@bone II hey dahv!! Thank you so much for your reply. Sorry I didn't see this earlier..
I like the way you put it as a " neurodivergence" . I have read somewhere in the book called Siddhartha's brain ( a book by James Kingsland) that everyone of us has mental illness.(Perhaps we don't name it as mental illness) It's just the matter of whether one realizes it or not.
I take it as a spectrum .Each of us has emotional disturbances or mental formation disruption to a certain degree, and it is very much depend on the environmental factors. I have social anxiety to a certain degree, some obsessive compulsive personality trait only expressed when in excessive stress, and magical thinking most of the time which to some people it is totally absurd.
Sometimes I find that it's unfair to just diagnose an illness based on a guideline, as long as fulfilling the so called criteria. It's arbitrary. One is said to be "ill' because he or she doesn't belong to the group which is "healthy". That's what happening when we diagnose mental illness based on a guidebook, based on the criteria. (Which is what I'm doing everyday )
But there's one thing which I learned that, in life, we have choices. We can choose the way of who we are, by learning more about ourselves, and be aware of our strengths and weaknesses. With the little insight gained day by day, we will be more comfortable with the surrounding, with the people, with the universe, and with ourselves.
Oh ya, I think weird is also arbitrary. When A perceived B as weird, merely because they have different sets of benchmark or standard. Sometimes conformity in the society can kill. Just because the voices are soft, doesn't mean what we are saying is wrong.
Thank you Dahv and I wish you getting more and more comfortable with us, and with yourself.
Cya around.
From Nie.