A friend recently called my adhd a disease and it got me extremely angry and hurt. They didn’t have bad intentions, I don’t think they think that I need to be “cured” but it probably came from a more ignorant perspective.
But how do you feel about it? How would you handle that situation?
To me calling it a disease implies that my neurodivergence is wrong, that I should seek some sort of cure, which I find stupid and mostly laughable, but I guess hearing it from them hit some nerve and it felt like a personal attack. As if they were saying that as long as I have adhd I am not okay and that my struggles are my fault for not seeking a cure.
Just somehow it instantly made me so hurt and angry and I couldn’t help but feel insulted and small.
I don’t really mind it? Disorder/disease: I kinda feel like that’s splitting hairs.
ADHD is treatable, and I’m glad it is (otherwise I’d not be functional at all), and there are plenty of diseases you can only treat (versus cure).
I dunno, that’s just not a distinction that’s ever bothered me.
More accurate than calling it a superpower. I hate that crap.
It’s a disorder, something that makes daily life more difficult. Yes it can be treated, but never cured (thus far).
Parkinson’s is adisease of the mind, and it often garners pity and sympathy. ADHD is treated as an “excuse” for bad behavior, since it’s invisible (save for behavior that is undesirable).
More than anything, how ADHD is seen by the ignorant majority is why it has any stigma at all.
Yeah fuck the whole “it’s a superpower” bullshit. It really fucking isn’t, it’s debilitating and it’s hell to deal with to try to function at all.
Honestly, it’s better than when people say I need to “just concentrate more”.
Yeah. All people will take for granted the things that come easily to them.
ADHD is seen as a detriment mostly because it doesn’t easily jive with our capitalist society. More modern understandings of it paint it as a deviation from a norm that loses more and more if its definition as time passes.
Someone has to stay up and watch for tigers, or spend 11 days nonstop searching for a spring.
Sickness implies that it can be cured; disease implies (through connotation, even if not the denotation) that it’s contagious. In both cases, it’s not that it’s negative that it bothers me - ADHD is negative, on the whole. It’s just the inaccuracy.
Like my depression is not my superpower, neither is my ADHD. It’s just something I have to live with.
It would definitely strike me as odd, but I don’t think I’d be too bothered by it. Sometime people talk a bit faster than they think. Is it a disease or a mental illness or a learning disability? To some people the vocabulary can be a bit muddy and I understand that.
If they treat me like I’m sick or disabled over an extended period of time, that would offend me. I never met someone who did that, but I’m not afraid of confrontation. I’d just call them out. That usually weeds out the people willing to change from those unwilling.
I don’t really care that much. If they are doing it to be insulting that’s just the type of person they are. If they do it because they are uninformed I can forgive and happily educate them on the fact that brains just work differently on a person to person basis.
In that situation specifically, seeing as your friend meant no harm, id probably just tell them “hey man, that’s not cool just so you know for future reference.” And just because feelings are hurt doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad thing. It just means that a line was unintentionally crossed because they didn’t know the line was there. Everyone has these lines and half of life is just figuring out where your lines are and where the lines of the people you care about are. If your friend had no bad intentions I’d say don’t take it personally. I know it can be hard sometimes, but just remember that they are your friend.
