Chapter 18 Neurodivergence and Assertiveness - why is it so hard to get the balance right?
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 21 июл 2023
- Chapter 18 recapping my unexpected Autism and ADHD year: this week I'm talking about assertiveness and boundary setting and why this can sometimes be doubly challenging for neurodivergent people.
I'll look at different types of behaviour responses, from aggressive to non-assertive (taking in passive, submissive, passive-aggressive and manipulative), how these can be all related to self-esteem, and why neurodivergent people can often oscillate from submissive people-pleasing to aggressive meltdown and back again without being able to land the 'Goldilocks' behaviour of polite, calm and firm assertive boundary setting and communication.
Finally, I'll ponder whether a 'high ground' of calm, self-respecting two-way communication between neurodivergent and neurotypical people may be possible with sustained effort from both sides.
Please do like and share this video and subscribe to my channel if you find any of it useful, or message me to get in touch and connect.
Contact email: amineurodivergent@gmail.com
Some useful links:
AQ Autism Self-Test:
I'm going to keep posting the link to the AQ Self Test for autism every Sunday in case this is the first video in the series people come across. Take the self test (remember it's JUST a self-test) and see how you score. You may have been autistic all along and had no idea, like me:
psychology-tools.com/test/aut...
ADHD Self-Test:
(with all the same caveats as above) an ADHD self-test. ADHD is even MORE common than autism (many of us have both) and the vast majority of ADHDers just struggle through from childhood through adulthood having no idea they even HAVE ADHD, let alone working out strategies to cope and deal with it all better to be happier and less frustrated with ourselves and others.
psychology-tools.com/test/adu...
![[DOKKAN BATTLE] August Producer's Letter](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/JUTYpaV_4Ic/mqdefault.jpg)
This is just genius ❤
You can use almost every sentence as a quote. Probably because it hits home so much
Just brilliant thank you so much. So relatable, articulate and concise. What a breath of fresh air your sharings are. Going through it at the mo and the way you describe my own experience and witnessed experience of certain of my friends is is just brilliant. I often know why folk and myself are doing things but can't articulate it so you giving a voice to all of this is pure gold.
Thanks so much for these encouraging comments - I really appreciate them.
The content you provide is extremely, easily digestible. Straight to the point facts/knowledge and sprinkled with tips to overcome.
Thank you - I appreciate the positive feedback. I can go on a bit sometimes, but what you describe is exactly what I'm trying to do!
Thank you! This was helpful for me. Since I have recently become aware that I am autistic. I have needed to find explanations of myself. This helps me see better the pressures of self and that I have placed on others. Again, thank you.
Early in the vid you say about really disliking conflict. I do too, it has always disturbed me and upset me, now I fear and avoid it. There have been too many times in my life where I have given in to others demands and desires when I shouldn’t have done, with consequences detrimental to myself, and yet, as a child my (strange, cruel) mother so frequently said to me, “You just love an argument.” Stuff she said would make me feel like the ground was dropping away from under my feet and plummeted me into despair because nothing could be further from the truth. I always told the truth, but she always insisted I was lying.
I think mothers have a powerful need for control over their children. When they have children on the spectrum, they don’t understand them, and they can’t control them. And I also know my mother is a covert narcissist. She was so destructive to my brothers and I. For many on the spectrum, our first tormentor was our parents, and sometimes our siblings.
@@my-rocket your story sounds so familiar
Nailed it with always playing defensively.
Thanks! I don't mind bragging that I was genuinely really pleased with myself when I landed on that analogy! 🤣
@@amineurodivergent 🤣 well it was well deserved. There are snippets of content that sometimes feel like someone reached down into my soul and surfaced a piece of information about me that was difficult to articulate and that was one of them
@@NeurodiverJENNt Same with yours, a lot of your stuff feels unbelievably relatable to what's going on in my head and thought processes - we could maybe (attempt to) do a joint video somewhere down the road about similarities and differences of male/ female experiences of a late diagnosis, I feel like that could potentially be a really interesting sidebar/ annex to what we're both creating?
I love your videos, and listening to what you say has been a great source of calm and helps with my inner strength. For this subject, I think the advice makes a lot of sense and can be helpful for anyone. But also and unfortunately, this one is harder for women (or any marginalized group) because a lot of people have pre-judged us as less intelligent, less "important", etc. And neurotypical people are much more likely to make decisions based on snap judgements rather than logic. Meanwhile, logic is the most important tool and primary language for many neurodiverse people. So it is extremely difficult to get the level of chill you describe here. None of this is a disagreement with this video, it is more like an addendum.
I will say that chill I wish I had more of is much more acheivable now that I am (self) diagnosed, can see my life more clearly, and know that others face the same things I do. Thanks for all you do.
Thanks for taking the time to comment - I do recognise what you're saying here and it's a really valid point. Thank you and all the best!
Trips to aggressive town! Love it. I think your comments were spot on. I am learning to try and not be too hard on myself for my emotional dysregulation. It's tiring though. Great post
Thank you for insightfully defining aggressive, assertive, and non assertive modes of communication for autistic people. Very interesting to consider in my life.
Regarding anger I feel a friend of mine made this quote that sums up anger brilliantly:
"Anger is an emotion people can have when their needs aren't met. It needs to be validated and listened to with compassion like any other emotion. Burying, denying or trying to destroy anger (in yourself or others) can be extremely harmful. I certainly wouldn't recommend using it to justify hurting anyone or calling it a solution to difficulties, like a warning light or alarm isn't a solution but a signal to draw your attention to a problem. Shaming or disowning anger doesn't make it go away any more than breaking the smoke alarm puts out fires. The fire alarm isn't the fire extinguisher, and it's important not to confuse them, but they both have their place."
I think anger is a very misunderstood emotion and is often confused with violence when that is often not the case. But I think a lot of people's instinctive response to anger (be that in themselves or others) is to shut it down. But that doesn't make it go away and intensifies it further. I think all emotions are there to tell us something, even the more intense, uncomfortable ones. And when we shut them down we lose what our emotions are trying to tell us. Anger is usually there to tell us our boundaries are being crossed.
Anger seems to be an emotion that is more acceptable in certain circles and people with certain status than it is in others. I remember watching a documentary about Margaret Thatcher once and they said how she was always very bitter about her downfall. That is something that was socially acceptable in her and she was still admired by a lot of people even if she was hated by others. If those whose lives she adversely affected expressed a fraction of the bitterness she showed they would not have been given the same leeway.
But I think whenever someone is angry they need time and space to process that anger, to talk it out. I find talking with people I don't feel angry with and who are in a position to listen and hold space helps a lot.
Thank you, these are really interesting points. I agree about anger needing to be validated and listened to with compassion (AND that more often than not it emerges when boundaries have been crossed), but for me where it becomes difficult is when that anger is directed at someone personally - and I say that as both an occasional perpetrator and as a victim of it. When one becomes cornered, one can lash out at the person (fairly or unfairly) one feels has cornered them. For me, when this situation occurs, is the time to walk away and find calm, not press onwards. I'm not sure if you were suggesting processing and talking between the parties the anger arose from, or processing and talking with a third party independent of the anger? If the former, maybe there's a higher level of compassion to be able to look beyond personal attack, on the part of either party, but I for one am not there yet in terms of being able to harness and convert that emotional regulation in the moment, and I think I think at that point space between the parties is needed. Return to the discussion in due course after reflection, yes, continue it in the moment of heat ... not sure. But to not suppress the reasons BEHIND the anger, I 100% agree - explore it and work out why it's emerged and then look for a way forward. I've been looking into emotional regulation quite a bit recently, but I'm finding while I understand it all intellectually, that understanding's not translating into NOT getting angry and stressed and frustrated with things on a day to day basis, if that makes sense? It's low frustration tolerance that gets me worked up, I think. I wonder if looking at this from a different angle - conflict resolution theories, maybe - could pay dividends. Sorry, long and not entirely relevant response to your point, but your post raised a lot of interesting points and got me thinking.
@@amineurodivergent I think it was relevant enough and I go off on tangents a lot. In response to your question regarding processing anger I think it depends on the context and the relationship between the person we are angry with. If it's not something serious and we feel safe around the other person then maybe it is possible to have the conversation with the other person. If not then it can absolutely be helpful talking with a third party. I agree it's best to walk away when we can but that's not always possible. I grew up in an abusive household and I wasn't usually allowed out of the house alone until my early 20's. I was subjected to a lot of corporal punishment and my mother who was a nurse for people with learning disabilities constantly used the restraint techniques she was taught at work on me. When I tried to defend myself I was seen as the violent one and nobody could understand why I was angry. If someone attacked me on the street my reaction would have been seen as self-defence whereas as a child with significantly less strength than my parents my reaction was considered violent because I was just supposed to take the abuse and be ok with it. I'm all for conflict resolution. I really struggle around those with more power than me throwing their weight around and being infantilised. I struggle when sharing my lived experience and being told my thinking is wrong when they haven't lived my life. But I'm good where two-way conversations are possible and the other party will at least listen to what I have to say. They might not agree but they respect where I'm coming from. That is something I can work with but for many years those sort of connections were very thin on the ground. I did used to think I struggled with people who disagreed with me but these days I find it easier to talk with such people. What this made me realise is that it wasn't that I struggled with people who disagreed with me per se but in the past most people who disagreed with me didn't stop at disagreeing, they attacked my character and were abusive. I still come across a few people like that and I still struggle having conversations with them but I set them apart from those who can discuss disagreements respectfully.
@@MiaMantri what a great, insightful post, thank you for sharing all that. I'm sorry to hear all the abuse you went through earlier in your life, it sounds like you've risen above it to have an incredibly healthy perspective on conflict. I've copy-pasted that whole post into my more in-depth 'user manual for me' I've started compiling with all the useful and good bits of advice and perspectives I come across. This was absolutely great - thank you again.
Thank you, good to see you back.
I think you've hit it when you said "We mask, and we mask, and we mask." For me, it isn't always masking so much as not showing emotions outwardly. So when a coworker does something which I believe they should know is annoying, and they do it again (no response), and they do it again- Boom! I am open about my displeasure, and I say something about it, and somehow I'm the bad guy because they didn't realize I was upset until now. I make the mistake of thinking "Treat others as you would want to be treated," and thinking, "I would never want to be treated like that, so surely they must know it's annoying. And if they continue, I assume that they are being purposefully out of bounds.
I think I can be so low-key much of the time that if I show any displeasure, people think I'm angry (and going to stay that way). No, just stop doing whatever caused this. I don't hold a grudge.
I also think there is some (probably allistic) tacit understanding that if the person you are doing something disrespectful or annoying to isn't outwardly telling you not to, then somehow it's okay to keep going with it. It feels like this may have to do with hierarchy and the sense that some may conclude "Wow, I seem to be getting away with this. I must have made it to a higher rank. Go me!"
In the end, I like that you describe this as a shared responsibility.
Thank you. What you've said all sounds very familiar. I struggled whether to say I thought it was a shared responsibility because I think it can be quite a delicate tread. But I'm more and more becoming convinced of the double empathy problem that Damian Milton discusses and for double empathy issues to be resolved between what are just two fundamentally different types of brains, I do think more and more that this needs to be an active two-way conversation. And an assertive one! This is where I want to start taking things, I think.
I understand your point about self-worth.
My experience is different though.
I never want to be agressive, but over time (many years) I slowly became neurotic, I even have essential tremors when I feel stress and it makes me impossible to keep masking anymore,
but my main point is about self-worth and agression, which is
even when I become agressive, I don't feel my self-worth lowering
because if my slef-worth wouldn't be checked first
I would be able to become agressive.
I don't become agressive without me being sure about my self-worth,
my strong sense of self-worth makes me sure of myself becoming agressive if I feel necessary, although I never want to become agressive, I always try to avood it,
but there are times when people just don't leave you alone until you explode because there is no "running away" from family or workplace and similar situations.
(by "running away" I simply mean,
I can't just walk away because it is late for me to leave home to walk away go to a store and calm down, going to a different room is not enough because you still can hear your family-members sh**-talk about you through the walls, even if every single word audible, the thought that they are still continue sh**-talking about you behind your back makes you want to "run away" (walk away, go to a 24/7 store to calm down), but if you don't have a 24/7 store in your area and if you live in a dangerous neighbourhood (maybe a gettho, where people are walking with knifes in their pockets) it is not possible to do a walk outside to calm down or to go to a shop at night, etc.
At workplace it is also not possible to calm down, the toilet is not always totally empty, and it is even more annoying when you are sitting on a toilet and you hear 2 of you workplace colleges walking into the toilet keep talking sh** about you behind your back without noticing you are sitting on the toilet.
The most annoying problem is that
many times they can't help sh**-talking about you
simply because they (neurotypicals) dont get you (autist)
and they actually believe that you are doing it on purpose (by "doing it on purpose" I mean
"acting weird" (ex. stimming, etc...) because you just want to be yourself for at least a few seconds from 9am to 5pm).
I think you are right,
and I wish that would be the case for eveyone (so we could find a one-fits-all type of solution would be easier to solve all of our problems),
but I simply got different experiences.
(PS. Sorry about possible typos, I'm trtin to type and reread this on my phone, but it gave me a headache)
(typo/edit:
if my self-worth wouldn't be checked first
I would not be able to become agressive either)
Thanks for sharing all that - that's a really interesting point about self worth being checked first prior to becoming assertive/ aggressive. I guess there's a pretty fine line between assertion and aggression sometimes maybe?
Another well thought out and explained video welcome back I hope your break helped you and your feeling better.
Nice research and truth from you. Thank you. To add another point of view taking cues from an another video of yours on procrastination - what’s helping me somewhat is in the knowing that my non-assertiveness comes from being in a zero dopamine (or a panic adrenaline) state by default. Hence in order to get assertive I need to get a mild fight sense within me (read as healthy adrenaline). This helps to be get ‘seen’ or ‘heard’ in a conversation when not overdone. I’m sensing that with dopamine being virtually dysfunctional, ‘adrenaline in a healthy dose’ could be the God chemical in us neurodivergent folks for just anything and not only on assertiveness. Further, may be trauma healing could be helpful to find the right balance in it. Just based on my personal experiments on myself 😅 and still learning.
That's really interesting - definitely still on the learning journey myself and would be interested in hearing more about your experiments and finding the balance
I am glad you’re back, I was thinking about your videos just yesterday.
My all time favorite assertive lines everyone can use for non-NO takers:
THE WORD "NO" IS A FULL AND COMPLETE SENTENCE!
OR
THE WORD "NO" HAS ALREADY DEPARTED MY TO LIPS, AND MY YOU'RE BEING DISRESPECTFUL, SO PLEASE/JUST STOP!.. after that WALK AWAY!
Extra Strength: THE WORD "NO" HAS BEEN SAID, WHY IS THERE STILL A DISCUSSION?
Thank you for making these videos.
This is a very well thought through video about ND communication. Thank you.
Shocking about ADHD kids getting thousands of more negative comments than those who aren’t.
Right? That was absolutely shocking for me to find out too, but believable when I thought about it. So many little micro-aggressions and 'telling off' comments. Death by a thousand paper cuts.
Helm of Understanding!
Knitted Cerebro beanie?
😂😂😂
I don't get the reference sorry ☹
Hi. At 6:56 I wondered. Have you heard of masking fatigue? I saw it on a video but which one? And was it a credible source? You covered a lot in this chapter. Thank you. I'll want to listen repeatedly and take notes. Glad you are back.
I haven't - at least not directly, though my gut instinct is that masking fatigue and autistic burnout will be similar. Really understanding all the manifestations and consequences of masking is one of the things I'm going to try to get more under the skin of over the coming weeks to understand it better both for me and for the wider community. Thanks for the heads up, I'm definitely going to look more into this.
@@amineurodivergent thank you for replying. It seems the more I decrease the circumference of my social circle, I have more spoons for attending to inner circle concerns. Namely, my own health, housing, and transportation needs whilst doing what I can with close family. What I can falls far short of family expectations. But. We all agree meltdowns are unacceptable. I'd apologize for rambling and oversharing, but rather I will say thank you for the unmasked space for parcing. Very valuable reality is. I'm 73. Undiagnosed ASD. Good day.
@@lindadunn8787 Never apologise for rambling (though I do all the time) - it's really nice to hear others' experiences and how they're navigating what's right for them. Your insightful comments on here I know have helped me (the concept of eco mapping you mentioned I've found very helpful) and I'm sure others that may have read them too. It's nice to have connected with you on here.
Slightly less soul destroying 😅
This. So. Much.
I’ve worked in “open concept offices” from ‘13-pandemic. What a nightmare. I have the privilege of working remotely now, and if this position ends, and I can’t find another remote position, I’ll stop working. Only sociopaths like putting people in open offices.