let's talk about invisible disability, because i promise you, the term does not mean what you think it does. thread:

#actuallyadhd #adhd #adhdtwitter

to get the obvious out of the way: i have disabling adhd. my adhd is comorbid with other developmental disabilities/disorders, and with those combined, i am Very Visibly neurodiverse. i have obvious visible stims, i have a stutter that my ed psych believed was due to my adhd and

dyspraxia affecting my processing capabilities, i have quit jobs after crying in public over how much i have struggled with tasks like working out change. if you were to talk to me in public for a while, my neurodiversity would very quickly become obvious, because it is a part of

the way i speak, the way i hold myself in conversations, the way i gesture while speaking, the way i react to topic changes, and the way i process social cues as a whole. you could probably walk away from me and think "wow, that person has adhd or autism". and while you would be

right, this does Not make adhd a visible disability.

here's where it might get confusing, so please stick around. i'll do my best to explain, and i had a hard time learning this at first as well.

in addition to my adhd, i am also physically disabled. i use a walking stick when

i'm in public, and even though i don't use it at home, i probably should, because i very regularly fall while doing basic activities like cooking and cleaning, if they need me to stand up. my joints are hypermobile and twitch and spasm. i wear compression gloves and wrist splints

and have a badge and card that let me use priority seating even if i am not currently using any of my mobility aids.

my physical disability is still an invisible disability. this is because it does not /permanently/ alter my appearance. if you remove my gloves and my splints and

my cane, no obvious visible change has happened to me that couldn't also happen to an abled person.

the same can be said about my adhd. maybe i have scars and cuts and bruises that i associate with it, but an abled person scars and cuts and bruises too.

no matter how visible

the symptoms of my disability are, the nature of the disability itself does not change. it does not permanently alter my appearance, and therefore, is invisible.

this is something that i struggled with when i first started using a cane, so if you're a little lost, i was too. but

the key here is to remember that "invisible disability" doesn't refer to you, or your presentation. it refers to the disability as a whole. some people with adhd may manage their symptoms in a different way, that makes it less easier to spot. maybe they don't stim, or they've

spent a long time teaching themself social etiquette. some people with the same chronic illness i have can manage it better, or have better access to medication and physiotherapy, so they don't need a cane. my wrists need extra support because they're extra fragile - that's not a

universal symptom of this illness, and so other people with it won't have to use splints, like i have.

most importantly, it is still possible to be visibly disabled while having an invisible disability. when i use my cane, i am visibly disabled, but it's /me/ that's changed, not

my disability. when you see evidence of adhd, that's means that person is showing visible symptoms of an invisible disability. and that's okay! you can still be visibly disabled while having an invisible disability.

as ive hinted at a lot during this thread, an invisible

disability is a disability which does not permanently alter your appearance. a visible disability would be something that does, like amputation. i feel like lately, i am seeing a lot of resentment for the term "invisible disability", but the resentment feels like it comes from

the wrong place. i would say that Yes, it's right to be upset that "visible disability" and "visibly disabled" do not mean the same thing, because it feels like another example of the language used for disability activism being so bloated and clumsy that it becomes Inaccessible.

but the way i see people express displeasure with the term is more like... like people believe "invisible disability" exists to belittle them, or act like their disability isn't as serious or as harmful as others. which is encouraging a misuse of the term that is leading to

physically abled people feeling comfortable saying they experience a form of ableism that even i, a physically disabled mobility aid user, don't experience, and also distancing themselves from the kind of ableism we /do/ experience, just by having a disability that made us look

like we do not have a disability. the term is there so that people like me, who don't always have their mobility aids, can sit in priority seats on public transport. its made so people with blue badges can park in priority spaces without fear of harassment because they don't

"look disabled enough" to be allowed to park there. it's made so that you can still list your accessibility requirements at job interviews, even if the interviewer can see you don't need a ramp. but what's more, however much we internalise our disability and the way it makes us

feel, and the pain it causes us, it's there because there is a level of external separation between us and our disabilities. no matter how visibly we present our symptoms, with canes or with stims or with dirty dishes piling up, and no matter what names we get called, we have to

make note of the fact that the kind of ableism we experience Is Unique to the fact that we don't "look disabled". that's why words like "lazy" are weaponised against adhd. every part of the struggle we face comes from the fact that, no matter how messy our rooms and our schedules

are, the lack of a distinguishing visible feature that ties all people with adhd together means we /can/be mistaken for abled people.

and isn't that what causes us so much pain? that no matter how visible our struggle, we look abled? why then, do we want to push back against a

term that exists to explain that struggle?

its because invisible disability doesn't mean what you thought it meant before reading this thread.

invisible disability does not mean, and i cannot stress this enough, that a disability is only invisible because people aren't looking hard enough, or because they don't know what to look for.

contrary to popular belief, it /is/ misinfo to say otherwise.