Hello, welcome to another episode of Unpacking Neuroqueerness.
In this episode, I'm going to talk about skill regression after, particularly what happens
after someone is diagnosed with autism, ADHD, or any kind of similar neurotype
Basically any kind of similar diagnosis, but particularly when it relates to autism and ADHD, people
will sometimes experience something called skill regression, or what it's viewed as,
in my opinion, it's viewed more from the outside perspective as skill regression, but internally
it's more like realizing that things that you've struggled with your entire life are
actually because you have a developmental neurological disability, rather than you
were broken or you were wrong or you were lazy or all the things that neurodivergent
people tend to be called, particularly when they or other people around them don't know
that they are neurodivergent.
This is an episode, the inspiration for this episode came from my friend, Ashra's podcast,
Autistic After Hours.
She did an episode on skill regression.
Feel free to check out her podcast as well.
I actually checked in with her about me doing an episode on my podcast about skill regression
as well, just because I didn't want her to feel like I was copying her episode, because
of course I always do my episodes in my own way, but I just wanted to bring that topic
to my listeners as well, because I feel like it's a very important topic, not only for
neurodivergent people to understand and learn and accept more about themselves, but also
for neurotypicals to better understand neurodivergent people, particularly if you have friends or
family that are neurodivergent or you work with neurodivergent children or adults or
such.
It's important to remember that when a person is diagnosed, particularly later in life,
if they're diagnosed after childhood or even as an adult or even as an older adult, which
can happen a lot of times, because as I mentioned many times before on this podcast, the diagnostic
criteria is centered around presentations of autism and ADHD that are generally prevalent
in young white boys.
And so everyone that falls outside of that category can have a harder time getting a
diagnosis.
It's not to say that they won't be able to get a diagnosis, because yes, people that
aren't young white boys do get diagnosed, but they usually have a harder time getting
diagnosed because the way women are conditioned in society, the way non-white people are conditioned
in society to present does not match the typical presentations of even while masking, it does
not tend to, it's different than how autistic males or autistic white presenting people
present.
So autistic women and non-white people get often overlooked and not diagnosed and then
struggle with ADHD, executive dysfunction or autism sensory meltdown, what not, related
things such as these things like executive dysfunction, these things like sensory overload
like meltdowns.
And then they often get blamed as if it were their personal fault where it's just really
the way their brain works.
And so what tends to happen after diagnosis, when this person that was just diagnosed at
say age 24 or 34 or 44 or 54 or 58 or whenever it was, whenever in life, you know, when they
get that diagnosis, they eventually there's like a grief process that goes with that because
you realize that all the times you've been called lazy, you've been called over-sensitive,
you've been called too literal, you've been called non-corruptive, like all of these things
are related to the way your brain works and how your brain works differently than most
people, especially in the case of autism and ADHD with autism with sensory sensitivities,
with social communication differences, with things such as sensory overload, meltdowns,
shutdowns, with ADHD, with executive dysfunction, like these are things that people often, especially
when they don't know they are neurodivergent and when people around them don't know they
are neurodivergent, that they have ADHD, that they're autistic, that whatever, they get
blamed.
A lot of people going through school get blamed for like executive dysfunction and it's called
them being lazy.
Sensory sensitivity gets called them being over-sensitive.
You know, social communication differences gets them bullied for being so-called weird
or different or non-understanding or whatever, like different styles of empathy, hyper-empathy,
which can lead to shutdowns, gets interpreted as us not having empathy, so all kinds of
stuff and so there's this whole grief process that happens as a late diagnosed neurodivergent
person where you look back and you realize how you've been wronged and how you've been
misinterpreted and misjudged and ostracized for just having a brain that works differently
and for just having struggles with certain things and having certain support needs that
in a capitalist puritan-based society that we live now are not generally accommodated
for given the nature of the system and the structures in the society that we live in,
this society does not really honor the needs of disabled people because it's a society
that runs off of productivity and rates people's worth based on productivity and so disabled
people that aren't able to produce at the same rates or even in the same style get often
seen as lesser which is just a one of the main symptoms of systemic ableism and you
start to realize all this, you start to realize that you've been wronged by society, that
there's nothing wrong with you, that you are different, that you have different support
needs, that you need things in order to thrive that society has not historically provided
enough of and so that can result in you, in situations where you're used to over exhaust
yourself and burn yourself out from spending enormous amounts of effort that you shouldn't
have to spend in order to just be able to do certain things to present in a certain way,
you realize that you didn't really need, like that you were kind of doing yourself a disservice
by like masking around people and like particularly when it comes to like social situations, when
it comes to making yourself present yourself in a certain way to certain people and like
doing certain favors to certain people that actually take a lot of effort for you but
you want it to be accepted and understood because when you wouldn't do these things for
people you would get called lazy by them so now you have this diagnosis you understand
more about yourself you might start saying to the person that you used to always do favors
for that are actually really taxing for you and you need to kind of step away and you
need to be like oh actually this is something that because of the way my brain works I can't
really it doesn't you know it's gonna take up too much energy and I need to prioritize
where I spend my energy you might start doing that you might start being like being more
considerate of hmm what do I feel like I can handle right now and what do I need to save
my energy for later and the person might be confused because they might say oh well you
used to do you used to be able to do that before why can't you do it now and they might
interpret it as you having a skill regression or you becoming more autistic or more ADHD
after being diagnosed but it's not that it's like you have the same kind of brain and the
same kind of support needs the difference is now you're honoring you're actually honoring
your support needs and you're actually honoring like how much energy do I actually have to
do this is it worth it is it gonna drain me do I need to save energy am I able to actually
do this without burning myself out and determining that actually no I can't do this without burning
myself out and there's nothing wrong with that there's nothing wrong with having more
support needs with having a brain that works differently and then laying a boundary and
saying no actually I can't really do this right now and it's up to the other people
to understand it's up to the non-disabled person to understand that you have a disability
that you didn't know about but you always had it and now you know about it and now you're
better about gauging what's gonna take too much energy and what am I able to do and some
things aren't are just gonna take too much energy and I need to preserve myself as a
disabled person I need to prioritize what I can do right now and what I can't and there's
nothing wrong with not being able to constantly produce constantly and constantly being able
to accommodate other people's needs obviously we all have to survive in this capitalist
society and that means a lot of disabled people do have to burn themselves out just to be
able to survive but at least we can start with personal boundaries at least when it
comes to relationships we can set what what we actually can do and what we can't and what
people are going to accept that and people that aren't maybe time to let them go anyways
that's all I have for today thank you for listening to this episode I hope it was helpful
and I'll see you next time.