> I've come to learn that actually a surprisingly large number of people have something going on, and whatever that something happens to be is complex enough that laypeople aren't in a position to understand it very well or at all.
I think I have a different perspective on things.
I'm far from normal. I'm prone to depression and anxiety. I'm autistic and anti-social. Most people would suggest there is at least one or two things "wrong" with me.
And sure, I clearly have issues and I'm not "normal", but I suppose I don't seek to be normal either.
I think our increased fixation on being as neurologically normal as possible is half the problem we're having with the increase in mental illness today. And it's possibly being over diagnosed.
You could make an extremely good case for me needing anti-depressants and how they would make me functionally closer to what we consider "normal". Similarly, with the anxious teen I was talking about in my prior comment – anti-anxiety meds would probably make her more "normal" too. But the assumption in both cases would be that normal is always better, which I don't agree with.
Growing up I was taught to hate myself for being different. In my early twenties I went through a bit of a crisis where for the first time I realised how much harder employment was going to be for me as an anti-social autistic weirdo. I hated myself more than ever – why I am autistic, why can't I be normal – I'd ask. But there's only something wrong with me from the perspective of others. I have no problem with myself apart from the fact I struggle to satisfy the preferences of those around me.
It was going down that route where for the first time in my life I actually started to question whether I was the one with the problem or if the world had a problem with me that finally gave me a much healthier outlook on things. The reality is there are just certain people who won't get me and will refuse to try to understand me.
This is a lesser problem today, but I suppose I had this also with my sexuality growing up. There was such an obsession with being hetrosexual that if you were anything but it was easy to hate yourself for being different and wish there was a drug you could take to be normal. Again, it's not that being gay (or whatever else) is an issue to you as an individual, it's that being gay is an issue to others which drives self-hatred.
My whole life I've had to try to get along with happy, extrovert neurotypicals, and rarely will they do the same in return. Instead these people suggest I need to drug myself so I'm more like them – "normal". So screw them.
These days I just embrace myself. I'm awkward as hell. But if you have a problem with that, then piss off – I'll find people who are okay with me as I am.
But what I find funny is that my girlfriend suffers the exact opposite problem to me. She's unable to see the negative side of anything. She's constantly happy and chirpy to the point of often being delusional. But she's seen as normal... But we work because I accept her and she accepts me, and we balance each other out. I'm the one who worries how we're going to address everything that might go wrong in our lives and she keeps us focused on the positive outcomes we're working towards.
Over time I've come to realise there's strength in the vast majority of these "mental illnesses" if we're able to accept them. I can only speak for myself here, and obviously others need to do what's right for them, but my depression and anxiety is no simply longer a problem in the way it used to be because of how I view it and allow it today.
So I guess I don't even understand why you would view ADHD as an issue? Why weren't you able embrace that side of yourself? My understanding is that people who have ADHD are super creative and tend to be less mentally restricted than people like myself? Did you have a problem with your ADHD because the world had a problem with you?