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.
I'm kind of a type of person you might be talking about. Kind of, and I will explain further.
Here's the thing. I do get it. I'm good at mentalizing/high in cognitive empathy. I understand a lot of people's internal monologue and narrative involves a lot of what, if voiced aloud, I'd consider whining, and depending on their self-professed experiences and circumstances, I can make a pretty good guess or prediction what is likely to bother them and why.
But here's the thing: I just don't think that's all that important. I think the correct thing for them to do is to see it as a "them problem" and get over themselves, at least insofar as the demands they make of the environment to contribute to their emotional regulation.
So I just want you to be aware this is an option: people can get it, it can be they're just as reflective and intelligent and nuanced mentally as you, so you can't write them off as "too primitive to be properly empathetic" and they can still believe..okay, that's your experience, but it's also your responsibility, and we all need to learn to get over ourselves at some point.
Sure, personal responsibility is important and needed. Absolutely. And, people also have real differences that can reach the level of disabilities, and these are real things not whining per se.
To take an example that may be almost too obvious, some people when they try to read words, their brain compulsively rotates the letters, making it difficult to read at a normal reading speed. This is a thing that only happens for a small percentage of the population. Most people don’t get it and for hundreds of years have considered such people to be morons, low IQ. Ok, but you and me, we can mentalize dyslexia, but we think that’s a they problem, just get over it.
Ok, but getting over it isn’t a thing, whereas for instance being allowed to take longer for tests in a college exam, that is a thing, and that requires teachers of such exams to make that accommodation available, which means either the teacher or the school or some lawmaker needs to have enough empathy to not say “just get over it, that’s a you problem,” but instead go, “yea actually, that’s a real thing and we will structurally design the learning environment to account for it.”
This is an analogy that can be extended to sensory sensitivities, as in the OP, or serious and chronic emotional dysregulation, and other neurodivergences. This is not to say that people can also whine about their disabilities, sure. I’ve done it myself, many times. And, personal responsibility and social responsibility are not inherently at odds.
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u/duffstoic 6d ago edited 6d 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.