I interrupt someone constantly that's not bc I want to

  • One of the largest problems for a neurodivergent people is neurotypicals misunderstanding how they communicate and assuming that they are being an asshole simply based on how neurotypical people communicate or miscommunicate with each other.

    Not understanding or playing into the neurotypical communication method of constantly lying by way of direction and expecting others to read between the lines often comes off as being an asshole or worse if they assume that you have unmentioned motives.

  • A business is not obligated to tear out every stairway to make a ramp because some of its users require a wheel chair. In the same vein, not every social interaction where a person who is neurodivergent (diagnosed or not) hurts the feelings of another person is necessarily them being an asshole. Another commenter said something about how intent matters. They're right. It does.

    However it matters for both parties. It's situational and it's important to remember that a lot of social interactions involve misunderstandings because there is a lack of communication from both sides and a set of different expectations on both sides.

    I don't necessarily think it's fair to view every social interaction through the light of who is the injured party. We don't do that to people with physical conditions. You wouldn't accuse a person in a wheel chair of being an asshole for having an expectation of accessibility. But that's because society as a whole has come to an understanding (by force) that accessibility for these physical conditions is important.

    I don't think society has come to that realization about ND people, nor do I think that the average person looks at ND behaviors and adapts to them in a meaningful way.

    So when people have an expectation based on Neurotypical behavior and a ND person doesn't meet that expectation, do they recalibrate at all to temper the expectations?

    One of the commenters here gave an example about working with a ND person and the response the rest of their co-workers had to another person calling them out for it in a fit of anger. The thing is, it should not have gotten to that point. And it's not just because others should have been setting good boundaries in a healthy way about that behavior. It's also because they should have been tempering their expectations and not overcompensating for that ND person in an unhealthy way.

    Part of the problems we're seeing between NT's and ND's have a lot to do with communication and an inability to compromise or at the very least try to find resolution in healthy ways.

  • It's so hard to tell sometimes. Thinking of a bipolar chap I knew back when. Decent hang most of the time, but really thoughtless and possessive at other times.

    I still think he was mostly a jerk. Mostly.

    • I had a friend that had a traumatic brain injury and almost lost his leg from an explosion in Iraq. They guy was a loose cannon, so I tried making sure he didn't do things that were to stupid. He would often run dilemmas by me, and I would talk it out so that he could make healthy choices. I could tell that he kind of looked up to me sometimes. I would hang out with him, give him regular guidance, paint a healthy path for him...but that was pointless. I was too powerless to help this guy. He just wanted to be stupid, drive drunk, run red lights, have ton's of one-night stands, get into bar fights, hustle money, do drugs, hangout with the wrong crowd, etc. I had to cut him off because he was trying to drag me down into that scene. One time in the middle of the day, I'm riding shotgun with this guy. Everything seems fine. Some guy cuts us off. He gets pissed and pulls out a pistol from the center console to show the guy that cut us off. I'm in the middle of the altercation begging for him to just move on. Luckily, the other guy backed down. The last time I hung out with him, he shows up at my house unannounced and says we're going out to have fun. My girlfriend gives me the approval. I get in the car with him, and he starts driving to I really don't know where. A light up ahead turns red, and about 3 seconds into it, we run it without stopping despite my warnings. I then realize this guy had been drinking. I can't remember how, but I either pulled an Irish goodbye or had my girlfriend pick me up. I never hung out with him again.

      Years later, I heard he got married, bought a huge house in a fancy neighborhood, and had five kids. A few years after me drifting away from that entire social circle, a joint friend tells me they heard he was in a halfway house/rehab facility after beating his wife. Some people just can't function right even with supervision. It was a hard lesson. All things considered, I still feel bad for the guy. I believe he was a good guy deep inside, but needed more supervision than what I could provide as a friend. I hope he recovers for everyone's sake.

  • I had a friend like that. They weren't always assholes, and we used to be good friends for over 10 years. But, they become an asshole eventually. I had to cut them off no-contact entirely because it was just unbelievable how disrespectful they became. Interestingly, the were blaringly neurodivergent, but denied it. I still can't tell if they really thought they were a normie or they were passing as a normie and making excuses or outright denying their "quirks". Either way, fuck them.

137 comments