You Don’t Look Autistic or ADHD

 

Every so often, someone will say to me, “You don’t look autistic or ADHD.”

I know it’s usually meant as a compliment. Sometimes, it even comes from a place of genuine kindness, like they’re reassuring me I “fit in.” But other times, it lands with a thud, like a dismissal, a rejection, or even an accusation.

The truth is: you can’t always see my AuDHD. What looks invisible on the outside is often exhausting, overwhelming, or even painful on the inside.

Here’s a glimpse of what “doesn’t look autistic or ADHD” but lives with me every day:

• Hours of rehearsing conversations in my head before making a phone call or stepping into a social gathering, only to be ambushed by nausea, headaches, or panic when it’s time to actually speak.

• The crash after a day of masking. To the world, I may have looked like I was “fitting in,” but my body feels wrung out, every nerve humming with pain.

• Chaos in my brain when all I need to do is something simple, like start dinner, but every thought is pulling me in ten different directions.

• Meltdowns behind closed doors that others might label as “overreacting,” but inside, it feels like my nervous system is literally on fire.

• The never-ending battle with clocks: time slipping through my fingers, yesterday turning into last week before I notice.

• The effort of social navigation, such as eye contact, taking turns, remembering to nod or smile at the right moment, takes so much mental bandwidth that I barely register what anyone is actually saying.

• Sensory overload hits me when lights, noises, textures, or smells become unbearable, tipping into pain, nausea, or exhaustion. Or the opposite: hyperfocus that drowns everything out, until I realize hours later that I forgot to eat, go to the bathroom, or notice someone was talking to me.

• Forgetting something important again despite best efforts, or freezing on a task I desperately want to begin.

• Melting down over the doorbell or an unexpected visitor, while also needing new and exciting things to stay engaged with life.

• The desperate need to retreat, to talk to myself or act out a fantasy scene, because that fuels my creativity and helps me function.

Neurodivergence doesn’t always look like anything. But it’s lived, every single day.

So, when someone says, “You don’t look autistic or ADHD,” what I wish they’d realize is: you can’t always see it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. What you don’t see is still real.