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Defending your disabled boundaries.
Tuesday, February 17th, 2015 09:41 amCaptainAwkward.com is still reliably useful. The most recent advice responds to someone who's been treated for ADHD as an adult, and is getting skeptical, disbelieving responses from someone she thought was a good friend.:
CA goes on to provide twenty-four ways to handle intrusive, boundary-pushing, stigma-painting inquiries. They'd work equally well for friends and family, and make very educational and gratifying reading.
begin quote When disclosing to someone who is generally a positive force in my life, I personally have found it helpful to translate initial “But I wouldn’t have guessed that you have _________” or “You don’t seem like someone with _________” or “You are much too young/smart/pretty/good at things to be _____________” reactions as:
“I am trying to hard to reconcile my mostly positive impression of you with the highly negative, stigmatized (perhaps scary) perception I have of people with __________. Since I am trying to resolve this cognitive dissonance in your favor, I’m going with wishful thinking and denial.”
Yep, many people react as if denying the possibility that your brain could work differently from other people’s is a compliment to you. Because that’s how scary/negative/skewed/narrow/ableist their imagination is about people who have (whatever you have).
Then you get the people who are immediate experts on your condition because of a thing they read one time, the people who want to immediately fix everything, the people who wring their hands and want you to comfort them about the issue that you are having, the diet and healthy lifestyle police who want to figure out how getting this was all your fault for not doing everything “correctly,” the blowhard who wants everyone to be so tough they don’t need medication…a rogues’ gallery of helpiness.
Once I can parse/translate their reaction as being about them and not really being about me at all, it doesn’t feel better, but it reminds me that I’m not the one making it weird by seeking health care for a health thing. quote ends
CA goes on to provide twenty-four ways to handle intrusive, boundary-pushing, stigma-painting inquiries. They'd work equally well for friends and family, and make very educational and gratifying reading.