Can’t speak for them but I can relate some ADHD perspective.
ADHD people often are told “what? Pfft! You don’t have that” in various ways despite our being diagnosed by a mental health professional and despite our disorder causing many significant problems for us in all/most areas of our lives from childhood onward.
The disorder makes me, personally, feel like I am not fully human, and that something is wrong with me. And I doubt I am alone in that.
You see, we are much more often in hot water with someone either due to behavior, procrastination, focusing on the wrong thing, forgetting appointments and deadlines, and so on. We are criticized and chastised much more often than neurootypical people from childhood onward.
I mention all this to provide context, only, not for tiny 🎻🎻🎻 :)
One of the ways the “you don’t have ADHD” message manifests is when we try to explain some symptoms and the person dismissively claims without hesitation, “everyone does that,” rather than trying to understand our perspective better, understand to what degree it affects us and how often it does so.
This can feel like minimizing our situation or outright denying our disorder depending on context (the old “ADHD iS oVeRDiaGnOSed”).
Tying into the context above, for me, dismissing my diagnosis and symptoms also sounds a lot like saying to me, “you know how you finally don’t hate yourself for moral and character failings because you understand why you are the way you are? Well sorry, that’s all bullshit, you don’t have ADHD you just fucking suck as a human being, so you may now go back to self flagellation and loathing.”
And so this sort of thing can be kind of “triggering” I suppose.
And one of our symptoms is poor emotional regulation so if we get disproportionately upset hearing “eh, that’s normal”… now you know why :)
Can’t speak for them but I can relate some ADHD perspective.
ADHD people often are told “what? Pfft! You don’t have that” in various ways despite our being diagnosed by a mental health professional and despite our disorder causing many significant problems for us in all/most areas of our lives from childhood onward.
The disorder makes me, personally, feel like I am not fully human, and that something is wrong with me. And I doubt I am alone in that.
You see, we are much more often in hot water with someone either due to behavior, procrastination, focusing on the wrong thing, forgetting appointments and deadlines, and so on. We are criticized and chastised much more often than neurootypical people from childhood onward.
I mention all this to provide context, only, not for tiny 🎻🎻🎻 :)
One of the ways the “you don’t have ADHD” message manifests is when we try to explain some symptoms and the person dismissively claims without hesitation, “everyone does that,” rather than trying to understand our perspective better, understand to what degree it affects us and how often it does so.
This can feel like minimizing our situation or outright denying our disorder depending on context (the old “ADHD iS oVeRDiaGnOSed”).
Tying into the context above, for me, dismissing my diagnosis and symptoms also sounds a lot like saying to me, “you know how you finally don’t hate yourself for moral and character failings because you understand why you are the way you are? Well sorry, that’s all bullshit, you don’t have ADHD you just fucking suck as a human being, so you may now go back to self flagellation and loathing.”
And so this sort of thing can be kind of “triggering” I suppose.
And one of our symptoms is poor emotional regulation so if we get disproportionately upset hearing “eh, that’s normal”… now you know why :)
Hopefully this offers some helpful perspective.
Edited: reworded for more betterness