I don’t speak about my ADHD diagnosis much. Not because it doesn’t impact my life. It does. Every single day.

ADHD shapes how my mind moves –  the speed of thought, the intensity of hyperfocus, the restless creativity, the executive dysfunction that can paralyse something as simple as replying to a message. It is woven into my art practice, into how I create in bursts, into how I burn out, into how I rebuild.

But when I talk publicly, I speak more about autism.

And there’s a reason for that.

When you tell someone you are dyslexic, most people nod. When you tell someone you have ADHD, people might even say, “Oh yeh, loads of people have that.” It’s almost become socially digestible. Mainstream. Understood – or at least tolerated.

But tell someone you’re autistic?

Watch what happens next.

You get questioned.

You get scrutinised.

You get analysed by people who have little to no understanding of autism beyond a stereotype they saw on television in the 1990s.

Why is that different?

Why does ADHD not trigger interrogation, but autism does?

Part of it, I believe, is stigma. For decades autism has been presented in one narrow frame: a white male child with an intellectual disability, socially withdrawn, visibly “different.” That image has been reinforced in media, in diagnostic criteria, in public consciousness. Even though research now recognises autism as a spectrum with immense variation, the outdated picture still dominates.

Historically, diagnostic criteria were developed primarily around studies of white boys. Research has shown that girls and women have been underdiagnosed for years because their traits often present differently – more internalised, more masked. Only in recent years has this gained momentum in headlines and clinical discussions. That shift is a good thing.

But people of colour? We are still behind.

There is growing evidence that Black and minority ethnic individuals are diagnosed later, misdiagnosed more frequently, or pathologised differently. Bias in healthcare is well documented. Cultural misunderstanding is real. Socioeconomic barriers are real. Racism within systems is real.

Even a psychologist I once saw told me I “presented like a female.”

Think about that for a moment.

What that really means is: I didn’t fit the white male stereotype. My masking was sophisticated. My coping strategies were complex. My internalisation ran deep. And instead of that prompting curiosity about racial bias in diagnostic frameworks, it was framed as me presenting “like a woman.”

If women have historically been harder to diagnose – and that has rightly gained attention – then where does that leave autistic people of colour? Especially those diagnosed late?

We sit in the blind spot.

So when I speak about autism, I am not just speaking about neurology. I am speaking about invisibility. About misrepresentation. About the harm of narrow narratives. About the damage of being told, subtly or overtly, that you don’t “look autistic.”

Because that phrase “you don’t look autistic” is not neutral. It is loaded. It implies there is one acceptable visual template for autism. And that template rarely looks like me.

When I speak about ADHD, I don’t encounter that same level of interrogation. No one leans back and says, “But you don’t look ADHD.” No one questions whether I’m “ADHD enough.” There isn’t the same cultural weight attached to it. ADHD is often trivialised, yes – reduced to distraction or energy – but it isn’t policed in the same way autism is.

And here’s the part that’s hardest to admit:

Every time I speak about autism, I brace myself.

Because I have encountered insult. Dismissal. Ignorance. People who think they know more about my neurology than I do. People who reduce decades of lived experience to their limited understanding.

A primary school teacher in charge of the SEND department said ‘I would say you are ADHD, not Autistic’ – that sort of comment makes me question are they capable of understanding children who learn to mask from an early age. Furthermore, even when I have a professional diagnosis and I am explaining the impact it has on me and has had on me, I am being scrutinised!

When you receive a diagnosis in your forties, you are already processing grief. Grief for the younger you who masked. Grief for the misunderstandings. Grief for the mental health labels that came first. Grief for the systems that missed you.

To then be questioned about it? That adds insult to injury.

So I choose my energy carefully.

I speak more about autism because it needs challenging. It needs reframing. It needs expanding beyond the white male intellectual-disability stereotype that has dominated for too long. My visibility, uncomfortable as it can be, disrupts that narrative.

But there is another layer that is harder for me to speak about publicly: race.

Racist trauma does not disappear because you become self-aware. It sits in the nervous system. It informs how safe you feel. It influences how openly you can talk about your experience. It intersects with autism in ways that are rarely discussed – hyper-vigilance, masking for safety, code-switching, over-analysis of social threat – it creates a whole new monster!

Research into intersectionality, the overlapping impact of race and disability, shows that outcomes for people of colour with disabilities are often worse across education, employment and healthcare. Yet these conversations are still fragmented. Autism conversations rarely centre race. Race conversations rarely centre neurodivergence.

So when I speak about autism more than ADHD, it is not because ADHD doesn’t matter. It is because autism, in my experience, carries a heavier social distortion. It is more misunderstood. More stigmatised. More policed.

And because my existence as an autistic man of colour diagnosed late already challenges the old narrative.

I will speak about ADHD more in time. I will speak about race more in time. Healing is not linear, and neither is advocacy.

But for now, understand this:

Silence on one diagnosis does not mean absence of impact.

It means I am navigating which battles cost the most energy.

It means I am protecting parts of myself while still pushing for change.

And it means that even in 2026, despite progress, despite headlines, despite awareness campaigns – the world still struggles to see autism outside of the narrow frame it created.

Until that changes, my voice will continue to sit there in that uncomfortable space, expanding the ‘picture’.