please stop getting angry at your friends for doing neurodivergent things like talking too fast, getting angry, having no empathy, having too much empathy, crying, stimming, saying inappropriate things at inappropriate times, forgetting dates or numbers or names, not understanding why youre angry, not getting jokes. add on more things if you want
skin picking and/or hair pulling in public, accidentally baiting fights, dissociating/spacing out, being clingy, spam texting for attention…
Speaking as someone who does a lot of the above… (specifically, at least six or so…)
People definitely need to have patience and consideration for someone doing things like that, but, not all of those things are completely benign or neutral and it’s still on you to consider how they will affect others. If you say inappropriate things, how much pressure are you putting on the other person to not treat them as inappropriate or not express their discomfort? If you’re spam texting for attention, do you get angry if not all of those texts are read immediately or at all? If you act clingy, do you get resentful if your clinginess isn’t met with sufficient attention and affection?
This behaviour being neurodivergent is not a carte blanche to exercise it unchecked or expect everyone to put up with it. Some people will feel hurt if you, say, keep forgetting a date that is important to them (birthday or anniversary or whathaveyou) and there’s no amount of “it’s not me it’s my neurodivergency” will fix how they feel. These people may not be the right people for you - and, this is important, this is not their fault either. Alternately, just because your behaviour is neurodivergent doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work on it and try to find a compromise that makes everyone happy. Running with the forgetfulness example, there are a lot of support tools available for people with that exact issue (whether the dates they forget affect their professional lives or relationships), so Making An Effort into not forgetting, and demonstrating it to the other person, will probably go a long way. I mean, if your best friend or significant other tells you “If you really cared about my birthday, you’d remember it”, it might sound shitty, but… if you’re doing a decently consistent job remembering other important do-or-die dates in your life, whether it’s through apps or note-keeping or making sure friends remind you, then they’re not wrong, are they?
And that’s without getting into anxiety and deliberately self-sabotaging behaviour and how sometimes people do those things to other people because they know on some level that it will drive them away, but that doesn’t make it a good thing
Being neurodivergent sucks, but some of the hard-to-control things we do are, in fact, often bad for others, and we should never simply let ourselves off the hook for them because the moment we stop trying entirely, we set our feet on a slippery slope to abuse. Don’t become someone who hides behind their neurodivergence to excuse the things they know they shouldn’t be doing but do anyway.
I forget dates too. Google Calendar + Notifications. It’s not that hard.
A lot of these behaviors are just flat out rude, and other people have a right to be upset about them regardless of your neurodivergency.