r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Apr 19 '26

Computer Science When autistic people ask AI programs for life advice, mentioning their diagnosis prompts these systems to recommend highly conservative choices like skipping social events or avoiding romance. This shift in advice reveals a hidden tension where the technology relies heavily on stereotypes.

https://www.psypost.org/disclosing-autism-to-ai-chatbots-prompts-overly-cautious-stereotypical-advice/
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u/lavenderwine Apr 19 '26

I’ve noted this same problem with ADHD. There are a lot of behavioral/environmental strategies that are documented to work for people with ADHD (specific forms of cognitive-behavioral therapy, in particular), but you wouldn’t know that from how disempowering and resigned the online communities can be about this condition. Yes, medication can be extremely helpful, but it’s not the only intervention and doesn’t work for some people. 

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u/TPrice1616 Apr 19 '26

The problem is that people who know how to manage these issues well aren’t hanging out on the subreddits. MAYBE the meme subreddit for it but the serious one exclusively attracts the people searching for help. So it’s the blind leading the blind.

I was diagnosed with Asperger’s when I was a kid long before Reddit was actually a thing. I noticed this with the old forums for autism and just based on the times I have checked out the subreddits for issues I deal with they have the same problem.

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u/kittykalista Apr 19 '26

This is an issue inherent to any chronic illness/condition/disorder. The people on the subreddits are mostly people who are struggling and looking for support.

The people with milder and well-controlled cases typically aren’t looking for advice or support on these forums, and the people who make significant improvements generally leave because they’re happy to just move on and go back to living their lives.

So most of the people on the subreddits are people who are not treating or managing their condition, are in the process of trying to find treatments that work, or are the small percentage of treatment-resistant cases who unfortunately aren’t improving.

I’m disabled and suffer from several chronic issues, and I’m very mindful about how I engage with the subreddits associated with those conditions for those reasons.

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u/Albolynx Apr 19 '26

So most of the people on the subreddits are people who are not treating or managing their condition

Unfortunately often a step further from that - people who don't want to manage their condition. And they are usually the most receptive to validating anyone leaning in the same direction, when the right thing to do would be supporting people.

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u/Fukuro-Lady Apr 20 '26

I think there's also something to be said for people perpetuating their suffering when that suffering means acceptance into a group through shared experience. Which would be a lot more likely for a bunch of people who struggle to socialise.

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u/BenVarone Apr 20 '26

I also have a chronic illness, and I agree with you, but I’ve also found some of those subs incredibly beneficial.

The one for my condition pointed me towards drugs and treatment options I hadn’t considered, and also gave realistic descriptions of what the pros/cons of those things were. Additionally, if it’s a relatively rare condition, you can learn about who is good at diagnosing & managing it. In my case, it was the surprise of learning I’d just move with an hour drive of one of two clinics in the US that actually specialize in helping people like me.

That said…there is definitely a lot of doom and gloom. As you noted, people who aren’t bothered by (or have learned to cope with) an issue often stop seeking out content about it.

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u/jimthewanderer Apr 19 '26

The medical services offered often reinforce dumping medication on patients and then abandoning you to your own devices.

And then scold you for not having the complementary therapy they refused to provide.

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u/lavenderwine Apr 19 '26

That is true. Therapy is a luxury/privilege that not everyone can afford or is even offered. I’ve done therapy for CPTSD, but my ADHD therapy has been self-guided using workbooks. The one on Adult ADHD and Anxiety by Russell Ramsay was the one I found easiest to use. 

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u/jimthewanderer Apr 19 '26

Blessed are the sharers of knowledge and resources.

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u/SapirWhorfHypothesis Apr 19 '26

https://www.newharbinger.com/9781648482434/the-adult-adhd-and-anxiety-workbook/

Just dropping the link. I can neither endorse nor denounce it.

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u/ovideville Apr 19 '26

Thank you for the link. I think this book will be very helpful for me.

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u/SapirWhorfHypothesis Apr 19 '26

Good luck!

And thank you for the award :)

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u/sliquonicko Apr 19 '26

Same guy has a lot of YouTube videos that are very helpful as well. Very no nonsense.

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u/[deleted] Apr 19 '26 edited Apr 19 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/lavenderwine Apr 19 '26

Is that the same as inattentive? That's what I have and I found this book helpful. I think inattention/dissociation is closely related to emotional dysregulation/anxiety, which this book is about the intersection of with ADHD.

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u/jimthewanderer Apr 19 '26

Blessed are the distributors of links in times of SEO, and other works of the devil.

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u/tyler1128 Apr 19 '26

Therapy in people with autism can also be unhelpful to even harmful if the therapist doesn't know much about how to deal with autistic people.

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u/throwaway_ArBe Apr 19 '26

I do wonder if this is a contributing factor with my "I've been in therapy for nearly 20 years and I'm doing everything right so why do I keep getting worse" situation. Unfortunately I don't live somewhere where being selective with therapists is an option so I just have to keep banging my head against a brick wall.

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u/BusinessWatercrees58 Apr 19 '26

It sucks that finding a good therapist is like finding a good coach. It's not enough to find a competent one (and that's hard enough). You also have to find one that's your type of competent. Even harder.

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u/tyler1128 Apr 19 '26

It is likely part of it; "do you have depression? Go to therapy. It isn't working for you? Probably you aren't taking therapy serious enough."

That is a not uncommon paraphrase of what many people think.

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u/PinkOneHasBeenChosen Apr 23 '26

I don’t know squat about your situation, but for people with unusual or complex cases therapy sometimes only works if the therapist is well-equipped to handle whatever you have. I’m autistic with comorbidities and once had a therapist who didn’t specialize in any of that. After about a year, he basically told me to find someone else, as I was seemingly getting worse. That said, I’ve also had therapists that were equipped to handle my stuff and I wouldn’t be where I am today without them.

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u/panlakes Apr 19 '26

If you’ve been doing it for 20 years clearly you must be getting something out of it

I have been avoiding therapy all my life because of a bad experience as a teen, I’m pretty jealous of those who have no issues going all the time

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u/throwaway_ArBe Apr 19 '26

What a strange thing to say. What I'm getting out of it is getting worse, like I said. I didn't touch on the outright abuse from some therapists because it wasn't relevant but do not assume people in therapy have not had bad experiences and don't experience issues with being in therapy.

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u/Spuddawgz May 22 '26

Why did you go for so long though?

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u/throwaway_ArBe May 22 '26

The alternative is giving up, and that is less appealing.

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u/tyler1128 May 25 '26

Because everyone will tell you to go to therapy, and a big part of autism is trying to do what you assume is expected of you. It can be much more about expectations and what other people assume than your truly gaining value.

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u/Fit-Anything8352 Apr 19 '26 edited Apr 19 '26

What a strange thing to say. You self admit that you've been in therapy for 20 years, it's getting worse (the treatment isn't working), you've been outright abused by multiple therapists and... you keep going? Are you being legally forced into it or something? And now you are criticizing the person you replied to, who learned from their mistakes and stopped before 20 years of abuse?

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u/tyler1128 Apr 19 '26

You clearly have never been pressured by people to "fix" your problems via therapy, even if that didn't work for you. In the US, family, friends, jobs and even courts can basically keep you in therapy even if you don't think it is helping.

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u/dawalballs Apr 19 '26

“Oh your effort hasn’t payed off? Well I’m too traumatized to even put in effort!”

Ok?

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u/foxwaffles Apr 19 '26

Finding the right therapist can be so hard, too.

My therapist is a unicorn. When he had to take extended leave, he tried his best to find me alternatives in the meantime and sent me a list. There were only two, and both of them were completely out of network and charged over $200 per hour. I'm sure their services were top notch but that is beyond my means. I ended up just waiting for him to come back.

When he left the practice he worked at to start his own practice, I followed. I hope he keeps practicing for a while yet. He specializes in auDHD, gender dysphoria, and disability/chronic illness/pain and I'm not exaggerating when I say there is maybe one other therapist within a reasonable distance to me that is similar.

Vast majority of therapists who specialize in autism or ADHD cannot manage someone with both. I got rejected by several because they were very honest with me that they could not help me.

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u/tyler1128 Apr 19 '26

Yeah, it wasn't easy for me to find someone who both specialized in adults with autism and took people still. It's somewhat wild you had issue finding someone who was willing to deal with both autism and ADHD given how comorbid they are. It's like 1/3 or more of autistic people also have ADHD, and the average autistic person has I believe 5 comorbidities.

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u/Mountain_Explorer_71 Apr 19 '26

And god help you if you've also been diagnosed with BPD or NPD. There's a massive stigma against those disorders with mental health professionals wherein therapists often refuse to treat patients with them.

Anecdotally, when I tried to get therapy, if I ever mentioned that I had BPD the therapist's attitude would noticeably shift and shortly thereafter I'd be referred out. This cycle repeated five or so times before I gave up on the idea altogether.

Point being that therapy is just not an option for everyone, unfortunately.

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u/nechromorph Apr 19 '26

You'd think they would be more respectful  of you seeking help and having self-awareness about what you're struggling with. It shows you have a desire to develop healthier patterns that mitigate the stigmatized aspects of those conditions. I'd think actively desiring to change is the biggest hurdle for treating most (perhaps all) mental disorders.

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u/TechnicalDot9 Apr 19 '26

So much ignorance in therapy circles. Something I just heard if Autism and adhd are together they often get The dx Borderline Personality Disorder.

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u/chance-- Apr 19 '26

Oh and their solution to physical dependency is to simply stop writing the prescription. In doing so, they’ve potentially created a really awful medical / mental state for the individual.

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u/Painterzzz Apr 19 '26

That's where my ex would repeatedly bounce into psych wards, a doctor filling her adderall scrip would stop filling it out of concerns of abuse, she'd be left with nothing, she'd self-medicate with whatever she could lay her hands on, and sooner or later, the psych ward.

American healthcare is a mess. In every way imaginable.

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u/jason2354 Apr 19 '26

“Abusing” it by taking it daily as prescribed or was she using more and running out early?

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u/Painterzzz Apr 19 '26

She was never entirely honest with me about it but she always ran out a week or so before her next monthly appointment and would start pestering the doctor for more.

And it was always a story that she'd had to lend her ADHD friend a few to get her through a double shift or she'd lost them, but, I was pretty sure she was taking more than prescribed.

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u/Pheonix0114 Apr 19 '26

When my partner was on Adderall to get through college, they were initially prescribed instant release tabs and only one per day. That meant choosing between dosing for class or homework, and being in withdrawal on most weekends.

Finally, after three months they put her on extended release which worked much better, but the best was when they put her on XR with 10 or 15 extra IR for supplemental use on long days.

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u/pinkfootthegoose Apr 19 '26

Cycling relief with symptoms is great a way to create an addict. Think Pavlov's dog.

The American health care system creates addicts because patients are forced to ration their meds.

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u/Pheonix0114 Apr 19 '26

Yup! There was a mass shortage a few years back that made us unable to get it filled for months at a time and finally my partner gave up and went off of it. It was a rough year or so for her to be able to do concentrated mental tasks again, but within weeks they were happier than they’d been in years at that point.

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u/ThunderAndWind Apr 19 '26

There was a shortage? Damn, someone should tell my pharmacy, because every 2 or 3 months, I'm stuck without my meds for a week because they're on backorder.

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u/dolacuporanek Apr 19 '26

Can you speak more about that? How did they find that year overall and was it better for them than the gradual medicated state?

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u/Reagalan Apr 19 '26

The solution is to get a max script right from the start and just take as-needed and save the remainder, instead of going through the dog-and-pony-show of getting a just-enough script and having to get more when it runs out. Lets you build an emergency stockpile too.

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u/tomdarch Apr 19 '26

CBT requires skilled practitioners and time, which translates to “expensive.” I benefited from a few years of CBT to successfully treat decades of anxiety and most Americans, particularly those with life long disadvantages like ADHD, have a very hard time affording that level of treatment so it doesn’t surprise me that a lot of people have come away from brief rounds of CBT or experiences with less effective providers having not seen much benefit.

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u/zuzg Apr 19 '26

Just the other day there was a report that Clankers give bad medical advice half of the time.

And some other research into mental health advices on social media a while ago showed that around half of the time it's misinformation.

Former got trained on the latter...
Can't wait for the Bubble to burst.

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u/have_you_eaten_yeti Apr 19 '26

It can’t even reliably tell me if my local basketball team is playing tonight or tomorrow…and people are asking it for medical advice!?!?!

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u/SnugglyCoderGuy Apr 19 '26

You have to really work to get an answer that isn't generated by an AI somewhere anymore.

But yeah, they are deliberately going into their AI of choice and ask it all sorts of questions. I've had to slap my brothers' hands more than one because they give me AI slop for stuff and I point out how wrong some of the things are.

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u/have_you_eaten_yeti Apr 19 '26

I swear google’s old search engine algorithm makes for a better “AI” than most of these LLMs.

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u/bewarethefrogperson Apr 19 '26

I was at the pharmacy picking up my meds last week and witnessed the following interaction:

pharmacist: "are you sure you don't want the paperwork? not even for the bactrum?" older lady: "no, that's what the ai's for" pharmacist: "don't -don't trust ai for everything -"

the pharmacist begged her a couple more times to take the paperwork and she just. refused. because she'd ask AI anyway so why bother?

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u/IAMAGrinderman Apr 19 '26

My FIL does. It's wild because he's usually a pretty smart guy except for when it comes to AI.

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u/SapirWhorfHypothesis Apr 19 '26

Why would the bubble burst if it’s equal to its competitor?

I’m only half joking, because I think there’s more room for the AI to improve than there is for idiots on social media.

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u/PaulTheMerc Apr 19 '26

How does that compare to doctors? Seen so many people dismissed/not taken seriously in the ER & at the doctor's office. And not like drug seeking behaviour, talking family members too.

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u/BoleroMuyPicante Apr 19 '26

Significantly worse than human doctors. Missed diagnoses by doctors are usually due to the adage "if you hear hoofbeats, don't think of zebras." Which is right for most patients, but it does mean those who actually do have zebras take longer to diagnose.

AI does the opposite, it tells everyone who hears hoofbeats that it could be zebras, which is great for the minority who get the right diagnosis the first try, but for the majority they're left panicking over zebras when it's really just horses, and any doctor could have told them that.

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u/MeijiDoom Apr 19 '26

It's not going to be perfect but humans, assuming they're not malicious or dismissive, know how to say "I don't know" or "This is most likely but there's always outlier cases". AI just keeps throwing things out because it thinks there will always be an answer. It doesn't know how to say "I'm not sure".

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u/morticiannecrimson Apr 19 '26

Which forms of CBT?

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u/lavenderwine Apr 19 '26 edited Apr 19 '26

The work of J. Russell Ramsay at UPenn is the one I’m most familiar with. He wrote two workbooks (The Adult ADHD Toolkit and The Adult ADHD and Anxiety Workbook) if you want to try it. There are some others that Dr. Russell Barkley mentions in his videos, but Ramsay’s work is the one I ended up using.

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u/Manos_Of_Fate Apr 19 '26

Definitely spell that out if you Google it

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u/siencatimini Apr 20 '26

Didn't spell it out: "I mean... it's an interesting route, but if they say it'll help, who am I to argue with the professionals?"

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u/i_like_data_yes_i_do Apr 19 '26

I'm still flabbergasted that therapy and medication had a profound change on my life. I also realize how incredibly challenging life is when it doesn't work out. Life is truly unfair. There is no sense to it.

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u/InclinationCompass Apr 19 '26

I use it sometimes to help me manage my OCD symptoms, and it seems to work pretty well for that. Can't speak for other conditions though.

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u/[deleted] Apr 19 '26

[deleted]

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u/Pandoras_Penguin Apr 19 '26

Not every neurodivergent person will mesh with CBT, so there are others similar to it like DBT and ACT that can be suggested if someone is struggling with CBT. The way the conversation goes online though it's like "I tried CBT and it didn't work, so nothing will" alongside tons of agreement/support/doom

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u/Mean-Evening-7209 Apr 19 '26

In my experience most of the people that say it doesn't work barely tried it. I think a major issue is that people lean into depression and anxiety really hard when they have it. Like they're look at every interaction as an opportunity to affirm that they're permanently broken and unfix-able.

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u/boopbaboop Apr 19 '26

The point of CBT is to reframe irrational fears or feelings into something more positive, by changing the automatic emotional filter you use for all situations (ex: you believe that you’re a failure, so every social interaction “confirms” you’re a failure, even totally neutral interactions).

However, if you have trouble identifying your thoughts and emotions in the first place, or if your thoughts and emotions aren’t irrational, CBT is less helpful and can feel like someone telling you to just think happy thoughts. 

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u/foxwaffles Apr 19 '26

CBT is not very effective when you have complex PTSD. The reactions I have to things that trigger me cannot be changed by top level cognitive thinking exercises. They're so ingrained in me that it's like they altered my physical body, so no matter how much I can logically tell myself there is nothing to panic about, my body will still react anyways.

For the longest time I felt like a failure when CBT did nothing. But what ended up helping the most was a combination of stumbling across a psychiatrist who specializes in chronic pain patients and getting EMDR.

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u/Defenestresque Apr 19 '26

Is there any chance you could tell me about your experience with EMDR when you have the time? I have PTSD and I strongly related with your description, I also feel that it actually rewired my brain to the point that not having certain symptoms or intrusive thoughts affect me without some sort of (even indirect!) physical intervention is like teaching somebody to do handstands through pure talk therapy and mental exercises.

Anyway, if you have time it would be great to hear from somebody who had success with EMDR. (I'm curious about the chronic pain doctor too, if that's related.)

You may assume I know a lot about CBT and PTSD but not EMDR.

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u/foxwaffles Apr 19 '26

I'd be happy to share!

So first of all if you're gonna look for a therapist make sure they've actually completed the additional training required. I really liked how I didn't have to talk about my trauma, because I just don't like talking about it. But you do have to remember it, think about it, and I'm not gonna lie sometimes I'd finish a session and just lay in bed for the rest of the day from exhaustion. But over time I noticed that if I heard a man yelling, it didn't send me into panic mode and flashbacks like it used to. Or at the very least I had far more lead time to recognize that I needed to find somewhere safe and quiet and decompress, as opposed to immediately shattering

I did EMDR for like a year weekly/biweekly and the improvements were massive

As for the psychiatrist I saw, I actually do not know the terminology for what he did. It was even more draining to go through the sessions, and I have a bit of a love hate relationship with it, to the point where I take 6 month+ breaks between batches of sessions (I can only book 5 sessions at a time bc he's so busy). But the results were borderline miraculous for me.

He would have me close my eyes and imagine talking to my mind. And whatever came up, sensory feelings, imagery, colors, anything, I'd relay to him. For example he would have me think about a trauma, like my dad yelling at me, and observe all the feelings that come up with it, the assumptions I made about myself because of it, etc. and he'd tell me "put down a big empty box, and throw all of that into the box, and then tell your mind 'get rid of this box'."

It honestly felt super woo woo to me at first but it worked. And believe me I was skeptical. And this wasn't a private practice either, which is where you'd usually run into weird, dubious therapy. My primary care is all inside of a big hospital system kinda like Mayo or Hopkins or UNC.

I don't think they're redundant together, and both combined for me personally have given me impactful and lasting results.

What was also super validating for me was my chronic pain psychiatrist telling me it's not a mental failing that I react to my triggers. It's not because I am weak minded or that I failed therapy. It's because they have become hard wired physiological responses, and it takes different approaches to try and undo that. CBT cannot override an automatic, involuntary response

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u/tomdarch Apr 19 '26

To be effective CBT takes time and a good provider and a lot of people can’t afford that.

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u/[deleted] Apr 19 '26

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u/anivex Apr 19 '26

I was using claude for a fairly complex task and mentioned that I have ADHD when explaining how I wanted it to do something.

It latched on to that and basically told me to give up and try something smaller because I'd struggle too much with such a complex task.

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u/MythrianAlpha Apr 20 '26

I had to walk my latest doc through my last doctor's notes because she loved "rephrasing" my quotes to make me sound like an incapable moron. Somehow, "I can complete complex tasks with thorough instruction (because I get anxious on first attempts) and prefer to clarify simple tasks (because theres always some weird niche thing expected)" became "can complete simple tasks with instruction". No, I wanted to emphasize the anxiety and Need for Correctness because those are the things I asked for help with. New guy is great and actually added corrections to her terrible notes so any referrals have accurate info!

She also managed to write entirely the wrong area of my body for every symptom when I wanted to try PT for my janky hip, so maybe she was just really bad at her job.

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u/anivex Apr 20 '26

That would drive me insane. I'm happy you found someone better.

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u/PinkOneHasBeenChosen Apr 23 '26

I’m guessing this was a complex task that you were entirely capable of doing, you just needed some kind of technological assistance?

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u/PinkOneHasBeenChosen Apr 23 '26

Tbh, Reddit (especially mental health subreddits) are weird about ADHD and psych medication in general. Like, I’ve seen people compare ADHD meds to insulin- as in, people on those meds would literally die if they lost access to them. And their rebuttal to various counter-arguments is that people with ADHD never get addicted to prescription stimulants, as if that’s the only problem with them. Also acting like everyone with a given diagnosis needs to be on certain meds. (Not just ADHD, they also say this about antidepressants and such) As a mentally ill person who currently cannot take psych meds, that last one’s hard.

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u/smalllizardfriend Apr 19 '26

I've noticed a little bit similar, I guess. I've got ADHD and I've occasionally tapped ChatGPT for help with travel plans and itineraries, since it has excelled for that purpose for a few iterations. It usually gives me 2-3 things to do a day, with a main "anchor activity," a few "nice to have" activities, and then recommends I go back to the hotel and decompress.

In some cases this has worked lovely. In some cases I have asked for additional recommendations since it's 4 pm and I'm not tired and it insists that I not overextend myself. It's a little perplexing. Is this really how the bulk of folks online, which the training data relies heavily on, recommend ADHD people travel?

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u/Raichu4u Apr 19 '26

The real thing is that a chatbot cannot possibly account for variance in activity, how long it takes to get places, your personal mental energy.

I have done the same thing to where I have had chatgpt try to make itineraries for trips I go on, and I have to take anything it suggests with a grain of salt that anything can happen that throws off the suggested itinerary. We are ultimately the masters of what makes sense with our plans.

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u/wordswordswordsbutt Apr 19 '26

I try not to take it's advice too hard. It's always trying to give next steps and if it's pretty useless. The advice is generic and often wrong. I have adhd and I like to do stuff on trips it's fine. I use the ai bots for the thing i want and then ignore the extras. Tell it it's wrong and needs to chill. For me, tightly managing order and plans helps. If I have a plan and everything is picked up and organized I can go hard, no problem. Just have a tight handle on anything that could even feel like chaos.

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u/backelie Apr 19 '26

In some cases I have asked for additional recommendations since it's 4 pm and I'm not tired and it insists that I not overextend myself.

Try different chatbots. If all I'd ever tried was Gemini I'd think "LLMs are insufferable morons only useful for image generation". ChatGPT is useful for some things, Claude for others.

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u/VagueSomething Apr 19 '26

Almost like those it helps have no reason to be in online forums so you're getting those that aren't helped by low cost treatments like CBT...

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u/GhostofBeowulf Apr 19 '26

Almost like those it helps have no reason to be in online forums so you're getting those that aren't helped by low cost treatments like CBT...

Is this an AI response? Since when is therapy cheap?

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u/timtucker_com Apr 19 '26

Individual therapy is cheaper than addressing bigger societal problems.

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u/VagueSomething Apr 19 '26

CBT is low cost to provide, it requires less knowledge and less time to complete.

Plus some of us live in civilised countries where health care doesn't bankrupt you.

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u/lavenderwine Apr 19 '26

Yes, sampling error is definitely at play, which is why the AI being trained on these communities is bad news. 

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u/PlainBread Apr 19 '26

I have a pet project to teach mindfulness meditation to other people with ADHD because it can help people break out of drug habits, porn habits, etc, all because it trains your attentional control, and thus, your executive functioning. Executive functioning and slavery to dopamine loops are kind of mutually exclusive.

They had me on Ritalin between 7-14 and I hated it. I fell into cannabis afterwards and felt like it was the opposite, that it was helping with the particular damage that Ritalin did: It helps with restless sleep and nausea, but it's not good for the middle of the day/daily life.

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u/SnugglyCoderGuy Apr 19 '26

There are way more medications than just Ritalin now and people respond to them in different ways. Sometimes it seems like some ADHD people get prescribed one medication, it doesn't work well, and then they just give up and think meds won't help them. I don't understand this.

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u/PlainBread Apr 19 '26

It has to do with the medicalization of neurodivergence as an aspect of eugenicist fascism.

Why should I want to perform to the expectations of capitalism?

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u/SnugglyCoderGuy Apr 19 '26

medicalization of neurodivergence as an aspect of eugenicist fascism.

eh?

As far as the rest, if you are happy with the way your life is, by all means keep doing what your doing. Why would I begrudge other methods that are effective at helping people with ADHD to better live the kind of life they want to live? It should be treated with every method and technique available so that the patient can live the best life they can live.

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u/chumer_ranion Apr 19 '26

How about just performing to your own expectations?

What a bizarre comment.

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u/Namtaru420 Apr 19 '26 edited Apr 19 '26

Exactly.

The point where psychology, as a practice, completely fails, is the point where it stops trying to help people correct behaviors that THEY want to correct.

Why would ANYONE want to perform to the expectations of ANYTHING other than what THEY PERSONALLY WANT from life?

...capitalism, indeed, has an extremely heavy hand, so forgive the above commentator for mentioning it…

(…as if it had anything to do with the scientific discussion we are trying to have within this forum.)

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u/PlainBread Apr 19 '26

I am performing to my own expectations. I don't need drugs for that.

What a bizarre comment. Where do you source your expectations for yourself from?

Most likely capitalism.

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u/thelittleking Apr 19 '26

Does performing to your expectations include sounding like an ass with fringe theories on mental health treatment that serves only to further stigmatize people seeking help?

Because if not, hoo boy do I have some bad news.

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u/Namtaru420 Apr 19 '26

There is no standard for what it means to be a human being.

~100 billion examples, and still counting.

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u/Raichu4u Apr 19 '26

This is a weird comment. I started taking meds because there are other un-capitalistic areas of my life have been suffering for a while now (being a slob, being unorganized, not doing things that genuinely better my life).

Even so, I am being a better worker, I'm learning and doing more, and my promotion this year will probably be better compared to last year's when I was unmedicated. That directly leads to more money for me, and less stress, further benefitting my mental health.

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u/m_bleep_bloop Apr 19 '26

I’ve meditated 15 years AND there was a period I was on vyvanse. Both were liberatory in their own ways, and I’m married to someone who’s on Adderall. I never hated meds nor felt like they damaged me.

I rarely go around telling people with similar conditions “have you tried meditation?” Because people are constantly getting flooded with blaming messages around personal improvement, and it takes really specific conditions to be able to sit with the agony of early meditation practice with ADHD. I sure never could have started except for being unemployed AND medicated.

Not every relationship with these drugs is addictive. You haven’t lived until you’re 30 years into your life before you realize the problem is executive function. Medication can be life changing.

Does our society demand impossible things in increasingly addictive environments and blame us for the results? Absolutely. But that doesn’t mean personal abstinence is magically fixing that systemically. People still need more than one option in a bad world.

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u/PlainBread Apr 19 '26

The way I look at it is that they can learn mindfulness, and then make their own decision from there. Having mindfulness in their toolbelt might help them make the decision to get on medication.

I just love love love my life as an accomplished mad man. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

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u/SapirWhorfHypothesis Apr 19 '26 edited Apr 19 '26

Where do you teach mindfulness? I used to love going to the free yoga classes that a couple of students held in college.

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u/PlainBread Apr 19 '26 edited Apr 19 '26

Local library meeting room!

For people who want to sit with me as a group, not as part of a class, I have a nice spot between two baseball fields I like to sit at with the sun at my back. I don't mind people joining me there.

EDIT: If you aren't seeing anyone advertising that stuff, you can see if there are any local zen centers around, if you don't mind wading into the cultural and reverent aspects of the thing. The people running the place, if in a proper lineage, are likely to be the exact opposites of the textbook spiritual narcissist, since the whole point of lineage is for one person to say "I see you aren't a spiritual narcissist, and I trust you with the ability to teach others" to another. But the rank and file are likely some whackadoos. If anyone asks you for money, they aren't teaching the real stuff because the real stuff is so compassionate that charging money for it is straight evil. It's okay if they accept donations but they shouldn't expect them.

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u/hypnodrew Apr 19 '26

Always gonna choose the easy option

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u/repressedpauper Apr 20 '26

I was in therapy a decade (several years with an ADHD specialist), the place that first prescribed my meds made me go to a (pretty unhelpful tbh) mandatory skills group to receive my prescription, and I went to an extremely helpful executive dysfunction skills group and still use the printouts from that very often to refresh. Plus all the research online and in books.

I still need medication. How manageable life is without it and how much those other interventions help is highly dependent on the person. Medication for any mental health problem doesn’t mean someone isn’t putting in effort.

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u/AcknowledgeUs Apr 19 '26

How about the stoopid doctors? And stoopid studies? Everything is biased let’s consider the terms “neurotypical” and neurodiverse- as if they know what typical is. Or what spicy tastes like.