Autistics vs ADHDers

You'd think these two communities would be fairly friendly, being the two main neurodivergencies, and so commonly co-morbid, but especially recently, the two communities seem to be at war.

Of course, as with every bit of discourse that exists these days, it all started on tiktok. A common trend on tiktok was; and still is, a little bit; videos like "things you didn't know where traits of autism" or "lesser known traits of autism". These videos, while many argue it "causes more self diagnosis" (I shan't go into that now.) , were very helpful for people like me, who were/are still learning a lot about autism and themselves. But a common thing you'd see, was people in the comments saying. "its also an ADHD thing" "i have ADHD and i also do this" or, worst of all "Imma pretend i didn't see this..."

All three of those, 99% of the time, are ADHDers scared of the fact that autism might be a possibility for them. This comes from the notion that autism is this big scary disorder, and especially recently, i'm getting sick of this attitude. Especially when you compare this to how ADHD is treated.

I saw a tiktok recently saying that ADHD is to neurodivergency, what anxiety is to mental health. I think that sums up pretty well the attitudes many have towards ADHD. Its seen as this common, harmless disorder that just makes you a little quirky or loud. But for those who genuinely deal with it they know its so much more than that. A similar thing has happened to anxiety, where it became so common where people treated it like a personality trait, and in turn undermined the struggles people with diagnosed anxiety disorders deal with on a daily basis.

ADHD is treated like the "acceptable" neurodivergency. The one that isn't taboo in any way, that people mention casually when they're just a little distracted. It's seen as a cute quirk. And this just undermines all the struggles that those with ADHD deal with regularly.

And at the same time, it further pushes Autism aside, keeping it in this space of being a scary serious disorder. I've seen many argue that autism is turning into a cute quirk, but I couldn't disagree more. I think its more a case of, those of us with autism have learned to appreciate it for its good sides and want to share that side of it. Only when we do we get the autism moms or siblings saying "um actually my child/sibling has severe autism and it greatly affects our lives and its a living hell so don't turn it into a cute quirk."

It sickens me, because that's just a reminder of how so many allistics see us as a burden and think our lives are hell, when its not that bad. Not for a lot of us anyway. Of course everyone's experience of autism is different, but I don't want to be reminded of the bad parts every day. I want to celebrate the good things, like special interests and stimming.

People really do still see autism as this big scary disorder, and they're scared to admit they might have it. I'll be honest I don't remember if this was my attitude towards it when I first started my research, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was in there somewhere.

Its frustrating to see these ADHDers inserting themselves in autistic spaces, claiming our traits as their own simply so they don't have to confront the possibility that they might also be autistic.

It's always bothered me when I see ADHDers using the term "masking". That was a term started in the autistic community, but ADHDers started to claim it as their own. ADHD masking is nothing like autistic masking. Autistic masking is actively being someone you're not, forcing body language or inflections that don't feel natural, forcing stims down so you can't regulate yourself and you have to sit in an overwhelmed state. ADHD masking is just trying to not fidget and stim, maybe forcing eye contact, not because its painful or unnatural, but because its understimulating. I would argue this form of masking isn't as exhausting as autistic masking, but either way, its different. It's frustrating that the ADHD community just took this term and claimed it as their own, seemingly ignoring the community who used it first.

I ended up in some hot waters on twitter recently, and I don't want to get into the details, cause its confusing, and besides I talked about it a little in a previous blog post. But this post was a very short post, one of the words being "autism". I used this word in what I perceive to be, anyway, a complimentary way. Within a few hours I was getting heated responses telling me I was wrong for tweeting this. It didn't take long before I was getting people telling me to delete my account etc etc. I just ignored it in the end.

I came up with the hypothesis that if I had used "ADHD" instead of "autism", I wouldn't have been attacked at all, or at least not as much. One of my mutuals decided to test this hypothesis and tweeted the exact same thing i did, only with ADHD instead of autism, and they didn't get much hate at all, for a long time, which, for the most part, proved my hypothesis right.

It sickens me a little, to know that when I tweet this phrase with autism, people think its insulting or a bad thing, but if its ADHD, people laugh along and think its fine.

Autism is still treated like a super serious scary thing. Why can't autism just be seen as what it is? Why can't it just be treated like a different way of thinking, or existing? Why do people have to look at me and think I must live a horrible life, or tell me I'm a burden to my family or friends (which I can assure you I'm not, considering 99% of my friends are also autistic, and same with my family). Why is autism treated like an insult? like the butt of the joke?

I'm reminded every day that society doesn't like the fact I exist, that they will spend thousands and waste time trying to research so autistics can be "cured" or so they can detect it early on in pregnancy so mothers can decide to abort their autistic children simply because they don't want the burden of an autistic child. It's not fair.

And then ADHDers still decide its ok for them to "reclaim" the r slur, that they are definitely as oppressed as us. ADHD is a norm in society today. People with ADHD are treated like people. Autistic people are not always treated like people. If that's not enough to show the difference, I don't know what is.

I wish Autism wasn't treated like a big scary word or an insult. It's me. Its thousands of other people. We don't want to be treated like insults.

I hope maybe people with ADHD can start to understand the difference and be mindful. We're in this neurodivergency community together, but you do not get to be a part of the autistic community if you still treat it like its scary or claim traits that aren't yours as your own.