My Podcasts that I listen to and how they help me.

 

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2OFfna9AEpkqVcYeJNcmLY?si=70LdqFLBTlmP5NIbRogg8g

This is a great episode and I have listened to it several times I need to put it out there that this host Alexis doesn’t mince her words, and I mean doesn’t mince her words uses what could be considered “offensive words to get her point across, but it’s used to prove a point and not to get or gain clickbait.

This episode is on the low dopamine trend, and I see that this is a trend that started in the ADHD, community and the “content creation” community took it and ran with it and is actively spreading miss information about dopamine, this podcaster has a background in Neuroscience (I am not sure of her qualifications but will find out for you).

This is part of a wider trend that I am sick of, and I am sure that many more in the disability community and cohort are sick of as well since it’s something that we created for ourselves, and it’s then been taken out of context for views. Also spreading the miss information is dangerous because people are starting to take what is considered “Hidden Disabilities’ and create stereotypes for views, this creates so many problems that the advocates that have come before we died trying to eliminate, people like the great Stella Young, and others, who pushed forward, in disability rights, and I feel would be very disheartened to see that disability like ADHD, Autism, Brain injuries, and mental health such as DID and other issues have been turned into clickbait. 

I am not saying that this is all creators, but I am finding that there seems to be a massive stereotyping of these behaviours on platforms like tic tock as YouTube, Google, and other platforms are creating terms of service that actively say, you need to put context or have this backed up by science. I am not trying to gatekeep, disability information but am saying if you have these conditions you need to be accurate in saying that this is your experience and I am not going deny anyone there 15 minutes of fame or even longer, or an income but what is harming is the stereotypes of disability and mental health, this pushes us back to the days of forced institutionalization that even my family went through years of pain to get me as a child into what is now considered mainstream, and this mocks the very experience they went through to keep me in the family and to have me educated at a mainstream school.  

 

The therapies I had are now very mainstream but at the time were considered fringe these being early child occupational therapy and physical therapy,  and are at times that these therapies are funded on a case-by-case basis is funded in Australia by the NDIS, and this is a good thing, but we are also seeing an influx of providers that are selling their support services, there is nothing wrong with this at all but they are denying the voices of advocates like myself that are what a USA based content creator would call a:” Freedom fighter, in fighting for the objective truth,” as yes the NDIS is a very good and progressive thing but it like any human creation can be used for bad and we see that there are people who enter the industry because they need a job and are unprepared for what they are going to do, as well and this can be great but at the same time this could be a disaster.

But in going back to the  podcast I love what this creator puts out and it is important and impowering in a way to be able to take what resonates and to leave the rest due to the fact that not everyone who listens to the podcast is going to be able to implement the advice, and this is something that I am going to talk about until it stops the “faking of disability for views” this harms the disabled community more than these generally young content creators realizes due to the fact that they only see the surface level of what these disabilities are, and let me tell you, it has taken me ages to be comfortable to use the words, Disabled, Special needs and Accommodations because of what I thought disability looked like due to the lets call it what it is the lies that these content creators would peddle, the stereotypes of what ADHD looks like being quirky, cute and cured by medication, I have massive amounts of small t trauma due to people not being able to recognise that I am ADHD, and thought it was a side effect of my  brain injury that was caused by a medical incident when I was a child, this is the other thing that people are faking and I am not saying that this is all content creators as I respect the content creators that have openly talked about there struggle, the people that I am talking about are the ones that when you ask a question on a live stream, or an AMA that is respectful well thought out and not invading their privacy they get angry.

If your mission is to educate about disability my question is why are you getting angry when someone asks a question that is not coming from a place of hate or ignorance but a place of education and lived experience of the same disability and asking about what strategies you have in place and you get angry, I feel that this is something that you need to reconsider. If online content creation is your job or a side gig then, what about learning a skill and then documenting that journey I would respect you a lot more for doing this and you’re learning a marketable skill.

 

Please respect my lived experience of disability and we see that people don’t respect this and people seem to now dismiss hidden disabilities due to the fact that people are using it for clout and this is something that isn’t going away easily but things that can change by being respectful and if a person is putting their content out there for consumption, to challenge them I am not advocating for them to be deplatformed but to be honest about their life experiences, as this is the only way we are going to minimize the trend of faking for views.