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🎙️ Episode 33: AuDHD Experience — Disclosure and Self-Advocacy

"Disclose where it serves you, and only where you feel safe doing so. People are not entitled to our information."

Summary:
Should I tell people I'm neurodivergent, and how do I advocate for what I need? This week Aaron reframes disclosure as something almost everyone gets wrong: it isn't a one-off announcement but a repeated, context-specific process that happens across settings and across a lifetime. Borrowing the queer community's language of "inviting people in," he explains why partial disclosure is the norm, not a failure, and why the decision always comes down to a personal cost-benefit analysis grounded in safety.

Aaron walks through what the research tells us. In a UK study of 238 autistic adults, around 55% disclosed to some people, about a third disclosed to everyone, and roughly 10% told no one, with close to half of employees only disclosing after starting a job and outcomes split between positive and negative experiences. He contrasts this with the only experience-sampling study of disclosure as it happens, where about two-thirds of opportunities led to some disclosure and three-quarters of those were experienced positively, and he lingers on one participant's line: "I don't have the spoons to disclose and self-advocate in this context right now."

From there, Aaron turns to accommodations. In Australia you don't have to name a diagnosis to a workplace; you can describe your difficulties and ask for reasonable adjustments, and employers have both a legal and a moral obligation to provide them where they don't cause undue hardship. Speaking as both a clinician and a small-practice owner, he explains what an employer needs to know to act, acknowledges that accommodations are often only partially met or not met at all, and closes with a practical self-reflection framework: identify the environment, the differences that matter in it, their impact, the accommodation that would help, and whether seeking it is worth the cost. That list tells you where disclosure actually serves you.

Key Themes & Takeaways:

• Disclosure is a process, not an event – we invite people in repeatedly, to new supervisors, HR, teachers, colleagues and friends, across settings and across our lives
• Partial disclosure is normal – telling some people and not others isn't doing it badly; it's the most common pattern and reflects safety, not commitment
• Cost-benefit analysis sits at the centre – weigh the energy and anxiety of disclosing, and the risk of prejudice, against the accommodations and expectation management it could unlock
• Spoons matter – capacity to disclose and self-advocate fluctuates day to day with everything else going on in your life, and it's okay to say not today
• You don't have to name the diagnosis – in Australian workplaces you can describe difficulties and propose solutions without disclosing a health condition
• Accommodations are a structural good – for employers, adjustments aren't an inconvenience but the way to keep goal-aligned people who feel safe, included and respected
• If nothing improved, it isn't you – partially met, unmet, delayed and self-funded accommodations are a documented pattern in the research, not a personal failing
• The AuDHD research gap – almost all disclosure research lumps neurodivergent people together; ADHD is thin and AuDHD is near-absent, so prospective PhD students take note
• Know your needs before you disclose – mapping environment, differences, impact, accommodation and worth-it-ness tells you where disclosure is actually in your interest

Referenced Concepts:

• Romualdez et al. (2021), "People Might Understand Me Better": diagnostic disclosure experiences of 238 autistic adults in