Them: A Users Guide for Us.
They love small talk. If you can master the art of small talk, they won't even know you're different. Try it. Talk about something like soap, where you buy your soap, where to get the best price on soap, why you like that soap. They like to congregate amongst themselves and are obsessive about social norms, what to say, what not to say. And it's dependent on what type of group you're in
I suspect that neurodivergent individuals are not necessarily the target audience, but this rings so true. And there's always this internal battle of I've spent my entire life attempting to mask and appear, quote, unquote, normal, but it was never good enough. I came across, once again a reminder of a study that was done with neurotypicals, a neurodivergence
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15
And they had this superior thinking about themselves and their understanding of the world and a devaluing of any other perspectives of how to make sense of the world and so on. And yet every description they pointed a finger at as being problematic, they were embodying and doing it themselves but not seeing it
And and yet if things like growth, learning, richness of life, and if any of these things really are valued then to prioritize, quote, unquote politeness or niceness over transparency or challenges or what have you, it's counter to all of those things
Yeah, it's almost as if the term mental health in our culture, in a competitive capitalist culture, is kind of a misnomer. Like, we already know that the studies show that mental health is better in collectivist cultures. And so can there really truly be mental health in a culture that is obsessed with conformity, fitting in, or behavioral health appearing as if you fit in? Perhaps that's why we're prescribing so much medication in this country, right?
I wish I give this several likes because there's so many different situations that this rings so, so true. I'm just thinking of like even take women going to the doctor, you know, and because they experience pain differently or even you talk about persons of color, the assumptions and beliefs about experiencing pain differently, if if the presentation, the performance does not match up with someone's idea of what quote, unquote is, then it's dismissed
Or if you say, I don't want to talk about the rain why don't we talk about some, I don't know quantum physics and how it's useful in discussing human consciousness or something interesting. For God's sakes. A lot of people call it politics. Office politics, academic politics, politic politics. Everything has its politics in it
It's just that some people are their brains are equipped to have that dialogue better than others. So I think, for instance, the best example of that would be when I read Steve Jobs biography several years ago. He talked about, like, when he was on his deathbed, or I should say the last year of his life, probably, and Bill Gates came to visit him. And Bill Gates was very much his nemesis to some extent