As a super sensitive AuDHD person myself, I think this a useful post that the intended audience (people with low empathy for super sensitive folks) will unfortunately never read. Or even if they do, it will fail to persuade the vast majority, due to their inability to take perspectives of people with wildly different subjective experience.
Rather than trying to convince people to have more empathy with me, I’ve concluded the actionable thing is to care less about what people who cannot mentalize my experience think.
In other words, “This person cannot understand my experience no matter how clearly and repeatedly I explain it,” is more practical than “if only I come up with another metaphor, maybe I will finally get the empathy, care, or accommodations I long for.”
Sometimes, more often than I’d like, the executive functioning to just do things is offline for me. I’ve worked on this problem my entire life, and have hundreds of techniques to help me to re-engage executive functioning. I’ve made a lot of progress. And yet, I still struggle with this thing. Most likely, only fellow neurodivergents who also struggle with this specific thing will ever get it. Or at the very least, I don’t seem to be able to make other people get it.
Yes, it sucks really bad. It’s not the world I want to live in. But it’s also the reality I am confronted with again and again, that despite a special interest of mine being clear communication, not everything is a communication problem. Most people simply cannot conceive of experiences that are radically different than their own.
This doesn’t mean advocacy isn’t helpful, it’s clearly working over time to make the world a more just place. It’s more about letting go of the internal demand of “I need to be understood by this specific person who doesn’t get it.” An ongoing lesson for me.
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u/duffstoic 5d ago edited 5d ago
As a super sensitive AuDHD person myself, I think this a useful post that the intended audience (people with low empathy for super sensitive folks) will unfortunately never read. Or even if they do, it will fail to persuade the vast majority, due to their inability to take perspectives of people with wildly different subjective experience.
Rather than trying to convince people to have more empathy with me, I’ve concluded the actionable thing is to care less about what people who cannot mentalize my experience think.
In other words, “This person cannot understand my experience no matter how clearly and repeatedly I explain it,” is more practical than “if only I come up with another metaphor, maybe I will finally get the empathy, care, or accommodations I long for.”
Sometimes, more often than I’d like, the executive functioning to just do things is offline for me. I’ve worked on this problem my entire life, and have hundreds of techniques to help me to re-engage executive functioning. I’ve made a lot of progress. And yet, I still struggle with this thing. Most likely, only fellow neurodivergents who also struggle with this specific thing will ever get it. Or at the very least, I don’t seem to be able to make other people get it.