ADHD Didn't Break Me–My Parents Did

> the therapist said that she had rarely been more certain of a positive ADHD diagnosis

> my utter failure as a student, the huge highs and lows of my professional career, my distrust and lack of respect for authority of any kind, and my pride in my achievements as an autodidact

Oh yeah. I'm with you.

People's experiences inside their head are amazingly different, but society treats them the same. Some have inner monologues, some don't. Some have aphantasia. Some have prosopagnosia. Some are left handed, which was once considered evil ("left" is "sinister" in Latin, from another autodidact).

We used to label people as one of: normal, genius, retarded. We are becoming more nuanced now and exploring "neurodivergence". The label you have been given is ADHD. One day it will be much more nuanced.

Embrace it. It's not negative, it's society recognizing you and me and our type.

Is ADHD a debilitating condition that can be consistently and independently diagnosed, with verifiable symptoms and clear criteria as to who _has_ ADHD and, more importantly, who _hasn’t_?

or is it a loosely defined group of behaviours that all people experience at different severities at some point in their lives, which have all been grouped into a nebulous so-called disorder (although many neurodivergent people now don’t like it being called that) so that doctors can quickly and efficiently work through the ever-growing mountain of patients who struggle with concentration in a world that is constantly and systematically trying to distract them?

I don’t want to insult people and I don’t want to be rude. But the more I read about ADHD, the more it feels like a meaningless diagnosis to absolve people of the responsibility to work on their concentration, and absolve them of blame if they can’t.

"In other words"... no, those are separate things.

"Normal" means being like most of the rest of the group. My being 6'3" isn't normal here, but iirc would be normal in parts of the Netherlands.

A deficiency or disorder is something that causes problems. And getting people to just declare that something isn't a disorder won't actually change anything, because the language is downstream of the reality of what skills or abilities are needed for what roles in society.

I have had life-long crippling ADHD that I am only now, in my 30s, starting to learn to cope with. My biggest thing was educating myself on what ADHD actually was so that I was better able to spot it in my own life, and then apply strategies to address it.

I'm not sure the above is relevant, but what I wanted to say is in response to this:

> I commented back then that ADHD may be understood as introducing chaos into life to avoid being trapped in local optima.

My life has been really difficult because I simply cannot, ever, force myself to do something I don't want to do. I think there are cool goals in life I'd really appreciate - playing an instrument, learning a language, gettign a PhD, etc. But each of these goals involves an activity that I inherently don't want to do and therefore cannot make myself do them. Studying for exams to get into a grad program, practicing consistently for an instrument, studying a language that has no real applicable use in my life. I simply cannot do these things.

On one hand, that sucks. I wish my brain needed less short-term reward. I wish I was able to hold long term goals in my head as a motivation to get stuff done. But ADHD brains are famously very bad at this, mine included.

On the other hand, ADHD, to your point, has forced a LOT of growth and movement in my life. I cannot sit in one job, town, relationship, friendship, forever. I get antsy. I have to try new things. I crave novelty, and I seek it out in every aspect of my life. I do weird, crazy things, and I meet people who also do those things, and we get along just great. I live a very nontraditional lifestyle. And I've tried a million different things, hobbies, people, cities. I know a little bit about absolutely everything and can talk to almost anyone about something they're interested in because I know just enough to ask interesting questions that they enjoy answering.

It's a shame that my ADHD is pretty incompatible with capitalism. I work for a couple years then take a year or more off work, rinse and repeat. I've done this my entire life. Thankfully I work in software that pays well enough, and I'm frugal enough, to make this work. But job hopping plus not caring that much about my work means I don't get FAANG bucks or anything, in fact my salary has always been pretty below average for the work I do. But I make it work.