Everyone Is Autistic These Days
Personal Musings on Invalidation From a Self-Diagnosed AuDHD-er
I get it.
When there’s a sudden influx of new information around a condition, identity, or movement, and just as suddenly, it seems like everyone is claiming it as their own, I think that skepticism is natural. The eye rolls, the “Oh great, another one,” the lingering question of whether people just want to feel special—I get it.
I think we’ve all been guilty of this reaction at some point. Our brains are wired to make quick judgments, to create shortcuts that simplify a complex reality.
But efficiency doesn’t always leave room for empathy. Or critical thinking.
My Story: Why Am I Like This?
I share some of my story because I am someone who could, and has been, scoffed at when I share this part of my identity. A disclosure of autism, ADHD, or AuDHD doesn’t account for the things you don’t see.
Here’s what you don’t see when you look at me.
For over ten years, I searched desperately for answers about why my great life always felt so hard. I appeared “normal”—whatever that means. I had friends, long term relationships, got good grades, performed well at jobs—combined with my straight/white/cis/non-disabled identity, I blended in with society and got by pretty dang easily.
Yet, I felt like I was living a double life: Maintaining my life came at the expense of every shred of life force and self-esteem that I had. Each event in a day, from socializing to boarding the bus to making dinner, incinerated my mental, physical, and emotional energy—I ended each day drained and grappling with feeling like a failure of a human. I didn’t feel like I belonged to the life I had, nor anywhere. I didn’t know why.
I spent years cycling through potential explanations for why I struggled with things that seemed so natural for others—depression, borderline personality disorder, anxiety, OCD—some were closer fits than others, but none fully explained my difficulties in daily life.
No matter how clear and eloquent my thoughts were in my head, when it came to talking, it’s like someone unplugged my mouth from my brain. It often came out with a different tone and message than I intended, and I always felt misunderstood—especially because others had no way of knowing that I wasn’t expressing what I meant to.
Socializing felt like an inside joke that everyone else was in on, but I managed to play along. Even the smallest encounters, like greeting a coworker or talking to a cashier, would induce anxiety and hyper-awareness of my words and facial expressions. I would rehearse encounters I could predict, even if they were with friends; I would leave each one replaying what I said over and over again, analyzing how it could have been perceived. Any time spent around others required double the time to “recover” in solitude.
I was so impulsive that maintaining any routine, structure, or responsibilities took all that I had. I struggled to find others that shared my interests. Certain noises made me sob. I never understood how people could sit in a classroom and actually listen to the teacher. Or sit through a movie, or read a book, or work on a hobby—I had hobbies, but as much as I yearned to, I physically couldn’t bring myself to pursue them.
I’ve just shared a small handful of the many things that made life feel hard and unfulfilling, that I thought were just randomly-scattered flaws within my personality. Their compounding effects took a chronic toll on my self-esteem. I often felt like an imposter, like nobody actually knew me. And most people didn’t:
So much of my life was rooted in the things nobody could see.
Then, in 2022, I read an article about a woman getting diagnosed with ADHD as an adult. Her story felt like my own, and I burst into tears. I have ADHD!
Do I EVER have ADHD.
This revelation was sweet relief in so many ways: A newfound sense of belonging (I’m not alone!), having an explanation for something I chalked up to my own laziness and incompetence, having tools to explore. Still, something was missing. I couldn’t shake the sense that I had a hopeless character defect, even after ADHD explained many things I couldn’t explain before.
When I began to suspect autism, I hesitated. Not because it didn’t fit, but because I had already internalized the very narrative I now challenge: Isn’t everyone autistic these days?
The Fear of Claiming Neurodivergence
Realizing I’m AuDHD has been one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. It hasn’t erased the day-to-day hardships; I wrote my story above in past tense, but it is still very much my reality. ADHD still kicks my ass, and my autistic struggles are ongoing.
But now, I face this reality with much more self-compassion and awareness than ever before. I am learning to embrace who I am and honour my unique brain instead of being mean to it. I am learning how to grow my authenticity instead of fighting against myself. I spent too long trying to hide the parts of me that I feared would never be accepted.
I now know there is a massive community of people who share pieces of my experience; humans need and thrive on belonging. It makes sense why simply belonging to this community has done wonders for my well being.
With the recognized validity and accessibility of self-diagnosis (more on this in a different post), so many more are finally experiencing belonging too.
And, yet, when they proclaim it, they’re often met with: Everyone thinks they’re autistic now. People are calling normal traits neurodivergence. This invalidates people who actually struggle. Just another bandwagon. You’re making it your whole personality.
I mean, it kind of is my whole personality?
I’m not saying that I’m defined by my AuDHD—I am much more than this. But I hope my story serves as one example of why discovering one’s neurodivergence can be such a big deal: the colossal impact of autism and ADHD on someone’s life, particularly for those whose “signs and symptoms” flew stealthily under the radar.
Navigating life without a sense of belonging means that you’re missing an integral piece of being a human; it’s a survival need, programmed into our DNA. You feel the void on a cellular level. When that void gets filled, you're left to deconstruct your entire life so far and integrate this new information into your story. You’re left to reorient your life around meeting your needs after they’ve been neglected for so long. You’re left to relearn who you even are. This process can take up a lot of space.
If I just wanted to attach myself to a label, why didn’t I stop at depression? My neurodivergent experiences existed long before AuDHD was on my radar. If this is a bandwagon, I must have jumped on in utero…
Invalidation Harms Everyone
“Commitment to Cross-Disabled Solidarity: We honour the insights and participation of all of our community members, knowing that isolation harms collective liberation.”
How do you determine if someone actually struggles?
And why does the presence of a perceived “worse” struggle negate the other? It’s a logical fallacy. “Worse” is a subjective term, and things can surely always be worse: By this logic, nothing is worthy enough for validation as an actual struggle.
This doesn’t mean that there aren’t significantly more barriers for many neurodivergent people when navigating the world—this is true and incredibly important to acknowledge and advocate around. But invalidating those who don’t have the same challenges—or, who don’t seem to—hurts the neurodiverse community as a whole.
Disability—both visible and invisible—is underserved and neglected by the government and society. Our capitalistic landscape was designed without accounting for a vast array of brain differences and physical characteristics. Autism in particular is finally inching towards mainstream awareness, but society is still riddled with stigma; its fabric is inherently not inclusive, no matter where someone may sit on the spectrum.
How can we effectively challenge systemic inequities if we don’t challenge limited narratives about what autism, or disability in general, looks like? What does gatekeeping who is allowed to be neurodivergent do, besides perpetuate stigma and push a big chunk of this population further into the margins? Doesn’t the government already do a pretty good job of that?
I think embracing curiosity over skepticism is a good place to start.
Let People Figure Themselves Out
Let’s acknowledge that sometimes, people might misidentify themselves as neurodivergent when they’re not. And here’s my hot take:
That’s okay.
There was a time when I thought I had clinical depression, and I certainly didn’t. I needed to entertain that possibility before I found my actual truth. Isn’t that just self-discovery? We explore, we try on different explanations, we learn, we move on. In my honest opinion, I think that if we run the risk of people misidentifying as something, it means that society is moving closer to acceptance of it, even if just in smaller circles. And still: We just. Don’t. Know.
It’s not completely benign.
It’s annoying to hear people say “I’m so OCD, I just love to clean” and “She’s so bipolar” when someone’s mood changes. But these patterns of ignorance give all the more reason to keep listening to people affected by these things, to gain a richer and more nuanced understanding of what it’s like to have OCD, bipolar disorder, autism, ADHD. We can’t obliterate ignorance, but we can sure put up a good fight.
…
And what’s so bad about wanting to feel special, anyways?
Contributed by Riley, BSW practicum student.
More to Come…
In the coming weeks, we will be diving into the unique and complex experiences of the AuDHD community. Upcoming posts will explore:
Contradictory traits
Self-diagnosis vs. formal diagnosis
Masking
For AuDHD education, support, and resources, check out @riley.unscriptedco on Instagram
Resources
References
Sins Invalid. (2021, March 24). 10 principles of disability justice [Video]. YouTube. ASL 10 Principles of Disability Justice - YouTube
Why are you like this [digital image]. (2019). Retrieved from https://knowyourmeme.com/search?context=images&sort=&q=why+are+you+like+this
Yellow flowers cover photo by Riley (2021).