Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

The problem isn't that time blindness is a fake issue.

The problem is that many people incorrectly self-diagnose as suffering from conditions like time blindness. Which they do for a variety of reasons: To externalize accountability for why they're late, to feel special, and so on.

A comparison is the large number of people who claim "gluten sensitivity" and maintain special diets. Now there are serious medical conditions like celiac disease that require one to avoid gluten. But the vast majority of self-diagnosed "gluten sensitives" do not have such conditions. Researchers conclude that for many of them there is no physical basis for their self-diagnosis.

Among other things this phenomenon makes it harder for people with actual conditions to be taken seriously, because there are so many impostors.

That's half my point, which is why I lead with agreement on that very problem, i.e. people self-diagnosing when they shouldn't. The top-level comment seems to attribute all such people who identify with those symptoms as doing so because of a trend.

This isn’t such a great example. You don’t need to have celiac disease to benefit from avoiding gluten. I suspect some people avoid it because they feel better in some way. For myself eliminating gluten (or wheat, I’m not sure how to differentiate that) has been life changing, it immediately made breathing through my nose effortless, made concentrating easier, etc. I can tell you eliminating gluten is not easy, you have to cut out a lot of common foods, eating out is almost impossible. If someone is sticking to that diet they probably have a very good reason. I think a lot of people should give it a try at least and not worry about this being part of some fad. I’m a bit ashamed to admit but I only tried it because of a South Park episode...

Most wacky things start with a kernel of truth, so yes, the real tragedy here is people with a genuine psychological issue getting drowned out by a wave of trenders. The trenders denounce medical gatekeeping as exclusionary, but it’s also what protects resources for the genuinely needy, and what protects them from unnecessary medicalization.

You can differentiate that by buying some pure food grade gluten and eating that. There's a lot of stuff in wheat beyond just gluten. Of course this won't be a truly scientific controlled experiment but maybe good enough for your purposes.

Most restaurants have menu items with zero gluten, so eating out is hardly difficult. Not much gluten in a plain steak, potato, and vegetables.

> The top-level comment seems to attribute all such people who identify with those symptoms as doing so because of a trend.

I think the only source of disagreement is in the way you chose to frame it in absolutes, i.e., "all such people" instead of "people".

Framing anything in absolutes counts as a strawman argument, because all you need to do to refute it is find a single case, no matter how isolated it is, where it doesn't apply.

I assume that your solution is having a professional diagnosis.

Sadly this doesn't really work due to the current state of psychiatry where many people with legitimate issues are being denied a diagnosis and treatment (see for example: trans healthcare and gatekeeping, adhd healthcare, etc). It is even more weird because often when you go to two different doctors you will get different results.

Not to mention that usually to even explore the idea of getting an official diagnosis you start with a self diagnosis.

> But the vast majority of self-diagnosed "gluten sensitives" do not have such conditions.

If you believe that you have celiac but for whatever reason you haven't been able to test it yet, then there is no harm to try going glutten free. The real issue is how many people deny the very existence of glutten sensitivity and put these people in danger. If you look at communities of people with the disease you will see what I am talking about.

i would encourage everyone to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. you interact with these people in passing, they deal with themselves all the time. you might find them grating or difficult to work with, and that's fair, but i would hope people wouldn't extend "i dont like this person" to "I dont believe this person has a disability and they're making it up and i assume this because i dont like them"

neurodivergence can and frequently is a real debilitating disability. it is really fucking hard to cope with in a society that actively punishes it, and is full of perspectives like yours that invalidate these very real conditions.

i understand it's a difficult thing to wrap your head around. it isn't super visible like someone missing their legs. it's a really complicated, nuance spectrum of problems that are also really difficult to understand by people who don't have it, and frequently the people who do have it also don't know they have or understand how it impacts them

You think that society now, more than ever, punishes this after what we've been discussing—numerous instances of people glorifying it and (attempting to) excuse poor behavior through it?

> If you believe that you have celiac but for whatever reason you haven't been able to test it yet, then there is no harm to try going glutten free. The real issue is how many people deny the very existence of glutten sensitivity and put these people in danger. If you look at communities of people with the disease you will see what I am talking about.

You just made one hell of a strawman argument about what GP said.

He merely stated that “the vast majority of self-diagnosed ‘gluten sensitives’ do not have such conditions”, as you quoted. This comment jibes with my experience.

The two folks I know who have full-blown celiac end up projectile vomiting for hours if they consume even small amounts of gluten (e.g., gross contamination in a fryer or on a cutting board).

The two folks I know who have milder versions were able to figure out that they needed to be tested in fairly short order due to “digestion issues” when they ate gluten.

On the other hand, the dozens of other folks I know who claim to be “sensitive to gluten” have no real basis when saying so. When I mentioned to them that I have friends with celiac, and I empathize with them, and I suggest they get tested if they haven’t yet (undiagnosed celiac is real), the answer I get are nothing short of glib - “oh, I’m just on a keto diet, and this is an easy way to do it”, “oh, I just found that I feel bad after eating things like cake” (sugar crash? diabetic?), or “oh, I’m fine, I just want them to make a fresh one (of whatever) for me”.

Your defense of folks who claim a problem that they can (often) fairly easily determine that they don’t have is enabling those folks’ dysfunction — that is, lying to themselves and (per this thread) using labeling as a defensive tactic.

People who actually have celiac need very specific accommodations. But the multiples of people who claim “gluten sensitivity” when they don’t actually have it causes large swathes of the general population to disbelieve the folks who really do have it.

It’s ok to call out the poseurs for what they are while still looking out for folks who have celiac or might have celiac and don’t know it yet.

No that's not how it usually works. People with a serious mental health condition don't usually start with self diagnosis. Instead they are referred to a mental health practitioner by another healthcare provider, a school administrator, or the criminal justice system because they are unable to function effectively in society. Many mental health conditions impair the type of objective metacognition needed to reliably self diagnose in the first place.

So you didn't think they were dismissive or trivialised the issue? I mean, I can sympathise with the frustration of people somewhat 'giving up' after labelling their own issues, but it's not a logical conclusion to assign it all to a trend. That's what they appeared to be blaming and I didn't see them say otherwise, in any of their comments.

> So you didn't think they were dismissive or trivialised the issue?

What issue would that be? People falsely claiming they suffer from conditions they do not have? Or is it when they claim they struggle with a condition they self-diagnosed but somehow don't even bother to seek medical help not even to verify a diagnosis? Because if there is something that harms those who actually have to endure these conditions is people making fraudulent claims and trying to capitalize on everyone's goodwill.

> I mean, I can sympathise with the frustration of people somewhat 'giving up' after labelling their own issues, but it's not a logical conclusion to assign it all to a trend.

Is it "giving up", or is it just abusing a label they clearly know doesn't apply to them? You're somehow avoiding the elephant in the room and the whole point of this thread, which is the problem created by fraudulent claims by attention seekers.

i didn't say more than ever, but in fact in a way it is: having a job and being able to support yourself is increasingly knowledge and skills based work, whereas in the past things were much more labor focused, which is a better fit for people with ADHD.

yes ADHD is better recognized and better treated these days. but as this entire comment section shows, there is still tons of stigma, misunderstanding, and a lack of compassion for a real disability