This is such a great comic expressing how it can be for some with ADHD. I hope I don’t detract from it too much by adding my experience.
I was also a quiet little girl so I was labeled as irresponsible, careless, not living up to potential, spacey, etc. Nobody ever suggested I may have ADHD when I was little. When I was just shy of 14, I saw a psychiatrist for mental health issues and was diagnosed as ADHD inattentive type. Totally unexpected. They never really said anything to me about that diagnosis, but I was given adderall. Nobody ever explained to me or my parents why I was diagnosed, and what ADHD looked like for me. We always wondered if the diagnosis was even correct because I wasn’t hyper, loud, disruptive. My mom often pointed out that I could sit through family dinners just fine, and when I was younger I’d spend long periods of time playing with the same toys. I didn’t seem to have a lack of focus in that sense.
In our senior year of high school, one of my close friends got an ADHD diagnosis and started meds - and she had an experience just like this comic. She really grieved for her younger self. She wondered how different her life could have been if she had the help of medication before. She talked to me about how she had no idea she had been living life on hard mode until she had the meds. She said she felt ‘more like herself’ than she ever had. At the time, I thought this meant I likely had been misdiagnosed, because that wasn’t my experience with ADHD meds.
I had heart palpitations and felt anxious while on the meds. Some of my other diagnosis’ included anxiety and PTSD as it was, but the adderal seemed to exacerbate my anxiety and I didn’t really get why they thought I should be on ADHD meds anyway. I wasn’t disruptive, and my grades were okay. I didn’t see how adderal was helping me, but I did see how it was harming me. So, I quit taking it.
About a year ago I was struggling to get work done. I knew it was likely me being in a fog of grief (my dad died), but I was worried about my performance at work. I’m not usually one to struggle with being productive at work. So I went to my doctor to see about ADHD meds for the first time in about 15 years. She gave me adderal but said it may work better for me now as brain chemistry changes a lot between being a teen an adult. I tried it, and it hasn’t caused me anxiety, but after a few months I wasn’t all-consumed by grief anymore so my regular focus returned and I didn’t feel like I needed it to help me with work. So I didn’t see any point in continuing it, and had mostly stopped using it for the last several months.
This summer I started therapy. I didn’t really expect ADHD to be a big topic of discussion, but the last couple of months it’s been a big focus for me because I’m just now - some 15+ years after my original diagnosis, finally gaining an understanding of what ADHD actually looks like for me.
I’ve talked to my therapist about how I’m self employed, set my own deadlines, and keep myself accountable without trouble. I see lots of content on tiktok and other places that discuss ADHD where they talk about how difficult (nearly impossible) it is for people with ADHD to start a new project, or begin a household chore. Things like “I know I need to do laundry today, and I’ve been thinking about it and feeling guilty about it all day, but I cannot make myself get up and start the load.” Online this is usually what I hear people refer to when they say “executive dysfunction” so I thought I didn’t have executive dysfunction.
So again - I thought maybe I was just misdiagnosed? But my therapist has explained to me that ADHD is really a spectrum. It’s not a spectrum with just a few types, either - it’s not hyperactive adhd, inattentive adhd, and mixed type. It’s a much more complex spectrum.
She’s talked to me about how diagnostic criteria for ADHD was largely based on boys and how ADHD often looks different in girls, women or AFAB people. I had come across some of that info online, so that wasn’t news to me. But it was news to me that the “I desperately want to do X, but my brain won’t let me” is more commonly seen in boys/men/AMAB people. So me not having that despite having an ADHD diagnosis isn’t weird.
She said the diagnosis is also largely based on people observing others with ADHD. So while it’s called attention defecit hyperactivity disorder, it’s common (or at least not uncommon) for people with ADHD to not feel like they lack focus. She said it’s now being understood that it’s more about being able to regulate your attention. She said she feels a better name would be attention regulating disorder! She said some with ADHD frequently experience hyperfocus, and this can make it hard for them to switch from focusing on one thing, to focusing on something new. To those observing us, this can look like we’re “spacing out” but in reality we’re hyperfocused on something, so we struggle to switch our focus to something new.
My main point is, I’ve realized in the last couple of months that I 100%, without a doubt have ADHD. I just experience it differently than some others, but that’s normal because ADHD is a spectrum. I’ve also learned that ‘executive dysfunction’ is a ton of things, it’s not just being unable to make yourself do the laundry or something like that.
My ADHD symptoms look like this:
I struggle to regulate my focus, because I hyperfocus on things that are “weird” to hyperfocus on. It’s common to hyperfocus on things like an exciting scene in a movie, or a video game. We’ve all experienced saying “hey” or “dinners ready” to a kid playing a video game and had them reply “huh?” even though you spoke clearly and at a reasonable volume. They just didn’t comprehend what you said because they were hyperfocused on their game. I do that if I’m just…doing the dishes and thinking about work. I’ll be so deeply invested in my thoughts that I can’t hear you unless you give me a minute to shift my focus. This also overlaps with audio processing trouble, and sensory processing is part of ADHD, too.
Another way that I struggle to regulate my focus is bouncing between tasks. People without ADHD can cook something that needs stirred every 2-3 minutes, and text their friend between stirring and will effectively regulate their focus between those two tasks to keep stirring at 2-3 minute intervals. I can’t just jump back and forth between focusing on one or the other with ease, so i’m likely to either get too focused on cooking, or too focused on texting, and I’ll end up not stirring frequently enough, or I’ll be too focused on cooking and stir too often. This also can overlap with “time blindness”. You might think you’re stirring the pot every 2-3 minutes, but maybe it’s been 5+ minutes because you got too focused on your text message so 5 minutes felt like 2 minutes. So you may think you did a decent job of stirring at the right intervals, but you’re confused why it’s now sticking and burning, you don’t even realize you lose track of time, necessarily. It’s a type of executive dysfunction.
I’m not a linear thinker, and I can’t edit my thoughts very well while speaking. Maybe I’ll be trying to explain to someone how I’ve been struggling with migraines, and I’ll go to tell them about one particular migraine I had, and then my brain remembers something else that happened on the day that I had the migraine, and now I catch myself telling this person about what else happened on the day that I had a migraine, even though it’s totally irrelevant to my point. I didn’t really even want to share this excess detail with them…it’s just that it popped into my head, and took over my focus, so I had to follow it along, and now I have to say “Oh, sorry, anyway - “ and then jump back to what I actually wanted to talk about. My therapist has used the analogy that neurotypical people, when talking, are sort of driving a car. They can control the speed, and control where to turn. They can consciously decide what details to share and what not to share. Where for many with ADHD, they’re more like a train on a track. If their brains focus shifts to something, they can’t really choose to just change topics. This is why I get “side tracked” and add irrelevant information when talking. And writing, to some extent - though I do try to “trim the fat” some when writing. This is a form of executive dysfunction.
Rejection sensitive dysphoria. I had heard about this on TikTok and elsewhere too, but thought it was basically when someone immediately jumps to feeling rejected anytime someone disagrees with them, or similar. It can be that, but it can be a lot more subtle. It can basically look like social anxiety, and worrying that people will judge you - not necessarily that you think they’ll hate you or shun you. My therapist explained that how I sometimes have really strong reactions to worrying about being judged is also related to emotional regulation trouble. I knew emotional regulation difficulties were a symptom of ADHD, but I thought that meant people who get frustrated or angry easily and can’t calm themselves down. Yet again, it CAN be that, but it also can be having “big feelings” other than anger that aren’t proportionate to the situation. So if I screw up something I was cooking and sort of momentarily fall apart because I’m so upset about it? That’s an emotion regulation issue, and this is part of executive dysfunction, too.
Hyperactivity. I thought this was the hyper kid who can’t sit still in school, church, or even at dinner. It can be…but my therapist said boys are more likely to have hyperactivity that disrupts others. AFAB people tend to have “internal” hyperactivity. They twist their hair, change positions in their seat, fidget with their jewelry, chew their nails, bite the insides of their cheeks, etc. That’s me!
So, now I’m re-trying ADHD meds although I don’t feel that I really struggle with a lack of focus overall…I think I’m more prone to hyper-focus, but they can help with executive dysfunction, too - and many of these things I experience are forms of executive dysfunction. I never paid attention in the past to whether I was better able to switch between tasks or ‘cut the fat’ when talking, when medicated. I thought they were just supposed to give me more focus, so that’s all I was checking for when trying to figure out if they were working.
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