Pride and pain rewrite · MDCopyNeurodivergent Pride and Pain: You Don't Have to Choose

Emily Linder
7 hours ago
8 min read

A single white car parked alone in an otherwise empty parking lot surrounded by orange bollards, representing the experience of sitting in your car unable to go inside — the quiet, invisible struggle that exists alongside neurodivergent pride.

By Emily Linder, LPCC-S | Calibrations Counseling & Consultation

I saw a post last week that said "Autism is a superpower!" with a rainbow infinity symbol and a bunch of cheerful emojis. I stared at it for a long time, trying to figure out why it made me feel so angry and sad at the same time.

That morning, I'd spent forty-five minutes crying in my car because I couldn't make myself go into the grocery store. The lights, the sounds, the unpredictability of where people would be and what they'd do. It was all too much. I sat there feeling like a failure, a thirty-six-year-old adult who can't handle basic errands that everyone else manages without thought.

Superpower. Right.

But here's the complicated part: I don't want to be cured either. I don't want to not be autistic. My brain, for all its challenges, is also the source of everything I value about myself. My ability to see patterns, my deep focus, my genuine approach to relationships, my creative thinking. These aren't separate from my autism. They're expressions of it.

So where does that leave me? Too disabled to embrace the "neurodiversity is beautiful" narrative without feeling like I'm lying. Too attached to my neurodivergent identity to want it erased. Stuck in the uncomfortable middle ground between pride and pain.

If you've ever felt this tension, you're not alone. This is the conversation nobody wants to have because it's messy and contradictory and doesn't fit neatly into either the medical model or the social model of disability. But it's real. And it deserves space.

The Pressure to Choose a Side

The discourse around neurodivergence has become increasingly polarized. On one side, the medical model frames neurodivergence as disorder and deficit to be fixed. On the other, the neurodiversity movement emphasizes difference, identity, and pride. Both sides pressure you to pick a team.

If you talk about struggling, medical model people suggest you try harder to overcome your deficits. The underlying message: you'd be better off neurotypical.

If you talk about struggling in neurodiversity spaces, you sometimes get pushback. "That's internalized ableism." "Autism isn't a tragedy." "If you accepted yourself, you wouldn't suffer so much." The underlying message: your suffering is a mindset problem.

But what if both things are true? What if your neurodivergence causes you genuine suffering and is also an essential part of who you are that you wouldn't want to erase?

What if you can love your ADHD brain's creativity and also hate that you forgot to pay rent again? What if you can value your autistic ability to focus deeply and also grieve that you can't maintain the friendships you desperately want?

The pressure to choose feels false because it denies the complexity of lived experience. You're not a walking political statement. You're a person trying to survive in a body and brain that work differently than most, in a world that wasn't designed for you. And that's complicated. Messy. Sometimes painful. Sometimes beautiful. Often both at once.

When Pride Feels Like Privilege

There's a specific kind of guilt that comes when you encounter joyful neurodivergent pride content while you're in the middle of a crisis.

You see people posting about their ADHD as a gift, celebrating their autistic authenticity. And you think: they must not struggle like I do. They must be the mild cases.

Or worse: what's wrong with me that I can't see my neurodivergence that way?

Pride starts to feel like something only available to people who aren't suffering as much. Like you have to reach some threshold of functionality before you earn the right to feel good about your brain.

But this is a false dichotomy. The people expressing pride aren't necessarily struggling less. They might be struggling enormously. Pride and pain aren't mutually exclusive. You can celebrate your identity while also being crushed by its practical challenges.

You're allowed to feel proud and also acknowledge that your life is hard. These aren't contradictory. They're the full picture.

The Grief That Lives Alongside Acceptance

Accepting your neurodivergence doesn't mean you never grieve what it costs you.

I've accepted that I'm autistic and ADHD. I wouldn't choose to be neurotypical if given the option because it would mean being someone else entirely. But I still grieve sometimes.

I grieve the career paths that are closed to me because I can't handle certain sensory environments or social demands. I grieve the friendships that dissolved because I couldn't maintain the expected frequency of contact. I grieve the simple pleasures that other people experience easily that remain inaccessible to me because of sensory issues or executive dysfunction.

This grief doesn't mean I haven't accepted myself. It means I'm human.

The neurodiversity movement sometimes struggles to hold space for this grief. There's fear that acknowledging suffering will be weaponized by people who want to cure or eliminate neurodivergent people. That fear is valid given history. But the solution can't be to deny suffering exists or to frame all struggles as merely social barriers that would disappear in a perfectly accommodating world.

You can grieve what your neurodivergence costs you while still valuing what it gives you. Both are real. Both deserve acknowledgment.

The Superpower Narrative and Why It Fails

I understand the impulse behind the superpower framing. After spending your whole life being told your brain is broken, there's relief in reclaiming it as powerful instead.

But for many neurodivergent people who are genuinely struggling, the superpower narrative feels dismissive at best and gaslighting at worst.

When you can't keep a job because of executive dysfunction, ADHD doesn't feel like a superpower. When you're having a meltdown in public because someone touched you unexpectedly, autism doesn't feel like a gift.

The superpower framing also accidentally creates a hierarchy where neurodivergent people who are successful get celebrated while those who are struggling get implicitly blamed for not leveraging their gifts properly.

My ability to hyperfocus is incredible when I'm working on something I love. It's a nightmare when I realize I've been hyperfocused on the wrong thing and missed every deadline. My pattern recognition serves me well in analysis. It causes anxiety when I see patterns everywhere, including places they don't exist.

These aren't superpowers. They're traits with both upsides and downsides depending on context. And pretending they're purely positive doesn't honor the reality of living with them.

When Accommodation Isn't Enough

One of the core arguments of the neurodiversity movement is that neurodivergent people are disabled primarily by lack of accommodation, not by our neurological differences themselves. Change the environment, provide proper support, and much of the disability disappears.

This is true. And also incomplete.

I have a job that accommodates my needs. I work from home, set my own hours, and structure my work around my executive function patterns. I have understanding friends who accept my communication style. I've built a life with minimal sensory overwhelm and maximum autonomy.

And I still struggle. Not as much as I would without accommodations, but significantly nonetheless.

Some things are just hard regardless of accommodation. Processing verbal information quickly. Navigating unexpected changes. Managing the cognitive load of multiple tasks. Tolerating certain sensory inputs.

Accommodation reduces suffering. It doesn't eliminate it. And there's something important about acknowledging that some aspects of neurodivergence are inherently challenging, not just socially constructed difficulties.

You can advocate for a more accommodating world while also acknowledging that your neurodivergence would still present challenges in that world. Both things matter.

Celebrating What You Can While Acknowledging What You Can't

So how do you hold both? How do you have pride in your neurodivergent identity while also acknowledging that it makes your life significantly harder?

Start by rejecting the binary. You don't have to choose between "my neurodivergence is wonderful" and "my neurodivergence is terrible." You can hold both truths simultaneously.

Some days you might feel more on the pride side. Your hyperfocus allowed you to finish a project you're excited about. Your authentic communication style led to a surprisingly deep connection.

These days, celebrate. Feel good about your brain without guilt.

Other days you might feel more on the struggle side. Executive dysfunction means you haven't showered in three days. Sensory overload led to a meltdown. These days, grieve. Feel frustrated. Acknowledge that this is hard without believing it means you should be ashamed of who you are.

Most days will be somewhere in between. You'll appreciate certain aspects of your neurodivergence while struggling with others. You'll feel proud of how you've learned to work with your brain while also exhausted from the constant self-management required.

All of these experiences are valid. None of them cancel out the others.

When You're Not Ready for Pride Yet

Maybe you're reading this and thinking: I'm not there yet. I can't find anything to celebrate about my neurodivergence. Right now it's just suffering and I'm not ready to find pride in it.

That's okay. You don't have to force pride before you're ready.

Sometimes you need to grieve first. To be angry. To acknowledge that this isn't fair and you didn't sign up for it and you're exhausted from trying to function in a world that wasn't built for you.

That anger and grief are valid. They don't mean you're stuck in internalized ableism or haven't accepted yourself. They mean you're human and this is hard.

Pride might come later. Or you might land somewhere in the middle where you don't feel pride exactly, but you've made peace with who you are. Where you've stopped wishing you were someone else even if you still wish certain things were easier.

There's no required progression from diagnosis to acceptance to pride. Your relationship with your neurodivergence will evolve over time, and wherever you are in that process is exactly where you should be.

Permission to Be Complicated

Here's what I want you to take from this: you're allowed to be complicated about your neurodivergence.

You're allowed to love parts of it and struggle with other parts. To celebrate some days and grieve others. To feel pride and also wish things were easier. To value your differences and also acknowledge their cost.

You're allowed to reject the superpower narrative while also refusing to see yourself as broken. To acknowledge suffering while still finding meaning. To admit that life is hard while also building a life worth living.

You don't have to fit into the medical model or the social model. You don't have to be inspiration or a cautionary tale. You don't have to prove you're struggling enough to deserve support or successful enough to deserve pride.

Your experience is valid exactly as it is, without needing to resolve into something cleaner or more consistent. You're not confused or failing at acceptance because you feel multiple things at once.

You're human. And human experiences are messy and don't fit neatly into boxes.

So yes, you can celebrate and suffer. You can have pride and also grieve. You can love who you are and also wish certain things were different. All of it is real. All of it matters.

Welcome to the messy middle. Most of us live here. And there's room for you exactly as you are.

Looking for support? Calibrations Counseling & Consultation offers neurodivergent-affirming therapy in Ohio for adults navigating autism, ADHD, identity, and more. We offer telehealth across Ohio and in-person sessions in the Barberton/Akron area. Visit calibrationscc.com to learn more or schedule a free consultation call.

This content is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for therapy, treatment, or crisis services. If you are looking for mental health support in Ohio, visit calibrationscc.com to connect with one of our counselors.