What it’s like adjusting to adulthood with ADHD
For many young adults with ADHD, they find themselves with a lack of appropriate information on how to combat the adult world with their ADHD. Many articles are solely aimed at ADHD in children or teenagers. Leaving the adults to figure it out on their own. As a young adult with ADHD, I often find myself frustrated trying to decipher advice aimed at parents of children and implement it in the real world. This is why I am making a call for more resources and guides aimed to help adults with ADHD.
What Is ADHD, Actually?
The concept of “what” ADHD is, is a stigma that is embedded in society. When you think of ADHD what do you think of? Most would say they see a young person, most likely a boy, who is jittery, hyper, and can’t sit still. This is the image of ADHD that is portrayed and accepted as a representation. What this portrayal does is cast aside anyone who does not fit these constraints. It is part of the reason why boys are 7.3% more likely to get diagnosed with ADHD compared to girls. ADHD is a diagnosis that affects the brain and its effects can vary from person to person, but can especially vary between gender. In younger males, they are more likely to have a hard time focusing or standing still. In younger females, they are often to be found to be more talkative. Which instead of associating with ADHD people often categorize these girls as simply “chatty”. They hardly go the extra step to look into a diagnosis because their symptoms go against the stereotypes of ADHD.
These stereotypes of ADHD even affect those in adulthood. ADHD affects the brain, something that develops with a person throughout their life. Because of this ADHD and its symptoms change as a person ages. In an article on verywellmind.com Keath Low states “Often the symptoms of ADHD in adults look less like the kid who seems driven by a motor and more like a person who is forgetful, restless, easily distracted, and/or overly reactive to frustration” This means that the stereotype of ADHD that was once targeted towards males, can now be completely inaccurate as a male develops with age. This can lead to adults whose diagnosis was completely missed in adolescence being almost ignored. They may be aware they face certain struggles but many won’t come to the idea of ADHD because they don’t find the stereotypical symptoms. The stereotypes of ADHD get less accurate the more you look into what ADHD is.
The stereotype of ADHD being taken from the perspective of a young child also affects the number of resources available for Adults with ADHD. If you are an Adult with ADHD you are essentially left alone to figure things out. I have had to spend hours reading articles and trying to relate them to a non-child perspective. When trying to learn about how my brain functions I’m often met by phrases of “If your child is doing this in recess” When In reality I need “If you find yourself doing this during your 9–5 shift.” Feeling as though I have to translate information for a diagnosis that is something that stays with someone for their whole life is ridiculous.
Battling this stigma is a large part of trying to provide more access to information for adults with ADHD. When adults with ADHD are normalized and not viewed as some niche demographic there will be more diagnosis. With those diagnoses will come more research for ADHD in adults. With that research will come more information tailored for adults and just anyone with ADHD.
What it’s like being an adult with ADHD.
A large part of being an adult with ADHD is suddenly realizing that your diagnosis most likely consisted of being told ADHD was the reason school was hard, and that’s it. I never had real conversations about why it made school hard, or why my brain struggled to focus. Or even what else comes with ADHD. As far as I knew growing up only meant I struggled to focus. However, being an adult with ADHD I often find myself learning about old habits that in hindsight I knew were different but never knew they could be associated with my ADHD.
For example, when I was younger I would commonly chew on the collar of my shirts. It was something I did without really thinking about, but I would often have pajama shirts with chipped-away collars. It was something that was definitely against the “norm” but I mostly did it at home when I was trying to zone off to bed. So it was never a real concern or topic of conversation. But just four months ago, I read an article talking about children with ADHD chewing on clothes. It was found that kids with ADHD chew on clothes because it’s a way to calm or reduce anxiety, help focus on a task, and or provide a form of sensory stimulation. And stimulation for people with ADHD is a very desired thing. Our brains lack dopamine which is a chemical the brain correlates to pleasure or happiness. So people with ADHD often do little tasks or motions that provide for stimulation that inherently provide small bursts of dopamine. Now looking back I was chewing on my pajama shirts as a child to help me focus on falling asleep. Instead of getting distracted and having my brain wander. It was also a way to release any stress that I had before going to bed. It’s honestly insane to me how many little “quirks” from my life can be traced to ADHD that I had no information on growing up.
I reached out to have a conversation with Annie Barnelleo. Annie is a nineteen-year-old female diagnosed with ADHD. In our interview, Annie expressed her life with ADHD and how it affects her daily life. “So I feel that having ADHD impacts my daily life — this is super common but I’m very forgetful with my things, and generally if it’s out of sight it’s out of mind. To workaround/combat this I kinda just live with everything out where I can see it — it looks a little cluttered and sometimes can get a little messy, but it’s organized chaos. If I see it, then I’ll remember that I need to use it kind of a thing (like skincare, or keeping my water bottle within sight). I do something similar when it comes to keeping track of my day to day activities — for the life of me I cannot keep a planner, not even on my phone, because I forget, or I say I’ll input stuff and then I never do, etc, so for a while now I’ve been just sticking post-it notes wherever I can in visible sight, with appointment dates, assignment deadlines, reminders to respond to emails or hand in forms, etc. It’s a little crazy but if it’s within sight it forces me to remember it
I feel like forgetfulness is super common in small doses, so it’s very easy for people to be like “yeah I’m forgetful too I lose my keys all the time, we’re all a little ADHD haha” But I don’t think the general public understands the extent to which forgetfulness and having poor object permanence come into play within your everyday life.”
She also expressed the aspects of ADHD that the general public associates with ADHD. She also stated how the public’s understanding of even the most common traits is almost watered down of versions of reality. “The most common and defining trait of ADHD within the general public domain is inattention/lack of focus. This happens to everyone, at least on a small level, no one can focus all the time, and this is the part where ADHD becomes trivialized/seems not as serious to people who don’t experience it (so a good portion of the population) — the general public doesn’t understand the extent to which not focusing affects us — like even doing something we WANT to do, I won’t be able to focus. I could be alone in a room with nothing but a pencil and a sheet of paper and still won’t be able to pay attention to my task at hand. It’s bothersome and hinders my progress in my daily life — smaller tasks take a lot more time and energy (mentally, especially) simply because staying on task/focusing is a conscious effort during every second of the task, and if I let my thoughts wander, I will lose focus and stop doing the task.”
I asked Annie if she feels the general public really understands ADHD. To that, she started to express how ADHD impacts her. “Writing it out it all sounds a little infantile like I’m a whole 19 years old and I can’t make my brain function normally, but I don’t know how else to describe it. ADHD is you just take what would be small inconveniences in the lives of neurotypical people (forgetfulness, object permanence, time blindness, inattention), and multiply the intensity by a million times. So it can be super hard because the general public thinks you’re just being dramatic about not being able to think or focus or remember things, but they don’t understand that it’s just a combination of so many inconveniences at once, that day to day life is consistently an uphill battle. Not to mention the less talked about but still completely present and annoying: emotional dysregulation, executive dysfunction, hyperfocus, and many more symptoms.”
Having this interview with Annie was a really reflective process. Talking to someone who shares the same diagnosis with me and having a conversation about how it affects us. That was something that was really informative and reaffirming for me. Annie brought many excellent points about being an adult with ADHD. Whether it was the symptoms the general public belittles, the small tasks we have to do to battle quirks, or the other great points we discussed.
Adjusting to Life with ADHD.
When I think about how to deal with my ADHD as an adult, I think about the little obscure things that I include in my day. I think about the deadlines day in advance I have to make for myself to trick my brain into panic and finally focus on a task. Or how I know it’s impossible for me to rough draft an essay. I either hyperfocus on the paper and do not leave my seat till it is completed or it just will never get done. I think a big aspect of dealing with ADHD as an adult is to learn about yourself. When I was younger in school I was confined to the school system. I didn’t have any real control over how my life was structured. Compared to college or work. Where I can choose my class times, my shifts, and no one cares if you can’t juggle them. I had to reflect on what ADHD makes me do and how I can make it work.
Realizing all the talk of pre-planning essays, clearing yourself of distractions, or whatever else my teachers told me when I was younger, literally was not designed for my brain. I sat down for this piece with my favorite album blasting in my headphones, with just bullet points (that would eventually be changed when my brain hyper-focused on a better idea) and have not and do not plan to sit up until I complete this piece. Why spend hours pre-planning something, when I can spend half an hour on bullet points that will spark my hyper-focus on the topic. Why should I get rid of all distractions, when my brain instantly creates a distraction from nothing. Instead, I could play my favorite album that I use to drown out the sounds of the world around me. My brain is used to the album. I can tune it out and use it to stop myself from trying to find a new distraction. But even though I’m aware of its aid to me, it’s something that would never be allowed when working in high school. And that’s the difference when you’re an adult with ADHD. In most circumstances, you have more control over yourself. There are situations where you don’t such as working in an office or maybe in meetings, but that’s universal. When you’re an adult with ADHD, you can figure out how ADHD affects your brain and how to morph it to your advantage. Hyperfocus is one of the strongest tools that I think the human brain is capable of. The pure amount of dedication, awareness, and functionality I have during it is incomparable. Using that to my advantage completely changed how I functioned as an adult.
