Mental health workers sometimes encourage neurodivergent people to imitate some of the behaviors of neurotypical people. The aim of this is to foster learned prosocial behaviors; mimicking an attitude may lead to adopting that attitude. "Fake it till you make it" is one way to describe this strategy.
I see in this the implication that neurodivergent people like me should learn to integrate with neurotypical people who in turn have no social responsibility to accommodate us. Because we are the ones with the differences, we are the ones who must adapt. Not integrating presents significant obstructions to the pursuit of happiness. If people think you're weird, they won't meet you halfway.
In order to accept the idea that I must pretend to be a certain way in order to ingratiate myself to people who aren't likely to help me otherwise, I must admit that the World of Others is hostile toward me. This doesn't make me want to win anyone's favor. The existence of outsiders seems to suggest the existence of an outside. But is it inevitable that we exile the Other?
There is value in learning to surmount the walls before us. Part of the value comes from accepting that people want to keep us out. We are outside their walls to begin with not because of molecular chance but because those walls exist to keep us seperate from them. And the number of neurotypical people working to dismantle the barriers to neurodivergent success in their world is far too small to warrant any hope that said success will come easily to us.
So the onus is on us to suppress our differences in the hopes that eventually acting normal will come easily. And the people we must strive to be like have no responsibility to try to be more like us.
I see in this the implication that neurodivergent people like me should learn to integrate with neurotypical people who in turn have no social responsibility to accommodate us. Because we are the ones with the differences, we are the ones who must adapt. Not integrating presents significant obstructions to the pursuit of happiness. If people think you're weird, they won't meet you halfway.
In order to accept the idea that I must pretend to be a certain way in order to ingratiate myself to people who aren't likely to help me otherwise, I must admit that the World of Others is hostile toward me. This doesn't make me want to win anyone's favor. The existence of outsiders seems to suggest the existence of an outside. But is it inevitable that we exile the Other?
There is value in learning to surmount the walls before us. Part of the value comes from accepting that people want to keep us out. We are outside their walls to begin with not because of molecular chance but because those walls exist to keep us seperate from them. And the number of neurotypical people working to dismantle the barriers to neurodivergent success in their world is far too small to warrant any hope that said success will come easily to us.
So the onus is on us to suppress our differences in the hopes that eventually acting normal will come easily. And the people we must strive to be like have no responsibility to try to be more like us.
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