6:43pm July 18, 2014

➸ Why so many autism bloggers and so few ADHD bloggers?

neurodiversitysci:

andreashettle:

michaelblume:

youneedacat:

neurodiversitysci:

prettymeanderings:

neurodiversitysci:

I know of literally countless blogs by autistic people/people with autism and almost none by ADHD people/people with ADHD*. I thought at first it might be because those of us with ADHD are bad at sticking with projects for a long period of time (including blogging), but then I realized many of the…

I don’t know, and I wish there were more. I think the unfortunate difference is that ADHD is more seen as a fake illness or a learning disability people grow out of by most people in society, and that probably creates a whole world of shame for people like us.

I talked to a friend about having this, and that’s on a level with coming out, so it’s not a small thing to talk about it for me, and the response I got back was “I don’t agree with the way they medicate kids for that illness, there’s not enough evidence and it can affect their development…yadda yadda yadda”… Give me fucking strength. First of all, that is an opinion, not your support. I’m an adult, that doesn’t even apply to the conversation. Secondly, how can people have such strong opinions on something they only know about from vague TV “exposés”!?

Tell a person you have depression, anxiety….you’re “so strong”. Tell a person you have ADHD and they give you an offended opinion. No lay man seems to know jack shit about ADHD. The tags on here for ADHD are fucking 70% inaccurate cartoons and opinions about kids being drugged to death. You get that on all the mental illness tags, but at nowhere near the volume that you get on #ADHD. My guess is that this sort of shit silences people that in reality are dealing with a lifelong, disabling physical and biological condition of the brain. We are the unpopular illness that is almost never given public airtime containing factual and realistic information.

So it’s hard to talk about.

Ouch. Yeah, I think you’re right.

Also I wanted to add that people with undiagnosed ADD or similar neurological issues can only add to the problem sometimes.

When I was younger, and was in the process of being assessed for stuff but not diagnosed with anything yet, I had a friend who told me he and his family all had ADD. He explained what it was like, and I was like “But I’m like that and I’m fine, so ADD doesn’t exist.” Which is what I told everyone and their dog if they even so much as mentioned ADD. I feel horrible now because I know now that I either have ADD (which is what my friend insisted at the time must be true, and I grumbled about overdiagnosis) or have ADD traits because of autism.

Which has always made me wonder how many of those die-hard “ADD is overdiagnosed/doesn’t exist” people actually have ADD or a cousin condition, and believe themselves to be normal, therefore ADD is normal, therefore ADD can’t be a condition. Not that it excuses any of it, but it would explain a lot.

a) I would love to have more ADHD bloggers to follow, some days the sense of this being my own personal pathology is way too strong

b) I really need to move some of those ADHD posts off my to-write list

Although I have ADD, I don’t tend to write a lot about it. I just seem to have more things to say on topics like general disability representation in fiction and other popular media, representation of all marginalized populations in fiction/popular media, things I’ve experienced due to being deaf, general disability rights issues, etc. Maybe because my being deaf is usually more visible/obvious to people than my having ADD so more things come up in my life related to my deafness and accessibility barriers I experience related to that and so forth. But I know I’d welcome knowing about more bloggers with ADD. Maybe I should try writing some content on that topic as well, though I don’t have immediate ideas coming to mind (maybe because I’m dealing with a distracting migraine right now)

Don’t feel obligated or anything, but if you ever have something to say about ADHD, I and all these other people would be interested in reading it.

Hope your migraine is better.

I feel like this is a good time to remind everyone that we have the “Actually ADHD” tag so we can find each other without the garbage that gets posted to the “ADHD” tag.

Also, we’re trying to add blogs and web sites to the list of Online Resources over at Actually ADHD, so if you would like to be listed or you have a favourite site, please send in the URL so I can add it.

Are people like me (undiagnosed, unlikely to ever be diagnosed, and possibly not ADD at all but just ADD traits from autism) welcome on the #ActuallyADHD tag?

Notes: