I mean...ADHD or not, your life is generally in your own hands, both successes and failures are your "fault". The ADHD doesn't take the responsibility, it only adds context.
this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2026
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Yes and no. I knew a guy that was biking and had an accident. He lost his legs. He because an athlete, did sailing and climbed mountain and stuff. He still couldn't use a normal bike. Do you get what I mean? You can do self-help as much as you want but you can't ask a blind person to look at the sky.
Or more like you can ask, but you'll probably get a blank stare.
Sorry for the bad joke
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Context, which can be translated to useful keywords and traits to use for self discovery. Primarily for learning about the coping mechanisms that others have successfully deployed but also to ease the sort of negative thoughts in the last part of this post.
The worse part is when you get so good at coping that others don't see the work that goes in just to function in a society built to your disadvantage.
Ugh, I hate that! Thank you for putting that into words. It's always been this vague frustration that I could never quite explain to people.
Like, if all the hard work and progress I've made only goes so far as to rule out any sympathy or benefit of the doubt whenever my obstacles become insurmountable, then I guess I'll just fuck off and not even try anymore...
Yes! And then whenever an online community springs up centering around solidarity, peer support, or advocacy pertaining to the common mental disorder, the same crowd who complains about avocado toast and rotisserie chicken get up in arms about "labels" becoming a "trend."
Like, no it's not a fucking trend. Some people deal with these illnesses every fucking day, and it's totally okay for them to talk about it online with other people who understand the experience. Outsiders looking in just think they're conforming to what the internet says about the traits, but the reality is that some people have these traits and have to live with them every day.
Clusters of traits get identified by researchers and standardized in the DSM, and that gives people the language and toolkit they need to understand themselves and talk about it with others. It's descriptive rather than prescriptive.
These descriptions pop up online because that's what some people experience. People aren't retrofitting their experience just to conform to an internet trope, like some folks claim. But someone who hasn't experienced that or been close to someone who has will never understand that.
And unfortunately, some people who are close to someone with a mental disorder are still skeptical and dismissive of them. It's really frustrating, and damaging too, because it's essentially gaslighting someone who's already mentally ill by saying they're actually fine and just need to stop being annoying, suck it up and "just be normal." For fuck's sake!
The best part is how it can cause one to develop any of a number of co-morbid mental issues and then those people will see that and try and force the adhd person to cure what is essentially a symptom of the adhd they won't acknowledge.
As someone presumably older than you, I would urge people in that situation to separate from those people. The lonilness of your own mind is superior to their toxicity. Take the time to find yourself as you are without these people loading you up with self doubt.
Most adhd people find adhd, true adhd people make the easiest friends. Find those people, they will not doubt you. Any reject yours and their adhd would clearly be suffering from one of those co-morbids.
So much this! I was in therapy for depression. I had no idea that I had ADHD, just internalized the stuff about being lazy, not trying hard enough, etc. Then I eventually got a therapist who has ADHD. She started sprinkling in stories from her own life, and every time I was like "OMG, I relate so hard to that!" Eventually she was like, "Sooo have you considered...?"
I'm sometimes very glad my psych has ADHD but sometimes she forgets to fill my prescriptions so...
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Yeh people with ADHD could just educate their parents and teachers about how their brains work differently. And how do they not just diagnose themselves and get the meds to function in a society that is clearly not made for them to succeed. Total failure that’s entirely their fault.
Yeh people with ADHD could just educate their parents and teachers about how their brains work differently
getting my parent to believe [evil food] poisons me took almost a decade and they had explicit proof.
There are still people with (varying degrees of) ADHD that are both normally successful or wildly successful. They did this likely not despite their ADHD but because of it. They probably grew up in an environment that allowed them to find a positive outlet for themselves so they achieved behavioral patterns that utilized it to drive them forward instead of it getting in the way.
If they are wildly successful they were most likely born rich like the vast majority of wildly successful people. That would be the environment where they can succeed despite barriers. ADHD does not promote effort, the inability to stay focused and succeed is one of the criteria.
ADHD does let me think creatively about stuff because my mind races about all the possibilities and make uncommon connections, but that is because of all the coping mechanisms I have had to develop while working in a society that absolutely crushes people with the symptoms of ADHD. If autopay wasn't a thing I would be missing bills constantly for example, it is a work around for the tediously large number of things that society expects everyone to remember and manage.
ADHD is not a superpower. No one is wildly succeeding because of any level that cannot be discounted by survivor biases. Show me the hard numbers to back up what appears to be third hand anecdotal claim or with all kindly and due respect, go fuck youself.
ADHD adds obstacles and barriers, where 'failures' can be due to simple things like trouble memorizing people's names instantly when you first meet them because not meeting social expectations counts against you.
I have ADHD. All of my failings in life ARE my fault.
My symptoms may be the reason for a lot of the issues I have, but they aren’t an excuse. I can and have overcome all of them at some time given the right circumstances and/or medication. Sometimes I just don’t want to. Sometimes I chose to hyper focus on a video game for 6 hours instead of doing the chore that would take 10 minutes that I have been dreading for 2 days. Sometimes I like starting a new project instead of finishing an old one.
It’s just part of who I am.
This follows that basic rule of forgiving and accepting yourself. Nice .
I never thought about it like this. Kinda made me tear up a little. Thanks for that. 😄
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I’ve tried to live a large portion of my life like this.
Don’t.
I have a subset of this problem where I think I might be faking imposter syndrome so that people will think I actually know what I'm doing.
You managed to get impostor syndrome squared
double secret imposter syndrome.
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I will beat your fucking ass if you come at me like this again.
For me it's kind of the opposite. I have always been extremely hard on myself in every area of my life and to some extent I still am. But realizing that some of the difficulties I'm dealing with may be due to me having undiagnosed ADHD, is such a relief. It doesn't fix me. It doesn't really dance anything, but it gave me the ability to forgive myself for some of the things I'm not good at or fuck up.
Sometimes you do your best and it's not really good enough, but it was the best you could do and that is okay. Life is a bit easier to live when you accept that you are a turtle and not a bird, so you don't have to constantly try and learn how to fly.
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Nah, I definitely have ADHD because otherwise my amphetamines wouldn't be acting as a sleep aid.
Is there such a thing as an "ADHD egg" 👀
Not really. We have: peer reviewed but undiagnosed, "I should get checked because these memes are too relatable", good student if they applied themselves more; and a few other categories that I lost the focus to think about.
ND gang feel free to add to the list.
Me every time I have a day when I actually get shit done.
Honestly, medication helped with this for me. Seeing how hyper stimulants make other folks while they settle me down. The amount of productivity I experienced in my first few weeks of medication was outstanding. Sadly, those tapered off and while i didn’t return to mean, now I barely functional without them.
Of course autism is not treatable by medication…
Well, I have been "tested" by neuropsychologists and they said I have symptoms that looks like ADHD, but it's probably not that. I never pushed more as it's difficult to get any diagnosis or help here in Quebec as an adult. In the end they said I may have PDA, and they will not give me a straight answer.
I still consider myself nerodivergent but according to the medical system here, I don't have ADHD. I just have a lot of symptoms that are common.
You very well still could be. Diagnosing conditions like these is very complicated when different things can present similarly, or even mask each other depending on their presentation. Autism and ADHD have a lot of overlap for example where it's not uncommon for someone to have one and be mistakenly diagnosed with the other because of how their particular combination of strengths and deficits manifested. Then still other conditions can mask symptoms entirely that without them no one would ever guess that someone might have ADHD.
That's what happened to my wife in fact. She joined a research study that was aiming to improve diagnosis for ADHD looking to be part of the control because she was reasonably certain she didn't have ADHD.
We come to find out through participating in that study that no, she did in fact have ADHD and her severe OCD had just been masking it all her life. The second she got on a new medication that got her OCD more under control I got a front row seat to literally watch the things I struggle every day with just manifest in her like I'd given her the damn Curse of the Were-Fuckup.
Autism and ADHD are a such a good example for this. While 15 years ago the DSM still said that it is impossible to have both, today we know that there is a huge overlap. Depending on the studies, when you have Autism, there is a 40-70% chance that you also have ADHD. And if you are diagnosed with ADHD, the chances to also have autism are between 20-50%
And there are enough other common comorbidities that can could be seen as the "main" diagnosis and prevent you from being correctly diagnosed, like depression, odd, ocd or anxiety.
It's so important to get a psychiatrist that is specialized and it's a shame that it seems to be an almost global problem to even get any.
Or maybe it's time to understand that mental issues aren't as clearcut as viruses that you can test in a lab. As long as we don't understand the fine grain of how the whole brain work (and so far we only have ideas about it, not the whole story), the yes/no diagnostic will stay a dead end imo.
Sorry to hear you have trouble though, I hope you still lives ok <3 good luck!
Apparently DSM6 is giving up on naming disorders and will instead name only the traits. So instead of being diagnosed as autistic and ADHD you'll be diagnosed with Hyperfocus, Executive Disfunction, Maladaptive Daydreaming and stuff like that...
While it's a lovely notion that maybe one day we might live in a world that doesn't otherize and pathologize the way the minds of neurodivergent people function. Or that maybe one day the whole of society might not be organized around the convenience and function of neurotypical people and I would love for either of those would either of those to be the case. The fact of the matter is that this is not the world we currently live in. So if someone with ADHD or Autism wanted support from this society in the form of say medication, or therapy, then in most cases they would need to still engage with that system that pathologizes the way their minds work and acquire a diagnosis.
So what good does it do to come into a conversation about the flaws in that diagnostic process and essentially just say "Well, maybe it shouldn't be like that." as if anyone here is in any position to just wave a magic wand and change the diagnostic criteria in the next edition of the DSM?
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We all know the medical system is flawed and adopts a paternalist / validist approach to neurodiversity (not to mention straight up corruption by big pharma). I don't want to fetishize self-diagnostic, but if I went to my doctor to say "I'm depressed", nobody will doubt my experience, so why would it be any difference for neurodivergence.
Put simply, a large cohort of mental health providers will look at anyone asking about ADHD as if they are lying and just fishing for a prescription for stimulants. Especially if you look like you're college age. So if you get unlucky with who you see when you finally go to get tested they might just take one look at you and decide "This person is looking for drugs" and ignore literally everything you present with because of it.
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All you can do is see if treatment helps or not, but if they are character flaws, but you have a desire to change them, and ADHD treatment helps you do that, then what does it really matter.
That's what I tell myself because I lived most of my life with a family that didn't believe in mental health issues and I was brainwashed that I was just a bad, flawed person. When it comes to the Autism its a different story because there is no treatment for adults and it's nearly impossible to get into the one clinic that offers diagnoses for adults, so I still struggle with believing I have it despite the big list of evidence I compiled and the fact that my neurodivergent friends always assumed I did and didn't know I didn't know. LOL
I've got OCD as well so reading that I had to reaffirm in my head that that is in fact not the case otherwise my OCD would've considered it a threat and gone into panic mode 🙃
It's a bit more insidious, it's like "what if I am just lazy..."
Something like ADHD is notably difficult to diagnose because its symptom behaviors are things that other people also experience, just less frequently or severely. Everyone has limited executive function, spaces out, forgets things, becomes restless, procrastinates, etc. to some degree. So it's difficult to notice the point where it crosses the threshold of interfering with a healthy life.
It is entirely reasonable to wonder if you've been misdiagnosed as having it, just like a neurotypical person may wonder if they have ADHD from normal experiences. It's not like we have another life to compare ours to.
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