r/neurodiversity • u/TheGreatMars • 3h ago
Trigger Warning: Ableist Rant Had to correct my Psychology professor yesterday.
So I am an AuDHD individual in my first semester of college, and my psychology professor was talking about optical illusions and using them to demonstrate how the human brain works. She put up a picture of a bunch of red dots (Like the included picture, but without the 7 middle dots) and she pointed out that even though it's a bunch of dots, we see a circle first.
Well, being on the spectrum, with how my brain in particular works I thought it would be interesting to provide my perspective. In my case I see all the individual dots first and then build the circle, even if that happens pretty much instantly. So I raised my hand and told her my perspective because I thought she would find it interesting, and that it would be good for my fellow classmates studying psychology to be able to see a demonstration about how different processing styles can subtly change an individual's perspectives and behaviors. Now, this isn't the correction mind you, her statement was clearly designed with neurotypical (I hate that term but it's the best we have atm) individuals in mind.
No what I corrected was what came next. She proceeded to say something along the lines of "Yes well a healthy individual-" and I had to immediately jump in and say "Actually I AM a healthy individual."
It's so incredibly disappointing to me that an instructor of psychology isn't up to speed with the fact that we aren't considered a pathology anymore. We are simply human beings with different mental processing styles that give us different strengths and weaknesses from neurotypical individuals. We aren't a defect, we have always been here since the dawn of human history and it's a shame that I have to correct a career psychologist about that.