About three things you need to know

Yes, I'm talking about the thing again

As I make sense of my recent ADHD diagnosis, I find myself explaining it to people a lot. At the office, in the context of how I feel about a particular task, environment, or working pattern. At home, to my husband, who has to rewrite his understanding of me just as I have to re-calibrate my idea of myself.

In doing so I find there are some things I’d really like people—especially people without ADHD—to know.

1. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder isn’t what it sounds like

I haven’t got an attention deficit. In fact, I pay attention to a great many more things than the average person.

My problem is being able to direct that attention to the thing that the world would like me to consider the most important and interesting thing. My brain often disagrees. And, dopamine receptors starved and screaming, I am ill-equipped to overrule it.

Hyperactivity can also be a tricky symptom. Not least because for those of us whose ADHD is classified largely as ‘inattention’ (ahem), almost none of our hyperactivity is visible. You might see my leg twitching or get kicked a few times under the table (when we worked together, my friend Andrew and I could not sit opposite each other because neither of us could be trusted not to kneecap the other). But for the most part I’m not terribly physically active—something of a couch potato, actually.

My brain, though, you could think of as a loud, furious symphony. Or a velodrome with one too many competitors. The hyperactivity is largely internal and, guess what, makes it seem like I’m not paying attention. I am. Just… possibly not to you in that moment. But I can give you quite a lot of detail about the conversation happening next to you and the music playing in the background.

2. Those symptoms often aren’t the most debilitating ones

Getting easily distracted and having racing thoughts can be issues, don’t get me wrong. But for me the really disabling, distressing symptoms of ADHD aren’t those problems, but the lifetime of brain conditioning that results from those problems.

When you’ve watched people around you do the apparently simple things you can’t seem to be able to do, you develop a narrative about yourself. I’ve been relatively lucky that I’ve been able to mask and cover a lot, so I didn’t get too much external feedback about being lazy or boring or difficult or disappointing. But, you know, I live in the world. I hear what people say about people who, like me, might get stuck on the sofa in a scrolling loop for… let’s say ‘a long time’.

Also, my impulsivity? Well, while I’m not great at saving I’ve always managed to keep financially on the right side of things. Instead I channelled it into food. While also being unable to keep up any sort of exercise momentum. And managing a thyroid condition. In short: I have a large body. I know what people say about that, too.

What makes life difficult every day isn’t so much the putting off a task until the deadline is screaming at me and then hyperfocusing until it’s finished. It’s the long-internalised message that doing that is bad and wrong and no way for a proper person to live.

3. The emotional dysregulation is real and exhausting

Everything hurts. Everything. Everything hurts so much more than it “should”. Last time a friendship ended, it took me a year to fully get over it, and looking back I’m not even sure I even really liked that person all that much. But I am very addicted to being liked.

The anxiety I get from an unanswered message is completely and utterly disproportionate to how much the message (or person) matters to me and if they even really needed to reply.

And then there’s the rage. Like Bruce Banner, I’m basically always angry. Mostly it’s simmering away and not really bothering me or anyone else. But that can turn on a dime. And though I’ve learned over the years how to manage that so it largely blows up in my own face, it’s a horrifying, guilt-inducing thing to know you’re a time bomb around the people you love. No, I’ve never done anything terrible or violent—beyond shouting—and I don’t believe I ever will. But boy have I had a meltdown or 300.

Side note: I had my first RSD meltdown on Ash about a week into officially dating, when I wanted him to stay over and he didn’t feel like it. He gently told me he didn’t really think whatever was bothering me was about him (he was right; it was my rejection sensitivity and a hangover from my previous, disastrous relationship with an avoidant from hell). He said we’d deal with it when I felt better. Reader, I would marry him again.

And then there’s the joy. The absolute fucking euphoria of being so! very! excited! because your dopamine is topped up and you’re firing on all cylinders. This is literally the best feeling in the world, and you can’t even be brought down by remembering that the dive at the end is going to feel like jumping into a paddling pool from the top floor of a tower block. Also the people around you seem to think your excited reactions are a bit outsize and uncool and too much. And that feels like a rejection.

You see where this is going.

ADHD is not all bad. I like that it makes me fizzy and interesting. And though the many, many, many times my chattiness has been a running joke over the years stings, I would rather be talkative than not, I think. But the bad things about it are not necessarily the things you associate it with. It is, in essence, a disorder named after the things that irritate and inconvenience neurotypical people, and not the things that truly make life difficult for people with ADHD.

So maybe if you are neurotypical and you know that, you can watch out for these signs in the people you love and, you know, not criticise them for it. Or make allowances without openly grumbling or uttering a long-suffering sigh. Or you could tell them you love and accept some of their weirdness. Yes, of course they need to work on functioning in the world. But the world’s not built for them—so yeah, you could cut them more slack. And you should.