I think there is a secret about ADHD that took me a very long time to understand. The reasonable adjustments, the therapy the medication all about my ADHD isn’t working towards the goal of curing my ADHD.
And it certainly isn’t to become more neurotypical.
ADHD is a neurodevelopmental condition that can affect attention, organisation, impulse control, emotional regulation and everyday functioning, and those experiences can look very different from person to person.
But somewhere along the way, many of us absorb the idea that the answer is to fix ourselves.
Not always because someone has explicitly sat us down and said, “There is something wrong with you.”
Sometimes it’s much quieter than that.
Be more organised. Be less forgetful. Stop procrastinating. Just try harder.
“If you’d only apply yourself.” Stop being so dramatic. Stop being so sensitive. Why can’t you just… “It’s not that hard to remember.” And generally become the sort of person who owns matching Tupperware lids.
Honestly, good luck with that last one.
Because after enough of those messages, it’s very easy to start believing that the problem isn’t the difficulty I’m experiencing. The problem is me.
And I think that’s the space where these ideas can start to become really painful.
Because if I spend my whole life trying to correct myself into something that looks more acceptable, I can become very good at hiding the things I struggle with without necessarily understanding why I’m struggling with them in the first place.
I can become very good at coping.
Very good at masking and an expert in pleasing other.
Very good at pushing through and ignoring myself.
Very good at looking like I’m managing it all!
And absolutely shattered.
What instead of trying to fix I can just give myself the permission to start to really understand myself?
To become curious about how my particular brain works. Where I struggle. Where I thrive. What drains me. What supports me. What my lived experience has taught me about myself and the world. What I have learned to do because I needed to survive. And perhaps, just as importantly, what those adaptations are now making harder for me.
Because managing ADHD isn’t about pretending it doesn’t exist, wishing it away, or blaming it as the root of all my problems.
It isn’t about finally becoming the person who can remember everything, organise everything, regulate everything and effortlessly keep seventeen areas of their life running at the same time.
And it doesn’t mean that once you understand your ADHD, everything suddenly becomes easy.
It doesn’t.
ADHD can be exhausting.
It can make seemingly simple things feel disproportionately difficult.
It can and does affect work, relationships, family life, education, finances, home life and the way we understand ourselves.
Understanding myself doesn’t make those difficulties disappear.
But it can change the relationship I have with them, the way I see them, and the way I treat myself when I consider them.
I can start recognising:
“This is something I struggle with.”
Rather than:
“I am a person who can’t do things.”
There is a difference.
A pretty significant one.
I can acknowledge that something isn’t working for me without immediately turning that into evidence that I’m lazy, incapable, selfish, unreliable or somehow failing at being an adult.
I can start asking what actually works for me.
Not what should work.
Not what works for everyone else.
Not what would make me look more organised from the outside.
What actually works for me.
And I think that’s an important part of moving away from the idea that we need to become more neurotypical.
Because my worth isn’t determined by how closely I can perform neurotypicality.
I don’t need to spend my entire life fighting my own brain just to prove that I am capable of functioning in a particular way.
I can find ways of working with myself rather than constantly fighting against myself.
That doesn’t mean giving myself a free pass.
It means understanding the difference between accountability and punishment.
It means I can take responsibility for my life without making myself the enemy. It can give me to space to start practicing self compassion, bring up my self worth, and feel good about myself.
And honestly, I think many of us with ADHD have spent quite enough time being our own fucking enemy.
So maybe the secret isn’t:
How do I fix my ADHD?
Maybe it’s:
How do I understand the person who has been trying so hard to manage it?
Because perhaps, just throwing it out there, there is nothing inherently wrong with you that needs to be fixed.
Perhaps there is a brain that works differently, a lifetime of experiences wrapped around that brain, and a whole lot of things you’ve learned along the way about what you apparently should be.
And maybe it’s time to get curious about all of that.
Not to become someone else or something else.
Just to understand.
And perhaps give yourself a little less shit along the way.