Some people on Facebook can have this habit of coping and pasting well meaning but ridiculous posts such as the one below to 'raise awareness' of a given issue. This one is on 'invisible illnesses':
Not one of my Facebook friends will copy and paste (but I am counting on a true family member or friend to do it). If you would be there no matter what then copy and paste this. I'm doing this to prove a friend wrong that someone is always listening. I care. Hard to explain to someone who has no clue. It's a daily struggle being in pain or feeling sick on the inside while you look fine on the outside. Please put this as your status for at least 1 hour if you or someone you know has an invisible illness - Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (EDS), IBS, Crohn's, PTSD, Anxiety, Arthritis, Cancer, Heart Disease, Bipolar, Depression, Diabetes, Lupus, Fibromyalgia, MS, ME, Epilepsy, hereditary angioedema, Migraines, Hashimotos, AUTISM, Borderline personality disorder, ADHD, RSD, rheumatoid arthritis , etc.
Urgh. I find this so utterly irritating not least as this example has autism capitalised as if its an acronym.
There you go:
Always
Unique
Totally
Interesting
Sometimes
Mysterious
I didn't make it up; I found it in Google Images.
So here's the thing that irks me the most. Actually no, you'll see in a minute that there are two or three things that annoy.
The first one: I don't personally find that I am in daily pain or feeling sick on the inside whilst normal on the outside. I appreciate some autistic people do have such sensitivities that they are in pain but please don't generalise. We are not all the same. Actually, when I am melting down, I am very much not normal on the outside. I swear and shout and my husband will testify that I am anything but having an invisible episode. My behaviour is very odd to a neuro-typical. I have had moments of shutting down and being mute but it is still clear to people who are trying to communicate with me that something is up. Okay so I don't require the use of a wheelchair and I don't need medication for my autistic 'problems' but I would suggest my difficulties are not something that can be seen on my person but rather in my behaviour. Invisible? I am not sure. I would guess to a neuro-typical person they might spot something, maybe not. I certainly find it an odd term to use.
And again, some of the conditions listed could be visible - requiring the use of a wheelchair with joint difficulties, tremors in MS, rheumatoid arthritis causing inflammation and swelling in the joints, etc.
Point no. 2: Autism isn't a bloody illness. I am not unhealthy or unwell in my mind or body and to suggest that is really not nice. I didn't catch it from poor quality drinking water. I didn't get it from eating loads of fatty foods and sitting on my bum all day watching TV. It wasn't caught after going swimming and nor was it from the MMR vaccination. Incidentally I had the MMR vaccine much later in life as my mother wanted both my twin brother and I to have it. It was introduced in the UK in 1988 so we would have been about 7 or 8. I was autistic before it and I am now, just that back then we just didn't know it. There has never been that point where I was neuro-typical and now I am not, unlike those with cancer and many of the other conditions listed where one identifies that they aren't feeling right and a disease or something medical manifests in some way. I do take the point that some medical conditions are from birth but autism in itself is not a medical condition even if it is from birth.
Point no 3: what a wide ranging bunch of things to lump together. I find it hard that one could put autism in the same category of many physical diseases. Cancer. MS. Diabetes, etc. And lets be fair, for those with well managed diabetes, what daily pain is there compared to those with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome? Or those with MS who have the horrific pains? I don't feel any pain except when sensory overload triggers a migraine but whilst it can limit what I can do whilst it goes away, I am not faced with any life shortening or life threatening problems. If I am in the position to manage my environment, the migraines do not occur so often. My autism is not causing a tumour and or damaging my nerves, joints or organs. It might impact on my mental health but I guess any factor in life that adds additional stress that pushes us to our coping limits will have a negative impact on our mental well-being. Again, lumping physical conditions/diseases in with mental health and cognitive developmental concerns is a bit weird.
So I guess the people who copy and paste such junk feel that they have raised awareness for a long list of challenges/conditions/illnesses people can face and then they can feel smug they have done their bit but what they have done for autism is to further the nonsense that it is an illness.
If you want to help educate people about invisible illnesses, brilliant! But please read about them, educate yourself first and write a well thought out caring post and perhaps do a cake sale to raise some money to support a particular charity. Don't just copy and paste mindlessly because myths around those 'illnesses' in the Facebook post are continued and it doesn't provide the awareness needed as all it does is spread ignorance.
I am sure it is well intentioned but it is bloody irritating. Please stop!
0 comments:
Post a Comment