I'm currently living abroad, so I can highly relate to this. I'm the first one in my family though. I'm a stranger anywhere. and being weird is much easier where people just assume it is because you are a foreigner
this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2023
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I never really noticed that I got a 'get out of weird jail' card by moving countries, but being from a different culture meant people would accept me being different more easily and I didn't get into trouble for not understanding or knowing every detail of social behaviour.
I self-diagnosed years after moving countries, but then it clicked and saw how I had been a foreigner everywhere and always, and that this feeling of disconnect made moving abroad really easy.
And then it clicked again - the few friends I found who I could really relate with also always seemed to move away. When I was a kid, when I was an adult. I might have a close friend or two for few years, a decade or two, and then they move, to another city or country. Maybe they move places as easily as me because they or their families feel the same disconnect.
Weirdly, it's the opposite for us - my grandad, my dad, me and my daughters even all went to the exact same tiny primary school (obviously over the span of 100 years!). We don't move very far at all.
That said, my parents now live in France. Maybe it just kicks in later for our family.
I moved countries as an adult. Never had culture shock because I never felt part of my country of origin so there was not much difference.
Yeah, this resonates. It would make for interesting research, to get away from our self-selecting anecdotal evidence. I have my own suspicion that major family issues also encourage people to move abroad, and that this can become intergenerational....
I have my own suspicion that major family issues also encourage people to move abroad
Yeah, I think about that too. Either the kids move to get away, or the family moves to have a fresh start.
I'm so curious how this fits together, I'm almost about to write a survey myself. Not sure where to start though, I'm no professional in writing Neurodiversity surveys.
My family has been unable to stay put for generations! My sister and I moved countries (in different directions), some aunts and uncles, some cousins, both sets of grandparents (individually and together) and even the generation before that as far as I’m aware.. In my immediate family we all have ADHD. The rest of them I don’t know well enough to say.
Would love to see more data on this, but it resonates pretty strongly.
I left my home country as a child. My father’s not diagnosed with anything, but he’s sure as hell not NT.
Make of that what you will.
Yup.
To clarify I have ADHD, my dad definitely also had it, and my mother has neurodivergent signs as well. My whole family is scattered across the continents, though. My dad was a novelty seeker (as am I) but our reasons for leaving are due to a change in political climate (and the uncertainty that caused)
My sister lives in the origin country, but all of her children have left, each one having gone to a different country (and not where I ended up)
Third edit: one example of why I think my mother shows neurodivergent signs: she won't eat salad in the winter. She thinks you're not supposed to. (She grew up where leafy greens were not available during the winter time, but has internalized that as a rule even though she lives somewhere that lettuce is available year round)
due to a change in political climate (and the uncertainty that caused)
Yeah, but even in a situation of uncertainty, isn't there still an element of choice often? (Of course I don't know if it was the case for your family, just that not every situation is and all or nothing thing)
My grandpa could have quickly moved home when he was let out of prisoner camp in the Balkans, but he stayed and ended up marrying a local. And she, equally strange, insisted in both of them moving to his country after a few years, where she lived as an eternally weird half integrated foreigner with a lot of strange habits and strong opinions.
My other grandpa could have decided to stay in the DDR. He wasn't persecuted, he wasn't in trouble, he just didn't like the political direction things were taking there, and so he and his wife decided to move to Western Germany.
For sure.
I didnt really realize how different my family was from other people for a long time. I don't know most of them well enough to know what the prevelance of neurodiversion is. It's just too hard to say why each of them went where they did... but at least with my dad, his behaviours and mine are alike enough that I can guess I got my ADHD from him. He died a long while back so I can't know for sure... but he was always all over the place. He even died in a different country on vacation!
I was the first American-born person in my family. Both of my parents are from very different countries. I lived in Japan for a year. I also have traveled to like 15 countries. I also don't live in my hometown and likely never will.
I'm pretty certain that my father was narcissistic personality disorder with some psychopathic tendencies. My sister thinks he was more psychopathic than I think he was, but we both agree on the narcissism. My mother's side was a lot more chill, quiet, and respectful, though she was schizophrenic. I remember when I met her brother/my uncle, we clicked immediately. He was just so calm and to the point, whereas my father's side was manipulative and disrespectful. Anyway, while writing this post, I learned that autistic people are much more likely to develop schizophrenia than NTs. Luckily, my parents did not stay together for long, but unluckily I got stuck with my father's side rather than my mother's side. On the other hand, my mother moved back to her home country, and that's definitely not a place I would want to be right now.
I'm starting to suspect that a narcissist is a neurodiverse person who hasn't processed their trauma well and has risen to some position of power and authority over others. My grandma fits that bill. Meh, both grandmas were manipulative. But then they entered survival mode early, lived through WWII during their late teens and early twenties ... fewer chances to develop a self-reflected personality probably? My ex spouse (different nationality and culture from me, of course) is narcissistic as well. Throw enough repression, religious and/or political, into the neurodiverse mix and these figures emerge I guess.
I embrace the voices in my head. I've never been overwhelmed by them to the point of coming close to schizophrenia, but it was never difficult to have whole conversations in my head. I used to interpret them as different parts of myself, these days I'm actually seeing it as a conversation with my non-human surroundings and even ancestors like the above-mentioned grandmas, but I'm keeping an open mind around it all. But I'd definitely tell 'fuck off' to anyone who'd try to tell me I shouldn't be doing that in my own head.