ADHD memes

If I've understood what I've read over the years correctly, a large percentage of girls with it get diagnosed bipolar, completely missing the underlying ADHD cause of the depression/anxiety. This can turn into an absolute horrid experience as they get prescribed strong drugs that can really mess you up if you don't need them, and they most likely don't.

I think it is at least in part due to it manifesting differently. This is slightly different because it pertains to autism, but a while back I read about how one of the theories of why autism seems to be lower prevalence is girls is because the social norms of girls/boys are different. For example, young boys tend to socialise with team sports, which can be highly reliant on non-verbal communication. In contrast, because neurotypical girls are (implicitly and explicitly) taught to take on caring roles, an autistic girl is more likely to be "taken under the wing" of a neurotypical girl, providing more opportunities to develop social skills via social mimicry.

I'm just one autistic woman, but this certainly scanned with my lived experience. As a result of this, I wasn't diagnosed until my teens, after a full on mental breakdown led to a psych eval.

I agree with you that institutional bias plays a huge role: I had a partner who had ADHD and was diagnosed quite young. When we discussed our experiences of the early years of school, I was struck by how similar our experiences were in terms of our behaviour, but how he was read as being a naughty boy (which is what led to his much earlier diagnosis) whereas my distractibility and fidgeting was seen as either me being unstimulated in class, or anxious. I think I'd have probably been diagnosed way sooner if I were a boy acting as I did.

But what's really interesting to speculate on is the way that my behaviour and understanding of my self changed over the years, as a result of that institutional bias. I think that there's a self reinforcing cycle at play, where an institutional bias leads to women and girls with ADHD (and/or autism) developing a particular set of masking skills that makes them further illegible to the systems that dispense diagnoses (which then reinforces said institutional bias).

That being said, I've noticed a lot of progress in recent years on this front, especially in the community. My friend is a high school teacher who almost certainly has ADHD but is on the very long waitlist for an actual diagnosis. Despite not having a diagnosis, understanding herself better has helped her to cope better in her life, and through community and solidarity, feels that she is better equipped to understand and support neurodivergent students in her classroom. People like my friend are one of the ways that the reinforcing cycle of institutional bias, even if progress on that front is slow.

Literally me

Tried a bunch of anxiety meds that didn't work, tried some antidepressants that didn't work, got a different doctor and they were like "I think you might have ADHD".

8 months later got an appointment and talked to the doc for an hour and got a new prescription for ADHD meds, and my life has massively improved since.

NGL I think getting that diagnosis may have been one of the best things to have happened in my life. I just wish I didn't have to wait I til I was 29 to get it.

Raises hand

IMO everyone is forced to, but some are able to do it while others can’t, no matter how hard they try. I’m definitely in the second category.

Same here my son got diagnosed with adhd and all the symptoms matched me too… hmm… weird huh.

I completely agree. I don't have autism, it's not a disease, it's part of who I am like my ethnicity. I am so fucking tired of having to conform to what neurotypicals think I should be.

The whole "person with autism is better because it puts the person first" sounds exactly like the kind of BS that autism can lower patience for, anyways.

Since ADHD is also a neurodevelopmental condition, it’s less ‘transfer’ and more just the same notion for a different condition.

Otherwise, yeah, this. I’m ADHD because it is a part of me. I can take medicines to help it, but it is the way I am.

Interesting, thanks for sharing a different view on this. I can understand that. For ADHD it’s the same of course, you can’t separate your personality from it. A question like “Would you like to have not had ADHD/autism?” makes no sense, because then we would have been entirely different people.

I’ve never heard someone say “I am autism” or “[person] is autism” though, like people seem to do with ADHD. In the case of autism, what would you use instead of people-first language?

I’ve personally only seen that used by dumbasses who just liked to keep their stuff organized and who had no idea what a devastating condition real OCD can be.

No but you do say "I'm diabetic" which uses diabetes as sort of identity within the sentence structure.

Similarly "I'm a cancer survivor" and "I'm a cancer patient" are ways someone with cancer could structure a sentence to give weight to the way cancer and the experiences of cancer fundamentally change this person's personality and identity.

While "I am ADHD" isn't perfect, it's a very new use of language to try and create an identity form, and it will continue to evolve and sound more natural.

Personally I still find myself saying "I'm autistic and I have ADHD" in most situations, but if I know I won't have to explain the term too much, I do prefer "I'm AuDHD", because it's an identity first phrase, and it feels as natural as "I'm autistic" or "I'm diabetic".

But the difference grammatically between "I'm autistic" and "I'm ADHD" is minimal, yet I agree one sounds fine and the other just sounds stupid. And other than exposure, I can't place my finger on why.