The Neurospicy Queer Experience: Insights Into the Lived Experiences & Counseling Needs of Transgender and Gender Expansive Adults with ADHD
Abstract
Using interpretative phenomenological analysis and grounded in queer, critical feminist, and crip theory, this study explores how transgender and gender-expansive adults with ADHD symptoms, who describe their traits as neurospicy, navigate mental health care. Ten participants revealed masking as a survival strategy that fosters exhaustion, barriers posed by executive functioning challenges and provider ignorance, and the importance of affirming therapeutic spaces, self-advocacy, and peer support networks. Findings align with transgender identity development models. Results call for intersectional, neurodivergence-informed counseling practices that are flexible, knowledgeable, and collaborative to address structural and epistemological challenges faced by neurodivergent TGE individuals.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
LGBTQ Health
Identity
and Policy
Sexual Differentiation and Disorders
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Journal of LGBTQ Issues in Counseling
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Volume
- 20
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 5–24
- Publication date
- 2 January 2026
- Language
- EN