Pick a Struggle: Black, Neurodivergent and Female

A few days before my 13th birthday, I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). 

Every Thursday, after the final bell would ring in my ancient, prison-style junior high school, I’d grab my sister, and a 20 pound binder and start the hike downtown to my therapist’s office.

There, I’d recount stories of rejection.

How someone looked at me the wrong way.
 How I was sure my friends were whispering about me.
How a sudden shift in someone’s posture could trigger a wave of self-loathing.

I regularly felt rejected, and I had constant breakdowns. 

Why did I annoy everyone around me? What could I do to be more likeable? Why didn’t I understand what the joke was? Was I the joke?

Until one day, my therapist stopped me, pulled out his copy of the DSM-5, or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and told me I should look into getting myself a diagnosis for my ADHD. 

It wasn’t just the glaring signs — what I’d eventually understand as Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, or RSD — leading to my diagnosis, but the moment with my therapist  was a powerful turning point in my life.

For years after, I struggled to convince my family and friends the diagnosis wasn’t absolute baloney. 

It wasn’t until my senior year that I had my interpersonal world convinced. After falling into deeper bouts of depression, anxiety and burnout, I was finally put on medication which aided me in becoming a better student and a happier person. 

My story seems like it may be a unique one. Why did it take almost six years to convince people of something confirmed by a trained professional?

However, it’s a story thousands of neurodivergent women share across the country. 

When many people think about Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia and many of the other disorders encompassing the label neurodivergent, their first thought is someone like Dr. Shaun Murphy from “The Good Doctor” or Elon Musk. 

Turns out, neurodiversity isn’t just for white guys with high IQs and a side hustle.

Men are diagnosed with ADHD on a three-to-one scale compared to women. They are four times more likely to be diagnosed with Autism and twice as likely to be diagnosed with Dyslexia.

When women do attempt to receive a diagnosis, they experience “lengthy waiting lists, a lack of support, sexist diagnostic criteria,” and negative public perception, according to Birmingham City University professor Emma Craddock. 

Additionally, young neurodivergent girls quickly learn to camouflage their traits to match what’s societally expected as both a coping and survival mechanism. 

While this is a way for them to survive and assimilate, it’s rarely studied by professionals when being trained on what to look for in the diagnostic process, leading to a large gender bias in diagnosing neurodivergent women.

Due to this, ADHD and Autism have both been coined the “hidden disorder” in female patients. 

However, for me, being a woman with ADHD is only half the story. My identity as a Black woman means I’ve never had the luxury of my neurodivergence existing in a vacuum.

It’s inseparable from the racial bias that shapes my daily life — a bias that, in 2019, led to the murder of Elijah McClain in Aurora, Colo. as he walked home from a gas station.

Officers would assume he was on drugs, and tell paramedics to give him Ketamine “due to his strength.”

“I’m an introvert, and I’m different,” McClain said. “That’s all. I’m so sorry.”

Elijah McClain’s pleas still haunt me. His death forever changed me. Not simply because of the brutality — but his last words. 

“I’m different. I’m so sorry,” he said.

A phrase I have felt the strength of since before my ADHD diagnosis. It encapsulates the growing pains of being a neurodivergent person. This is a reckoning, begging for others to like us — to not hurt us — despite the flaw of being born different into an American society which doesn’t accept or accommodate.

Neurodivergent Black children and adults are often labeled defiant, problematic or dangerous due to their need for clarification, routine and movement. 

For example, Black male teenagers are more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia, and all black teenagers were more likely to be diagnosed with conduct disorders, bipolar disorder and other psychosis-related disorders. 

Being diagnosed with these disorders, specifically conduct disorder, may lead to significant outcomes, such as difficulty securing clinicians willing to treat the child and a higher likelihood of incarceration.

The harm doesn’t end with how we’re seen. It also affects how we’re missed. 

Black neurodivergent people are missed by diagnostic criteria built for and by white men. Harm is amplified by teachers who confuse our coping mechanisms for misconduct. We are disregarded and ill-advised by structures not built with us in mind. 

One of the most misunderstood aspects of neurodivergence in women and girls is how it manifests through hyperfixations and special interests. 

While the media depicts neurodivergence as hyperfocus on technology, trains, trivia — all hyperfixations skewing towards men — the reality is far more complex, especially for women. 

Often, neurodivergent women’s interests might revolve around literature, art, relationships, fashion or politics and social justice. 

They are no less intense, no less vital, but they are often dismissed because they don’t “seem” neurodivergent. 

Even worse, when we speak up, advocate, hold onto the structures which help us make sense of our world and break social norms — we’re not called quirky like tv shows, films and books would lead many to believe. 

We are called bitches. 

So, I’m not a young white boy who has a high IQ, loves trains and can’t sit still. 

I’m a neurodivergent Black girl with a deep sense of justice, a relentless fixation on politics and a label I didn’t choose: difficult. Angry. A bitch. 

I’m not wrong, broken or dirty. I deserve to live safely.

For many neurodivergent individuals, the path to diagnosis, supportive mental healthcare and a safe world is blocked by systemic inequity. 

Neurodivergence is a spectrum of human experience, a mosaic of many races, genders and identities. It’s a diversity which should be seen, not hidden, and a richness that should be celebrated, not suppressed.