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Since my friends know that I have ADHD they send me all their friend’s friends and neighbors with their children who they believe “have something wrong” with them so that they can ask for pieces of advice.
I love it! I get to know many new people – amazing people – from all backgrounds … and I hear many stories about a subject I’m passionate about and for once people actually want to hear what I have to say. It’s a very interesting time for me.
The puzzle of life is coming together
It’s like all of life’s puzzle pieces are coming together in a way that I never expected. Things that I had perceived as failures have revealed themselves as the biggest gifts. Smallest things from years and years ago that I never paid attention to, now suddenly become important.
People leave my life, old people stay but change in my favor, new ones come. Expectations leave my life, new ones come – with a lot more compassion and understanding.
Awareness rises. Empathy rises … for myself!
I’m feeling my old me coming back. The easy, happy, energetic me that I had lost so long ago. I laugh for no reason and dance in the rain outside without thinking … and I don’t care anymore if others see me or not. The joy of life. Let me feel the wind! Leave me be!
I’m sad that it took so long. What a waste of life. And I’m sad for the children that I see going down the same road .. and others undiagnosed that still struggle …
Nobody knows what ADHD really is
A mother of a 10 year old girl called me. She told me her daughter has all the signs of ADHD the inattentive type and nobody would believe her. Neither the school, nor the psychologist. School said they see nothing. She is a sweet, calm well performing girl, adorable. So she can’t have it, she’s alright.
The psychologist read a couple of questions from a questionnaire. She sent me the copy. What I saw was an old questionnaire from the past century when it was still believed that ADHD is a little white boy bouncing off the wall – issue. All the questions were geared towards hyperactive child behaviour. With this paper every single inattentive type would still not get seen.
Research has advanced since then. Only around 10% of kids grow out of ADHD and girls can have it just like boys … just we show it differently. You see, hyperactivity doesn’t always just show in the body … but also in the mind. So .. we can all have it: boys, men, girls and women at any age.
You see, I thought I knew what ADHD is. After all, I’m a teacher and teacher trainer and I have worked with a lot of children with ADHD and autism … but wow did I not know! Leave alone that I ever thought I could have it myself! And how could I? Apparently there even are some psychologists that didn’t figure it out yet.
I can not even start telling you what I have heard from people regarding this.
You see ADHD is a complicated issue for several reasons. Research is nowhere near understanding what it is. There are plenty of new things to consider, new technologies such as brain scans changed a lot of the picture. So it’s still in plain research scientifically.
Even the official psychological handbooks don’t get it right yet. The little white boy theory isn’t working anymore, so now everything is being reworked and re-looked at .. and until then .. well, good luck to us.
So the professional trainings you get at school are … just that. You think that ADHD is this hyperactivity thingy, when the kids are bouncing off the walls and can’t sit still. You see the kids that are having a hard time focussing, you see that one that’s always impatient and can’t hold back to blurt out the answers.
You see that they are capable of driving you insane in your class, aren’t they? At least at times!
You take it personally – at least I have back then, because I thought they don’t like me or they don’t like my class … you think if only they would do some effort, just control themselves … like everyone? It’s a lack of self discipline, because in the end .. we all don’t want to sit for 8 hours at a desk and we all wish we could just doodle and daydream and we all just wish we could talk over each other to make ourselves heard. But we don’t. It’s a character flaw, right?
I can guarantee you though, not only do we not do it on purpose, but also … the hyperactivity … is not even the problem. The ability to focus is not even the problem, the impulse is not even the problem.
This is not ADHD!
They are componants of ADHD that yes, do cause us issues and sometimes bad ones.
But when I ask ADHDers what the worst problems are with ADHD, they are these:
– inconsistency
-executive functioning and
– emotional control
among others
And now here is the kicker .. none of those are listed in the current DSM5 psychological manual. They are working in it currently, so by the year 2026 we will see what they came up with – maybe.
So you got the wrong image! Nobody really knows what it really is, where it comes from .. they all have ideas and everyone has their theories but truth is things are still being tested. The only things they can see for sure for now is that our brain works differently and that it seems to have a lot to do with genes – meaning it’s biological, not a character flaw.
So, maybe you will wonder … why don’t you ADHD people not just tell everyone what’s going on in your mind, what you struggle with … that’s a valid question.
I can’t even tell you about myself – no frame of reference
I noticed that I simply can not communicate it. And I think most of us can’t for this simple reason … we have no frame of reference as to what the other 90% of the population is doing, feeling, seeing, experiencing.
Like I was mindblown to learn that you could not know that you have dyslexia at the age of 48.
For me, I thought, well isn’t it clear when you mix letters or they start dancing in front of your eyes … but … how can you know it’s not normal that letters aren’t dancing? For you, this is how everyone reads. You didn’t live another life, so this is all you can refer to. You never saw with other people’s eyes.
It’s like the child that is squinting with their eyes because they can’t see well, but for them they think everyone sees like this and he doesn’t even realize that he is squinting. So he won’t be able to tell you .. hey, I need glasses – no frame of reference.
And especially if you have ADHD, at least one of your parents should have it too, which means you already didn’t grow up in a “normal” family, so what are referencing to?
It’s like the little girl that had one ear infection after another until she just stopped crying, because she believed well, this pain is normal. There has always been pain, but she learned to deal with it.
And that is what we do. We are in pain, but we think this is how it is and we learn to deal with it. And often with the unhealthiest of solutions.
We do know though that we are different, just we didn’t really figure out in what way, if that makes sense. So how do you want me to communicate that to the outside world?
So you tell me my physical hyperactivity is a problem … yes, most likely in your classroom but in life in general I’m doing quite alright, especially if I’m doing lots and lots of exercise.
So you tell me the problem is focussing, yes, but don’t we all .. and just wait for me to get into hyperfocus ….
The problem is not the focussing, the problem is that I alternate between focus and non focus and hyperfocus … and I can not foresee it. I can not wake up one day and tell myself “oh let’s hyperfocus today on xyz topic”
You think the problem is blurting out the answers because I’m impulsive … I can’t even begin to tell you what impulsivness really implicates …
I’m hearing and learning from other ADHDers on a daily basis of things they do or don’t do, what they think, how they feel .. and I am under shock, because not only did nobody ever tell me that this is what ADHD is, but also suddenly I recognize all those things I have been doing and beating myself up for them unconsciously … or recognizing things I had issues with that I didn’t even know I had issues with!
Let me give you an easy example … Most of us ADHDers don’t particularly like the “big light” … meaning the ceiling light, the thing that shines so bright in the room when you turn on the switch. A sensory thing that is. I never knew I had an issue with it, because I was actually never exposed to it other than in school.
In my parent’s household we had floor lights and if ceiling lights, they were warm yellow and you could dim them. The appartment where I lived had no ceiling lights, I had lots of floor lights though, but all with warm yellow colour. Just recently I moved into a new house and it has ceiling lights and that’s all it has … and it’s driving me insane. I can’t concentrate on anything with this sun in my face all the time, I get headaches, it makes me agitated, makes me want to run away really.
But before that, if you had asked me if i had an issue with ceiling lights, I would have confidently told you nope. Because I had no reference. And now imagine me in your classroom with the fluorescent light that is worse than any of the ceiling lights and me not being able to tell you that this sucks.
And this goes for every single area of our lives.
How do you know that something is interfering in your life – if it’s the only life you have ever lived? You rely on other people like parents and teachers for an evaluation of the situation. And what they are evaluating is not if it’s impeding YOUR life, they are evaluating if it’s impeding THEIRS or others around.
So you see the little hyperactive boys getting evaluated a lot sooner than the daydreaming little girl. Their symptoms affect everyone around them while the other one, not so much. Not disturbing anyone. Girls often just notice later when they grow up – if at all.
But there is not just the boys hyperactive and girls inattentive thing going on.
There is the hyperactive, the inattentive and the combined type. And what it looks like everyone can have everything. You could be a boy and have the inattentive type or the girl and be hyperactive. However most seem to have to the combined one.
So when we live our lives, being who we are and we constantly get comments from people around us on how we are overly sensitive, insecure, crazy, paranoid, dramatic, confused, absent minded, emotional, it’s not that bad, you don’t have ADHD – you’re alright, having boundaries you have set constantly ignored, being compared to everyone else and their puppy, people that provoke you on purpose, “you can do better”, and we can continue the list until tomorrow.
So this is the evaluation I get for myself from everyong around me. One day I paid attention to how many negative remarks I get about small things like how I was inattentive, emotional, didn’t do what I was supposed to do the exact way the other person wanted it but my own way … Within one hour I got 5 negative feedbacks and 0 positives. So I decided to not even continue the observation for the rest of the day.
And then you wonder why I stop speaking? And then you wonder why I stop going out to meet people but prefer staying alone at home or going to the coffee shop by myself? I prefer my own company. And then you wonder why I am weird?
On the other hand, how could YOU know? Because I can’t tell you. I’m trying to, but you don’t hear me. Not because you don’t want to – maybe. We are speaking 2 different languages.
I can tell you 500 times, I didn’t do it on purpose. I can tell you a million times I just forgot, it’s still important in my head, I can tell you sorry so many times. That may work 1,2,3 times, but after a few more, you will stop believing me that it’s not on purpose. You come up with your own explanations, rightly so, I guess. I don’t know. Because normal people who are like that are just inconsiderate and stupid and not caring. Whereas I am actually the completely contrary of it. I just can’t make you understand – because I don’t understand it myself. No frame of reference!
Then when you get your diagnosis and you learn how your brain actually functions … it is a life changer. Suddenly I can tell people, look I have ADHD, I do this because my brain works like abc, if I offended you in any way please know that is never on purpose.
Once I started speaking about it with people around me, they actually got curious and asked me how I am actually different. And those who cared about me, they listened and they tried to understand and they tried to accomomdate and come up with strategies that made things work.
You will always have that one that will tell you ADHD isn’t real. It’s in your head. Because to the outside we seem alright. Especially women. But we are not. And then to know that we have it is the greatest gift. We can finally stop beating ourselves up or giving importance to the evaluation of others around us. I can finally start to evaluate myself!
ADHD is NOT an excuse! It IS an explanation, however. And a good one! You can not deal with something you don’t know you have! So now you know you have it, let’s work it out. And it would be fantastic if you were one of those amazing friends of mine that were curious and open to listen instead of coming in with all their prejudices and just listening to answer. This is the biggest gift you can give to people like us at a stage like this.
Too long, didn’t want to read!
Getting an ADHD diagnosis and working through it = the puzzle of life is finally coming together
Archaic evaluation techniques, symptoms not mentioned in the DSM5 psychological handbook = you got the wrong idea about ADHD
Where research is at – it seems to be biological and who knows what else
We ADHDers can not tell you about what we are struggling with, because we simply have no frame of reference. We think what we do is how everyone perceives things – more or less.
We understand that we are different, we get told so all the time, but how exactly that looks like, we don’t know. We don’t do things on purpose!
We are depending on evaluation and validation from others outside instead of ourselves. But they never evaluate us if something impedes our lives, but rather theirs.
So the messages we get are that we are not enough or too much … that we are not alright. And we make it our own evaluation of ourselves = we come up with coping mechanisms that are not necessarily good ideas.
Until the day you learn how your brain actually works and you can evaluate yourself and are not depending on others anymore for this.
Inside an ADHD mind 
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