Like autistic people get to be autistic. That’s a word, and it has meaning. Someone can be autistic because it’s a type of person (spectrumy type). In my opinion, ADHD sucks as an identifying term. It’s 3 letters, one repeated. It means nothing as it is spelled and can’t be owned as an identity because they’re letters, not a word. “I’m adhudd.” The initials include “disorder” in it. That sucks. Autistic people don’t go around saying, “Hi, I’m austically disordered,” cause that’s not accepting. Is there a term that is smooth and not judgmental for ADHD? Maybe we can take Aspergers since it got dropped, but add the ‘d’ to get “Adspergers”. Nah, that’s stupid af. What about multibrained? I feel multibrained because I act like I’ve got multiple brains running in my head doing their own thing all at the same time, and I bounce around them based on who knows what.
What? Oh, yes…I’ll have the spaghetti bolog-knees. Do you guys have red pepper…crushed red pepper? Yeah, thanks. Cool. I like your name tag. Is that really your name? Samsquatch?..oh! It’s Samuel, but you changed it to Samsquatch! I love Trailer Park Boys. Fuck off, Leahy! Yeah. Sorry. I got excited.
Okay. So…um, is there a descriptive word for ADHD that isn’t ADHD?
I just don’t tell people. It never leads to anything good.
Agreed. It’s like they start looking for confirmation, so they start expecting and noticing every little mistake. Or they don’t see it, and give you unsolicited speeches about how they struggle to focus to and you just need discipline… In fact, you should stop taking your meds
I just tell people without telling people. “I can’t sit still for too long, I have to walk”, “the music/videos and stim toys help me focus”, “my thought process is weird, I know that sounds unrelated but it makes sense to me”, “I know you’re writing up a list, I need to take notes to process what you’re saying
and if I don’t doodle I can’t pay attention to this boring ass meeting”If you take on the label, they don’t see you as managing your symptoms, they look for the cracks. If you explain your compensation strategies and areas of difficulty, they usually are pretty supportive and will even respect the level of thought you put into it
Conversely I’ve met people who were diagnosed as adults and who then blame everything they do on their ADHD - “you know, now everything makes sense about me!”.
Ditto with Autism, to be fair - you don’t get to excuse being an arsehole just because you’re not neurotypical, Dave.