Disclaimer: I have no quarrel with the mods using the term in the creation of this community. I understand why they chose it, as even if they share my disagreement with the term when applied to ADHD, there’s not really a better inclusive term. “Mental illness” is really the only other option, and naming a community that would probably invite darker discussions that the mods might not be prepared to handle.
Another disclaimer: I think the term is perfectly valid when applied to autism, as autism is not, to the best of my knowledge, a mental illness so much as a difference in processing. Being autistic is only “bad” in the sense that our society discourages autistic traits. (Apologies if this is wrong; I’m neither autistic nor especially knowledgeable about autism.)
The term “neurodivergent” implies that there’s nothing wrong with you if you have ADHD–you’re just special and different. But my ADHD is an illness that requires treatment. A lot of people will tell you that the only reason ADHDers struggle is because society is set up wrong, but I don’t think that’s true, at least for me. Being unable to remember anything, unable to self-start, and hypersensitive to rejection would be massive problems in any world. Sure, the world today is particularly brutal for ADHDers in a way we could probably mitigate if we reorganized society to be kinder, but that doesn’t mean ADHD isn’t ultimately a disorder that some people need to treat with medication and therapy.
It’s not that we don’t think ADHD is a disability; it’s that we’re more convinced by the social modal of disability than the “there is just something fundamentally wrong with your brain” modal.
For me, it causes me a LOT of problems, but I think most of those problems are looped around each other and exaggerated by society, and by the resulting secondary, problem-compounding problems that tend to pile up on top of adhd like depression, anxiety, cptsd, low self esteem, poor diet and sleep, and so on and on.
I see it exactly the same way I see autism. Not fundamentally bad, even though it absolutely causes issues. Autistic people, for example, run into heaps and heaps of trouble because of the difficulty they have communicating with more neurotypical people. They might miss subtle social cues and be ostracized, or be very direct to the point of being seen as rude, and get ostracized or fired from jobs and so on.
Meanwhile, off meds, I miss subtle social cues because I can’t always look at someone’s facial expressions and talk at the same time, and maybe there’s a song or an anxiety loop or a previous conversation topic stuck in my head. Or I can’t talk coherently because I think of a whole wordcloud of an answer all at once and can’t pick a linear route through it fast enough. It’s not so different, imo. The reasons are different but the resulting problem is the same, more or less.
And both ADHD and autistic folks experience sensory issues.
I suspect if there were meds that helped autistic folks the way meds can help many adhd folks, people would probably view it more the same way. Or if ADHD meds didn’t exist and we just had to exist without them.
Even as it is, autism is so much more stigmatized than unmedicated ADHD. If ADHD is an illness, and autism is not an illness but is a stigmatized but normal brain difference, why do autistic folks usually seem to have the harder time in the world? Why is society’s shitty response to adhd “ignore it, it doesn’t exist”, while its shitty response for autism is to widely adopt a child abusive “therapy” invented by the guy who invented gay conversion “therapy”?
I get tired of the people insisting we don’t have huge struggles or count for disability help, too. But tbh I also get sick of being told my brain is broken and that my adhd is an illness, because I don’t think mine is. I think it’s just different, albeit in an often very inconvenient way. But I see upsides to it too. I don’t think I would trade-in for a neurotypical brain, to be honest, despite all the problems. I like the creativity and the non-linearity of thought and the outside-the-box thinking and the hyperfocus adventures. I like my neurodivergent friends and the way our socialization works amongst each other. And I do have the meds, which help a lot with the problems.
For my, and my own adhd, it’s both a positive neurodivergence and a disability. Not an either-or.
All that said, I kinda don’t think “neurotypicals” per se actually exist, especially when accounting for the really dramatic plasticity of even adult brains, and the way experiences and thought patterns can and do continually change the structure of the human brain. And ADHD folks share symptoms with a lot of mental illnesses that aren’t considered neurodivergent normally.
Talking about neurodivergence is helpful because it’s a more positive and less medicalized lens for looking at things, in my opinion. I like it. But the neurodivergent/neurotypical binary idea can also become a problem.
Anyways. Different peoples’ experiences with adhd can differ a lot. If you see yours purely as medical disability, that’s a-okay with me, and you don’t have to describe yourself as neurodivergent, but I don’t see mine that way.
Perhaps on all sides of this we could benefit from being more careful not to describe other peoples’ adhd in authoritative tones based on our own. Like, I agree not to call your adhd neurodivergent, and you agree not to call mine an illness? (Tbh I think you did a good job in your post of talking about yourself rather than talking for others.)
/ramble I half-feel like deleting and might later but at this point I’ve committed too much so here you go I guess
Edit: also there’s so much overlap between autism and adhd I’ve heard some talk, sometimes, about whether they might be best classified as two forms of the same thing. shrug The science is still sciencing on this one.
You are, of course, allowed to feel that way. But I’d trade my brain for a normie brain in a heartbeat. I’d still be me, just capable of taking out the trash. I see no upsides to my ADHD that aren’t canceled out by the signifcant downsides.
Hopefully a community like this where people share their experiences can help you to discover the ways in which your brain is wonderful and beautiful. I have quite a few partners with ADHD and I’ve found the following traits of theirs rather admirable:
I’m not necessarily saying that ADHD doesn’t come with benefits. I’m just saying that, for me at least, my ADHD’s shittier aspects undermine the benefits it gives me.
For example, I’m quite creative. But I don’t create much. Why? Executive dysfunction. I’ve wanted to be a writer my entire life. But I just don’t have the discipline (or executive function, call it what you want) to make it work. I’ve had the same novel idea for a long time. Wanna know how many words I’ve written? Zero. I’ve got a bunch of scattered, sometimes contradictory notes about the characters and setting, but I can’t make myself sit down and compile it all, let alone plot out a coherent story. I’ve tried writing without planning or outlining beforehand, and it works insofar as it gets words onto the paper, but at the end of it I’m left with a disaster that needs copious editing and no energy or interest in doing it.
I wrote a couple novels when I was a teenager. They will never see the light of day because after writing them, I never got around to making them into something decent, and now I’m no longer interested in the projects.
Even on meds, I just lack whatever it is normies have that makes them select a project or skill to work on and then follow through with it until they’re satisfied. The one and only creative thing I’ve ever been able to stick with is crochet, and even then, I took a six-month break from it and only picked it back up on a whim. And I only stick with crochet because it’s easy and mostly thoughtless; I won’t be able to do consistently anything that requires sustained mental effort, especially sustained mental effort.
Admittedly, I probably could write more consistently if I had some kind of outside force making me, but where do I find that? I both need structure and avoid it at all costs because it feels so suffocating. I could maybe get an accountability buddy, though I hate having to be accountable, but I doubt that would be enough. I fear the hell out of failing out of school, but if my dad doesn’t sit down with me and help me study, I just won’t do it half the time. Even with the meds. Even knowing my future depends on it. Even as a 27-year-old adult. Even knowing my dad is paying good fucking money to send me to school. My brain simply hates doing things. Hell, I even procrastinate on things I love.
What good is a writer who doesn’t write? I know I’m worth more than what I produce, yes. But still. The world could have my works, but it probably never will, and that depresses the hell out of me.
And none of this is even touching on rejection-sensitive dysphoria. RSD makes normal life events like breakups and failure into soul-crushing catastrophes. I’ve tried repeatedly to kill myself in part because RSD ensures things that happened years ago still hurt just as sharply as they did in the moment. There are some things I will simply never get over, and I just have to learn to numb the pain enough to keep living. Call ADHD a gift all you like, but the truth is that a healthy person’s brain should not try to kill them over every bad thing that happens.
I realize this is like 2 months later, but I read your posts and wanted to let you know about an online event/community called NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). It’s an annual event/challenge (traditionally in November) to write 50k (or your own goal) words in 1 month, with an explicit quantity > quality approach. I’m an aspiring writer in the same boat as you and participating in NaNoWriMo is the only thing that ever worked to get me putting words on paper, even during college. It provides some structure (daily or weekly goals) without being suffocating, and it adds a bit of a gamification/friendly self-competition element to the experience of writing, but the community itself is really laid-back, casual, and inclusive. There are also sometimes in-person writing get-togethers that can be very helpful to get that extra dopamine boost for writing. If you’ve already tried out this or something similar and it wasn’t for you, no biggie, I just wanted to highlight a potential writing aid that you/others reading might not have heard about.
That sounds really tough, and I’m sorry you have to struggle with a system not designed with people like you in mind 💜
See, like, I’m not sure that’s the problem. I mean, sure, that’s definitely part of the problem for work and school shit. But what about shit I do on my own time? Even under fully automated luxury gay space communism, surely you’d have to do a lot of stuff on your own. And I just… can’t do certain things I’d like to do. I dream of a socialist utopia and a world where it’s okay to be different, but even in such a world, who would make me write? Someone clearly has to if it’s ever going to get done. Owning the means of production would not make me more productive on my own time.
Needing help with stuff other people don’t doesn’t make you lesser, but it is something of a problem that has to be dealt with. I don’t like it. I’d rather be able to do everything someone without ADHD can do. I’m not sure there’s anything worthwhile I can do that a normal person couldn’t.
And what of the RSD? Breakups and ends of friendship and failures are going to happen in any world. Yes, we could live in a less lonely world, or a world that doesn’t place so much value on productivity/succeeding at everything the first time, but frankly, I think if we all lived in close-knit communities the way a lot of my fellow leftists hope we will someday, that might make relationships ending even more painful because then you’d have to keep seeing the person at the monthly community meeting or whatever. Again, I don’t know that this is a social problem so much as a “my brain tries to murder me every time something bad happens” problem.
I hope this doesn’t come across as me being upset with you. I’m not. I’m just trying to say that hey, for some of us at least, this whole ADHD thing is a real shit deal and having it treated as “just a difference” isn’t always helpful.
The more I learn about my own ADHD, and my wife’s ASD, the more convinced I am of this. There’s no such thing as “neurotypical”, just people that are better able to exist under society’s rules than others. Every one of us is the result of the experiences that have led us to where we are this moment in time, of all the neurones that have fired up and formed pathways to give us the skills and abilities and disabilities that make us who we are.