Thread by @AdhdAngsty

I know many disagree with me, but I earnestly don't understand the benefit of only framing ADHD as an exclusively bad thing. To me that just ends up with eugenic thinking about getting rid of ADHD, which would mean getting rid of me as a person. It's intertwined with who I am.

This isn't me trying to be edgy, this is me genuinely reflecting and trying to understand why so many people think challenging the pathologising of ADHD is oppositional to accepting it as a disability. To me they can both exist in unison.

I think "superpower" narratives are harmful. It makes it seem like every ADHDer could be "successful" if they worked hard enough, which is untrue. People who push this always seem to be rich, white, and male, so they have access to implicit accomodations that many of us do not.

I just don't think treating ADHD exclusively as a curse is better. We're taught only our bad parts are ADHD, but I believe our whole beings are shaped by it. We aren't neurotypicals that have ADHD damaging us- we are our own category, with our own good and bad.

I also don't see how advocating for an understanding of ADHD that isn't totally based on pathology somehow threatens the support and treatment we have access to. To me, thinking about ADHD in a more expansive way counteracts the narrow medical model that many are excluded from.

I don't trust the medical system to accurately assess, define, and support us. Even though it's helped me, I also don't think medication is a silver bullet, and in my experience doctors do very little to provide you with any other kinds of support.

Pushing for a world that accepts and accomodates ADHD rather than just "treating" it, isn't me discounting the support we do need. I just think that framing it exclusively as a disease means support is conditional on visible negative symptoms, which seems wrong to me.

I'm never ever trying to dismiss the difficulties of being an ADHDer. Unmanaged ADHD nearly ruined my life, and left me with a lot of trauma. There is no denying that as it stands, ADHDers often find life really hard.

It's just that ADHD itself isn't my enemy. My enemy is the ableist, white supremacist, classist systems that make being an ADHDer so much harder than I believe it needs to be. I don't want a world without ADHD, I want a world that accepts and accomodates it.