In this episode of Translating ADHD, hosts Ash and Dusty explore the intersection of queerness and ADHD, emphasizing the importance of community, acceptance, and flexible frameworks. They discuss how their identities as neurodivergent individuals shape their perspectives on relationships, support systems, and personal growth. Dusty shares her experiences navigating the complexities of community care while balancing her queer identity with her ADHD challenges, while Ash reflects on his journey of coming out as transgender and how it has informed his understanding of self-acceptance and identity.
The conversation highlights the necessity of mutual support within the neurodivergent community, advocating for the value of chosen family in lieu of traditional norms. Ash and Dusty encourage listeners to embrace their unique paths and seek out connections that validate their experiences, ultimately reminding us that there is no singular way to live or succeed. By letting go of societal expectations, individuals can create fulfilling lives that authentically reflect who they are.
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Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Ash: Hi, I’m Ash. [00:00:03] Dusty: And I’m Dusty. [00:00:04] Ash: And this is Translating ADHD. Listeners, just a quick reminder, especially for those of you that are already patrons, we do have a Discord server, and Dusty is in the Discord server, not just for this season, but she’s gonna stick around, so If you want an opportunity to interact with us, to talk about the episodes, that is there for you.And if you’re not a patron yet, you can visit the website, TranslatingADHD.com, click on the Patreon link, and for five bucks a month, you gain access to the Discord server. And our patrons do cover all of the costs of running the show, which allows us to keep bringing it to you. So thank you to those of you who have been supporting or who have ever supported this show financially. We so appreciate you.
So Dusty, I’m really excited about our topic today because this is definitely something that we’ve never done on this show before in the hundreds of episodes that are out there. So last week we talked about identity, and we even talked a little bit about how you and I both really have lives where neurodivergence and queerness are at the center of our lives, our communities, and what a big difference maker that is. But we also thought it would be interesting to talk about queerness.
Queerness specifically now for listeners who are not queer, stick around because we’re not just talking about queerness. We’re talking about this idea of – and this is your language, Dusty, I really love it – of flexible frameworks.
So Dusty, why don’t you say a little bit about flexible frameworks and this language that you’re bringing that I so, so love. I’ve already stolen it. Like I’m using it. It’s part of my vocabulary now. And I’m stoked to talk about it today.
[00:01:54] Dusty: Yeah. Well certainly I think for any listener who’s not queer, I would encourage you to sort of think of queerness as the framework because it is quite a flexible framework. The same way that we think of like feminism as a lens through which to, you know, take a critical view of certain things as they happen, right? We can use a feminist lens to like understand certain things, and we can use like a queer framework to help ourselves figure out ADHD struggles and strategies, right? Even if you’re not a queer person. I think queer frameworks and ways of being can still be helpful and applicable and relevant to you. So yeah, it’s interesting.Like, I feel like for me it’s quite, it’s quite a surprise recently that I looked around at my friend group, and the people in my life and found very few, like non-queer, non neurodivergent people. Like that just sort of slowly happened over the years. And then I kind of realized – and it’s funny because on the one hand, like, I definitely identify as queer. I don’t think I always would have, but I always knew that I wasn’t, like, straight. On the other hand, I’m very, like, straight passing, so I’m not super comfortable taking up a lot of space in the queer community. I don’t really feel like I need to. And so I’m sort of the most, like, I would say like hetero of my queer friends.
So like I’m sort of the, you know, the square in my group of friends, which is really funny. And so, yeah, I kind of looked around one day, and I was like, Oh my God, like all of my friends are like trans, queer, non binary. Most, not all, but like most of them are neurodivergent, and I think that sort of happened organically, but what it means is that the majority of things that myself and the people around me do to make life work for us can be really what’s the word I want to use? Can be really sort of, what’s in my brain.
There’s a word I want to use, but I can’t think of what it is, but essentially non-normative, right? I think many of the people in my community and my friend group, like we’re coming at problem solving from all these really unique and different angles because we’re not worried about sort of, you know, ascribing to those societal norms already.
[00:03:55] Ash: Dusty, I think that language non-normative is really at the heart of what we’re trying to get to today. So much of our work with clients is around acceptance is around this idea that this sort of perspective shifting from I need to be able to do it like everyone else does it, I need to be able to fit in, to recognizing, Hey, I am different. I am actually different in some pretty crucial ways. And normative ways of doing things just aren’t going to work for me. [00:04:36] Dusty: Yeah. And I think the big one for me that I’ve been realizing lately is just like how entrenched I am In like community care. And like I can’t be separated from it, and that’s part of what kind of made me realize that there’s a lot more queerness going on in my life than I thought. Because I’ve had male partners, I’ve been married, and every time I’ve had a male partner, they want to take me all to themselves. They want to live alone, no roommates, like, just us, like, nuclear family type situation.And this ongoing, sort of, way of being that I have, where I’m very interconnected with people, like, people help me, I help people. There’s a non insignificant portion of my time that goes to, like, helping out people in my community, friends, or even, you know, just even stuff like going to protests, or whatever, right? And I always had this real, like, struggle with, like, male, cis male partners where they would kind of be threatened by how much of myself I wanted to give to something that wasn’t them, right?
But the more that I’ve kind of realized, like, you can’t extricate that part of me, and the more I’ve sort of set boundaries with partners and let them know, like, no, this is, I’m a package deal, right? Like, you’re not just getting me, you’re getting all of us together. You can’t separate me out from them. And like leaning into that, and like just giving myself permission for that to be the way that I live has meant that I’ve had like more fulfilling life, less stress.
But also I’ve been able to get the support that I need, right, because it’s reciprocal. It’s community based, right? For example, like I live with roommates. I’m an adult person, right, make good money, but I live with roommates because, like, I don’t ever want my child to have less than three adults around her at any given time. Because, like, I’m a parent with ADHD. I don’t always have the spoons, right?
And just managing a household, like, anything I need to do, I know there’s someone I can call if I’m ever stressed or struggling. And same thing, they can call me anytime. And leaning into that has meant that, for me, ADHD wise, I’m never, like, drowning. But it also means that I’ve had to sacrifice that identity and that idea that like, Oh, someday, like me and some man will live in like an apartment alone together, you know, on the 33rd floor. Like, that’s not going to work, and it’s not going to happen.
But yeah, so when I think about this idea of like, queerness, what it means to me, is like an ability to accept. Getting where you want to go in a way that really doesn’t look the way that you thought it would look, right?
So, I was engaged at one point and I thought I would get married and I really wanted to have another baby. And one of the big struggles in our relationship was this person really struggled with the idea of, like, living with roommates, which I said, I need to. Like, I can’t. And he even admitted, he was like, I don’t think I could live alone with you. Like, you need a lot of support.
And he just sort of couldn’t. He couldn’t embrace the unique sort of way that we had of doing things. And so, you know, that was one of the things that caused the relationship to not work out. And it was really hard for me, like I grieved a lot because I was like, I’ll never have that, you know, like that sort of, you know, family, like married, have a baby, right?
But I realized, okay, you know what, like, I actually, I already have that. And now I have a totally kind of a zany, you know, like lifestyle going on. I’ve got my roommates. My roommate and I are currently in the process of fostering. They have in the past tried to to get pregnant and they may again you know, in which case like myself and the other roommate would be playing like a major parenting role for them.
They help parent my child. Right. I would say that they, they’ve been the most supportive, stable, you know, other adult presence in my child’s life for many years now. And so we have this great household, right? And I’m not like romantically involved with my roommate. I have a partner, right? And so I have someone to meet all my romantic needs, but I’ve sort of got like a domestic partnership going on and it’s, it’s quite unusual. It’s quite unique.
And so my partner and I have had to have conversations about like, what does the future look like? Right. And what does this mean for where our relationship might go? And because I’ve had that space to accept, like we talked about acceptance, and recognize my identity and realize that community care and being interconnected with other like neurodivergent queer people is a central part of my identity, I was able to set boundaries right away and say straight up we’re a package deal.
Like even if I move, like my roommate, my domestic, you know, friend, partner, person, like, they’re coming with me, right, because we are making a family, and we are a family. And my partner is part of that family, but it looks quite unusual to what I thought life would look like. But because there’s three or four or sometimes five of us in the household with my child, she always has all the support she needs, the pets are cared for, everybody can work towards their future goals, whether that’s parenting or, you know, going back to school and getting their degree.
We know that there’s enough mutual support for everyone. And I think that that comes primarily through a lens of like, sort of neuroqueerness, right? The idea that we got to do things different because we have ADHD, and we got to do things different because we’re queer, right?
[00:09:31] Ash: So, Dusty, for you it sounds like your journey of figuring out yourself as a person with ADHD and figuring out yourself as a queer person, it was sort of a parallel journey. Those two things went hand in hand. [00:09:46] Dusty: Yeah, I’d say that’s right. [00:09:47] Ash: I had a very different experience from that. I was already working as an ADHD coach, had done a hundred-plus episodes of this podcast as an ADHD coach before I realized and then came out as transgender. And so I have a little bit of a different perspective to offer. I think with kind of the same moral, but I’ve been thinking a lot about what, what does this conversation have to offer all of our listeners with ADHD?And I kind of think it’s this, I think the difference between ADHD and queerness, when we talk about finding community, finding those people, figuring ourselves out, is queerness is much more of a forcing mechanism. When I realized I, at least awareness is much more of a forcing mechanism, or at least it was in my case, because I had a very clear set of choices to make.
Once I realized what was true about myself, I could either come out or not, I could start transitioning or not. And I was pretty clear on what – I hate to use the word consequences – but the, I guess the impact of those choices would be including losing a lot of my family of origin. So that’s a scary thing to face, but in a lot of ways it was also a much more clear cut thing than trying to unravel this ADHD thing, because I knew this to be true about myself.
You know, with our clients – we talk about this so much on this show – we know we have this thing called ADHD. We know what the effects are. We don’t know a lot about cause. We don’t know a lot about what it’s really like to live in an ADHD brain until we do, until we find resources like this show. With being trans, I knew. I just knew. And so, I needed to adjust my life.
[00:11:49] Dusty: Ash, can I ask when you say forcing mechanism, what does that mean? [00:11:53] Ash: Well, ADHD is a lot less visible than being trans, particularly being a trans person in transition, right? There is no masking in my situation. When I introduce myself as Asher, the way that I look and sound today, I am effectively outing myself as queer. I wear it on my sleeve. And so what I mean by it’s a forcing mechanism is that thing we do as ADHD people, where we mask, where we try to blend in, where we try to conform. I don’t really get those choices when it comes to queerness.And so by forcing mechanism, I mean there’s just a very clear, like black and white, okay, I’ve made this choice. And now I have to figure out how to make my life work. Because I can’t live in the in between. And I think that can actually be a real blessing.
You and I were talking last week when we were talking about bringing this topic about how, in many ways, the acceptance piece when it comes to ADHD is easier for our queer clients, because we’ve been here before. We’ve already kind of acclimated to existing outside of societal norms in so many ways. And particularly as a trans person, I deal with that every day.
Society just doesn’t have amazing ways of dealing with me. So, and I mean that in the nicest way. So I have awkward encounters, and most of the time with people who are trying to do the right thing and trying to get the language right. But our language, the way that our society is structured, the way that gender works in the society that we live in, people just often don’t know what to do with me.
And so that’s something I have to face head on every single day. And it really, I don’t know, I think it just, it’s a forcing mechanism for learning who you are and what matters to you and what you need, I think.
[00:13:58] Dusty: Yeah, absolutely. And in that, you know, kind of coming back to this idea of like, what does queerness have to offer maybe like non-queer people with ADHD? I think what I really learned from the queer community is, yeah, how to work towards goals and embrace your identity and be yourself and be comfortable doing things in a way that is different than how other people do them because you have to.And, you know, we talked already about, like, identity and about acceptance and all of that is really salient here because, like, so much of the work that we do as coaches with our clients is about just, like, helping them to accept that, like, yes, this. You have this type of brain, and maybe you have to grieve about it first and then kind of accepting that probably you’re going to need to do things in a way that looks a little bit different, right? But it doesn’t mean that you can’t necessarily have the things that you want to have, right?
And so kind of going back to the example of like parenting, if you’re, you know, if you’re in a queer relationship and you’re not, you know, like, a uterus and some testicles, right? And you can’t, you might have to go in some really creative ways to make a family happen, right? In terms of having a little one. And that’s just the way that it is.
So I think we can look to the queer community for great examples of like how to get where you’re going and embrace the fact that like is gonna maybe look a little different. I also love that about, you know, like kind of poly, like the poly community, right?
Again, this, there’s a lot I think we can learn there about this idea because essentially like, you know, I live with other adults because I don’t think I would do very well living alone, or even just with a partner, right? And I’m not romantically involved with my roommate, so, you know, we’re not like a polycule or something, but we are like a family, right?
And that’s how we have to do it. And I think that it makes my life so much better and so much easier. And when I’m working with clients who live alone, I always tell them living alone with ADHD is like playing ADHD on boss mode, like the hardest mode because you have nobody else to like hit your wagon to in terms of like routine or structure or body doubling.
When you have lots of people around, it is just so much easier, but it kind of also requires, you know, maybe stepping away from what looks normal. And poly people, and often queer people, are doing that anyway. And we can learn so much about how to just kind of like, let go of that internalized idea that things like, are supposed to or should look a certain way.
[00:16:23] Ash: Big thing I want to bring into this conversation, and this is kind of building on what you’re saying, particularly about your family structure and what support looks like for you, is the ideas of chosen family and mutual support. Again, queerness is often a forcing mechanism for these things. I don’t have a relationship with most of my family of origin, so my friends, my chosen family, are massively important to me, and I would not be making it without mutual support.And what do I mean by mutual support? Well, let me give you an example. I had a whole ass meltdown a couple of months ago about the state of my backyard, because this was like three years worth of weeds. So we’re not talking just go pull the weeds. We’re talking chainsaws were needed to cut down trees that were growing in my garden.
And I’m not much of a gardener anyway. And so every time I would look out there, or even walk out there with my gardening stuff with the intention of trying to make a dent in it, it was just so overwhelming because I lacked the skills and knowledge. I didn’t have the right tools, and it was a really big job.
And so a few of my friends came over and we spent a Saturday morning weeding my gardens and made massive progress. And the friend that’s handy brought his chainsaw, he dealt with all the trees, he cut up all the big stuff. That’s what I mean by mutual support. And it’s something that for whatever reason in like normative society, people are so afraid to ask for.
But I think it’s something that we need as neurodivergent, not even queer neurodivergents. I think it’s something that we absolutely need as neurodivergents. And the other thing that queerness has really taught me, and Cam and I have been talking about how important community is for people with ADHD since the inception of this show, being able to talk to other people who understand, who have that same lived experience.
Again, queerness is a bit of a forcing mechanism here. I can’t talk to cis people about what it’s like to be trans. There are certain things that I am 100 percent going to pick up the phone or send a text message to a transgender friend because they are the only people who can relate to and understand what it is that I’m going through, who can offer relevant advice in this situation, whatever.
That’s just something that a cis person can’t do for me. And so, listeners, the same is true for ADHD, right? There’s just something really powerful sometimes just in knowing that you’re not alone in this lived experience.
[00:19:14] Dusty: Yeah absolutely. I second everything that you said. And so often when I’m doing consultations about group coaching, I’ll always tell people like, okay, nobody ever comes to group coaching cause they’re like, Oh my God, can’t wait to be in a group with other people. But one of the things that every single person leaves group coaching with is just saying like, Oh my God, it was like so validating to be in a room full of other adults, and I say something and like, everybody’s not like, that was huge, right?Like it’s really healing and really important to be in community. And yeah, I talk to my clients about this all the time and like, if you have ADHD, I just think that trying to do it on your own Is like trying to push a ball up a hill. And I get it, right, like, you know, again, going back to this idea of acceptance and identity, I think most of us have just totally, like, got all this internalized shame about doing everything wrong and being behind and being so embarrassed about how things are for you. You know, whether it’s in your house, your backyard, your finances, how you feed yourself, like, whatever.
There’s some hidden, messy shame somewhere, and like, you don’t want to ask for help about it because you feel like you shouldn’t be struggling with it in the first place. And so we have this culture which comes to us from like the neurotypical framework, like this culture of like, if you’re a grown up, you should be totally like independent. You’re supposed to sort of just take care of all your business alone and not need any help.
And it’s always weird to me, because sometimes I find that like my neurodivergent friends, if I ever offer them help and they’re struggling, they’re usually quite grateful. And I’ve had people kind of like push me away and be like, Oh no, no, like I’ll take care of it on my own. And like, that will largely usually be my neurotypical friends. And I’m like dude, just let me help you, like it’s not weird. But they’ve got some weird like chip on their shoulder about it, like no, like oh, I don’t want to bother you, like this isn’t your problem. It’s like, I know, but I’m offering.
And I really just think yeah neurodivergent adults, you need to be willing and able to ask for help. You need to be interdependent with other people. But they have to be the kind of people who are in the same situation as you, which is where the idea of community comes in, because you’re going to need to give and receive freely. Right?
I had a friend a while back who’s struggling a little bit with some mental health stuff and like working on some life skill stuff. And they were struggling with like, maintaining their space. And they’d like had some friends come over and you know, help them clean. And then you know, I helped them clean, and they were saying, like, oh, my other friends, you know, they kind of gave me a hard time when I still needed more help in the future. You know, they kind of like, well, we already came and did this for you one time. It’s like, okay, but that didn’t fix the problem.
And so there was just kind of this fundamental lack of understanding that, like, okay, this is not like a one and done thing. And it’s also not like an insult to that person that like, well, I’ve already come and helped you with this once. And the fact that it’s not better is somehow like an affront to me, right.
I think, as you say, Ash, like, neurodivergent adults need support, and you have to get that support from your community, because you need people who understand what you are going through.
[00:22:14] Ash: Whether it be ADHD or queerness, what we’re dealing with is the fact that we exist outside of what society considers normal. Normalcy does not work for us. It just doesn’t. [00:22:31] Dusty: You hit the nail on the head, Ash. And so like this idea of flexible frameworks, like, what do we mean when we say flexible frameworks? It’s the idea that like, okay, I’m here, I want to get there. The way that I’ve been trying to do it isn’t working. So what else can I do? Right?And then being willing. There’s, I mean, cause there’s always so many possibilities. There’s always so many options, right? You get into wonder, you get into curiosity, but your ability to actually do what works hinges on self acceptance of your identity. It hinges on willingness to like try something in a new way and to be comfortable doing something in a way that’s different than how other people do it.
That’s a flexible framework, right? And it can be as simple as, you know, I think I had talked about this client in a previous episode, but this client who didn’t want to put up post-it notes for themselves, right? Because they were like, well, I should be able to, right? Even if all we’re talking about is your willingness to put up post-it notes in your own space. Or, you know, heaven forbid where someone else might see them, you know. Doing what works so that you can get where you’re trying to go.
I think that’s really the heart of a flexible framework. And I think we, people in the queer community, are just living that like already, right? And so there’s a lot that we can learn from the queer community and from, I think, like a queer framework. Which to me essentially translates to like, how do we get where we’re trying to go and like be happy with ourselves and accept ourselves and do what works, versus like internalizing shame and like being mad at ourselves, you know,
[00:23:58] Ash: Exactly right, Dusty. We are doing that already, and that’s kind of back to that forcing mechanism, right? We’re doing it already because we have to do it. But we’re also doing it already because what queer community does really well is it provides a lot of positive models for different ways of doing things.When your romantic relationships, your family relationships, your way of being or existing in the world are outside of the norm. Right? What is dating and sex look like for me as a transgender guy? That was a big fat question I had when I found myself single last year because I certainly did not know. Because the rulebook for the normal, the typical rulebook for dating, relationships, and sex just simply does not apply to me in any way, shape, or form.
So, listeners, I think the moral of the story here is we’re kind of encouraging you to think of your ADHD much like queerness. It’s neither good or bad, it just is. It’s a part of your identity, bringing it back to identities from last week.
I think ADHD is absolutely an identity. It’s one that you cannot separate from the rest of yourself. And so, this is really about acceptance, and be getting curious about just how flexible can you get, right? Because when you throw the rule book out, the possibilities suddenly become pretty endless in terms of creating a life that fits.
[00:25:34] Dusty: I love that. And kind of coming back to that story I was telling earlier about, you know, how I sort of have realized that I have this quite maybe like non-normative lifestyle, and it just, it’s always been a sticking point with my like cis male partners. And I realized like, why do I keep trying to figure out a way to fit these people into my life? Because I like my life the way it is, and people can either accept it or not.And so I have a wonderful partner now who’s like just so supportive and so open minded about what our future is going to look like that, you know, and he embraces it and it’s working really well. But I’ve had this experience where people walk in my house and sometimes they get overwhelmed because we’ve got three dogs, a cat, two birds, there’s a very ADHD like child under the age of six, and then there’s me and two other roommates. And it’s a big messy house, got a lot of, a lot of stuff going on.
I’ve had people walk in and be like, whoa. Your house is so overwhelming. Oh my God, like I can just see it on their faces sometimes. And then I had this friend walk in my house one time and she looked around and she said, oh my God, she said, I love your house so much. It’s so full of life. And I was like, yes, that’s it. It made me so happy because I’m like, that’s how I see my house. That’s how I see my life. It’s a big busy life. It’s full of sounds and plants and, you know, colors. And it’s so full of life that what that’s what I think.
I love my house. I don’t find it overwhelming at all. And it’s totally okay if other people find it that way and that wouldn’t work for them. But like that mindset shift because I always had a little bit of like, oh if someone comes in my house they might, I kind of have to apologize. Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I know like birds are chirping It’s crazy. But, like, this person was just like, oh my God, I love it. And I was like, yeah, dude, me too, right?
And the more people I bring into my life who also see it that way, the happier of a life that I’m having. Because really when you come down to it, there is no right or wrong way to live. There’s no right or wrong way to have a job. There’s no right or wrong way to keep your house. There’s no right or wrong way to do a relationship or parenting.
But if you have a bunch of people around you who are telling you that you’re doing it wrong, you’re going to feel like crap. If you have a bunch of people around you who are doing it the same way as you, or who think that the way that you’re doing it is really cool, the same thing is going to look so different from these different angles.
So you might as well just like find an angle to look at it from that is really positive because there’s definitely people out there in the community who are going to see you and your attributes as a positive and the way that you do things as a positive, and that can make all the difference.
[00:28:07] Ash: Really well said, Dusty. And I actually think that that is a great place for us to wrap for today. So listeners until next week, I’m Ash. [00:28:16] Dusty: And I’m Dusty. [00:28:17] Ash: And this was the Translating ADHD podcast. Thanks for listening.
