Sorry about reblogging this, but it’s important to share.
ADHD IS a disability and it affects every day life. I need accomodations and acceptance for it, because it’s a disorder that causes shit for me.
You are right. It might be a “label” but it’s a label that actively helps me cope with bad days. That helps me look towards the future for what I need. It’s not a gift, but it helps me recognize how to deal with it.
Edit: I made the assumption that as I left the original posters name on the photo and the fact it is a photo people could deduce that it was not my own.
I found this image on Pinterest and thought it would be helpful, I attempted to find the original to reblog but the name @ceebycee does not come up when I search it and I was unable to find the original.
I do not claim this is my post and I am not trying to steal someone else’s just thought that it could be helpful.
I’m sorry if I have caused any issues or offend anyone in sharing this information.
UGH there is NOTHING more frustrating than trying to research ADHD, it’s all “do you interrupt people a lot? do you find it hard to sit still?” and “boys are twice as likely to have ADHD than girls” and “here’s how to deal with your ADHD child” and there’s nothing about adults, nothing about underdiagnosis in women, nothing about RSD, dyscalculia, sensory processing, emotional regulation
i am not a little boy pretending to be an airplane in the back of the classroom. I was never allowed to be, because I was a little girl. i was a little girl who couldn’t sit still but i had to because ladies sit still while the boys shout and fidget in the background. i was a little girl who got left behind when recess ended because i was so engrossed in my small rock garden i didn’t hear the bell; i was a little girl who grew up smart enough to take precalculus, but couldn’t for the life of me remember my times tables; i was a little girl who got so angry and didn’t know how to stop it (“you can control your emotions!” my dad told me; “don’t bottle it up,” my mom said; “scream into a pillow, write it down, take deep breaths” everyone told me, and none of it helped); i was a little girl who lay awake every night terrified i’d forgotten to do something due tomorrow; i was a little girl who couldn’t make friends because socializing was hell because if i made one wrong move, received one negative response, i might as well have set myself on fire; i was a little girl who took pride in being the Weird Girl, because i had to; i was a little girl with adhd
and now i’m an adult woman with adhd, and i know that because of people on tumblr, not because of the DSM-V. The DSM-V and the CDC tell me little boys have ADHD, not little girls. they tell me if i don’t interrupt people (don’t interrupt people, that’s rude, being rude means hurt hurt hurt because of RSD and nice young ladies aren’t rude anyway) and finish assigned tasks (don’t forget don’t forget don’t forget if you forget they’ll hate you) i don’t have the inattentive component; and they tell me if i can sit still (what kind of organs do snails have, anyway? let’s research that for four hours) and avoid butting into people’s space (don’t be rude, don’t be RUDE) i don’t have the hyperactive component; and they only ever mean to talk to parents of little ADHD boys, and there is nothing, nothing, nothing meant for me.
Wow. I relate to this so much and the thought of it possibly being ADHD never even crossed my mind.
Just from my personal experience, I’ve found it much easier to get a diagnosis and be treated for mine. More and more health professionals are recognizing ADHD in AFAB (assigned female assign birth) people and adults. I’d highly recommend seeing a mental health professional to get assessed if you think it’s impacting your daily life in massively negative ways; getting help can be a life saver.
They also don’t talk about how girls with ADHD are much more likely to develop anxiety or how girls tend to fixate on hyper control to prevent “unladylike” behavior.
It took until college for me to get a definitive diagnosis of ADHD, and even then I second guess it. I can focus on video games for 18+ hours, with no breaks, not even for food. That’s not inattentive! Doesn’t matter if I can only focus on a few very specific games or that what’s really happening is hyper fixation. I can focus therefore no ADHD. My classmates comment on how surprised they are that I didn’t make a lot of noise in class from fidgeting? Everyone fidgets, still not ADHD. Literally feel like my brain is being crushed in a voice whenever I try to study or work? I just don’t have the discipline to get my work done, not ADHD. Want to start crying cause you can’t focus and what your learning/working on just does not make sense? Suck it up, still not ADHD.
“Everyone experiences those things”
Actually, no, they don’t. I’m not hyper fixating because I’m obsessed or addicted to something. My brain just decided THAT’S SOMETHING WE CAN FOCUS ON. Normal people don’t fail to get any work done for weeks or months at a time because it physically hurts your brain and things just WONT WORK. Normal people can get comfortable when sitting.
I was tested for ADHD as a little girl but it was decided I didn’t have it, so I learned to sit still. I learned not to talk in school. I didn’t fidget and I didn’t speak unless spoken to. I hyper fixated on reading and expanding my vocabulary in third grade I was reading books at an 8th grade level because of this, but I didn’t have ADHD, I was just smart. I could not, for the life of me, figure out what the weird language of math was. it was a foreign language I couldn’t understand. but that was just me not trying hard enough. when I drove myself to tears trying to figure out one problem and being unable to move on to the next until k got this one right it wasn’t ADHD, it was me being childish and procrastinating my work. me not turning in half done work because it wasn’t finished so I couldn’t because it wasn’t done and it needed to be done to get turned in, was me being irresponsible and not caring about my grades when I cared so much it stressed me out in the fourth grade.
I got diagnosed with ADHD when I was seventeen years old. I was almost done with school by then. but that didn’t matter. we got me on meds, but they made me so sick I couldn’t eat anything and I was almost a zombie, no emotions to even struggle to regulate. (which when I had issues with that I was just “over emotional” and “a crybaby”) so we got me on new meds, and I think they worked. I couldn’t tell. I didn’t feel any different. I still hyper fixated on english and reading only now it’s fantasy and fiction because the world I see is too bleak and rattled with horrible things that my mind of anxiety, depression, and ADHD can barely handle.
now I’m twenty and off all medication and not being out back on because “it’s all in your head”. I’m twenty and just learning that the sinking feeling and tightness in my chest when I even THINK I’ve made someone close to my heart remotely upset is something that comes with ADHD that I wasn’t told about.
nobody tells you how much it actually sucks to deal with ADHD, and how its different for literally every single person with it. because while I may suffer from auditory processing (“huh?” “oh wait, *answers question/continues conversation in the middle of the person repeating*”/ “wait what? my brain said no to that-”), someone else may not, they may be able to process things perfectly but have some other issue with I don’t have.
WOW. I got my diagnosis a few months ago at age 32 and it seriously just boggles my mind. This entire post is so necessary. A diagnosis of ADD/ADHD as a late teen/early adult is just wild. You’ve lived your whole life feeling a certain way and then you get told you have ADD/ADHD. If I hadn’t worked up the courage and actually talked to my Doctor about my eating behavior and how it was making me feel, I wouldn’t have even known.
Doc decided to test me after 6 months when we talked about side effects of the med he had me on (Vyvanse) and there weren’t any negative. The positives prompted the test.
People don’t realize you don’t need to be hyperactive to to have attention deficit disorder.
I hate that no one talks about just how distressing memory loss from adhd actually is. I always see memes that are like “haha I forgot my phone, I don’t remember where my laptop is, etc”, but no one seems to talk about how it can really fuck you up long term to just, not remember things that are completely mundane to non-adhd’ers. The memory loss is, however, so frustrating to us. I cannot physically count how many meltdowns I have had over the sheer mental frustrationandtorture of not being able to remember seemingly simple things
in addition to the frustration and shame of the actual forgetting, there’s this constant background dread, because you know for a damn FACT you are forgetting something important at any given moment. racking your brain may or may not bring it to mind, but you can’t be dwelling on that 24/7 or you’d never do anything else, plus it quite often doesn’t even work. so you just. live with it. every second of every day.
you have forgotten something that is going to bite you on the ass at some random future moment. water is wet. this is your life.
i think the reason so many people with ADHD develop such an absurdist sense of humor is that you have to deal with constant uncertainty and absurdity while being low-key scared and high-key BORED AS FUCK. like if you don’t learn to laugh this shit off you just die.
That and there’s the aspect where it eventually affects your long-term memory as well.
My memories of my childhood are populated by precise layouts of rooms and buildings, the names and faces of people I know, a list of favorite things. The sounds of a church congregation singing. A map of the neighborhood where I grew up. The smell of my elementary school library. Facts. Sensations. Things carved into my recollection through repetition.
But events are largely a blank. I know that things happened. I know that my brother and I went swimming and caught grasshoppers in the summer. I know that we went to Disney World at one point. I know that we had Midnight Madness at Grandma’s every Christmas Eve until I was a teenager. I know that school was rough and that I used to hide in my closet when my parents fought.
I know these things because people have told me about them. There are pictures. There are stories. I was there. I participated. So they tell me. Once in a while, there’s a corresponding ping somewhere in my brain that pulls up an image or a sound or some physical sensation that seems to confirm what I’m hearing.
But so much of my life, especially my early years, is just…File Not Found. And that honestly terrifies me. Because I worry that it makes me way too easy to gaslight. How am I to know if what I’m being told is true? After all, nine times out of ten, I can’t remember.
This is one part of ADHD that I actually find really fun. Whenever I get a new hobby, which happens often, I leap into learning all about it and then I get really excited to share it with other people. Though, sometimes I get a bit too enthusiastic admittedly.
This is actually based on an earlier comic I did about a task I’d normally do easily, suddenly being much harder, but I really wanted to focus on the emotional aspect of it.
This happens a lot to me and it can be hard sometimes to recognize it is part of a cycle my brain will go through. My ADHD can have a huge impact on anxiety, so when my ADHD isn’t under control, my anxiety is allowed to go haywire.
I’ll get so self defeated and suddenly the next time I try the task, I don’t struggle as much and it can be very confusing to me.
its so shiddy when u have to convince yourself to do your hobbies. like, its fun, you like it, why cant you just do it. do it. do it. but what if…. mindless media consumption instead….
Shout out to all my adhd peeps who now have to suffer the hell of self-regulating online classes
And another shout out to all my adhd peeps who are in quarantine right now and bored as hell
I wish you all the best!
Ok but where is my shoutout to the homeschooled adhd peeps who had to deal with online classes before all this?
How could I forget my homeschooled peeps when I’ve done some homeschooling myself?! Shout out to you all! Hopefully we can share our wisdom with those new to online schooling!
And while we’re at it, a big shout out to all my adhd peeps struggling with working from home because we all know that adhd doesn’t go away just because you’re an adult!!
