Five ways my ADHD makes adulting hard.
Yeah, so did I.
I'm Sonya, I was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult last year.
I never even considered that I could have ADHD
until my doctor suggested I get tested.
A couple of years ago, I showed up to her office,
sobbing to her, because I felt like I was failing
at being an adult.
I was anxious all the time and felt depressed,
and I was overwhelmed by basic things
like keeping my apartment clean, paying my phone bill,
or remembering my best friend's birthday,
or where I put my keys.
It turns out that ADHD doesn't always
look like a hyperactive kid bouncing off the walls,
especially in girls and adults.
I have a type of ADHD called Inattentive ADHD,
which shows up as distractibility,
disorganization, forgetfulness, or procrastination.
Once I got my diagnosis
and learned how ADHD affects my brain,
much of what I struggled with my whole life,
finally made so much more sense.
I wasn't lazy or incompetent.
My brain just works differently
and it turns out my ADHD makes adulting hard.
Here our five ways my ADHD
makes basic life tasks extremely challenging.
Number one, I'm super disorganized.
Do you have a friend or roommate who's always late,
constantly loses important things,
bounces from idea to idea, and sometimes gets lost
coming to your house even though she's been there
a million times before?
Yeah?
That's me.
My brain is kind of like a computer browser
with a whole bunch of open tabs
that I'm constantly jumping between,
just as I try to do one thing, I think of something else
that needs to be done or something else
catches my attention and another tab gets opened.
People with ADHD struggle with a set of skills
called executive function that are needed to stay organized
and complete tasks.
Executive function includes working memory,
flexible thinking, and self-control.
It's sort of like the management system of the brain.
It's completely unsurprising
that I'm constantly misplacing things.
My keys, my wallet, my phone, and forgetting to do
important adulting things like pay my bills on time
or file my taxes.
The second way my ADHD makes adulting hard
is that I lose hours of my life to hyperfocus.
Hyperfocus is kind of a surprising symptom of ADHD
since it's basically the complete opposite of distraction.
Hyperfocus is when a person becomes intensely immersed
on something like a new hobby or topic of activity
for a long time.
When I get hyperfocused on something,
I'm often so focused I don't notice the world around me
or realize how much time is passing.
Sometimes, the ability to hyperfocus is actually helpful.
Think pulling an all nighter
to cram for an exam, for example, because I can completely
block out all distractions and focus super intensely,
but more often than not, my hyperfocus gets me into trouble.
I'll miss my subway stop, because I'm so fixated
on researching which restaurant I wanna go to
for my birthday dinner, and then I end up late
for an important meeting or appointment.
I basically need to set alarms for myself for everything,
because it's so easy for me to get sidetracked
when I get hyperfocused.
The third way my ADHD makes my adulting hard
is that I'm completely time blind.
My time blindness makes almost every aspect
of my life more difficult.
What's hard for my friends and family to understand
is that I'm not just intentionally ignoring the time
or showing up late, because I don't care.
The ADHD brain actually senses time differently.
For me, time passes differently
depending on the state I'm in.
If I'm hyperfocused, hours can fly by before I know it.
I'll sit down to play a quick video game and then suddenly,
two hours have passed without me realizing it.
I often misjudge how long getting ready
to go out for dinner will take
or how long a certain project will take to complete.
This means I upset my friends who have to wait for me
or often have to work through the night,
because I'm trying to meet a deadline for a project
I didn't realize would take so long.
Another way my ADHD makes adulting hard
is that I have a hard time managing my emotions,
and I'm super sensitive.
Research shows that people with ADHD
feel emotions more suddenly and intensely
than people without ADHD.
The ADHD brain sometimes allows a sudden emotion
to become too strong and floods the brain
with that emotion super intensely.
When I get one of these intense floods of emotion,
it's really hard to not have an equally strong reaction
like an outburst of anger, or sadness, or excitement.
Typically, these outbursts of emotions
don't go over well in the adult world.
I'm also extremely sensitive to criticism in any kind
of rejection, which I always thought
was just because I was super emotional.
It turns out, Rejection Sensitivity Disorder
or RSD is actually a common symptom of ADHD.
People with RSD feel extreme emotional sensitivity
and even physical pain when they feel like
they've been rejected, or criticized,
or if they feel like they've failed in some way.
Even though I've come to embrace my emotional nature,
it's part of what makes me compassionate, creative,
and sensitive to others.
This struggle to manage my emotions
is one of the most difficult parts of adulting with ADHD.
Adults are expected to be able to deal with frustrations
in life and accept feedback without losing their cool
or having a complete meltdown.
And the fifth way my ADHD makes adulting hard
is that I am the ultimate procrastinator.
As the responsibilities of adulting continue to pile up,
my ability to hyperfocus isn't always enough
to help me get by like it used to.
While it may look like I'm simply being lazy,
my ADHD can actually make it feel physically
impossible for me to get started on something
like doing laundry or studying for an exam
I'm nervous about.
I will desperately want to clean up my apartment,
or do my laundry, or some other basic task,
but I become immobilized with anxiety
and feel like I'm stuck to my couch,
completely overwhelmed with all the things I need to do
that I can't seem to do anything at all.
This part of my ADHD is really tough,
because when I can't do things
that seem so simple to other people,
like just doing my dishes before they get moldy
or remembering to call my grandma on her birthday,
I feel stupid and full of shame.
So yeah, adulting with ADHD is hard,
but I've learned that it's not totally impossible.
Knowing that I'm not lazy, weak, or incompetent,
that my brain just functions a bit differently
has been life changing.
Over time, I've learned lots of ways to cope with my ADHD
and even knew some of the symptoms to my advantage.
A combination of medication, therapy,
support groups, scheduling tools, time apps,
and a lot of self-compassion have turned me
into a pretty decent adult.
Though, I'm still pretty messy and usually late for dinner.
This video is not meant to be used to diagnose ADHD.
If you think you might have ADHD,
the best thing to do is contact your doctor
to see about getting assessed.