Why People With ADHD and Autism Get Blamed for Not Caring- August Gorman, Imi LoWhy People With ADHD and Autism Get Blamed for Not Caring- August Gorman, Imi Lo
Eggshell Transformations with Imi Lo
Philosopher August Gorman and Imi Lo talk about how ADHD, autism and other neurodifferences are frequently misread as a lack of care or effort. Their conversation questions common social norms around blame and highlights gentler, more accurate ways to interpret behaviour.
1:11:20•25 Oct 2026
Why Minds That Work Differently Get Blamed for Not Caring
Episode Overview
- Common social norms often treat one style of attention and emotion regulation as the standard, leading to unfair blame of neurodivergent people.
- Conditions such as misophonia, aphantasia, autism and ADHD can change behaviour in ways that have nothing to do with how much someone cares.
- People with ADHD may require extra steps and scaffolding to do boring but important tasks, yet this hidden labour is usually invisible to others.
- Interpreting all behaviour through a single lens of "care" or "effort" can reinforce structural injustice, especially for traumatised and marginalised groups.
- Cultivating a "virtue of mildness"—pausing, staying curious and questioning our assumptions—can reduce unfair blame and improve everyday relationships.
“"It’s this person cannot do x automatically translated to this person does not care enough."”
What drives someone to seek a fairer way of understanding minds that work differently? This conversation between philosopher August Gorman and psychotherapist Imi Lo digs into why people with ADHD, autism and other neurodifferences so often get blamed for "not caring" when the real story is far more complex. You’ll hear August share their own experiences of misophonia, that intense sound sensitivity where certain noises trigger a fight-or-flight reaction long before there’s any chance to "choose" a response.
A simple moment of getting a name for it – and showing a news article to family – suddenly changed how others treated them. That shift, they note, raises a powerful question: why do we only take someone’s struggle seriously once it has an official label? The chat moves through vivid examples: aphantasia and not being able to picture a loved one’s face, autistic eye-contact expectations in job interviews, and Tourette’s tics that can include slurs.
Again and again, the pattern appears: "this person cannot do x" gets quickly translated into "this person does not care enough". August argues that these everyday interpretive habits carry real moral and political weight, shaping who is trusted, who is blamed, and who feels able to leave the house. ADHD comes up in depth, especially the "interest-based nervous system" where attention is pulled towards what’s most interesting rather than what’s most important.
The extra labour of scaffolding routines, managing lateness and creating a "decoy neurotypical self" is described with honesty and humour, without sugar-coating the exhaustion. Towards the end, trauma, structural injustice and the "virtue of mildness" take centre stage: can we pause before deciding what someone’s behaviour means, and ask whether we’re actually getting the story wrong?
If you’ve ever wondered whether you’re being unfairly judged – or might be judging others too quickly – this episode might just give you some new conceptual tools to think differently. How could your relationships change if you assumed "difference" before "defect"?
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