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If you are well organized, it is a healthy trait. no one would say you are "on the OCD spectrum".. but when that trait gets out of hand we would say you have OCD, and likely would be diagnosed as such.
I see (autism) ASD and ADHD as much the same way. Most people diagnosed with it who are high functioning dont really have it at all. It is just a personality trait and all in all a positive one. high-functioning ASD are just people without social hangups, good. And people with ADHD who are high-functioning are largely just amazing multi-taskers.
The harm in putting people on a spectrum is they see themselves asa diseased, broken, something that needs "consideration.. they arent, in most cases in the right proportions these "diseases" are in fact just super powers, things more people should wisht hey have really.
+bonifartius 𒂼𒄄
@freemo maybe calling them super powers is a bit too much but i'd argue that those traits have had evolutionary advantage for the group - just like people without them were also filling a required role.
if they had as negative consequences as they can have in our current society, like attention "disorders" in school, these traits wouldn't have survived for this long.
@bonifartius as someone witb ADHD i call them suoer powers because thats what itnis. I have beeen wildly successful in it business largely due to thosensuper powers. My ability to context switxh, multitask, and see extremely complex big picture stuff is superior when unmedicates by leaps and bounds.
Now take me off my medication and i hyper focus to the poi t of obsession on one thing at a time and my abilities reflect that of more normal people and my usefulness goes down..
@freemo didn't want to play down the usefulness! :) i only think all people have special traits or talents which help them to perform especially well on some tasks or in some environments. imho that's why humans were so successful settling in wildly different places :)
FWIW, I agree with this 100%.
@freemo
That's not my point of view.
First, you don't even get a formal diagnosis if you are just high functioning and don't have any problems (at least in my country, Germany). On the Opposite, there are so many struggling day to day who are not formally diagnosed.
If you have ADHD/ASD, even when you don't struggle at the moment, there is a higher risk, so it is better to prevent possible negative outcomings. You don't lower that risk by calling those people "healthy" or "super powered".
@freemo it mostly comes down to the circumstances they live in. What they do, what their local communities expect.
Consider something more clear-cut and outside of mental health: myopia, near-sightedness. A condition with which one's eyes have a much closer focal range, meaning they see things worse from afar, but also better up close. Not just as close as people without it — even closer. Meaning that with a comparable retina a myopic can clearly discern much finer details. Kind of a superpower, right? If they do lots of work on a tiny scale it would seem like it.
And yet, street signs, menu posters in restaurants, numbers on the public transport and tons of other things are *a lot* harder to see, to the point of them being entirely nonfunctional, which reflects on the user – forcing unto them alternatives or aids (glasses, smartphones and their cameras, other people) through difficulties integrating into society.
Different lifestyles have different compositions of these components.
@freemo
They are different brain wiring though -whether or not you happen to live a life that disables you doesn't change the fact that you run a different "operation system".
I think this view plays into the pathologizing view of conditions like ADHD and autism. The harm in not "putting people on the spectrum" is perpetuating harmful preconceptions about them & what they mean for one's life. They also prevent people from having insights into how their brain works, should difficulties arise.
@freemo Functioning labels are not very useful, they are often used to dismiss autonomy or infantalize high-support need autistics. I've also heard many "high-functioning" autistic ppl/AuDHDers say that they're just high-masking & considering them high-functioning usually bars them from accessing support, so they struggle in silence. I'm that. I'm just one step away from burning out at all times but I'm highly educated,have job, partner, home, so am considered "high-functioning".
It is useful because if you are high functioni g, even through masking, then you do t have the disorder. By defi ition something is only a disorder when you are no longer high functioning.
It doesnt mean the personality trait isnt there, it just means it isnt manifesting in an unhealthy way in order to prevent you from functioning well.
A person who has episodes of OCD obviously has the tendency towards related personality traits. Just that in his healthier state they are not net negitives they are just perfectly normal and healthy parts of a personlity that he happens to have in common with others.
@freemo would disagree that autism/ADHD is a disorder, also it seems most of the ppl considered "high-functioning" are struggling.
You definition also means that a perfectly accommodated person has lost the disorder, which makes no sense to me.
@AutisticDoctorStruggles I agree it shouldnt be seen as a disorder, thats my point But formally it is.
Yes high-functioning people are struggling. When you live in a world without social hangups and you have to be around people who do have social hangups (to the point I might even say most people have a personality disorder) then yea, you would struggle, any normal person would.
@freemo A few things:
* Cognitive disabilities are not "super powers". This is (with respect) an ableist take. Sure there are benefits (I get a lot of utility from ADHD hyperfocus) but it comes with a heavy cost.
* Autistic people do not have "social hangups". See https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/professional-practice/double-empathy
* The concept of "high functioning" is relative to social expectations, which are exclusionary and largely arbitrary. This is not useful or accurate. But I'm curious to know how you would define it?
Cognitive disabilities are super powers in the right and healthy proportions. As a person diagnosed with ASD this has become quite evident. I gave specific examples of how. The whole point is calli g them cognitive disabilitiea is a bad take. They are personality traits that whwn they become too exagerated cause harm, but in healthy proportions are good.
Ths relative nature of social expectations is exactly how psychiatry is designed. Desieases are generalally ide tified by their manifestation when among the normal population.
One of the studies i helped work on shows, interestingly, how people who would qualify for an autism diagnosis based on their expiernce when living in the states typically when reevaluated relative to their interactions in another countery (in this case when living in germany) they know longer met the diagnostic criteria in many cases.
Also calling someone diagnosed on the ASD who is a professional researxh scie tist who has worked to advance the topic and ablist is kinda out of touch with reality and rude, but we can let that slide...
@freemo I didn’t call you ableist, I said that what you said was ableist, and I stand by that, and still hear it in your latest reply.
If you want to think of yourself in the terms you’re describing, then fair enough, I only object to you generalising such dismissiveness on broader communities. Yours is the harmful attitude in my opinion.
@freemo Having said that, I do agree with what you’re saying about the cultural relativity of personality traits.
A high functioning 0erson with adhd is at higher risk of developing adhd related problems, just as thry are at a higher risk of developing its super powers.
Im a person with adhd, for me it has manifested largerly as a suoer power with little or no drawbacks. It is a large reason for my carereer success.