A note before we start: the people described in this essay are composites, drawn from patterns I’ve observed across many years and many individuals, not any single client. Details, names, and circumstances have been invented or altered to protect confidentiality while staying true to the underlying dynamic.
I’ve been in the room for this moment more times than I can count.
Someone brilliant, self-aware, often already deep into their autism or ADHD identification journey, is describing a conflict with a partner, a friend, a boss. They’ve told the story several times, in several sessions, in versions that shift slightly each time. Somewhere in the retelling, I feel a small, uncomfortable click of recognition. This isn’t just about being misunderstood anymore. This is about an inability to tolerate being anything other than the one who’s right.
This is delicate territory, and I’ve watched it get weaponized against the very people I’m trying to help. So let me say the thing plainly, right up front.
Neurodivergence does not cause narcissism. Chronic invalidation, unprocessed shame, and unmet developmental needs can produce narcissistic defenses in anyone. Neurodivergent people, who disproportionately experience exactly those conditions, are not exempt.
We talk endlessly, in this corner of the internet, about the ways neurodivergent people are misunderstood, dismissed, pathologized, punished for traits they can’t control. This conversation is necessary and long overdue. We talk much less about a harder question: what happens when being misunderstood becomes the central organizing story of the self?
That’s what this essay is about.
The Pipeline Nobody Wants to Chart
Here’s a pattern I’ve watched develop, across many people, in myself at earlier points in my life, and across the broader neurodivergent community online. I’m laying it out as a chain because each link makes the next one more likely if nothing interrupts it.
“I’m misunderstood” leads to “I’m different,” which leads to “I’m exceptional,” which leads to “I deserve special consideration,” which leads to “anyone who challenges me is invalidating me.”
Picture a composite I’ll call D., a man in his late thirties, who arrives in therapy after an ADHD diagnosis blows open a lifetime of self-loathing narratives.
Read more
