The lighter side of ADHD
Once I had to fill some forms for the gouvernement and I just went to their office and found a wonderfully helpful lady who helped me to do it and reassured me when I would freak out because their questions were not logical or not as closed as they thought. It was an eye opener and I've used the technique ever since.
Neurotypicals seem to suffer from the curse of knowledge far more than others. The worst part is, they're neither aware of it, nor do they want to be aware of it.
They don't realize how many assumptions they're making about what you know, and that the information they're assuming you have is the same information that they are working from.
For the uninitiated, the curse of knowledge is a concept where, by knowing the context of a thing, you understand it, but others do not because they don't have the context of that thing. It's a curse because the speaker with the curse of knowledge assumes that others have that context, often unaware that context needs to be provided for that thing to be understood.
The easiest demonstration of this I've seen is, try having someone guess a song by tapping it out on a table or something. More than 90% of the time they will not be able to guess what song you're portraying because they lack the context. As soon as you mention the song, assuming the listener has heard the song before, they will be able to hear the association between your taps and the song, but not before being told.
This phenomenon happens a lot, and it's the worst on government anything because often you are not provided any reference to look up what is intended for the question, form, information or whatever that you're being asked to provide, you just need to provide it, but you lack the context to know what they even mean.
I refer to this as the corrollary to "you don't know what you don't know", which is, "you don't know what you know".
That's apt. I like it.
I would suggest that NT’s suffer from the curse of assumption and they’re unaware of it. It they read a question like we’re discussing they assume only one aspect of it. Whereas a non-NT like adhd would see multiple angles and answers to the question all at once and suffer the frustration of having to decipher what the asker really means - hence the au/adhd person’s need to over-explain an answer to be sure to corral the information specifically to the question they think is being asked.
Assumptions are the corner stone of the curse of knowledge.
NTs make a lot of assumptions about the listener and how they will understand something, because they always operate within a contextual box. They either don't care, or don't want to examine their statements from outside perspectives because their perspective is the only one that matters to them. That makes it sound worse than it is, but it's accurate.
Neurodivergents generally spend a nontrivial amount of time trying to "fit in" with the NTs, often at the cost of their own mental well-being, but I digress. The majority of divergents have the skillset of understanding someone else's point of view, since it's a critical tool when building up a persona, aka masking.
I don't care what anyone says, that's a skillset, and it can be extremely useful. It's often not used in a good, or productive way (looping back to the argument of masking being mentally burdensome here). As a tool, out can be used to great benefit, or great detriment, depending on how it's used.
Nice of them though. I forced myself and it was not impossible since that's what I have done every day until now. Some people seem to expect servants to help them. But we're past slavery. I know how hard it is. But everyone has different challenges in life. Be happy that you are assisted with yours. Not many are.
Just as an FYI, most states have programs that will fund a disability lawyer to assist you with your disability claim. Most of the time the lawyers will be paid partly through your claim if it is successful and it's usually free if it is not.
Also do not get discouraged if your claim is initially denied, in my state it's basically an open secret that your first claim gets automatically denied to discourage people from actually getting benefits. With disability, it's all about persistence, documentation, and filing as soon as you can. Even if you get denied for years, when it is successful your claim will be back dated to the date of your initial filling.
Not a lawyer, but I work in a field where most all my patients are on disability, and I have had to help my parents file in an extremely conservative state.
Disability lawyers only get paid by a certain max percentage of the backpay after you win the case. There is no upfront cost to it. Try going for non profit lawyers as the others tend to just not give a fuck. In my experience at least.
Seems weird that they're willing to pay for a lawyer to help you but not to pay their own employees to help you, which is why you need the lawyer.
It's bullshit jobs all the way down.
most states ~~have~~ had programs
Ah the classic catch-22. Proving you have a disability, proves you are not disabled. Be glad though, it means you are not going to the farms.
And being able to fill out the form is considered by the government to be proof of a neurotypical mind.
I got my partner to fill it in for me. After all, they're the ones suffering from it the most.
I've lost out on probably more than $10k in grants and bursaries for my education because of this same problem.
It's honestly so infuriating.
So the system is working as intended.
If you file for adhd and don’t complete the form, it should be granted.
I successfully submitted for a short term disability claim for an anxiety condition that arose from my ADHD. A few weeks later I was told that there wouldn't be a role for me to return to once I was recovered. IE in an attempt to avoid a nasty law suit they aren't firing me until I'm off short term disability.
Talk about setting up adverse conditions for recovery!
I'm pretty sure that could be used against them, especially if they told you in writing 🤔
That's why unions are important
That's exactly what they did to my wife last year.
Pretty much the equivalent of asking a paraplegic to prove their disability by running.
My guess is they expected a filled out form. But I see the Catch 22.
My guess is they hoped for what they got, so that they wouldn't have to pay for any support.
Filling out the ADHD form proves you must not have ADHD. Also, not filling out the form proves you don't have it.