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specks-of-time:

Twitter/X thread from Victoria Duncan on X: "At some point, very early on, undiagnosed neurodivergent children are faced with a terrible dilemma. They will tell someone they're in pain, someone they trust, and that person will say no they're not. That didn't hurt. It can't have. They're being selfish/dramatic/lying. The child has to get their head around it. They feel pain, but a trusted caregiver says they don't and they're being bad for saying so. How can it be true? There are only two, bad, options. The child may choose to believe the caregiver and decide that they are wrong about their pain. They will make this choice again and again over the years and slowly learn to ignore their body until they are barely connected to it at all. They learn not to trust themselves. Or, the child might not be able to ignore the reality of their pain. In which case, they have to give up on pleasing their caregiver by keeping quiet as demanded. They learn that adults won't believe or take care of them. They learn not to trust other people.ALT
I think whichever choice you make, you carry the rest of your life, disconnected either from your own body and experiences, or from other people and meaningful relationships. Maybe both. Anyway, diagnosis is the only way out of the dilemma. It's the only way your reality can be different from other people's without someone being at fault - is if you have a word like "sensory overwhelm" to explain the difference. That's why diagnosis changes lives & why people want it so much. This is about saying you're in pain because of sensory overwhelm, but it can also be about saying you're tired from sitting still or socializing or reading and someone says you can't be. Saying you "don't like" an activity you find hard, and having people assume the worst of you.ALT