ADHDers Don't Disrupt to Break Society but to Make Room for Honesty & Authenticity

This evolutionary inheritance does not make us invincible, but it makes us unusually attuned to power and intention.

Image by Ryan McGuire from Pixabay

It’s Christmas, and most of us are with family or friends, bringing to the forefront the challenges many of us Hunters have in such situations.

For most of history, we Hunters survived because we could read a situation faster and more accurately than anyone else. We noticed danger before others sensed a thing. We caught the subtle shift in the wind, the flick of movement in the grass, the tension in a rival’s face, the emotional weather inside a tribe.

In the modern world those same traits are still present in people with ADHD, but instead of being recognized as gifts, they often make us outliers.

For years, for example, after we’d have social interactions, my wife, Louise, would let me know all the times I’d barged in rhetorically, said something that upset somebody (that I didn’t realize), or just generally socially blundered.

She did it in a loving, teaching way so I’ve learned, over these past 53 years of marriage, how to be more functional in social situations. Now, when we’re about to get together with people, she’ll just gently say, “Don’t forget to listen more,” or “Pay attention to what other people are saying,” or “Think before you say something out loud.”

Many neurodivergent people spend their lives wondering why they seem to unsettle others without trying. The truth is that Hunters don’t unsettle people because we’re difficult; we often unsettle people because we see clearly.

Danielle Brycey recently posted to Instagram a raw and insightful reflection on what it feels like to move through a world built on layers of pretense. Most people, she said, sustain their day to day lives by relying on three invisible tools.

They socially mask, they avoid uncomfortable emotions, and they follow unspoken rules.

These behaviors keep society predictable and safe for those who depend on a shared sense of comfortable illusion. But neurodivergent people often don’t use those tools in the same way. We don’t mask as easily. We find it much harder to avoid the emotional currents running under conversations.

We hear what is not said. We see the mismatch between words, tone, and body language. And we notice patterns that others desperately try to pretend are not there.

This isn’t a flaw in neurodivergent people: it’s a flaw in a culture that prefers compliance over clarity. Danielle explained that most people communicate by subtext, saying one thing and meaning another.

A Hunter hears the literal words, sees the contradiction in the body, and immediately senses that something is off. That simple awareness can make others uncomfortable because those unspoken rules only work when nobody questions them. Hunters question them without effort. We can’t help seeing the gap between the story and the truth. In a world that runs on pretending, noticing the truth can feel like breaking a social law.

Many people also rely on subtle dominance games to structure their relationships: tone, silence, guilt, vague disapproval, and the little manipulations that nudges someone back into line. Neurotypical social order depends heavily on these cues.

But they don’t always work on Hunters. We’re not impressed by status, threatened by a tone of voice, and automatically fall into place when someone expects deference.

We don’t intuitively buy into the same hierarchies because, at a deep evolutionary level, Hunters were meant to be scouts and leaders, not followers in a rigid line. This resistance, which we often don’t even notice in ourselves (as Louise still reminds me), can feel threatening to people who depend on those hierarchies to maintain their own sense of control.

Once you begin seeing patterns in behavior, you can’t unsee them. Hunters track emotional patterns as easily as we track movement in the bushes.

When someone mistreats us or makes a false assertion, we don’t shrug and say it was probably nothing: we connect the dots. We remember the tone from last week. We recall the contradiction from yesterday. We recognize the pressure in the room. We see the pattern long before the other person wants it spoken aloud.

And because most people spend their lives avoiding their own behavior, they react not with curiosity or gratitude but with defensiveness. They shrink us so they don’t have to face themselves.

This is why so many neurodivergent people grow up feeling hard to manipulate. It isn’t because we’re stubborn or rebellious (although that’s sometimes the case): it’s because we had to analyze every microshift in other people’s behavior just to survive.

Hunters developed survival by observing the smallest cues, always scanning, always noticing. This evolutionary inheritance does not make us invincible, but it makes us unusually attuned to power and intention.

Those who try to control others through vagueness, guilt, triangulation, or subtle bullying can’t get around our internal radar. Their annoyance isn’t personal: it’s instinctive. When a tactic fails, people often decide that the person who resisted must be a problem. So labels appear. “Overreacting. Too sensitive. Difficult. Dramatic.” These labels function to ease others away from accountability.

Truth telling becomes its own offense. Hunters speak plainly because our minds are built that way. We don’t embellish or soften truth to protect someone’s ego: we simply say what is happening as we see it. Not the cruel truth, just the real truth.

But in a world built on avoiding discomfort, real truth is threatening. It breaks the illusion that allows people to pretend everything is fine when it is not.

What many neurodivergent people eventually discover is that they’re disliked not because they’re unkind or chaotic but because they’re clarifying. Their presence exposes what others spend years learning to ignore. Their insight makes the invisible visible. Their inability to play along breaks the social spell that keeps everyone comfortable but stagnant.

Society punishes the mirror holder because the mirror is often way too accurate.

So what do we do with that knowledge?

The first step is to stop pathologizing the very traits that kept our ancestors alive. The second is to recognize that discomforting others is not the same as harming them. Sometimes clarity is the only real gift available.

Hunters aren’t evolved to prop up artificial hierarchies or unspoken delusions. Our nervous systems are tuned for truth, motion, risk, creativity, pattern recognition, and deep perception. These aren’t deficits: they’re evolutionary tools.

The price of those tools is that we sometimes reflect back truths people don’t want to face. But the reward is that we also perceive possibility, connection, and meaning where others see only routine.

We disrupt not to break society but to make room for honesty and authenticity. And that, I’d argue, is exactly what this moment in history needs.