Nat (she/they)

“It’s not that deep” feels the same as “it’s just a joke”. No, it’s a joke with a point, and that point is wrong. I will not let people smuggle in a bad idea without criticism just because they phrased it as a joke or sarcasm.

When I was looking for an ADHD diagnosis I had to soft through lots of clearly finance/tech bro companies

“Disability” is apparently some mythical essence of your being and your worth rather than the literal meaning: not abled. Not a fan of the way it’s been socially constructed tbh.

Something to put the ableism into perspective: when other students underperform compared to me they’re not called lazy for underperforming, I’m called abnormally good instead. But when I underperform at “normal” tasks, I do get called lazy.

Disability is measured relative to the environment.

Compared to fish you’re disabled in that you can’t breath underwater, and if the world changed such that everything was underwater and you were one of the few people who couldn’t breath underwater, you’d be considered disabled because you would literally be less abled in that environment.

You could give an upper bound, or even just say you don’t know.

In English there’s often no good way to avoid connotations other than a massive wall of text, and even there people will frequently ignore caveats.

I did find myself over a very long time and it turns out “myself” oscillates between several different points uncontrollably and I somehow think that’s not gonna be considered an acceptable answer.

Oo, yeah, I remember disliking the over-the-top praise.

Sometimes the true answer is “idk” and I’d rather hear that than false and contradictory rationalizations for why they’re mad.

And you can’t just ask because, like measuring a quantum system, measurement perturbs the system.

“Bazinga”

Overwhelming emotions all the time that she cannot explain or process… the only answer she comes to is IDK.

Open-ended questions can be hard. Perhaps you can ask a series of simpler questions, such as “are you feeling good/bad/neutral/idk?” with follow ups for emotions like happy, sad, excited (can be good/bad/neutral), tired, etc. If you’re asking to gauge her response to something, consider asking something like “is this a good/bad/neutral/idk thing” and digging deeper into what aspects are good/bad; then you can ask about concrete plans like “should we seek/avoid that?” or “should I stop/continue that?” and elaborate further on how you should try to achieve those.

Of course, there is a risk of overwhelming her with questions, so you should probably monitor for symptoms and behaviors that indicate she’s getting more overwhelmed, or even just ask.

Jumping off of what you said: I feel a lot more comfortable when people are very clear and direct about expectations. I hate the feeling that I might be doing something wrong but I’m unsure.

Maybe you can tell them how they’re making you feel? It’s plausible they could be trying to accommodate you but in a way where they make bad assumptions rather than asking you. If so, maybe they’ll listen.

At the very least, even if asking burns the friendship even more, you’ll have some data to predict how someone might think in another/future friendship.

That doesn’t negate the good times. I remember when I struggled to make friends, and most of my “friends” weren’t really friends, but it was still better than nothing.

My type of person! Same!

Now I’m unsure as to whether this study would accept trans women or not

A part of me dies when I say the lie

That’s the same with most disabilities. For instance, blindness does have some intrinsic hardship, but then it also has the hardships that come from a society that assumes you have vision and does not accommodate you.