Yes! And for someone who has lived their whole life confused as to why they struggle so much, a diagnosis can provide a lot of relief, even if that relief is only a starting point. Of course, the ideal version of getting a diagnosis or identifying with a disorder like ADHD is that it gives you tools to actually improve your life via medication or new coping strategies, not to provide an all purpose excuse for anything bad you do. This is why I do think that diagnoses, as flawed as they are, can still be useful (that and insurance rebates). I'm also wary of going too far in the other direction towards the RFK Jr. banning SSRIs or the "mental illness is all fake" camp. But that's the constant grey area we have to live in, as you say!
Recognizing you have agency to change your life and that doing so is hard because of societal factors to me is key to blending the "individual" mindset that right wing loves to tout with a systems level mindset.
As you have the power to do so, it is the privilege of your existence on this earth to harness your agency and use it shape your life.
it's never fully the symptoms that are the problem, but the worldview by which things are valued or not. and by that worldview, defined into always inaccurate "things". Daoism plus decoloniality is how i worked through much of my own pathologization by the systems of control we are forced into.
One of my recent Autistic special interests has been Western Europe's so-called "Age of Enlightenment", and comparing its individualism, "universalism", linear time, etc to other peoples/worldviews/etc.
The attempt to keep our minds away from recognizing environmental/systemic problems and fixated on individualized "trauma" and "victim hood" seems like a very logical outcome of these Western Europen ideologies.
I really enjoyed doing further research on the earlier interview:
It seems to me that the pathologies aren't in individual humans, but in "Age of Enlightenment" ideologies themself.
I'm not trying to absolve individual responsibility, but I also have moved in recent years away from being angry at individual humans for simply being more blindly "loyal" or "patriotic" to the worldviews which are embeded in (and agressively promoted by) institutions such as settler-colonial Canada and the USA.
Yes! And for someone who has lived their whole life confused as to why they struggle so much, a diagnosis can provide a lot of relief, even if that relief is only a starting point. Of course, the ideal version of getting a diagnosis or identifying with a disorder like ADHD is that it gives you tools to actually improve your life via medication or new coping strategies, not to provide an all purpose excuse for anything bad you do. This is why I do think that diagnoses, as flawed as they are, can still be useful (that and insurance rebates). I'm also wary of going too far in the other direction towards the RFK Jr. banning SSRIs or the "mental illness is all fake" camp. But that's the constant grey area we have to live in, as you say!
Btw this recent op ed in the Times by fellow substacker Awais Aftab was fantastic. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/11/opinion/adhd-autism-depression-diagnoses.html?unlocked_article_code=1.hlA.cHvg.rCXtWWVGxfgJ&smid=nytcore-ios-share&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Recognizing you have agency to change your life and that doing so is hard because of societal factors to me is key to blending the "individual" mindset that right wing loves to tout with a systems level mindset.
As you have the power to do so, it is the privilege of your existence on this earth to harness your agency and use it shape your life.
it's never fully the symptoms that are the problem, but the worldview by which things are valued or not. and by that worldview, defined into always inaccurate "things". Daoism plus decoloniality is how i worked through much of my own pathologization by the systems of control we are forced into.
put into words what i’ve been seeing and feeling for years, thank you
So...
One of my recent Autistic special interests has been Western Europe's so-called "Age of Enlightenment", and comparing its individualism, "universalism", linear time, etc to other peoples/worldviews/etc.
The attempt to keep our minds away from recognizing environmental/systemic problems and fixated on individualized "trauma" and "victim hood" seems like a very logical outcome of these Western Europen ideologies.
I really enjoyed doing further research on the earlier interview:
https://r.flora.ca/p/age-of-enlightenment-psychiatry
It seems to me that the pathologies aren't in individual humans, but in "Age of Enlightenment" ideologies themself.
I'm not trying to absolve individual responsibility, but I also have moved in recent years away from being angry at individual humans for simply being more blindly "loyal" or "patriotic" to the worldviews which are embeded in (and agressively promoted by) institutions such as settler-colonial Canada and the USA.
oooh such an interesting point! gonna dive down this rabbit hole