Yeah. The same goes for the friend, as for OP: Masking and how automatic it becomes makes it hard to really approximate how bad anyone has it. Add to that the fact that OP almost definitely doesn’t see the friend 24/7, but only on social occasions, which would usually mean they haven’t seen much else other than the mask. So of course they’d think they don’t have it as bad as them, because we can only ever live inside our own skin.

I feel like gatekeeping like this is a net negative. I don’t even know why one would care about how others have it. It sure feels like OP has an unhealthy need to be the worst off, and while the reason for that is very likely completely understandable and human, it’s still harmful behavior and an unproductive mindset to have. For everyone involved, OP too.

However, there’s one thing there that is just annoying. The “everyone has adhd” line just serves to undermine adhd and its effects on any individual, it makes it seem like nothing. Which is also not the case, and actively harmful to the treatment and management of it.

I think a lot of the attributes relevant to adhd are a scale, and we all have them in varying amounts, but the same goes for the amount of tumors in our body and the microbiome in our gut. The fact that it is a scale does not take away the fact that some people are, necessarily, if we agree it’s a scale and not a binary, at the higher end of that scale and will have problems living with that. And that’s I think what’s the most important part: whether or not it negatively affects one’s life. Especially day-to-day life. There are benign tumors in everyone’s body pretty much. But for some, the tumors are either of a dangerous type or too big, or there are too many of them… we respect that and don’t go saying “well everyone has them” when someone has cancer. The same should go for adhd I think. So in that aspect I do get OP’s frustration.

However, I wouldn’t go ahead and gatekeep “true” adhd from them just because they happen to have a bad take on this specific thing.