I’ve been diagnosed with Autism and ADHD for well over a year now. I’ve suspected that I was neurodivergent since the early to mid 2010s, yet it was only in the last few years I had been able to access adequate therapy and a diagnosis. Around my diagnosis, I had been let go from a work contract and have been job hunting. The process was difficult because I was figuring out if I were to be open or not about my diagnosis with new prospecting employers. I went ahead with the ‘half-in/half-out’ approach of informing hiring managers for job interviews that I required some accessibility accomodations but didn’t disclosed my neurodivergence or having a disability for that matter. 

However, I got into the Switch to Social Work program after about four to five months of job hunting and by then I’ve read ‘Unmasking Autism’ by Dr. Devon Price. His book mentioned a study of having an autistic person walk into a room of neurotypical people and see how they react. The study concluded that an autistic person would be judged negatively as soon as they walk in; it wasn’t at the fault of the autistic person but neurotypical figuring something is ‘off’ with the autistic person who entered the room. From then on I figured I am damned if I do and damned if I don’t, and I rather be damned for doing it. 

So I decided to be open about my identity from starting the course and then going into the internships. I justified that this is a space and time that I really need to be open about my learning style and I can’t do it without saying I’m autistic and have ADHD. So in the last few months, I had learned the following:

1. Prepare to be an educator:
   If you are going to be openly neurodivergent in the workplace, you are going to be singled out as a token of your community and a token of a minority. Part of that tokenism is being expected to be an educator about issues related to your marginalised community. I’ve witnessed this in a job I had a few years back when I and another youth worker got hired at the same time to the same team. He got hired because he was openly gay and the position to be the rainbow worker in our team was available. When we started, I approach him by starting some small talk around some well known youth LGBTIQA+ organisations and asking what he thought about them. As it turned out, he knew nothing about the organisations I had mentioned to him, and time proved he felt out of place and depth in doing the work of being a dual identity or lived experience worker. Understandably this isn’t all his fault, it can be argued that it is problematic to be expected to be an expert just because of you are owning or belonging to a marginalised identity. Yet I learned that expectation is still going to exist and it is a price to pay for being openly neurodivergent. So I took it on me that I needed to be up to scratch with current discourses from the autistic and ADHD communities while directing others in work and study environments to neurodivergent and neurodivergence advocates and experts to get a rounded and informed opinion about whatever they queried me about neurodivergence.
   
2. Being open doesn’t mean loosing all boundaries:
   While I maybe open about my identity, I’ve made it clear that there are still some aspects that I set boundaries around. As far as I am concerned, the goal of being open is to get the workplace accomodations I need and to provide an understanding of how my and other neurodivergent brains work in professional contexts. I also believe that there is merit in lived experience practice and it provides reassurance to many neurodivergent clients that I can understand their experiences on a level that many neurotypical practitioners cannot. But I try to keep the medical information about my diagnosis to a minimum and look up on lived experience practice frameworks on how to be an openly neurodivergent practitioner working with neurodivergent clients and other professionals to guide my ethical and professional conduct.
   
3. People are still going to be weird about it…but that’s on them:
   How people are going to react is on them and it’s more of a reflection of their own understanding and psyche. Most people have been quite receptive to my own honesty about my neurodivergence and are mature enough to value allowing me space for my earnestness and required accomodations because that gives them space for me to return favours that I pay out of my own strengths which are linked to my neurodivergence to begin with. If they otherwise continuously act in subtle forms of ableism, act insecure, or are weird about it, despite any effort on my own or others to set the record straight, then they give me the clear message that they are not worth my energy. 

So for me, being openly neurodivergent in a professional context has provided me more positives than negatives. But with that said, I understand why neurodivergent people would continue to mask in their workplaces or in study environments due to the stigma and ableism. My advice to other neurodivergent people is to do what you need to keep yourself emotionally, mentally, and physically safe as a first priority. The question of being open is not a decision to be taken lightly but if you do choose to become open, be prepared that you will be met with new learning curveballs that you will need to confront head on.