This and "ADHD is a superpower" are my pet peeves. I get the sentiment. I get that the person saying that is just trying to be nice, but no. No ADHD is not a superpower. It would be the worst superpower if it was one. You're telling me that basically being a chaotic and neurotic mess all the time is appealing just doesn't sound right. I wouldn't trust myself with an actual superpower. I doubt I would be like Homelander, but there would be so many intrusive thoughts that come along with that territory.
I love being ADHD, why wouldn’t I try to be my best self with the cards I got handed? ADHD sucks sometimes, but other times it feels great to have my brain work the way it does.
I work in a creative field and most people I know are neurodivergant in some way. Many with diagnosed with ADHD. I don't think I'd be good in this career if I was nuero typical.
Idk why the nts can't accept us loving ourselves if we don't have some kind of "superpower". I don't have to falsely believe I'm not disabled to love every bit of me.
Disability or not, just love yourself. One of my best friends is ADHD, and has been in a wheelchair his whole life. He’ll never get to know what it’s like to use his legs, on top of being ADHD. But he’s also one of the smartest, and funniest people I’ve ever met. He makes incredible jokes about being in a wheelchair. He has never once let his disability prevent him from being his best self despite never being able to walk.
"He has never once let his disability prevent him from being his best self". So disingenuous. People have low moments. People falter. Happy people spend time being sad, just like depressed people still laugh.
There is no way the person you are describing hasn't thought about what their life woul be like with working legs. They may have self-reflected and arrived at a place where they realized envy isn't serving them, but I bet they didn't start there. And why would they? I'd rather walk too. We all would.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but "Happiness is free and easy, you just need to change your perspective " is the sentiment I'm picking up.
To that I say: "Let people be as sad as they are. Help them if you want to, and if they'll let you. If you don't think its worth it, leave them alone. But don't discount their reality. Don't tell them to 'just' do anything. Because if it was that easy, they wouldn't need you to tell them."
No he hasn’t let his disability prevent him from being his best self. That’s super inspiring. Not to mention he’s had brain surgery, had to get one of his legs amputated, we were all very worried for him. Now he tells people he lost a foot (literally). This man has endured more than most and still cracks jokes about his condition. He’s a super hero in my book for going through so much and still have a good attitude. Does he get depressed? Yeah, so do I, so do you, so does every human in some shape form or function. To be depressed is to be human. Does he wish he could walk? Do the thing that most take for granted? Of course. As a DDR player, if I couldn’t use my legs anymore, I don’t know what I would do. But he persists. He stays positive, not happy, but positive. One of the most inspiring people on the planet impo.
This might be nitpicky, but „Does he get depressed? […] so does every human in some shape form or function.“
That isn’t true. Depression is an illness, not just being sad, and it can be debilitating. I know the words are often treated as synonyms these days, like people thinking flu (a disease that can make you feel terrible for days or weeks and take weeks to recover even if your healthy, and a disease that kills people) and a cold are the same. Or people using migraine for „severe headache“, because a main symptom of many migraines is a severe headache and they don’t know better.
But while depression is common over an entire lifetime, by far not every human experiences depression.
To be human is to have brain chemical imbalance. Watch out for your friends who are always trying to stay positive, they’re often in the ones who are masking the biggest depressions.
Love, I know what depression is like, both from all the wonderful psychoeducation I got from qualified therapists and from being severely depressed for most of my life. I’m doing very well, by now, because for the past few years, I’ve almost never wanted to die! Depression isn't just being sad. Depression is also rage or emotional numbness, it’s memory issues, it’s needing to keep my flat running but being unable to even get up, it’s dishes rotting in the sink, it’s not being able to eat, it’s not being able to sleep, and so on.
I also know about masking depression, because for quite a few years, the way you could Tell I was doing terribly was because I’d suddenly manage ALL the social stuff and all the extracurrivukars and so on. Until, you know, even that wasn’t possible anymore,
Yes! , I actually found that word freeing, because realising that ADHD is a genuine, real disability (I was diagnosed as a child but only learned more about it as an adult) made it so much easier to stop hating myself, and to work with my brain instead of against it, and show some compassion for myself. Some things are harder for me, some things are easier, some things will never work as they do for others. That’s not a character flaw, it’s a fact of my life, and it’s done me a world of good to really understand that.
I am not exaggerating when I say that one of the biggest improvements to my mental health came from me applying the word disabled to myself
I did as well. Learning you're a swan and not a broken duck is an incredibly freeing experience. Sure, swans can't do some (or many) of the things ducks can, and we have to find different ways through things, but knowing we're swans makes that part so much easier.
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u/pdbard13 5d ago
This and "ADHD is a superpower" are my pet peeves. I get the sentiment. I get that the person saying that is just trying to be nice, but no. No ADHD is not a superpower. It would be the worst superpower if it was one. You're telling me that basically being a chaotic and neurotic mess all the time is appealing just doesn't sound right. I wouldn't trust myself with an actual superpower. I doubt I would be like Homelander, but there would be so many intrusive thoughts that come along with that territory.