Shared, But Not Safe

Shared neurodivergent identities are often assumed to create shared understanding.

I am autistic and have ADHD. For much of my life, I was undiagnosed, moved frequently, and learned early that difference makes a person visible in ways that are not always kind. The bullying I experienced growing up was rarely loud or obvious. It lived in small, persistent signals that I did not belong, that I was too much or not enough, that I needed to adapt more than anyone else in the room. That history does not disappear with age, education, or self-knowledge. It accumulates.

In many ways, this is a better moment to be neurodivergent than the one I grew up in. Younger generations have language, visibility, and a growing cultural framework that treats neurodivergence as variation rather than failure. There is more openness now, more willingness to name differences without immediately pathologizing them. That progress matters. It has changed what is possible in classrooms and workplaces in real, tangible ways.

But that understanding is not evenly distributed.

Many adults who are now discovering their neurodivergence did not grow up with that language or that support. They learned to survive by masking, outperforming, or distancing themselves from vulnerability. Recognition often comes later in life, after patterns are already entrenched, and the label arrives without the unlearning that younger people are being taught alongside it.

What has been difficult to reconcile is that the bullying I am experiencing now comes from people my age who also identify as neurodivergent. People who understand difference intellectually, but who were never given the cultural tools to examine how harm can be reproduced quietly, especially in peer-to-peer relationships. Labels may be shared, but practices of care do not always follow.

Identity alone does not produce empathy. When that assumption fails, the impact can land more heavily — not because anyone is owed understanding, but because recognition feels possible and is then withheld. The harm is not louder in these moments, but it is sharper. It carries the weight of surprise.

Neurodivergence does not prevent people from causing harm. It does not stop anyone from aligning with social power, reproducing hierarchies, or defaulting to familiar patterns of exclusion. People can carry marginalized identities and still perpetuate harm, especially when survival strategies from earlier eras go unexamined.

Safety is not conferred by identity. It is practiced. It is learned. And in some cases, it must be relearned across generations. Shared labels are not the same thing as shared safety.