Knowledge can be a either a dangerous or a useless thing for those who don’t have the emotional skills to handle it. And I don’t say this to promote some kind of censoring on how information should be difused in a paternalistic way, an argument often used by totalitarian states to find an excuse for attacking freedom of speach. That will be a matter for another post. But here, I can tell you of some groups of people for whom knowledge is a double sword. People who, like me, face mental illness, and are forced to learn in an environment that don’t take into account the way our brains work. The possibility to understand the paper emotional intelligence has on the process of learning, and to take into account in the process of teaching what aspects of our brains can be involved in this process, and how their failure can lead to failure in the process of decition making, and more over, of perception of reality, sounds like something of science fiction, of the most naive utopia. And yet, I think neuroscience is begining to get us there for the first time in history.
I think many people of society can secretely relate, to some extent, to what this guy went through. In my case, the start of my career was somehow similar to what this guy experienced, with the difference I had no brain injury, but other mental illness. And I know self diagnoze is something we should avoid at all costs. either on purpous, when you go around on the internet trying to find out what is wrong with you, or when you just see by accident something you can relate to, and fall in the temptation to dig deeper until you convince yourself that’s what you have. However, I think one of the most direct and efficient ways to introduce the topic of neurodiversity and mental health in the process of learning is to actually teach the kids some situations with whom they might feel related to. Some cases they can use as mere analogies, to say “Hey, I don’t have the capacity to tell I have that, but I can sincerely relate to that in this and this and this”. I can see a course of neurodiversity on school curriculum, just like what happened with sex education, and will eventually happen with gender and minority studies. An education system that can help students have inputs to discover their own skills and limitations, with the help of a professional, can be one more fair, and in a feasible way.
In my case, I will definitely be telling my therapist about this case, as I feel that it is a good input for him to know that I feel related to it to a great extent. But I know I must trust his judgement on what to do with this information, and I won’t be taking the comparison literal. Here again, I deffend the power and limitations of analogies. And god knows one of the best things of this year is to have found this youtube channel of Antroporama. Go check it out.