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.
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.