>I would love to hear more about you're experiences growing up and especially the dysregulation.
Dysregulation[1] was Hell on Earth, in the literal sense. Very little in life works the way you think it should, and the reaction to these things constantly going wrong is extremely intense, negative, emotional unable to be controlled in any real sense. You lose the ability to reliably form even basic episodic/autobiographical memories, and with it any sense of the past or future. Entire chunks of your life go missing and you don't know what day it is, where you've been or where you're going. All you know is that you're constantly exhausted, nothing makes sense and everything just feels wrong. You don't know how long you've felt like this, and you don't know how long you'll continue to feel like this. As far as you're aware, past and future suffering will keep going on for eternity. And you will do anything, literally anything, to make it stop.
For me, I was fortunate that my mum took me to a sleep specialist, who recommended getting my adenoids removed and prescribing an extremely specific sleep schedule which I followed to a T (all screens off at 9:00, in bed by 10:00, I don't remember if there was a specific constant time I needed to wake up by but I suspect that was part of it to. As an adult, I now supplement this routine with melatonin). This was enough to get me from a state of complete dysregulation to "garden-variety" depression, which eventually I overcame with the help of a supportive network of friends and parents who (semi-forcefully) steered me down a path where I could succeed.
A hypothetical AussieWog98 might have convinced himself that the cause of the dysregulation was gender dysphoria, cut himself off from the people who really care and spent all his time online with other people just like himself until one day he couldn't take it any more.
I really, genuinely believe that this is what is happening today, at least in the case of some people. For others (especially people who transition later in life), it really can help them be comfortable in their own skin, and this is of course where the trans "debate" gets hairy.
[1] This is not technical language, but is the best and most concise word I can use to decribe it. There may be a more appropriate technical term, or a more scientific description of what is happening (seizures in the amygdala?). Feel free to comment if you have any scientific information or proper terminology, I'd love to read the literature on it.
My fear is not really with the misdiagnosis, but with the lack of the precise support you received being so common. It's hugely common in North America, where I am from, to adopt a "child as asset or liability" mindset that leads to parenting based solely around achieving normative goals, which accumulate with increased intensity around adolescence, and are further bolstered by today's media environment. Ours is a consumer culture, and part of that is that your identity is very product-driven.
In this light, gender comes to the fore not in the sense of being "tempted" after seeing something online, but as a particular mask to wear 24/7, regardless of which one you choose; something which autistic people have long been known to struggle with. It isn't outrageous to conclude that switching masks might be a relief if the assigned one isn't working out; consider that autistic women are historically underdiagnosed, and then flip it around to the context of MTF transition: suddenly, autistic man behavior would "pass" as neurotypical woman behavior. That makes it seem like transitioning is the way to be normal!
Of course, normative masks have consequences for people who lean into their assigned gender, too, creating a context for all kinds of medical interventions: steroids to look big, diet drugs and surgeries to look small, study pills to pass exams, and so on. It's a promise of purification which has gradually targeted younger and younger ages. Gender in this light isn't so unique, it's just a particularly scapegoated expression of the culture.
The parents bear some responsibility because in happily going along with a diagnosis of this sort, they're most likely being all too eager to make their child be a better product on the market. Whatever the intervention was, they can go to bed that evening telling themselves "my kid will be successful now." Which in turn results in prolongment of mental health issues and ad-hoc coping mechnaisms.
You linking depression and exhaustion to this dysregulation state and the cure being sleep related sounds like your describing a really bad case of sleep deprivation. But I also get the sense that it is not that? And somehow related to autism and you can recognize people in that kind of state based on their word choice? Like if they could sleep a lot and go camping in nature with not many people and not many expectations for a month and avoid overstimulation, would a lot of these problems clear then?
AussieWog93|3 years ago
Dysregulation[1] was Hell on Earth, in the literal sense. Very little in life works the way you think it should, and the reaction to these things constantly going wrong is extremely intense, negative, emotional unable to be controlled in any real sense. You lose the ability to reliably form even basic episodic/autobiographical memories, and with it any sense of the past or future. Entire chunks of your life go missing and you don't know what day it is, where you've been or where you're going. All you know is that you're constantly exhausted, nothing makes sense and everything just feels wrong. You don't know how long you've felt like this, and you don't know how long you'll continue to feel like this. As far as you're aware, past and future suffering will keep going on for eternity. And you will do anything, literally anything, to make it stop.
For me, I was fortunate that my mum took me to a sleep specialist, who recommended getting my adenoids removed and prescribing an extremely specific sleep schedule which I followed to a T (all screens off at 9:00, in bed by 10:00, I don't remember if there was a specific constant time I needed to wake up by but I suspect that was part of it to. As an adult, I now supplement this routine with melatonin). This was enough to get me from a state of complete dysregulation to "garden-variety" depression, which eventually I overcame with the help of a supportive network of friends and parents who (semi-forcefully) steered me down a path where I could succeed.
A hypothetical AussieWog98 might have convinced himself that the cause of the dysregulation was gender dysphoria, cut himself off from the people who really care and spent all his time online with other people just like himself until one day he couldn't take it any more.
I really, genuinely believe that this is what is happening today, at least in the case of some people. For others (especially people who transition later in life), it really can help them be comfortable in their own skin, and this is of course where the trans "debate" gets hairy.
[1] This is not technical language, but is the best and most concise word I can use to decribe it. There may be a more appropriate technical term, or a more scientific description of what is happening (seizures in the amygdala?). Feel free to comment if you have any scientific information or proper terminology, I'd love to read the literature on it.
syntheweave|3 years ago
In this light, gender comes to the fore not in the sense of being "tempted" after seeing something online, but as a particular mask to wear 24/7, regardless of which one you choose; something which autistic people have long been known to struggle with. It isn't outrageous to conclude that switching masks might be a relief if the assigned one isn't working out; consider that autistic women are historically underdiagnosed, and then flip it around to the context of MTF transition: suddenly, autistic man behavior would "pass" as neurotypical woman behavior. That makes it seem like transitioning is the way to be normal!
Of course, normative masks have consequences for people who lean into their assigned gender, too, creating a context for all kinds of medical interventions: steroids to look big, diet drugs and surgeries to look small, study pills to pass exams, and so on. It's a promise of purification which has gradually targeted younger and younger ages. Gender in this light isn't so unique, it's just a particularly scapegoated expression of the culture.
The parents bear some responsibility because in happily going along with a diagnosis of this sort, they're most likely being all too eager to make their child be a better product on the market. Whatever the intervention was, they can go to bed that evening telling themselves "my kid will be successful now." Which in turn results in prolongment of mental health issues and ad-hoc coping mechnaisms.
novok|3 years ago