In yesterday’s post, I talked more about the medical model of ‘fix the broken thing’. I also ranted about a variety of things as is my wont; now, I’d like to actually talk about the social model of disability. Or not. We’ll see where my brain goes.
The basic premise is that it’s not the person who’s wrong, but the society. Or rather, our society is set up for ‘normal’ people. In many different ways, but in this case, let’s give a ‘for an example’. Let’s talk about time. Most jobs are 9-to-5, if not earlier.
Side note (but a related one for once): I have recently learned of a disorder called Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome (DSPS) in which people affected can’t consistently go to bed at a ‘normal’ time. 2 hours or more than the recommended/normal/randomly chosen time to go to bed. It’s fascinating because one of the suggestions for adjusting your schedule to a more ‘normal’ one is to push your sleep schedule forward/ahead an hour at a time.
Let’s say you go to bed at 3 a.m. normally. The old advice would be two go to bet at 2 a.m. until you get used to it, then 1 a.m., etc., until you get to the desired time. I have tried that. A few nights of fucking that up and it’s back to the old time again.
The suggestion I mentioned was to go to bed at 3 a.m. for a few nights, then 4 a.m., then continue that until you get to the desired time in the opposite direction. I have not tried that, and it’s so involved. It would take months to do that.
I have a wild third option. What if we, hear me out, allow people to follow their natural biorhythms? Outrageous, I know! Acutally letting people sleep at a time that’s good for them? How dare I? Look. I know that there are reasons for business hours being what they are. Well, no. I don’t, actually. I mean, I know that it’s ‘always been this way’ (yeah, right) and that there is some sense to getting it done first so you can have time afterwards for personal life.
But I just don’t function at eight in the morning. I am at my best at two in the morning, which is not normal at all. After my medical crisis, I did sleep from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. for a year. That was a magical time, honestly.
It’s not me, though. My sleep schedule started sliding back to what it had been before (4 a.m. to 12 p.m., basically), even though I tried to ffight it. I’m struggling with it again now. I’ve gotten it to 3 a.m. to 11 a.m., but it keeps bumping towards later.
My best thinking time is when the rest of the world is asleep. That’s when I feel the most alive, when my brain is the sharpest, and I am at one with the universe.
There is nothing wrong with me for being a night owl. This is something I have never felt gulity about. it’s caused problems in my life, obviously, but that’s on the world and other people–not on me. The fact that I couldn’t get more than six hours of sleep a night for a long time (or less) was a problem, yes, but not the fact that I slept best at a shifted time.
I’m offended, honestly, that this is an actual disorder. A disorder! No. I refuse to accept that. But, weirdly, reading the description of this ‘disorder’ has really underscored how arbitrary some medical shit is–and how much it skews to a mythical normative that is nonsesnical.
This gets me (finally) to my point about the social model of disability. My friend, A, from the RKG Discord hepped me onto it. I had heard of the concept before, but not the actual term. Basically, it says the medical model is not the right one to use with neurodivergency (and, again, probably other things, too, but let’s not go there). I’m going to try to stick to one topic for once.
In the medical model, someone who can’t focus on one thing would be given medicine or therapy or something in order to try to force them to concentrate on one thing. In the social model, that person would be allowed to use a fidget toy, for example, in a meeting in which they had to concentrate.
In my case, I do the hyperfocus thing, but I need to be in complete control of the stimuli around me. And I’m very sensitive to noises. If I were in an office, I would need to be able to use noise-cancelling earphones (well, that has it’s own problem because I have sensory/sensation issues) because I could not deal with the noises people make around me all the time.
It’s interesting. In reading the Ask A Manager website for the past five or so years, I’ve noticed an interesting battle going on. People have become more open about neurodiversity, but there is also more pushback about it. Both from people wto are neurodivergent and those who are not.
The tension is how much accomodation should someone who is neurodivergent receive at work. Of course there have to be norms in any culture because otherwise, you can’t really function. I am not arguing for total anarchy (though a little more anarchy would be nice), but I am arguing at the very least for more leeway when possible.
I can’t help but mourn how much of my life has been wasted because I did not know that I probably had a neurodivergent brain. At least my childhood and my teens, if not all of my twenties. In fact, I would say it wasn’t until I started Taiji in my mid-thirties that I had an inkling of an idea that maybe I wasn’t completely broken.
It’s hard to come from two cultures that hate on weirdos so much, but in differing ways. America claims to be an individualistic country, but that is so not true. Yes, DEI is becoming more of a thing, but we have such a long way to go.
Let’s not even talk about Taiwanese culture, or at least how my parents perpetuate it. Honestly, I don’t know how much of what they pushed on me was their culture and how much was just them.
A told me if I had a ruler in the house, I should try the old ‘drop it and see how long it takes me to catch it’ trick. I don’t have a ruler, but I do have chopsticks (of course), which are roughly ten inches long. I can’t catch it before it falls halfway, no matter how hard I tried. Sometimes, it fell all the way to the end (so eight inches or so) before I caught it. And once it dropped to the floor.
I mentioned in an earlier post that playing Have a Nice Death (Magic Design Studios) on easy mode is what finall ymade me realiez that yes, I was neurodivergent. I simply cannot do what I need to do to get the secret ending. I barely was able to get the first completed run and the second one (both of which ends differently).
I’m done for the night. More tomorrow.