Weirdly Successful
Dedicated to helping you understand, navigate and enjoy your weird & wonderful neurodivergent life.
Internalised ableism is a psychological construct that refers to the internalisation of negative beliefs, stereotypes, and prejudices about disabilities that are prevalent in society.
It involves self-stigmatization and the development of a negative self-concept based on one's disability and onboarding negative beliefs said to us by parental figures, teachers, grown-ups and society in general.
The double empathy problem is a concept in neurodiversity studies that suggests a mutual misunderstanding between neurodivergent and neurotypical individuals.
It states that the perceived social communication deficits in neurodivergent people may not be due to an inherent impairment, but rather a reciprocal lack of understanding or empathy between different neurotypes.
This theory challenges the traditional deficit model of neurodivergence, emphasizing that empathy is a two-way process, and both parties bear responsibility for successful communication.
Spiritual bypassing is a dismissive behaviour, meaning the use of spiritual explanations to dismiss, diminish or avoid dealing with complicated emotions, uncomfortable experiences or facing the complex and often harsh realities of life. It's part magical thinking and part toxic positivity.
The curb-cut effect refers to the phenomenon that policies initially created to serve a marginalized group end up serving a much more significant portion of society, benefiting even more people than it was originally designed for.
Neuroaffirming or neuro-affirmative refers to practices, approaches, or environments that recognize and affirm the neurodiversity of society and the neurodivergence of individuals.
Unmasking is when you slowly learn to allow your neurodivergence to present itself and you don't try to hide yourself. However, to unmask is a privilege, as you need a safe space to do it.
High-masking refers to a person who is able to mask so efficiently that they ‘pass’ as neurotypical. High-masking is often one of the reasons women go undiagnosed – unfortunately, many assessors completely ignore masking and dismiss the experience of the individual.
Masking is a partly unconscious effort to hide or suppress the manifestations of your neurodivergence. It is an exhausting process that many of us do to "fit in" more. Many people start to mask to avoid abuse, discrimination, bullying, harm and ableism.
The term allistic refers to people who are not autistic. Neurodivergent and neurotypical people can both be allistic if they are not autistic.
Ableism is discrimination and social prejudice against people with physical or mental disabilities. In an ableist society, it’s assumed that the “normal” way to live is as a non-disabled person and that every disabled person needs to or wants to “get rid of” their condition.
