The Neurospicy Queer Experience: Insights Into the Lived Experiences & Counseling Needs of Transgender and Gender Expansive Adults with ADHD

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. © 2025 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.