suffering - Emergent Divergence

Jan 26 2023

Understanding Autistic mental health in a broader context

We often discuss anxiety and depression amongst the Autistic population. Some such as myself and Autistic and Living the Dream have pushed to get lesser discussed mental health concerns into the zeitgeist, but there is a problem with how it is framed in a more general sense. When most people discuss Autistic mental health, they discuss the individual experiences, I feel it is necessary to look at the bigger picture.

One of the reasons we centre our conversations on individual experiences is because of the medicalisation of acquired neurodivergence. Medical models of psychological wellbeing centre the experience of distress as the defining feature of what is then described as a disordered mind. It teaches is that acquired neurodivergence is the source of our suffering, placing the responsibility on us to adapt to an unchanging environment.

This is where Autistic mental health becomes complicated. In general, Autistic people favour social models of disability and neurodiversity-affirming approaches, and yet we are taught that further neurodivergence is a disorder. It directly conflicts with our understanding of our Self. It partitions off parts of ourselves and teaches us to eliminate them rather than co-exist. What we actually need is to recognise that distress from traditional “Psychiatric conditions” is as much of a reaction to our environment as an Autistic meltdown is.

The environments that exist in our world are inherently traumatic for Autistic people. Trauma alters the way the brain functions, and we are then taught it is our responsibility to recover from that. In truth, the responsibility lies with the environmental factors that cause our distress. You are not suffering because of “illness”. You are suffering because the world is not made with your needs considered. When the world consistently abuses us, crosses our boundaries, and fails to meet our needs, we suffer.

Autistic people need to be allowed to co-exist with themselves. We need a world where the experience of distress doesn’t require us to get better but requires the world to do better. Lack of accessibility and invalidation of people’s lived experiences might well be one of the biggest causes of psychological distress in our society.

David Gray-Hammond 0 Comments

Jan 5 2023

How “mental illness” disempowers the average person

Over the past decade or so, we have seen a surge in the awareness of so-called “mental illness”.

While the concept of telling people you are struggling has served a good purpose, the concept of “illness” has actually disempowered people who have these particular neurodivergences and the people around them.

Human suffering, as it stands, is a heavily medicalised field of study. It has become the realm of doctors and nurses, and this is where we become disempowered. When we experience suffering, we believe that only doctors have the responsibility to remedy that. The average person is made to feel as though they are “out of their depth”.

In fact, the responsibility for reducing human suffering is on all of us. Medication can take the edge off, but to see a true reduction in trauma that litters our society, we all have to do work. Doctors are not responsible for the environments and people we grow up with, and yet we assume they are the answer when we experience suffering as a result of those things.

Society is structured in such a way that we are likely to encounter trauma throughout our lives. It is important to move beyond normative standards of trauma and recognise the subjective nature of this abstraction. What is traumatic for me may not be traumatic for you. It does not make it any less valid.

This is why we need to listen to minorities about minority experiences, ot allows us to root out the traumatic experiences occurring in society, and not just those which we recognise. When we invalidate another person’s experience, we are contributing to the immense suffering that is currently happening in our world.

Perhaps then, it is pertinent for us to take responsibility for the role we each take in the suffering of others and ensure that we are doing good with the limited time we have on earth.

Our psychological well-being is far from being solely the realm of medics. We each play a significant role in other people’s worlds.

David Gray-Hammond 8 Comments

Sep 13 2022

Neuronormativity, the pathologisation of Mental health, and the normalising of suffering

In recent years mental health has become more widely talked about, thanks to the popularisation of the “it’s okay not to be okay” trope. On the surface this is a wonderful approach to the normalisation of Mental health issues, but does it have a darker side?

There are currently over 300 “disorders” listed in the DSM 5, the diagnostic manual used by psychiatrists around the world. One could imagine that between them they account for the vast majority of human experience; a concerning thought to say the least.

What benefit does this serve us as a society?

Realistically, it only benefits those who adhere to normative standards.

We’ve been taught that mental health concerns are an illness, that we have a pathology that requires treatment. Despite this, there is no biomedical test that can definitively diagnose any of the numerous entries in the DSM. So perhaps there is something more to the pathologisation of human experience.

Our society is broken, it has fixed rules that apply to fewer and fewer people, while trying harder and harder to assimilate people into it’s normative standards of behaviour. Szasz would argue that this approach serves to provide a sort of social control over us.

So now we live in a society where anyone who doesn’t fit cultural standards of normal is considered “sick” or “ill”.

Thus, we reach a point of starting to understand why “it’s okay not to be okay” might have a darker side to it. Mental health issues (in my opinion) arise from living in an environment that can not fulfill the individuals needs. An environment that consistently traumatises those living in it.

However, we are now normalising human suffering. It’s okay to say “I’m not okay” but we must never normalise human suffering. When we do or say things that uphold the pathology paradigm, we are allowing our oppressive society to continue on its harmful path.

We need to do the work to rebuild society into a brighter place, thar meets the needs of the many, and not just a selected few. We do this by recognising that neurodiversity is about more than Autistic and ADHD experiences.

The change starts with us, and it ends with a brighter future.

It’s never okay to suffer.

David Gray-Hammond 2 Comments