Last week, I was having lunch with some people I hadn’t seen for a long time and was telling them about my new book.
“Oh, I think we’re all a bit ADHD, aren’t we?” they all agreed.
And to my horror, I found myself flushing in embarrassment.
The truth is, if you’d said this to me a few years ago, I’d have probably smiled and laughed awkwardly then let it go – even though I completely disagree.
Partly because I know that when most people say this, it doesn’t come from a dismissive place, but an attempt to reassure and find common ground.
What they’re really saying is not, “No, you’re making it all up.”
But rather: “I understand. I get it. I do those things too.”
So while on one level it can still feel a little bit like being dismissed, I know that it comes from a well-intentioned place.
The truth is, if you’d said this to me a few years ago, I’d have probably smiled and laughed awkwardly then let it go – even though I completely disagree.
Plus, I’ve often struggled to explain the difference myself anyway, and accidentally ended up reinforcing the idea that ADHD is just a collection of symptoms people experience when they’re stressed, tired or busy.
It’s so much easier to politely let it go.
But in that moment I realised I couldn’t be the person who could politely let it go anymore.
Not because I feel the need to be special or prove that my life is actually harder than yours… I understand that everybody has something to contend with.
But because I’d just spent nine months writing a book about what it means to be an ADHD mum raising an ADHD child, and if ADHD really is just a collection of traits that everybody experiences in roughly the same way, then the entire premise of that book falls apart.
ADHD Mum, ADHD Kid isn’t about being forgetful sometimes, or feeling overwhelmed from time to time.
It’s about what happens to a woman when specific traits have entirely shaped the course of her life.
Up until now, my ADHD has been a private matter, shared only with those very closest to me. It has never been something I’ve needed to defend.
Now that I’ve written a book, however, I realise this is a question that’s likely to come up again and again, and if I can no longer laugh it off, I now need to have a better answer than just to stammer out a list of fairly innocuous sounding symptoms.
So, I’ve thought about this a lot over the last few days.
And here’s what I should have said:
Of course we all experience traits associated with ADHD sometimes.
We lose our keys.
We forget appointments.
We get distracted and burn the dinner.
We feel overwhelmed and struggle to focus.
That’s all just part of the human experience.
But the point is not that people with ADHD experience scenarios that are completely alien to everybody else in the world – they don’t.
The difference is that for people with ADHD, these experiences are just part of the fabric of their everyday life.
Missing the bus, forgetting to buy dinner, locking yourself out of the house… these are not annoying little traits that we have to contend with occasionally when life’s particularly busy or stressful.
They’re things that happen all of the time.
And each one of these things builds on the one before, and accumulates into something much bigger.
ADHD is not a collection of isolated symptoms therefore. It’s a constant pressure that, just like running water can carve a path through rock and stone, entirely shapes the course of your life.
And it influences everything.
Your relationships; your career; your finances; your self-esteem; how people see you and how you see yourself; your physical health; your mental health; the opportunities that pass you by.
In my own life, that accumulation shaped some of the biggest decisions and turning points I’ve ever faced. It influenced the relationships I stayed in, the fact that I dropped out of university after a term, and eventually my decision to walk away from a career I loved.
I wouldn’t change any of it now.
But how differently I might have felt about those decisions had I understood myself better.
For some women with ADHD, their lives look as chaotic on the outside as they do on the inside, because they struggle to find many coping mechanisms at all.
But others become queens of masking and adaptation.
They create systems; they over-compensate; they work incredibly hard just to keep all the plates spinning.
So much so, that when they finally receive a diagnosis, people around them say, “I don’t see that in you.”
As if you’re trying to make yourself special. Or that you’ve been duped into being given an unnecessary label.
But the cost is there. Shaping our days, our years, and ultimately our lives.
For good and for bad.
So yes we all experience traits that are associated with ADHD, but no, we don’t all have ‘a bit of it’.
Because ADHD is not the occasional moment of distraction, forgetfulness or inconvenience.
It’s thousands of those moments accumulating over years, and shaping the entire landscape of your life.
ADHD Mum, ADHD Kid: Real Life Strategies for ADHD Mums Raising ADHD Kids is out now. Buy it here>>
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