Stretch vs. Suffocation: Why ADHD Accommodations Aren’t Necessarily About Avoidance

Workplace accommodations for neurodiversity should not mean the complete avoidance of difficult tasks. Because neurodiversity exists on a spectrum, our support systems must be equally nuanced. I am writing this because, right now, online advice is split between genuine experts giving away their incredibly valuable insights for free, and bandwagon influencers who miss the critical subtleties entirely.

This article addresses some misconceptions about masking, the difference between a healthy stretch and toxic burnout, and a vital truth that is often completely ignored: for many neurodiverse minds, chronic workplace boredom can be far more destructive than healthy discomfort.

As a quick disclaimer: I am not an ND researcher. I am an organisational psychologist who happens to be neurodiverse. My current frustration is triggered by people who suggest that an ND person should never have to do anything that feels uncomfortable or difficult. I also feel very strongly that we need to be incredibly careful about what actually constitutes "masking" – a term that is bandied about by a few and often deeply misunderstood.

The Cost of Masking

Masking is serious. It is when you have to pretend to be something other than you are, all or most of the time. It is hideously uncomfortable for anyone stuck in the pattern and leads directly to burnout or breakdown.

These are just some of the things I have done repeatedly in roles that did not really suit me when trying to hide my natural thought patterns:

• Over-preparing: Spending an hour preparing for a five-minute conversation, running through every permutation. I am 50 – let us not think about how many months of my life have been lost in this way.

• Over-editing: Taking four attempts to write a simple, one-paragraph email so I do not look careless – ditto.

• Hyper-vigilance: Constantly scanning for signs that I have overstepped an invisible social mark.

• Ruminating: Chewing over a throwaway comment from months ago, trying over and over to reframe it so that I did not look like the idiot.

Looking smooth while that internal storm rages has dire consequences. It leads directly to anxiety, to physical issues, and to burnout. There is a heavy tax on masking because you are burning immense amounts of negative energy while trying to say, "nothing to see here."

Accommodations Do Not Mean Avoidance

But here is where you see daylight between those who understand neurodiversity and those who are just joining the online chatter. An ND-friendly workplace does not mean an employee never touches uncomfortable tasks.

"Accommodations" do not mean complete avoidance. They mean being aware of when someone is really digging deep, and supporting them to mitigate for their challenges in a healthy way so they can contribute meaningfully.

To illustrate, early in my career, I had to attend meetings alone with a crowd of incredibly senior, smart people. They were pretty unforgiving of errors. I had to prepare complicated, highly confidential multi-page booklets. I also had to make meaningful contributions – I could not just sit there like a lemon taking notes, but had to speak up.

Was this comfortable? No, it was painful. Even deciding what to say and how to say it as a conversation flowed quickly was torture. But it was not painful all the time. And the sense of accomplishment I felt after each of those meetings was more than compensation for the pain.

Here is what I learned from that discomfort:

1. Content matters much more than delivery: I really have to concentrate to maintain eye contact all the time – both in person and online. But if what I have to say has value, people do not notice that I have scanned all around the room like some batty (now older) lady.

2. I can stretch when it counts: I could gather and prepare a big document. It was stressful, involving a lot of uncomfortable checking and fixing, but I did it. I can do things that are really uncomfortable. Which of us does not need to be able to say the same?

3. It is stretch, not permanent tension: A three-monthly meeting that caused a sleepless night beforehand gave me the best sleep of my life the next night. Yes, I was spending more cognitive energy on these things than a neurotypical person, but the stretch was rewarded with an immense sense of achievement.

Had I been forced to do these types of tasks every week, it would have been toxic masking. But doing it once every three months was a healthy stretch. I grew, gained skills, and built resilience. It is the most valuable life lesson possible to know that you can be sorely tested and come through the other end, as long as you don't keep repeating the lesson.

"So if it was done so well, why did you leave?"

What did kill me off in that role was not the points where I had to really stretch. It was boredom from repetition that actually caused me to burn out. This was not a boredom that appeared overnight, but over a period of years. There was no drama – I just put in my resignation and left, leaving a particularly prestigious organisation behind with nowhere to go.

So burnout from boredom was my reason for leaving that role, not burnout from being overstretched. I think that is an important distinction to make.

That said, I still say that they were absolutely ahead of their time, providing me with accommodations before the concept even properly existed. One of the last things I did before leaving McKinsey was to create the bones of a pan-European internal music festival. As a pretty junior member of staff, I sold the idea to the partners to get an initial chunk of funding, got someone external to run it, and suggested some of the key staff.

This year, it is running for the 20th year, and I will be there with my violin as a guest. A lowly member of "support staff" was allowed to make a proposal, show how it would work... and then step aside as soon as it had to be administered! It is no wonder that I am happy to return – they really did treat me well despite my less usual traits.

Building the Muscle

When you read online posts claiming that neurodiverse team members “cannot do” this or that, take it with a pinch of salt. That perspective diminishes people and limits how they can contribute.

No, you do not want me running your diary today – you would find yourself scheduled to visit three continents simultaneously, all on your spouse’s birthday. And if you ask me for meticulous attention to detail on a massive project, I will have to lean hard into AI and into my colleagues to pick up all the daft mistakes.

But I can do difficult things. I can do them because I was stretched earlier in my career. What I got from my repetitive job with points of high pressure was resilience. And who doesn't need a little resilience? We should all build resilience.

A Note for Employers

If an employee says, “I am neurodiverse,” do not assume you have half an employee. Do not instantly catalogue what they "cannot" do. Nor do you have to give them an endless succession of novelty – it is all about balance.

Definitely ask them what they find challenging, and ensure their manager learns quickly what tasks cause them ultra-high friction. But support them to do some of those hard things, some of the time.

Neurodiverse people experience a huge amount of satisfaction from overcoming a major challenge, just like anyone else. But if we do it well, do not assume we want to do much more of it – it may have taken every drop of fuel we had. Even more than this, however, definitely do not assume that a safe, predictable little job is going to protect someone with ND from burnout. It could well have the opposite outcome.

NB: If you want to just imagine what being ND is like, I have written this article and edited it a few times without managing to spell "accommodation" correctly once. We are by no means stupid or limited in our capability – what we are is wired differently. But given modern technology, does it really matter that I still cannot type "acommodation" correctly?