#adhd explained

[batri-jopa]

The boldest way ADHD has been explained:

Found on Instagram: rebuildtoday

One of the most persistent myths?

That individuals with ADHD simply “lack willpower” or “just need to try harder.”

But research tells a different story — a story rooted in brain function, not personal failure.

Clinical studies show that ADHD is linked to dysregulation in key neurotransmitter systems, particularly dopamine and norepinephrine (Arnsten, 2009).

These chemicals play crucial roles in:

- Motivation

- Focus

- Emotional regulation

- Reward processing

When a task is intrinsically stimulating (interesting, novel, or rewarding), the brain’s reward pathways light up — making it easier to engage.

However, when the task is boring, repetitive, or emotionally neutral, individuals with ADHD may struggle to activate the necessary attention networks, even when they want to.

Functional MRI scans have consistently found:

- Reduced activity in the prefrontal cortex, responsible for executive functions like planning, organizing, and impulse control (Bush et al., 2005).

- Delayed cortical maturation, especially in areas governing decision-making and attention (Shaw et al., 2007).

In simple terms:

The ADHD brain isn’t lazy or undisciplined — it’s wired to need stronger stimulation to maintain focus.

ADHD is not a deficit of knowing what to do — it’s a deficit of being able to do what you know, consistently (Barkley, 1997).

When we view ADHD through the lens of brain chemistry instead of willpower, everything changes:

- It’s not about trying harder. It’s about understanding differently.

- It’s about creating environments, supports, and strategies that align with how the ADHD brain is wired to succeed.

Because sometimes, the gap isn’t between intention and character — It’s between neurobiology and expectation.

This analysis is grounded in research from clinical psychology, neurodevelopmental studies, and psychiatry. We are a research media platform and do not provide clinical diagnosis or treatment advice.

🎥 - @msjherisouth

🎤 - Dr. Thomas E. Brown

[messymonologues]

adhd & lying: a (pretty long) breakdown

• this post was super big, so i included a “read more” link here. go ahead and continue to the post below! •

i was today years old when i finally realized why i lied so much as a kid. (before anyone judges this, pls let me preface by saying that 99.9% of the time, i only ever lied to my parents!!) i’m going to do my best here to shorten the long train of thoughts that came with this discovery… but basically, any time i lied to them, it was because the truth about that situation wasn’t valid or didn’t make sense to them- essentially i was always lying about things to my parents because for them, the truth wasn’t an acceptable answer.

— for more explanation on this, here’s a good personal example (in the form of a very long story): throughout my school years, from elementary to middle to high school, i’d always get in trouble for hiding my grades from my parents and lying about how i was doing in class/ if i did my homework. i’d be so ashamed of my executive dysfunction meltdowns that for most of my life growing up, i really did believe that i was just ‘being lazy’- because that’s what the whole world was telling me. it took me years to realize that normal people don’t have to sit through hours of crying and brain paralysis to complete simple tasks. but anyways, i’d lie left and right about school, saying stuff like “oh yeah i handed in that homework on time” when in reality the homework had been lost for a week after it was due,, or i’d say the teacher “forgot to put these grades in” when mom asked why i had so many missing assignments- the truth was that i hadn’t done them at all. but looking back, now i finally know why i felt the need to lie all the time- it was because when mom and dad asked me “why didn’t you do this simple thing?”, i couldn’t tell them the truth… because if i did, they’d never ever get it. if i answered them honestly and said “i didn’t do it because i forgot the assignment ever even existed”, or “i planned out a way too creative way to do the thing and then got too overwhelmed to finish”, or “i had every intention of doing the work, but the second i ran into something i couldn’t understand i froze for hours and couldn’t function enough to complete it”, or “i tried so hard to mentally push myself past executive dysfunction, but it didn’t work and i couldn’t get myself to start the thing even after trying so hard to start doing it that i made myself sick from crying”, or “i couldn’t figure out what things to prioritize and that task fell to the bottom of my list and i forgot to do it for an unreasonable amount of time”— these are all the real reasons behind why i didn’t do my work or didn’t hand in a paper or never started a project; all of which were due months before i got caught in the web of lies i’d woven to keep myself from the pain of knowing i was disappointing people (as well as the pain of “wasting all my potential”!!). it makes sense now why i lied so often & over such small things: because what parent would ever believe what the truth really was as being a real, valid reason to not do all these seemingly easy, manageable, everyday tasks? i love my mom and dad to death, but even my own kind and wonderful parents laugh at the idea of accepting these honest explanations as valid. all in all though? lying is actually extremely typical in adhd kids, as a.) lying about something to make it look good keeps us from feeling extreme pain when people are disappointed in us; and b.) our truths will never make sense to the real world, so when you’re an adhd kid who just wants to feel like things are okay, you lie so that it makes sense to people who just don’t get it.

• to wrap it up: this was very long, i’m so sorry!! still, i hope this helps somebody out there who might be blaming themselves- like i’ve done all my life- for being a liar and feeling pathetic for it.

NOTE: if you’re a parent and this lying situation is sounding pretty familiar, i’m no doctor, but i would really recommend doing some research on adhd to see if it might explain this + any other unusual behavior in the child/children you have who might seem like they’re always lying about small things. this post is something i’d always wished my parents knew or understood because as a kid, i felt so horrible with every lie i told them! we don’t lie for fun.

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[abcsofadhd]

The more I deal with my ADHD, the more I realize how a lot of the big issues are related. 

Below I’ve listed three difficulties caused by ADHD (1, 2 and 3) and issues that are caused by the difficulties (a to h). 

These are quite simplified for the sake of explanation but the information is all correct.  

(I’ve also linked my coping tips for the issues making it a kind of an ADHD masterpost, I guess).

1) ADHDers aren’t deficit in attention, but rather have a hard time controlling the subject of our attention. I call the tendency to get distracted ‘distractable energy’.

2) ADHD makes it hard for us to do thing cause the brain doesn’t find it worth it.

3) ADHD makes it hard for us to understand and deal with our emotions and also makes us hypersensitive.

a) Distractability: Issues 1 and 2. Unless things are interesting, they lose our interest and our attention easily drifts away.

b) “Driven by a motor”: Issue 1. Everyone’s brains get random impulses to do things but our minds can’t shift attention away from it so we act on them.

c) Full of energy: Issues 1 and 2. See (b). We don’t actually have more energy, rather its the ‘distractable energy’. Doing things is just just less boring than not doing things.

d) Hyperfixations/ hyperfocus: Issue 1. We can’t shift our attention away from these things.

e) Inattention: Issue 1 and 2. We have hard time keeping our attention on things that our brain doesn’t find interesting.

f) Fidgeting: Issue 1. See (c). Doing something physical uses up the ‘distractable energy’ and allows us to work on what we want to do.

g) RSD: Issue 3. Our tendency to misunderstand emotions and hypersensitivity makes us feel rejected when not and feel it harder.

h) Sleep: Issue 1. Our mind is easily distracted cause of the distractable energy so has hard time switching off.

[vibe-o-gator]

Ok so I thought of a really cool analogy for adhd today! Alright here it is:

With ADHD, every thought is a balloon. focusing on it more will cause it to inflate and take up more room in your head. However, not every balloon has a knot, so the moment you stop blowing into it the smaller it gets. Some people have balloons with a lot of knots, and some people's balloons don't have any at all. But they all have one thing in common; they don't get to choose which balloons get knots. They can do many things to help remember to refill their most important balloons, but things will inevitably fall through the cracks and some balloons will deflate. Alternatively one might blow so much air into one balloon desperate not to forget about it, that others deflate faster, or become squished to the side. There is almost no way to fill every balloon at once, but you don't have to. You just need to know yourself enough to figure out what works best to make up for your knotless balloons.

TLDR: With ADHD, every thought is a balloon. You can inflate them more and they take up more room in your head. But, not every balloon has a knot, so the moment you stop blowing into it, it gets smaller.

If you think it's flawed/missing peices please feel free to add on at your discretion!

[messymonologues]

adhd word of the day

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“executive dysfunction” (abrev. ED):

• a symptom of adhd that is used to describe a mental blockage in the specific area of the brain that controls everyday function and execution of neurologically-transmitted commands. this symptom presents itself in the form of a temporary psychological paralysis to the frontal lobe. ED is also defined as “short-circuiting” in the brain, specifically freezing the neurotransmitters that send out commands to your body to turn thoughts into actions. ED impairs the ability of the brain to easily execute the thought-to-action commands. this is thought to be a result of the dopamine deficiency inherent to adhd.

-> more facts: executive dysfunction can occur randomly and last for equally random periods of time; it is not a conscious decision & the area of the brain that could, theoretically, decide to “snap of out it” becomes partially paralyzed + unable to make executive commands (like decisions) at the time of the ED experience. while executive dysfunction externally looks like laziness, it is often described by adhd-ers as a constant and conscious mental war to find enough dopamine to get our executive command center unstuck. ED impairs various areas of life by turning everyday functions into large mental blockages that have no quick fix. while this is arguably the most difficult symptom of adhd to deal with, studies have found that it can be made somewhat more manageable by increasing intake of magnesium as well as omega-3 fatty acids to stimulate brain function.

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this post will be linked on the “word search” navigation page <3

[messymonologues]

adhd word of the day:

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neurodivergent (adj.):

• definition: an adjective that describes any individual with any sort of mental, emotional, or neurological condition. this means that while adhd falls under the neurodivergent category, it is not the only disorder to fit the bill: others include autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, bpd (borderline personality disorder), any diagnosable types of anxiety, and clinical depression, amongst many various others. to break the word down, “neurodivergent” means, in its most basic sense, “different brain”— in essence, it is used to describe anyone who is wired differently than their neurotypical (a word for anyone non-mentally afflicted or neurologically impaired) peers.

• more facts: this term cropped up fairly recently in an internet movement to help people with neurological differences move away from all the stigmas and stereotypes that have always weighed them down, in an effort to raise awareness as well as to spread compassion for these neurodivergent individuals.

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this post will be linked in the “word search” navigation page!!

[messymonologues]

adhd word of the day:

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dopamine: (neuro-chemical)

• definition: a chemical naturally produced in the brain that acts as a type of neurotransmitter (aka it sends messages from the brain to the nervous system) and the molecule responsible for what is referred to as the “neurological reward system”. dopamine influences our ability to focus, plan, and find things interesting, as well as stimulating the brain’s motivation to execute tasks due to the neurochemical concept of being rewarded in some way for completing goals. other aspects of brain function that are heavily linked to accessing dopamine include: learning capability, sleep habits, mood regulation, attention, and impulse control. in relation to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, dopamine deficiency is clinically observed as being the largest underlying root of adhd- medical studies conducted over the last 20 years have consistently verified a natural lack of dopamine in over 99.9% of all individuals diagnosed with adhd.

-> more facts: without a readily available source of dopamine, the brain cannot easily develop its regulatory neurological pathways in the typical, natural developmental processes (as compared to the patterns of brain development seen in those who do have sufficient dopamine levels). this dopamine deficiency in adhd is thought to play a significant role in the biggest symptoms of the disorder, including mood regulation problems, executive function failures, and hyperactivity, as well as the impulsivity displayed most often in hyperactive-type adhd (simply because impulsivity as a symptom is observed less in other types of adhd). so just to make a long story short: adhd is widely believed to be the result of a deficiency in the brain structure that reduces the amount of dopamine the body’s nervous system is able to readily transmit.

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this post will be linked in the “word search” navigation page!!

[telomeke]

Replying to @wellthendamn here's a clean version of the analogy for those of you with strict parents 😪 thank @ughh for the suggestion! #adhdtiktok #adhdexperience #adhdexplained #neurodivergent

TikTok explanation for ADHD (clean version) – monkey driving a car with tinted windows