I keep seeing things like "Imagine if doctors dismissed other things like they dismiss ADHD" and "neurodivergence is the only diagnosis that comes without support"....and I'm sorry but in the nicest possible way...this is just not true at all?
SO MANY other conditions are dismissed or go untreated by doctors. I know a woman who died from stomach cancer last year bc doctors thought it was just anxiety and refused to do any tests. It took me 7 years of bugging doctors to get my endometriosis diagnosis and treatment.
Not to mention how much worse things are for Black and Indigenous people, who are not only dismissed at greater rates than white people, but have also literally been harmfully exploited by doctors in the name of medical science. nytimes.com/2020/01/13/ups…
Multiple studies show that patients of colour are less likely to receive diagnosis, treatment or pain medication than white people...and we're talking for seemingly cut and dry conditions like appendicitis, broken bones, and cancers.
It's not as simple as improving doctors' understandings of neurodivergence. Medical knowledge is built on a foundation of ableism, sexism, and racism. We have to address all of it to have any meaningful change- otherwise those treatments and supports will be inequitable anyway.
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Me: I can't be autistic, I don't have any social difficulties
Also me: Avoids any social situation where the rules are unclear, writes down scripts for phone calls, asks a billion questions in conversations to avoid losing control, can only unmask with other ND people
Me: I can't be autistic, I don't have any sensory issues
Also me: wants to throw up at the thought of dry paint or clay on my hands, can't walk on dusty concrete, feels sick from wearing tight clothing
Me: I can't be autistic, I don't care about things changing
Also me: Eats the same thing for breakfast and snacks every day, has to deep breathe every time work tasks change, hates when people try to contact me without warning or propose hangs when I already have plans
I hate that practically every resource about ADHD and relationships is framed around "how to put up with your ADHD partner and all the ways they will fail you".
My partner and I BOTH have ADHD, and it is the most fulfilling, stable, and joyous relationship I've ever been in.
Honestly, if you're dating an ADHDer, and you find ADHD traits like losing things, being late, interrupting etc to be dealbreakers...don't date them. You don't have to put up with those things, but you also can't force your partner to magically be someone else.
My partner and I interrupt each other all the time- I love how energetic we are. I often lose things- he helps me find them. He finds it hard to focus on big convos- so we chat in bed where there are less distractions. These traits are not objective relationship ruiners.
I’d rather live in a world where some people mistakenly think they have ADHD before doing more research, than a world where ADHD has no visibility. A psychiatrist confirmed my self-diagnosis, but I never would have known to look into ADHD without memes and social media.
ADHD's diagnostic criteria is based on what it looks like to others- how much we seem like we're not paying attention, how much we seem like we're not listening, how much we talk "excessively" (who determines what excessive is, by the way?).
Conversely, memes and threads and stories capture how ADHD *feels*. I remember going onto the ADHD women’s subreddit and seeing posts about losing keys and letting friends down and having 15 mugs
on your desk at once. I remember seeing myself.
Do you ever think about the impact of consistently telling kids their ADHD related struggles mean they're lazy, careless etc? No wonder some of us catastrophize- many of us were taught that small mistakes DO make us inherently bad.
Growing up, adults consistently made assumptions about what my behaviour meant. I lost things because I was careless, forgot homework because I was lazy, was late because I was selfish etc. As a child I knew this wasn't true and that I was trying really hard to be "good".
But, to the adults around me, behaviour equaled intent. And they expected me to show remorse for that intent, to apologise, and to adjust my behavior accordingly. No matter how hard I tried, I kept making mistakes, which they took as me not bothering to change.
Don't mind me, just sitting here thinking about how angry flatmates and family used to get at me for leaving kitchen cabinet doors open, when it turns out it's related to my ADHD. They always made me feel super inconsiderate even though I tried SO hard to remember.
I'm not saying that ADHD is a get out of jail free card for annoying your flatmates, but it's also not cool to moralise an ADHDer's behavior based on assumptions e.g. interpreting someone leaving kitchen cabinet doors open as them not respecting or caring about the shared space.
I'd love for people with ADHDers in their lives to think critically about what's important and why. If ur consistently hitting your head on cabinet doors or some equivalent, I get the frustration. But if it's bc of what it represents, are u sure it means what you think it means?
Too many doctors resist diagnosing people with chronic illness bc they think it's not worth it, or that people get "worse" and "depressed" after the diagnosis. Hmmm, maybe people appear visibly worse bc diagnosis validates them and they stop pretending everything is fine???
It's absolutely bizarre to me that so many doctors seem to think the diagnosis is what causes the discomfort, rather than the symptoms. It really feels like they're revealing the extent to which they believe what their patients are telling them.
Even if something can't be "treated", a diagnosis means recognition. You have terms to google, and a community with strategies to lean on. You can tell your workplace. Your family believe you. You believe YOURSELF that what you're going through is real and deserves care.