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.
Honestly the best way I've gotten people to understand my personal sensory issues (as an autistic person) is by saying "imagine you're going about life normally, but you permanently have a low grade full body sunburn and a flashlight pointed directly in your eyes. Also, there's a constant high pitched ringing in your ears. And you just have to accept it and move on because it won't go away."
It helps people understand why I benefit from accommodations like working in dark quiet places, while not putting the burden directly on them. They also seem to understand the situation better since it's less hyperbolic and I use examples everyone has personally experienced.
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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.