as small as a world and as large as alone

4:41pm June 22, 2014

neurodiversitysci:

tomithejellyfish:

people with mental illnesses who joke about having mental illnesses in order to cope with said mental illnesses ARE NOT ROMANTICIZING MENTAL ILLNESSES

YES.

I will sometimes joke about “being so ADD” or having an ADD day because I have the characteristics of ADHD and am officially diagnosed. It makes me feel better and lets me vent my frustration at being let down again by my out of control, unreliable brain. I also know I know what ADHD is and that I am talking about behavior actually caused by ADHD. (I’m not making that irritating “oh look, a squirrel” joke). Odds are if someone without ADHD made an ADHD joke, none of that would be true and I would be annoyed.

I also don’t see official vs self diagnosis as relevant here. If you’ve done your research and ruled out alternative diagnoses with similar symptoms and you think you have ADHD, then as far as I’m concerned, you probably have ADHD and I’m not going to judge you for joking about it. Self diagnosis can be thorough and accurate or it can be BS, just like diagnoses by medical professionals, so I take self diagnosed people on a case by case basis and generally give them the benefit of the doubt, especially if they seem to know what they’re talking about.

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