When being tested for ADHD my mom refused to take part in the interviews and was really reluctant to help me figure out the symptoms I had as a child etc. Funniest thing, she works as a therapist in an asylum for prisoners, so one might think she'd understand how important it is to get help with mental health, yet she was apparently thinking I want to get diagnosed just to get drugs and my problem is that I just don't try enough. And here I'm thinking, ma, have you realized how many different careers and educations you've had, how your relationships are a mess and how anxious you are all the time, not to mention the hoarding of stuff and hobbies etc. we are the same.

[–] Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world 3 points 36 minutes ago* (last edited 36 minutes ago)

I don’t look forward to having the AuDHD talk with my mom. She’d always been terrified at the idea that her kids aren’t nOrMaL. When I was diagnosed ADHD as a teen, she outright dismissed it. I haven’t even mentioned the word “autism” around her because I know exactly how she would react.

Yet, my dad is just like me. Our conversations regularly veer into such niche topics that go completely over my mom’s head. Neither of us “officially” studied these topics (dad went to trade school, not college), we just have the same curiosity and overlapping special interests. Add my siblings to the mix (2 of whom also are likely on the spectrum, with one more sibling who IS diagnosed ADHD), and my mom becomes “the odd one out.”

I don’t think she’d handle that well.