(This wasn’t even the first time this discourse dissociative but worth it! #author #reader #booktok #authortok #writertok ♬ Just Dance - Lady Gaga “At this point all the character traits I have are just my neurodivergence ,” wrote another. “12th grade reading level in 5th grade you say? Damn … #trauma,” wrote one. It often looks like this: On August 26, a woman posted a TikTok suggesting that “excessive reading” in childhood was considered a “dissociative behavior.” In the video, she turns to the camera and shakes her head as if having a sudden, life-altering realization that explains the trajectory of her life the comments are flooded with people experiencing the same aha moment. We end up treating mental illness like a subculture, complete with its own vocabulary that only those in the know can use and weaponize. One way to do so is by seizing on common human behaviors to name - gaslighting, emotional labor, trauma, parasocial relationships, “empath” as a noun - then disseminating them until they cease to mean much at all. It has also turned discussions around ADHD and psychological conditions with similar symptoms - generalized anxiety disorder, depression, autism spectrum disorder - into land mines, capable of turning a good-faith debate into an endless back-and-forth of ad hominem attacks.īut in the past decade, as social media has forced billions of us to virtually bump into people we never would have otherwise, many of us have also found the need to categorize people into recognizable boxes. Were we overdiagnosing neurotypical brain functions? Were we overmedicating children who were simply acting like children? Was it all the health care industry’s fault? This line of questioning is a touchy subject for plenty of people who have found meaning and identity and medical help from their diagnosis. The nebulous definition of ADHD, and Big Pharma’s push to diagnose and treat it, has made the disorder’s very existence the subject of intense cultural debate since before I was born. Videos would show up on my For You page with captions like “Hidden signs you’re ADHD” and “what my ADHD brain feels like,” and I’d roll my eyes because I knew what was coming: They’d reference common attributes of the modern mind - difficulty focusing and difficulty switching tasks, difficulty completing boring tasks and difficulty completing difficult tasks - and finish by saying, “If you relate to this, congrats! You probably have attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.” To be fair, this isn’t all that impressive, as TikTok and the rest of the internet make it extremely difficult to focus on a single thing for more than five seconds - there is simply so much stuff to look at! - and it’s certainly possible to argue that anyone who spends enough time online may experience some of the symptoms that help psychologists diagnose patients. When I first downloaded TikTok, in the fall of 2018, it only took a few days for my algorithm to figure out that I have ADHD.
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