281

ADHD
Posted on May 19, 2024 by David M Willis

281 thoughts on “ADHD”

  1. DailyBrad

    God, I love these two’s rapport. They are basically always entertaining together.

    1. Yumi

      Yeah, for most of the comic I haven’t particularly cared for Dorothy herself (not in a hating on her way, just didn’t find her really interesting), but I always liked these two together.

      1. Delmore Slim

        Both Dotty an Walky are characters who I am very fond of because they kind of annoy me. But I can understand why they’re like that an ultimately I feel for them.

        1. Throwatron

          nothing would make me happier than all the people who annoy me finding each other! now they have less to complain about, and they’ll all stay away from me!

        2. Yumi

          Me and my friends in high school high-fiving each other after finding out two people we disliked had started dating each other

  2. Ana Chronistic

    “First of all, HOW DARE—”

  3. Animedingo

    Ok dorothy, now look up OCD

    1. Veronica

      It’s only OCD if it has a negative effect on your life otherwise it’s OCP which is totally cool and normal to have and checking your stove is off seven times a night is just being sensible.

    2. GingerMadman

      That’s not really OCD. If it truly is a COMPULSION, it MAY be OCDPD, which is similar. Or it could be some other neurodivergence, or it could (and in her case most likely may) just be mental health related.

      1. Throwatron

        I mean, there’s a big reason why OCD and Autism are so commonly co-morbid, that doctors regularly confuse the diagnostic criteria for both, and diagnose one as the other all the time! There is a lot of overlap there.

    3. ValdVin

      Dorothy:

      “Merriam Webster defines OCD as…”
      “Oxford English Dictionary defines OCD as…”
      “Encyclopedia Brittanica’s article on OCD states…”
      “The Mayo Clinic says the causes and symptoms of OCD…”
      :NIMH reports that OCD may result in…:

      1. Psychie

        I feel like Dorothy would know the first place to look is the DSM

    4. Stephen Nedland

      Oh, I can guarantee, that just like Batman has a folder on how to take him out, Dorothy has a subfolder on herself, in that, “neurodivergent directory” of hers. It’s locked under a password, that only Joyce would think of.

      1. Uly

        Is that “take him out” like… on a date? Or more murdery?

        1. Decidedly Orthogonal

          The latter. Next to the similar folder for Superman. But Clark’s contains both versions. Bruce just doesn’t want to admit it.

        2. Uly

          Oooh, pic twins!

        3. John Campbell

          Catwoman keeps the folder on how to take Batman out on a date. It starts with, “First, knock over a jewelry store,” and then after the chase over the rooftops, the fight segues into makeouts.

        4. thejeff

          Batman’s folder on how to take him out on a date has a much higher classification level than the one on how to kill him.

  4. Casi

    I agree with both Walky and Dorothy here. pathologizing organization is bad, but also she does show some signs of autism.

    1. ian livs

      As an autistic person, I would not be shocked if she eventually found out she was

      1. Casi

        As a person who checks most the boxes and definitely is not Neurotypical but cannot get an appointment with a specialist so am self diagnosing, i would not be surprised if she found out she was either. I see a lot of myself in dorothy, which is why i’m happy i’ve been blessed with the Dorothy grav in this roulette

        1. NGPZ

          Even if she acknowledges the signs, she likely cannot go any further on account of her internalized ableism, very much getting in the way of her being happy ?

          For her to confront that is much easier said than done. (speaking from experience)

        2. Groove

          I used to think self diagnosing was such an odd idea, until I had to deal with official autism diagnosis. My wife waited about 3 years for diagnosis and just this month it came through as confirmed.

        3. Skulduggery

          My experience getting an ADHD diagnosis raised my support of self-diagnosis for similar but opposite reasons. I spent years considering the possibility. By the time I went for an official diagnosis I had spent hundreds of hours chewing on the problem. Then the psychiatric nurse practitioner ran through an hour’s worth of cognitive tests that were very obviously being read and scored through a pre-printed binder with next to no independent analysis and the actual psychiatrist cut me off after 4 personal anecdotes of ADHD-type difficulties out of the several dozen I was prepared to go through and said “yeah that sounds right” and made it official.

          I guess I’m happy it was easier than I thought, but also, is that all an official psychiatric diagnosis looks like? I could do that! Why do we make people go to school for 8 years before they’re allowed to do certify neurodivergencies?

      2. Lysbeth

        As an autistic* person I wouldn’t be surprised by any of the characters being identified as autistic. Except maybe Blaine, I guess?

        * note: not diagnosed, not self-diagnosed, but a secret third thing (called “obviously autistic” by over 5 autistic friends, all confirmed and diagnosed)

        1. Daibhid C

          A few years ago, my understanding of my own writing went from “Even though I’m maybe autistic myself, I wouldn’t be comfortable writing autistic characters because I’d be afraid of getting it wrong” to “Now that I know I’m autistic, I’m looking at my writing and … have I ever written a non-autistic character?”

        2. StClair

          I suspect this has also been Willis’ process.

        3. Throwatron

          I dunno if I’ve ever seen a neurotypical webcomic artist.

          If I ever did, I dunno if I’d enjoy that comic at all, anyway.

        4. Jerach

          I very much feel that. I honestly think part of why I’ve gravitated towards webcomics as a medium is because it’s just so much easier to find neurodivergent or neurodivergent feeling characters than in more popular media.

        5. Opus the Poet

          I follow several comic artists-writers who are trans, at a much higher proportion than is present in the general population. I don’t know if that’s an indication of the comics I follow, or something about comics in general, or “some from column A, some from column B”, in that trans people are slightly more prevalent in comics and I’m also more likely to follow trans comic writers/artists because I’m more into the local trans scene and have that sense of humor.

        6. lyzyrdwyzyrd

          Pretty hard to diagnose a dead guy.

    2. S.R.

      I mean, “you organize things way more than is typical, particularly about relationships. Have you considered (for this and other reasons) that maybe you’re autistic” isn’t pathologizing. It’s pattern recognition.

      1. Reltzik

        … I take your actual point, but “view or characterize as medically or psychologically abnormal” is the actual definition of pathologize (thanks, Merriam-Webster), so yes, it’s pathologizing. Literally.

        1. Daibhid C

          I think the problem is pathologising neurodiveristy in the first place. I don’t think of myself as “abnormal”, just “different” (or occasionally “weird – in a good way”). And it took a lot of time and effort to get there,

        2. lyzyrdwyzyrd

          On the one hand, yes.
          On the other hand — for some people it’s a disability which requires treatment and care.
          And if it’s not a pathology, then health insurance isn’t paying for it.

          Same situation applies to trans folks.

          And like… we should have a better understanding of this sort of thing. Nobody thinks of people who have glasses as disabled.

        3. Reltzik

          … actually, there are some people who think that.

          … they aren’t nice people.

        4. lyzyrdwyzyrd

          Well, it IS a disability. It’s just that the disability aids are affordable compared to others and it’s so commonplace that it doesn’t really clock for many people.

          But by definition, glasses are a disability aid.
          My point is that ‘disability’ is in some ways a social construct.

        5. Reltzik

          I’m on board with that, except I feel like “abnormal” is an umbrella term which isn’t necessarily bad and can include the concepts of “different” and “weird in a good way”. Connotations can get varied, I guess.

        6. lyzyrdwyzyrd

          Definitely agree. I have somewhat of a statistics background so I have to remind myself that ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ have different connotations in that field vs colloquial speaking.

          I haven’t gotten it wrong

        7. Psychie

          Technically speaking, as far as clinical psychology and psychiatry go, the definition of a disorder is whether the differences you experience have a significant negative impact on the quality of your life. If someone is neurodivergent but for whatever reason that doesn’t negatively impact their life, they are not supposed to be diagnosable per the DSM as they do not have a disorder, even if they ARE neurodivergent.

          I would argue that Dorothy’s quality of life is *starting* to be negatively impacted by her neurodivergence, and thus she likely *should* seek help before it snowballs any further, considering the nature and severity of the negative impact.

          Granted, knowing what I know about the mental health services available at IU and in Bloomington in general, I actually caution *against* seeking psychiatric help outside of particularly dire circumstances, because you have a better chance of them making things worse than better based on the anecdotal evidence of my own experiences, as well as the experiences of everyone I’ve known in the area that needed treatment, plus how the various local services are discussed in the bloomington subreddit whenever they come up.

      2. Mark

        Something in that “more than is typical” rubs me the wrong way. People who do something useful “more [or more effectively] than is typical” get paid more, promoted faster and remembered longer. We like them, and many of them like themselves quite well.

        I suspect that, whatever there is in Dorothy that she finds more a bother than a blessing, organization isn’t it. This seems more like an effective way of dealing with something else.

        1. Paul

          Lets replace “neuro-typical” with “neuro-boring”.

        2. Lysbeth

          I used to use neuronormie and neurospicy for fun, but then I found out about the fact that “neurospicy” is used a lot by other people whose approach to mental health, challenges, and behaviour isn’t exactly cool (with a bunch of issues really) so now I don’t have a fun term for neurodivergent/neuroatypical, but “neuronormies” has stuck with me.

    3. Rose by Any Other Name

      My wife was semi-recently diagnosed with both ADHD and Autism (female presenting).
      Walky and Dorothy’s conversation last comic was like watching two halves of my wife converse with one another.
      SO yeah, like 98% sure Dorothy. Go get yourself checked and stop being a denying dotty.

      1. NGPZ

        Denying Dotty? That’s a thing? 😮

        1. Regret

          All alliterative affirmations are accurate.

        2. clif

          Awesome!

        3. StClair

          Agreed.

        4. Reltzik

          And all assertions are anti-factual.

        5. StClair

          “This! Sentence! Is! False! donthinkaboutit don’tthinkaboutit”
          “Um… true. I’ll go true. There, that was easy.”

      2. lyzyrdwyzyrd

        I know what you meant but when you said ‘Autism female presenting’ was that somehow autism is a gender identity. I need another Coke.

        1. NGPZ

          Well, sometimes it can be part of gender identity?

          Autism can sometimes affect the way we experience gender, which gender itself by definition.

          Auti-gender,neurogender and neurofluid are identities in which one views their gender as being influenced by their neurodivergence. ^^

        2. Taffy

          It is a gender. It’s mine. You can’t have it.

    4. Ophidiophile

      Organizing your friends pathologies, on the other hand…

      1. Steamweed

        I think Booster could accomplish this.

    5. lur

      funny how she understands pathologizing organization is bad but doesn’t understand autism and adhd are not actual pathologies

      1. NGPZ

        This. What people call autism and ADHD are actually very broad collections of neurodivergent stripes that can occur in individuals in many many disparate combinations and causes that are all lumped together into few generic categories.

        It’s worth pointing out that neurodivergents as a group actually display more diversity among their brains than that of the entirety of all humans.

        1. Miri

          Migrainey but the last sentence can’t be right? Neurodivergent people are a subset of all humans so cannot display more diversity than the wider group… Are you saying that neurospicy comes in so many different varieties of flavours that simple labels like “autism spectrum” can be wildly misleading, because they cover a wide range of behaviours, traits, experiences, expectations, etc..?

          I think we’re getting there and the vast majority of people under the age of… maybe 50? Understand that e.g. ADHD and autism typically present differently in girls, boys, men and women; these are spectrums and can vary from “debilitating” to “sometimes struggles with interpersonal communication” to “find some things harder than ‘typical’ but this is at the level of ‘self-diagnosis as an adult because it helps clarify some things, and hasn’t caused significant issues that even close friends or family members would pick up on’ and their lived experiences definitely don’t make it into any official stats”…

        2. Lysbeth

          subset of all humans yourself. I reject my humanity! Jojoooo!

        3. Daibhid C

          Makes sense to me. Imagine 100 felt tip pens. 90 of them are blue. The others are red, pink, green, orange, purple, brown, turquoise … I’m running out of colours I have names for, but you get the idea,

          The diversity in those last 10 pens is “every one is a different colour”.

          The diversity in all 100 pens is “most of them are blue”.

        4. NGPZ

          Basically this, only with countless more individual characteristics like color

        5. lur

          the last sentence is not entirely correctly worded but it’s almost right
          what ngpz meant (because we’ve discussed this before and also because i have seen that data too, even if i can’t link references off the top of my head) is that neurodivergent people are more diverse within ourselves than neurotypical people are within themselves

          or in other words, neurotypical people are a more homogeneous group than neurodivergent people are

      2. Chris Phoenix

        I came here to say this: What about not pathologizing autism?

      3. Tatterhood

        Cosigned

    6. Tatterhood

      It’s interesting to me to see how many people feel this is as obvious as it seems to be to Walky. Interesting because I am trying to puzzle out my own flavours of neurodivergence, and autism never crossed my mind for Dorothy. Now that it’s been pointed out, I can certainly see the possibility. But in my mind my “obvious” armchair diagnosis for Dorothy was always anxiety (insert “why not both?” meme here).

      Mostly it piques my curiosity because it makes me wonder how off-base my understanding of both autism and anxiety might be and b) how wrong I might be about myself.

      1. StClair

        Dorothy is completely normal. Just like Jennifer!

        1. Random832

          She is, if anything, completely normal in the exact opposite way from Jennifer.

      2. lyzyrdwyzyrd

        She reads as anxious to me. There’s social stuff and childhood markers I feel like she isn’t matching, even for low support needs autistic folks.

        I’m in a similar boat apparently.

        1. Uly

          Except… we’ve mostly seen her socialize with other people who probably are neurodivergent. That’s not exactly a point in favor of her not being autistic.

  5. shadowcell

    Dumbing of Age Book 14: Go Back to Arranging Your Friends’ Issues Into Subfolders

    1. Red

      That’s a pretty good one

  6. shrub

    Normally I’m quite down on Walky (because hes a little dipshit) but credit where credits due hes doing well in this arc

    1. Thag Simmons

      He is improving!

      1. Jeremiah

        Really, it is more that he has his good and his bad moments, like the majority of main cast.

    2. HueSatLight

      I like how he’s not pushing her off of the 30 foot tall snow pile for her deciding to look into ADHD for him without asking or offering first. Shows restraint.

      1. Bash

        A common complaint I see in the comments section is that characters do things without express permission. And maybe in real life they would have asked first. But in a panel-by-panel comic, some of that naturally gets condensed. Dorothy saying she will do something gives Walky a chance to say he’s not comfortable with it, while also informing the reader what is happening without an extra panel of dialog. The interactions between the cast members differ, but characters will often back off if explicitly asked or if they see signs of genuine distress.

        1. marcus erronius

          No we must have two separate panels of Walky giving a knowing long-suffering smile and a quick head bob to indicate his consent cuz pics or it didn’t happen
          …
          /s

        2. HueSatLight

          Why is it whenever I give Walky credit for not being a total dipshit, someone tries to convince me I’m wrong.

    3. BarerMender

      I endorse the dipshit diagnosis.

  7. DarkoNeko

    Oooooh the irony 😀

  8. True Survivor

    Hey, she sticks her tongue out when she is thinking! I do that, too. Though, I am also concerned people think I’m a weirdo because sometimes I get lost in thought and walk around like that.

    1. Regret

      Please continue to be weird, weirdness breeds tolerance.

      The way it works (according to me, renowned expert on everything I deign to have an opinion on) is that peopl determine what is normal by looking at everything they experience and then excluding five percent at the edges. If almost everyone is the same except for a handful of people, these people will be excluded. But if everybody is as weird as possible, only the weirdest ones are excluded. And since we all see things differently they will be excluded by different people, so they can still have friends.

      Once again complexity saves the day, just like it saves nutrition and a thousand other seemingly hard things. You don’t need to actually solve the issue, just make it as complicated as possible and you won’t be able to understand what you’re doing wrong!

    2. Mark

      Own your weirdness. We don’t have enough people who think deeply enough to get lost.

  9. Jeremiah

    With the causal way Walky react to that suggestions, something tells me this was wasn’t the first time it was bought up to him, but the first it wasn’t immediately shut down by Linda.

    1. True Survivor

      That is a sad thought.

    2. RassilonTDavros

      That’s how I read it, too.

    3. Queezle

      Yes. There are downsides to being the “golden child” Linda messed up both of her children in very different ways.

      1. Jamie

        Matches my personal experience.

    4. DaveM

      Hypothetically speaking I’d imagine that he worst thing that could happen when your brain doesn’t tick quite like everyone else’s is being surrounded by authority figures who actively deny (for possibly the best and kindest reasons) that you might be in any way divergent from the norm. If you’re old enough then possibly the terminology didn’t even exist back then, and in either way even if you do acknowledge it you’re still alone and living in a society whose rules you do not or cannot fully understand. Hypothetically speaking I’d imagine that could be quite lonely.

      Fortunately for Walky he seems to acknowledge his divergence and can be open about it to those he trusts (a set which doesn’t and shouldn’t contain his parents).

      1. Needfuldoer

        I’d say Dorothy’s version is worse because she does it to herself.

      2. Throwatron

        “Hypothetically speaking I’d imagine that he worst thing that could happen when your brain doesn’t tick quite like everyone else’s is being surrounded by authority figures who actively deny (for possibly the best and kindest reasons) that you might be in any way divergent from the norm. If you’re old enough then possibly the terminology didn’t even exist back then, and in either way even if you do acknowledge it you’re still alone and living in a society whose rules you do not or cannot fully understand. Hypothetically speaking I’d imagine that could be quite lonely.”

        you pretty well summarized the exact life experience of nearly every neuro-divergent over the age of 30, who didn’t have any accompanying intellectual disability.

        if you weren’t flunking school, hard, then neither parent nor teacher was ever going to entertain the idea that you were one of those “special kids…” no matter how many massive, obvious social deficits or atypical discomforts you might display, in any situation.

        in fact, since many of us did quite well at school work, our failings in other areas were treated exceptionally more harshly, because “obviously you are smart enough to understand complex things – why are you being difficult about something simple, that I know you are smart enough to understand?”

        So, you end up with a perfectionist complex, and an abandonment complex, and a general fear of all social situations and people; because, all of your mistakes involve you running afoul of unwritten rules that “everybody understands,” and you’re treated as being willfully disobedient for simply not having any fucking clue what was going on, or what was expected of you. You internalize the tacit assumption, that you’re supposed to know the right thing to say and do in every situation (just like how you get 100% on all that schoolwork, every time!), and that any time you don’t know what to do, it’s because you are inherently bad and deserve to be punished for not knowing something obvious to everyone.

        So, it becomes your goal, to sort everything excessively, and to know everything, so you can avoid those situations where you deserve extreme punishment. Except, that’s the way you see every single thing you do, and environment you inhabit, every single day, for the rest of your entire life.

        Which is one of the reasons, a lot of autistic kids also present as having OCD, I assume.

        1. Uly

          I’m going to take this moment to, once again, be thankful to my parents, for all their flaws, for not being like that in this area.

          They still couldn’t get me diagnosed, but they sure as heck tried.

        2. Bobbi

          Stop describing my life ?

  10. Dave Van Domelen

    The fact that her organizational stuff WORKS for her means she’s at least not ADHD.

    1. Stephen Bierce

      No, it means “high functioning”.

    2. Uly

      Hahahahaha, no. Very much no. A world of no. That’s not how it works at all.

      That is how a lot of people get cheated out of diagnoses, because when they’re asked “Do you have a problem with this?” and their answer is “No, not so long as I follow my system!” they actually say “no” when they mean “yes, absolutely”.

      1. Mark

        The missing follow-up question: “well, do you have any problems with your system?” Or perhaps just “tell me about your system.”

        1. Throwatron

          yea, but since when do doctors give a fuck about that kind of thing?

        2. Uly

          Yeah, the trouble is that people don’t even say “No, not if I follow my system”. They just say “no, no problems”. Which is wrong, because they have to have a system.

    3. Taffy

      Nobody is ADHD. Lots of us have ADHD, though.

      1. DinaJoyce

        Nah. I am ADHD. It’s not a thing that changes how I act, like when I “have the flu” or something. ADHD is am integral part of how my brain works and has always worked. Without ADHD, I wouldn’t be me, I would be somebody else. If you prefer person first for yourself, that’s fine, but that’s not what we all prefer.

        1. Florens

          Fair point. It’s up to each person to prefer person-first or identify-first language or other options. But let’s be careful about the faulty abstractions we use when trying to argue for one preference, because they can have unintended implications.

          Case in point: the idea that “having” a condition or disease means that it will go away like the flu goes away is wrong. A lot of diseases cannot be 100% cured or can leave people with debilitating sequalae. Even the flu does not necessarily goes away (it can kill you, or trigger a post-viral syndrome).

          This idea of curable diseases being 100% different from disability or neurodevelopmental disorders can paradoxically feed into ableism, especially for people with long-term or lifelong acquired diseases. People with long-term diseases or sequalae often get treated badly because everyone (including healthcare providers) is bad at dealing with the cognitive dissonance of a disease that does not go away after a couple weeks.

        2. Bogeywoman

          ?I’m A.D.D. I’m dyno-MITE?

          (Skipped the h cos it doesn’t work with the song)

        3. Needfuldoer

          The H was optional, but now they call that variant ADHD-PI (Primarily Inattentive).

        4. Taffy

          This is a weird response.

        5. Yumi

          Is it? The discussion of person-first language and labels used for people seems pretty commonplace. For ADHD, I do definitely hear “have” more, which makes sense if you expand the abbreviation, but I also don’t know an alternative form that would fit better with “am.”

          Like I wouldn’t say, “I am ASD,” but would say, “I am autistic.” And some people do say someone is ASD, and that’s usually an outside comment rather than how someone describes themselves but if there’s not a corresponding term for ADHD, it fits with the idea of some people preferring “I am autistic” to “I have autism.”

        6. Taffy

          I don’t really think I follow, but that might be because I use both “I’m autistic” and “I have autism”. I’d never say “I am autism” in a serious context though, because that sounds weird. Maybe it’s something to do with ADHD not having that corresponding term like you said. Any alternative term I’ve heard for it sounds either overly clinical or overly cutesy, so that doesn’t exactly help.

        7. Yumi

          Yeah, I use both as well. I’m not bothered by the use of either, but I would be bothered by someone going, “*You’re* not autistic, you *have* autism,” as some people do because they think it’s a kindness to separate autism from the person.

          When taking teaching courses, part of the (few) lessons on disability in the classroom was on using person first language, pushing for it very much and saying it was to emphasize that those with disabilities are people and not their disabilities… a classmate turned to make a comment to me during this, and I was like, “Hold on, I’m about to go off on this lesson.”

        8. Taffy

          This is where I’m gonna have to withdraw and just apologise for saying anything, because I’m not understanding the problem and it’s around this point where people start yelling at me for not understanding.

        9. Yumi

          For me, the only problem was at “This is a weird response.”

        10. Tan

          Autism -> Autistic

          ADHD -> ADHDisorderly

    4. NGPZ

      Well that’s the thing, ADHD is just as diverse as autism in terms of HOW it affects us and there’s lots of overlap, the only discrepancy here being you couldn’t get officially diagnosed with both until 2012.

      (69th comment by the way, count them if you are also bored)

    5. Bogeywoman

      Allow me to introduce you to my 50 step plan for doing an assignment which was the cornerstone of my academic success before being medicated. It involved reading everything at least three times and working butt naked except for swimming goggles, headphones and a floppy beanie to reduce distractions. Now I’m wondering if that’s what tipped off my shrink…

      1. NGPZ

        wow and I thought I was the only one with that kinda sensory wardrobe,

        thanks for sharing, now I know I ain’t alone in that ;-;

        1. Bogeywoman

          Sensory wardrobe buddies ?

      2. Aletheia

        ….huh.

        It’s not quite at the “work naked” level, but your comment made me realize that I grew my hair out long enough to tie up securely (like, in a bun up, not in a ponytail) because I couldn’t concentrate when it was short. Somehow, people didn’t understand my “I get distracted when I feel my hair move” explanation when they asked why I no longer had short hair. :/

        Welp. Adding it to the ever-growing “reasons I may or may not have ADHD but good luck at getting to a doctor to even begin to diagnose it” list, hahaha…. hah…

        1. Aletheia

          Er… that should read “when it was short is because I may have ADHD.” I should learn to read things before posting, haha…

        2. Bogeywoman

          I’m the same but opposite. My hair has been short pretty much always because I can’t stand it touching my face/neck. I just get so frustrated I HAVE to shave it.

        3. zee

          Same to an extent. Its Not the feeling itself (though i get frustrated by that too sometimes) but once my hair gets long enough to form a full curl i compulsively touch it and play with it, i physically cannot spot myself. And for some reason it elicits the worst feeling within me, almost nauseating. I call it reverse stimming/nega stimming. So i keep it shaved too short to form full curls

  11. Doopyboop

    https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/04-dont-stop-billie-ving/sunlight/ Just gonna leave this one here

    1. Vulcanodon

      This was totally me. I didn’t realize most people didn’t have to study to get through social interactions.

  12. Nono

    Eh, to be honest, I’m not buying the Dorothy having a mental thing. She’s organised and probably a bit too focused, but those are easily just normal traits or someone needing to learn to relax.

    She’s not Monica Geller or Monk levels.

    1. Jeremiah

      You don’t have to be Monica level to be Neurodivergent. The way Dorothy thinks and operates about things are certainly signs of something. (Signed actual autistic person).

    2. Uly

      Sure, she’s not at the levels of a TV show character in a comedy production, where all traits are hyper-exaggerated for humor purposes.

      Yes, I am aware that this is a comic, however, I still think my point is valid if you’re using “Not Monica Geller or Monk” to handwave diagnoses of real people in the real world – or, to put aside your own concerns about yourself or any people in your immediate family.

    3. Regret

      Everybody has stacks of mental things, please use more precise language if you’re going to deny someone a descriptor so we can actually argue against it. Waving vaguely in a direction isn’t exactly intellectually honest.

    4. Oatmeal Pie

      Even if she doesn’t have some kind of formal diagnosis, that girl ain’t right. At the very least I think a therapist would tell her that the way she’s always trying to fix her friends while ignoring herself isn’t healthy (if she’d bother to quit hiding shit from her therapist).

      1. Miri

        Seconded; as a suicidally depressed teen I spent a lot of mental energy on my friends’ issues. Mine..? Mine didn’t matter. Those were for bottling up, ignoring…

        I had to hit rock bottom before I faced up to those demons.

    5. Monito

      Referring to pop culture examples is exactly why it took me so long to seek a diagnosis.

    6. zee

      Sitcom characters are parodies of people, esp when it comes to mental diagnoses and anything from the 90s. Do not use them as your yard stick

      1. StClair

        Strongly agree with this.

  13. Newlland(Henryvolt)

    You’re allowed to learn different ways on how to fix the brain but you’re not allowed to learn how yours work.

    1. Taffy

      Well yeah, if you understand yourself then it’s harder for others to lie to you about yourself.

      1. Steamweed

        Even more difficult to lie to yourself about yourself.

        1. Taffy

          One would hope so, at least.

  14. JA

    Isn’t organizing friends into folders itself a form of ADHD?

    1. Uly

      There’s an overlap.

    2. Reltzik

      Only if you are A) doing it as an (over)correction for your normal ADHD symptoms and/or B) supposed to be doing something else.

      1. Yeet

        I feel like Dorothy hits B several times over given the amount of things she’s decided she’s supposed to be doing

    3. Chaucer59

      No. More like OCD.

      1. Tatterhood

        OCD doesn’t have anything to do with organization unless it’s motivated by some other symptom, like an obsessive fear of germs. I hate the way media have educated the public to completely misunderstand this disorder.

        My loved one with OCD is also one of the extremely few people I’ve ever met who is more disorganized than I am.

  15. Mr. Random

    It’s very easy for me to just assume these characters are “realistic but wacky” characters that I sometitmes forget how… bizarre their behavior is when you look at it from a human perspective….
    Like Sal should not be that comfortable climbing into and out of windows.

    1. Jeremiah

      Could you explain why?

      1. C.T. Phipps

        Because it’s breaking and entering, which also intrudes on people’s privacy.

        1. Uly

          Is it breaking and entering if the resident allows it?

        2. Needfuldoer

          Nah, then it’s just entering.

        3. Mark

          I’d have thought that the “entering” in B&E is illegal entry. Not illegal if the legal occupants invite you in, AFAIK.

          I think it’s “breaking” only if you defeated some instrumentality that was intended to keep you out.

          Sal doesn’t break window frames or slip latches; she asks to be let in, and I believe she’d just leave if refused.

          Now, Dorothy picking the lock on Ruth’s door to let herself in uninvited to mooch alcohol likely is B&E, but ask a lawyer if you want to be reasonably sure.

        4. thejeff

          We did kind of just see one reason why it’s a problem: When you’re climbing up floors to knock on windows, you’re invading their reasonable expectation of privacy before you even can knock.

        5. Jeremiah

          That’s a reason why she shouldn’t do it, but I was asking why she couldn’t be comfortable doing it.

      2. Bash

        Because it’s incredibly dangerous and it would be so much easier to use a door.

        1. Needfuldoer

          I like to think it’s a method she developed for sneaking out at night undetected by Linda. It must have served her well at the boarding school.

        2. zee

          I think she said she developed the habit at boarding school

        3. Uly

          Moderately dangerous, if the windows she’s using are on the second floor or even the third. Most anybody can survive a drop of that height.

    2. Chaucer59

      Maybe she was a caesarean birth.

    3. Yeet

      to be fair here, it’s an incredibly good feeling compared to taking the door

    4. HueSatLight

      There were some common character traits in the Walkyverse that only got put in one character in the Dumbiverse. Sal regularly uses windows instead of doors. Amber has the rage. Mike’s dead.

    5. Taffy

      The climbing and windows thing is fine and not a problem. God forbid women have a skill, right?

  16. IntangibleMatter

    It’s okay Walky, even if you don’t grow up to be a brain surgeon there’s a promising career in software for you!

    1. IntangibleMatter

      I love forgetting the “https://” in links

    2. NGPZ

      He’d probably be very much into game dev ^^

  17. Suet

    Lemme just snip something off panel 2…

    1. Taffy

      Walky is already circumcised, you’re too late.

      1. Da Boy

        Oh yeah… Americans do that :-/

        1. HueSatLight

          Courtesy xenophobia and racism.

        2. Da Boy

          What?

        3. HueSatLight

          In the mid 1800s, a British doctor decided that because there was a lower rate of certain STDs among Jewish Londoners, the cause was male circumcision (other cultural explanations are more likely). So he decided that male circumcision was hygienic, and also discouraged masturbation. And being able to look down on immigrants for being “dirty” is really popular in the US, so infant male circumcision among WASPs was a way they set themselves apart as cleaner. And the tradition hasn’t been broken because it would require generations of men to confront that a functional piece of their dicks had been cut off during infancy.

        4. Agemegos

          The British doctor in question was Jonathan Hutchinson, from the 1850s onwards. The bloke who kicked it off in the US was somebody Sayre, starting in 1870-odd, and he urged it not to prevent syphilis but masturbation, which he asserted caused a bunch of paralytic conditions, weakness, and under-development disorders that sound as though thy were more likely dietary deficiencies.

        5. Agemegos

          And corporate promotion (by Gomco, Mogen, and Plastibell, if memory serves), facilitated by the fucked-up financial incentives in the US medical industry.

        6. Taffy

          Yeah, it’s mainly the parents making that decision though, not their kids. Also the doctors, usually without even asking first because they just assume you want your kid’s junk scrambled for some reason.

        7. Da Boy

          This always baffled me about US because it just doesn’t have the cultural background of it like Jews or Muslims…

        8. Taffy

          Our culture is broadly stupid and pointless in a lot of areas. The longer you look, the more there is to be baffled by, and then foreign people wonder why we don’t “just” change the pointless shit that helps nobody., like we’re not all exhausted from having to navigate it on the daily.

        9. Throwatron

          Yeah, but the US DOES have a serious background in religious fundamentalism and a systemically anti-sex and anti-pleasure culture. They don’t circumcise because it’s holy; they circumcise because weird 19th and 20th century religious kooks thought that decreasing the sexual sensitivity of males, would make them less sex-motivated.

          Never forget that breakfast cereal exists, because a kooky Quaker thought that a more boring breakfast would keep people from being horny. When you’re looking for examples as to why something in American culture is fucking insane, always assume it goes back to extremist puritanical values.

        10. Uly

          Will Kellogg was a Seventh Day Adventist, not a Kellogg.

          And while his beliefs about bland food and masturbation were objectively wrong, they weren’t his own private brand of kookiness and woo. A lot of Americans believed that bland food was more healthful and that masturbation caused physical illness. (There’s a strong stench of nativism in 19th and early 20th century American food faddism. No garlic, no spices – what are you, an immigrant!?)

        11. Uly

          Not a *Quaker*, sorry.

        12. Taffy

          Nope, too late. This is Kellogg Lore™ now. He was actually the bastard son of John Kellogg’s greatest rival, but when that guy met his end in a suspicious misfortune, John legally adopted the infant William and paid off the courts to keep it all hush-hush.

        13. HueSatLight

          his greatest rival, General Mills. That’s where the term Millerite comes from.

        14. Da Boy

          Wow this would make for a really fun book, so many wacky characters.

  18. kiva

    …going to be honest I forgot that that being ADHD was not like, a known thing with Walky, I’ve always read him that way

  19. Esolo

    Damn, Walky…

  20. Red

    LMAO WALKY

  21. Bruno

    I’m with Dottie on this one. Just because you can diagnose someone with some DSM thing doesn’t mean you should.

    1. Regret

      It can be useful to get a diagnosis, but it should not be something you do to friends or require them to do to themselves. Let people be weird without pidgeonholing them, it is going to be OK if you can’t exactly classify them. Which is also something someone needsd to tell Dottie.

      1. Bruno

        That said, Walky’s obviously just joking here, and I’m not mad at him.

      2. Bash

        Well, Walky just told her that he struggles with being able to focus on something. And then he said that he’s too scared to get medical help because of his mother. He didn’t say anything about feeling uncomfortable with being pigeonholed or being unwilling to explore a diagnosis for his own sake. So I can see why Dorothy feels like she can help, as a friend.

        1. Bruno

          I’m even less mad at Dorothy than I am at Walky, if it’s possible. Dorothy did nothing wrong. Here.

      3. thejeff

        I kind of feel like we’re overpolicing pretty normal human interaction here. This isn’t either one of them diagnosing the other or requiring them to get diagnoses. Maybe Dorothy’s going a little over the top, but that’s tied to her own coping mechanism, as Walky realizes.

        1. Taffy

          That first sentence could be automatically added to every single comment, honestly.

        2. Mark

          +1

        3. StClair

          yyyyup.

        4. Throwatron

          I truly do find it weird, how much of the comments section of a comic called Dumbing of Age, is so frequently full of arguments complaining that the cast of characters is immature, and needs to grow up and have better social and personal skills…like, is that not the precise material we all came here to read, together? It isn’t called “Well-Adjusted Sophomores, Who Understand Themselves Fully, as 30-Year-Olds Might, and Make Consistently Good Life Choices Because of Their Innate Wisdom!”

        5. Taffy

          “This character needs to grow up” Yep, that’s how time works. We all used to be that age, and we were all exactly as incomplete and stupid as these characters. We just didn’t have a horde of buzzing locusts each yapping off 3000-word essays about our every thought and step.

        6. Uly

          Speak for yourself!

        7. Taffy

          That’s the only person I speak for, generally. Some people seem to think I’m not even qualified for that much.

        8. Jeremiah

          They should be glad we aren’t the kind of Buzzers they can actually hear. I don’t think they ready for that kind of perception. (This is an Awful Hospital reference, if anyone get it).

  22. Chaucer59

    Dorothy: I’m not neurodivergent; I’m just drawn that way.

    1. Bogeywoman

      *upvote*

  23. StClair

    “Is there anyone in this comic social circle who’s actually neurotypical?”

    — definitely not me, ever, nope

    1. Bogeywoman

      With all the PTSD, depression and substance dependence? No. Except maybe Lucy.

      But also 10 years out of highschool noone in my school friend group is cishet or NT. We flocked together like neuroqueer seagulls after the same dopamine chip

      1. Tatterhood

        Yeah…Lucy’s social skills don’t scream “neurotypical” to me. Although I would be pretty convinced by now that neurotypical is a fiction if it wasn’t for that one friend I have. It’s so weird – she gets stuff done consistently without overthinking it, makes friends easily, isn’t uncomfortable in social situations, has never questioned her gender or sexuality ( and seems genuinely happy with both)…she’s also a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, vaguely-Christian who fits into clothes off the rack without even trying them on. If only she was male, I’d have found the one person everything in my world seems to have been designed for.

    2. Xujhan

      I certainly don’t think I’ve ever met one.

      1. Mark

        “Typical” is an average. No one is typical. Some are closer to the average than others.

    3. Da Boy

      Joe maybe? Probably Jacob too… Joe’s only issue was that he was a douchebag by choice.

    4. Yumi

      When I was trying to gain a better understanding of if I was neurodiverse, I thought about talking to someone who’s neurotypical to compare childhood experiences… and then I was like, “Do I… know anyone… who’s neurotypical?” (Like, yeah, I *know* people who are, but I don’t count any among my friends.)

    5. zee

      Not sure if an ND can write an NT. I’m still not entirely sure they exist but that’s probably just because my family and friend group is almost entirely undiagnosed autism and semi diagnosed adhd

  24. DashWallkick

    There’s nothing wrong with being organized but the problem is Dorothy doesn’t know how to exist *without* that. If everything is not structured then she doesn’t know who she is.

    1. Throwatron

      Dorothy knows exactly who she is! She’s the girl who does everything she’s supposed to, so that she never does anything wrong, and excels at everything! That’s why she has so much responsibility to literally everybody else! Because she was born with the innate responsibility to please everyone on Earth, and to always be doing the most optimal thing she possibly could, every minute of every day!

      I mean, that’s what the world deserves from everybody, right? Just doing your best. And anything less than doing literally everything, all the time, could never be someone’s best, could it?

  25. BBCC

    These two really are the best at getting each other despite being opposites. I love them so.

  26. Samniel

    Dorothy, organizing your friends’ mental health into folders for you to “fix” or “treat” is hella rude. Especially when you’re ignoring (or trying to stamp out) your own issues.

    1. Taffy

      Point to where she said either of those things. You can’t.

      1. Regret

        Right here in this strip she is organizing her friend’s mental health into folders.
        And she is definitely ignoring her own issues, as does everyone on and off as they work through them. Working through your issues is a back and forth process with lots of breaks, fallbacks, and retreating.

        1. rowanmikaio

          I think Taffy means that Dorothy never said anything about the folders’ purpose being to “fix” or “treat” her friends. Those are words that Samniel used but Dorothy didn’t.

        2. Taffy

          What you said.

        3. HueSatLight

          It’s a reasonable inference.

        4. Mark

          Another reasonable inference is that Dorothy wants a neat breakdown of the things she needs to learn more about in order to better understand and interact with her friends.

        5. Taffy

          That’s a much kinder one, too.

        6. Throwatron

          Whoa, I don’t know if this comment section is prepared to be kind to Dorothy, lmao.

        7. HueSatLight

          That’s Dorothy, no history of trying to fix her projects problems for them.

        8. Taffy

          Being kind to Dorothy is the only way to get into Heaven.

        9. HueSatLight

          “… for you”

        10. Jeremiah

          I mean it is reasonable if you are already predisposed to think the worst of most things Dorothy says or does.

        11. Chubseus

          Dorothy is likely just doing her own research because she read that that’s what allies should do. She then tries to help as much as she can because she doesn’t think she’s a good person unless she’s useful. It can come off as rude sometimes, but Dorothy would hardly be the first neurodivergent person to misunderstand or be misunderstood.

        12. HueSatLight

          I’ve heard it’s a typically masculine trait to hear someone has an issue, and decide they want you to fix it for them or for you to tell them how to fix it. But since I’ve heard that I haven’t noticed a gender correlation, but I have noticed that it annoys me.

        13. Tatterhood

          I’ve found most gender categories for behaviours don’t hold up to scrutiny. I’ve also heard autism defined as “extreme male brain”.

    2. Bash

      What if she’s trying to help?

    3. Needfuldoer

      It’s a coping mechanism so she has an excuse to leave her own mental idiosyncrasies unaddressed.

      1. Da Boy

        It’s like procrastination cleaning for mental health “Deal with my own issues? Oh look! My friends need to have their lives cleaned up and organized!

      2. Da Boy

        Also… oops, sorry, accidentally clicked Report instead of Reply on your reply. Sorry.

        1. Taffy

          Reported for apologising twice for a harmless mistake that’s never once caused a problem or been otherwise knowable in the two years since the button was added.

        2. Da Boy

          Oh no I’m doomed!

        3. Needfuldoer

          Don’t worry about it. Five different devices have to report a comment before anything happens.

      3. Mark

        Now I wonder if there’s a file on “me” in one (or more) of those folders?

    4. Agemegos

      At lewst she isn’t sharing through an RSS feed.

  27. Amós Batista

    Finally, Walky! Someone has to say it to her.

  28. Hazel

    Conspicuously, nobody had diced any PTSD into the acronym salad, yet.

    1. Needfuldoer

      Just don’t add too much NaCl.

      1. Mark

        Don’t skimp on the CH₃COOH though.

  29. Bryy

    THERE’S Dorothy’s abelism.

    1. NGPZ

      It’s internalized ableism, albeit necessary for her to confront for the well-being of herself and others, it is not easy.

      I used to be just as resistant to it, and when she inevitably forced to confront it she’s probably gonna make leave a mess in her wake.

      1. Bryy

        I’ve noticed that a subtle running theme this year has been everyone calling everyone else on their shit on a more frequent level.

        1. Throwatron

          Well, yeah. They’ve all known each other for about a year, now. That’s when that level of the friendship tree unlocks, naturally!

        2. Uly

          They’ve only known each other about half a year. Well, except Sarah and Raidah.

    2. David M Willis

      I think Abelism is when your brother beats you to death with a rock because you’re better at altar sacrifices.

      1. thejeff

        Nah, that’s a Caining.

  30. Rabisch

    Walky had a great idea wanting to go outside in the cold. Dorothy has been able to cool herself down and now they can talk to each other with a seriousness that they couldn’t have had in the room. It’s quite funny to see how Walky is much more aware of himself than Dorothy. If only she would stop being periodically attracted to him, they could have a good friendship.

  31. yak

    Deciding your friends have developmental disorders and spending far too much time cataloguing information about it isn’t an ASD trait.

    1. Throwatron

      I don’t know, you’re kind of just describing every autistic friend I’ve ever had with that sentence.

      1. Uly

        All the other autistic and ADHD friends and family members I have mostly only have other autistic and ADHD friends. Which brings me to: Dorothy, if every one of your friends is neurodiverse, you’re not the outlier, honey!

  32. Da Boy

    Let’s pathologize turning friends into construction projects…

    1. Throwatron

      this comment is an absolute gem

  33. Florence

    “What me? Being different? Don’t be ridiculous, I know exactly who I am, it’s only a coincidence that my conclusion is a normal person”

    1. Tatterhood

      How can I be a “them”? I am clearly speaking in first person. That makes me an “Us”.: Don’t you know how grammar works?

  34. Yeet

    these two continue to sound like my brain arguing with itself

  35. Spriteless Aunty

    Oh no dotty comorbid conditions are going to ruin your folder structure.

    1. Da Boy

      Ah when you’ve got a piece of fanart which two different categories and you can’t choose where to put it.

      1. Tatterhood

        Is this why tumblr is the neurodivergent capture area? We have tags for that. All the tags your little heart desires, and no folders at all.

    2. Taffy

      She’s gonna wind up making a private booru just so she can put tags on everyone, for the sake of organisation.

    3. Needfuldoer

      That’s what symlinks are for.

    4. Mark

      Time to move it all into a database.

  36. Zamperla

    I like how Walkys aware of the possibility, and also why he aint been diagnosed for nothing.

    1. Schpoonman

      Ha ha haaa, “You just need to focus,” haaaaaaaaaaamychildhoodwasaprison.

      I was diagnosed with ADHD but when the first prescription I tried didn’t work well with me we just quit. That was cool.

  37. Needfuldoer

    Goddammit, Dorothy! You’re Dorothy-ing again!

  38. Kitsune

    Some of us have both.

    1. NGPZ

      Yee, except you couldn’t get officially diagnosed with both until 2012 for some reason.

      1. Taffy

        RIP to the rest, but I had both by 2009 somehow.

      2. Needfuldoer

        I think just the terminology changed with the DSM-V in 2013.

      3. TheKelliestKelly

        Really? That’s fascinating. I should read into that

  39. Wright of Void

    My best friend is actually a brain surgeon with ADHD.

  40. Nedlum

    Would Walky know about Joyce’s potential diagnosis? As far as I’m aware, it never came up when he was around.

  41. PrimarilyInattentive

    Long-time reader, first-time commenter, ADHDer through and through here.

    And all I can say is:

    LET’S GOOOOOOOOOOO!

    I’ve been waiting years for someone to finally suggest to Walky he might have ADHD! I think it’s pretty clear the he does based on how he’s written – characters in stories need to be a bit more intense with how they act because we see so much less of them than people IRL.

    1. DalNiente

      Big same big same big same!

  42. poyo

    “promising young men” walky …… honey……………

    1. Taffy

      He’s definitely heard at least five people refer to him as “bright”.

    2. Da Boy

      He is a definition of The Gifted Kid hitting The Wall in College.

      1. Needfuldoer

        They’re both victims of the Gifted Kid College Burnout pipeline.

        1. Da Boy

          Yeah in opposite ways, kind of. He was failed by his inability to actually work, she was failed by her inability to set reasonable goals maybe? Human goals?

  43. Mturtle7

    It took me a minute before I remembered that nobody has ever brought up the actual term “ADHD” to Walky in the history of this comic. They’ve mentioned it when he wasn’t around, they’ve strongly implied it right to his face, but this is the first time somebody’s actually asked him the question Dorothy’s asking. Wild.

    1. DalNiente

      Yeah, I’m SO glad it was finally brought up to him directly. I’ve been waiting since the Math Panic arc, lol.

  44. Woof McGee

    Is it weird there’s not a folder for dissociative identity disorder in there?

  45. Antonio Tyler

    I’m pretty sure my wife and I had this exact conversation.

  46. thumb

    damn, the reflexes on Walky

  47. Reltzik

    Alternate reading: Dorothy doesn’t mind being pathologized, but pathologizing BEING ORGANIZED is blasphemy.

  48. TheKelliestKelly

    Re: alt text:

    Yeah, Walky, it could also be OCD!

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