u/Glass_Friendship_187

*Rules for thee, but not for me

I have no diagnosis, but I want to check if this framing resonates with anyone.

Not only is there an undefined set of social rules that I must follow, but once I feel as if I have learned a rule, I see it violated, sometimes even by the same person who pointed it out to me.

As an example, it is generally inappropriate to press someone about a sensitive topic (e.g. regarding race, mental health, or emotional wellness) without the proper setting and setup. The pressing can be misunderstood without that context.

However, I often see people around me apparently violate that social convention, without incurring any obvious social cost. E.g. person A will express dissatisfaction about topic X. Person B will sympathize, and A will acknowledge and not elaborate further. B might then continue the conversation or reference what A is feeling.

I operate under the impression that it is typically not safe to continue that talk, but sometimes people will feel as if I am being insensitive. I have previously tried to press and address, but then I have told that I pressed a sore spot.

TLDR: I am deliberating an identity that includes neurodivergence (ND; [neurodivergent]), and I feel as if I am isolated from both ND and neurotypical (NT) populations. Isolation from perceived NT people may be self-explanatory (to people in this subreddit), but isolation from self-identified ND people feels frustrating. I echo some frustrations that ND peoppe may empathize with and point out specific behaviors from ND people that feel implicitly problematic.

I [23M] have recently decided that internally identifying with the ND label may be more beneficial to my mental health than not. I have lived my life insisting that I am neither autistic, ADHD, nor otherwise qualified to be called ND, by myself or others. I felt as if I didn't run into the same social integration issues that "truly" autistic people face, or that I never really had the same "focus issues that people with "real ADHD" have (which is not the full scope of ND, but appears to be where the brunt of attention is in the ND discussion).

As I've gotten older and left the comfortable social petri dishes that school provided, I find myself empathizing with specific grievances that ND people express (I present two of many examples).

1. I'd always considered myself an effective socializer because I can maintain conversation with individuals. However, I have learned the way I conduct conversations can be considered masking (fairly rigid conversation structure, explicitly querying others to the end of giving them the chance to open up).

2. I'd considered the way in which I jumped from activity to activity and needed to plan out explicit structure to get tasks done to be a fairly normal coping strategy that everyone could benefit from. I have learned that people diagnosed with ADHD cite this as a specific struggle they face, and there are NT people who state this has never been an issue worth addressing for them.

So I am trying to find a space where I can feel accepted. I have been informed that I have some specific grating social tendencies that preclude me from getting close to perceived and self-identified NT people in a way that fulfills my social needs. That's fine. ND people are difficult to find, but I have historically gotten along with ND people exceptionally well. My closest friends are ND, and I enjoy spending time with them. These are friends that I've largely grown up with, but we all live separate lives as adults.

To this end, I try to incorporate myself with people, but there are a lot of people who proudly identify as ND that I feel completely removed from. A common pattern of conversation I see is:

• Openly ND Person A complains about situation X or skill Y that they struggle with
• Openly ND Person B empathizes with A
• The conversation between B and A effectively caps with "this is because I am ND" or "NT people don't struggle with this" (B and A have a mutual point of solidarity now, further conversation may continue)

Recently, I have heard conversations in this pattern about 1. Knowing your lefts and rights 2. Using Generative AI 3. Doing schoolwork.

This symptom-first representation of ND often leaves me feeling more alone. I walk away feeling as if I can no longer empathize, and perhaps I was wrong this whole time; maybe I'm just an inept NT person (which in itself seems like a contradictory state).

Can anyone here relate to this feeling of limbo? I'd love to hear it either reframed from a different perspective, or get a cold splash, whatever way this post makes you feel.