Procrastination or Learned Helplessness?
Learned helplessness is often experienced by ADHDers and Autistic folks. Successfully completing a neurotypically-designed task to neurotypical standards with a neurodivergent brain is tough. The result is this: the ADHDer or Autistic person is told that they aren’t doing it right. Hearing these messages on repeat causes them to feel powerless and incompetent. The result? Learned helplessness.
How to Make Affirming Diagnoses
Language is important. As evaluators, we should think about how we can frame the DSM criteria in a way so our clients feel understood and not shamed by us. We can take our conceptualization a step beyond the DSM and consider the contextual factors at play. Consider the cultural, societal, and relational contexts that the individual functions in and how these frameworks contribute to their challenges.
From Pathology to Neurodiversity
The neurodiversity paradigm focuses on differences and assumes that diversity among brains is natural, necessary, and valuable. There is no normal. Sure, there tends to be dominant groups across all areas of human diversity, but we can’t confuse dominant with best.