I went my whole life thinking that I was broken. I had intense anxiety surrounding social interaction, was horribly depressed, got terrible grades through high school, and just generally did not enjoy most of life. I eventually learned how to cope and function normally to an outside observer, but still would go through cycles of intense anxiety and depression that I didn't know how to explain.

A few years ago I finally was diagnosed with ADHD and suddenly everything clicked. My anxiety, my depression, my grades, my intense hyperfocus on one thing at a time but also inability to keep consistently focused on one thing for more than a few weeks. All of that suddenly made sense, and there were people in the world who knew exactly how I felt. And the thing is, the anxiety and depression have largely gone away. Now that I know what's going on inside my brain I don't have to beat myself up about it, instead I can learn from and lean on hundreds of thousands of other people who have to cope with the same thing.

So yeah, today I will often notice "oh, that's an ADHD thing" at random times in my life. But it's not so much that it's an essential part of my identity as it is that it's enormously comforting to finally have an explanation for all of the weird quirks that I have, and it's a huge relief to have a community of people who experience the same things that I do. When I say "that's my ADHD", it's me reminding myself that I am not broken, just different, and different is okay.

But a while later, I found it was not enough. I hadn't reached "true happiness" or at least whatever I can call my current state of being. I took a different path, shed all my labels, self-prescribed or otherwise, and am happier than I was before.

I still think I am "different" and have quirks, etc. So in practice, not a whole lot different than before. I just don't use the labels to describe these differences that others might use instead.

I think this only emphasizes that one approach does not necessarily apply when generalized to all people. In my case it only served as one step towards a greater solution, and hopefully even more effective solutions I can build on top of that later.

The same goes for heightened awareness for ADHD. More knowledge can be a blessing (as in your case). At the same time, the population such awareness can serve is shaped like a very complex blob, the form of which nobody truly knows, but I believe some clinicians/promoters see the "blast radius" of promoting awareness as a perfectly round circle overlaid directly onto the population.

My experience also made me realize what one can term "ADHD" may change with overarching cultural shifts or personal growth. I think ADHD should be seen closer to a symptom of a constellation of any number of potentially unrelated causes than a "disorder" to be focused on alone. Unfortunately the established terminology seems to have won out there.

The way we see health conditions and the words we choose to describe them can have profound effects on our understanding of ourselves.

I think a far far greater number of people experience the exact same problems of focus and distress, and learn to cope effectively in their own deeply personal way. I identify strongly with all the symptoms stated. A label feels useless, or worse - constraining, as it becomes your identity. I still have to drag my ass out of bed, do enough good work everyday next to colleagues who figuratively lap me every day, make a to-do list to remember to buy soap, go without soap for a week, .. etc lol.

I call it being me.

You could use the exact same line of reasoning to ask "if just talking about an issue with a professional alleviates an issue, isn't that a placebo?"

And the answer is obviously, "No, talk therapy is an extremely well-known mental health intervention with an extremely high effect size on average"

Anxiety and depression are disorders in the way you think about things. If you provide someone with a different and effective way of thinking about things, your are directly treating the disorder. The "maladaptive pattern" flowchart[1] might be a meme, but it's also a very real concept in psychology.

From a more personal point of view: while a label can defining be used in a confining way where it serves as an excuse to not "have to" do a thing (and I certainly know people like that), I find it's very useful to have something concrete to point at and say "this method that other people claim works great won't work for me because my brain doesn't work like that, I need to find a way to alter the method to make myself successful".

[1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/maladaptive-pattern

I suspect if you just have a "label" it doesn't do much. But the label now makes information a keyword search away. Hence their commentary:

instead I can learn from and lean on hundreds of thousands of other people who have to cope with the same thing.

Which would lead to learning strategies to deal with the day to day rather than struggling to find your own way.

Knowledge is power. But power still has to be used to mean anything.

Once you've learned the strategies that work for you. Then I guess the label loses it's power.

I think this can become a double-edged sword in some cases. When applied to certain problems, especially ones with no clear-cut solution, additional knowledge can end up being misleading. (Disclaimer: this is only my experience, and I do not intend to speak for others!)

Example, I always used to frame issues I worked with in the language of ADHD, because I believed that was what best described my pathology. My lack of efficiency at work was an issue of a faulty "executive function". My ability to work uninterrupted for extended periods of time was "hyperfocus". My inability to accept criticism without feeling dejected is an indicator of "rejection sensitive dysphoria".

Yet, after I got therapy that worked for me, I realized three things in short order:

- In my own view, there were no deficits in my executive function. It had been intact the entire time. It was actually uncontrolled stress that was causing my executive function not to operate at its maximum capacity. Hence my problem had not been one of executive function, but of stress relief.

- "Hyperfocus" was merely another way for me of saying "putting sustained attention on an activity to cope with unchecked stress." I no longer consider myself to hyperfocus (which I define as working 3+ hours straight at a time, only stopping for food in between), but at the same time I don't perceive I've lost any of my abilities. On the contrary, I gained the ability to participate in and actually enjoy a wider variety of activities more consistently (cooking, cleaning, socialization, exercise, reading, and many others), as well as start and stop each activity when I please, without losing too much time to activities I only used as a coping mechanism for stress (doomscrolling, social media, etc.). In a sense, my interests became more balanced, even though I still carry the same level of passion for a few niche activities (arguably even stronger for some).

- Criticism does not hurt me as strongly as it did before, when I am aware the criticism is coming from a constructive place and is not merely the feelings of the other party making themselves clear in dramatic fashion. If it's the latter, I now have the ability to ignore the other party and move on. I am now also motivated to avoid going to places where people are likely to criticize me unconstructively. I understood that this was the way to deal with criticism in the past, but I was unable to internalize how to act and feel about criticism until now. Hence, I am no longer dysphoric in this way, if I ever was.

So at least in my view, after I gained a sense of inner peace not having to deal with runaway stress anymore, several problems that I used to see as pathological - having terms such as "executive function" and "dysphoria" - turned out not to be any kind of pathology at all. They were only the aftereffects of excessive daily stress.

In my case, these terms weren't the most helpful for me to understand and work on the real issues underlying my core self, and thus get back a much greater return for the effort I expended - which was much less effort than spending months, years and a lot of money on recurring therapies tailored towards framing my problems in an ADHD-centric way.

Absolutely! But with a label you have:

- meaningful options you didn't have before

- hope drawn from those around you who have found ways to cope.

- knowing that you are not alone

The label doesn't fix you. But it's a good starting point. Answers don't jump out and grab you; you have to filter and verify.

And from the rest of your post it seems you managed to do that. And by having your experience here you have provided valuable context for others in a similar scenario. Thank you.

Think of it this way: The shape of a hammer compels you to hammer things down with it, but with sustained effort and creativity you can use it for chiseling marble instead.

To reach where I am now, I had to undo some amount of (but not all!) progress I'd made in one direction (since I had bought into the therapy circuit for treating ADHD already) and actively resist attempts to pathologize my own behaviors.

People say "don't treat ADHD like an identity" like it's easy, but the nature of a label compels you to treat it like an identity sometimes. Especially in the society I live in where awareness and destigmatization of conditions is pushed on social media all the time. And especially when your life lacks other meaning and you crave an identity to anchor yourself onto ("just don't make it your identity" sounded like "just don't be depressed" innumerable times to past depressed me, and I saw little reason not to take hold of a new identity for myself). This is a function of depression so I don't blame anyone for it, but I ultimately felt better served by other movements as far as making tangible gains in my mental health.

To use the metaphor again, the art of chiseling was unlikely to make itself known in my current state, but deep down inside I preferred to be there than where I was, so I had to deliberately seek out a teacher and undo the preconceived notions about myself in order to get there. In reality that was just finding another form of therapy that was more effective for solving my problems.

Mostly it's changed my attitude towards myself. I'm naturally a strong perfectionist, which doesn't combine well with ADHD. That has historically led to me constantly beating myself up when I do anything wrong, ruminating over conversations for days to figure out what I should have said differently, and generally being anxious and depressed. After receiving the diagnosis, I've been able to separate "me" from "my ADHD", which has helped me stop kicking myself while I'm down, which in turn has actually increased my ability to stay functional because I don't get into anxious/depressed spirals.

Sounds extremely normal to me. I wonder what I'm missing.

For example, suppose a typical person decides to learn a new language.

At the beginning, they are very excited and enthusiastic about it. They might buy a textbook, download an app or sign up for language classes, and spend lots of time on it for a couple of days.

After a week or two, as the tediousness sets in and the goal seems farther off than they expected, they start to shift their focus to something else. After a month, there's a 50/50 chance they completely forget about language study and stop doing it. Only a very small minority will last more than a year.

That's what I'd consider normal. How is ADHD different?

Another example: meditation. A new meditation practitioner may try to focus on their breathing, but then find they usually get distracted and start thinking about something else within 10 seconds.

I have a feeling that if I were to say "I find it difficult to focus my attention on something for 10 seconds without getting distracted", many would reply "that sounds like ADHD." But this is, in fact, quite normal.

ADHD is different in that sustained focus takes a ton more of energy than for non-ADHD folks - if you're high functioning. And is almost impossible if you're not high-functioning.

Totally agreed that "can't focus on my breath for 10 seconds today" isn't ADHD. "I have repeatably sub-par executive function" very much is, though.

For your language learning example, it's more that somebody can't stay focused on the learning, even if they want to/have to and are aware their focus is sliding away.

There's a reason ADHD diagnosis is technically a process that's a bit involved, you're trying to test for both sub-par function, and for the repeatable part. I'd take self-diagnosis with a bit more salt, especially it's of the "I often forget my car keys" kind.

That would be quite normal. A determination of ADHD is made based upon the severity of impact. Everyone gets distracted to some extent, but is it significant enough to be destroying your life, Y/N?

That's the determining factor.

1. I can focus and solve hard problems, but you’ll notice my legs swinging restlessly, hand gestures, or me suddenly typing a completely unrelated web address.

2. I was always a great student, but I was also the most restless; making jokes and talking constantly, no matter how hard I was punished for my behavior.

3. The toughest part of my ADHD is inconsistency. My performance can fluctuate a lot, and it takes tremendous effort to stay consistent. I get bored quickly with easy tasks, so I rely on alarms, calendar events, and other reminders to help me stay on track.

4. People like me are prime targets for distraction businesses, whether it’s social media, gambling, or other addictive behaviors. And a lot of my energy goes to resist them.

All in all, even for a functioning person like myself - managing ADHD takes a lot of effort. In my late 30s, I’m finally feeling a bit more in control. I’ve accepted that this is part of who I am, and while I can’t fix it completely, I’m doing my best to avoid letting it impact the people around me.

- get the proper amount of essential fatty acids

- experiment with vitamins, especially magnesium

- green, leafy vegetables

- minimal processed sugar & zero alcohol

And exercise. Get some cardio, even if it's just walking for a half-hour to an hour.

It's a struggle, but learning your body will help you optimize your performance and consistency.

Peace be with you, and I wish you the best of luck.

But it's very, very important to remember and understand that these things don't make it go away.

I'm not saying you're suggesting that doing these things will make ADHD go away—but your comment is ambiguous as to whether that's where you're going with it, and there's definitely a lot of people who don't really believe that ADHD is a "real" disorder, many of whom give advice just like yours and end with something like "...and if you do all of this right, you'll be perfectly normal!"

So I want to both heartily endorse your recommendations (both the general "eat well," and these specific items), and also caution strongly against expecting miracle results.

I'm still a foot-tapper at nearly 60, with high blood pressure putting the kaibosh on Adderall, so I do the best I can with what I can.

Those are the techniques that I have found to work for me, but I wouldn't and didn't call any of them a miracle. No, this programmer's life is non-trivially difficult for we ADHD folks, friend.

I apologize for not making that clear, but I'm certainly not downplaying ADHD's reality or difficulty after having dealt with it for over 30 years.

And taking Adderall is not without its side-effects, so I wouldn't recommend either it or pharma-grade cannabis, because I'm not a doctor, and those things are dangerous. I only recommend the safest possible path. Besides, all my recommendations actually helped me get the most out of Adderall for the few years I had my prescription.

In my experience, there are no miraculous shortcuts, but those are the ways I have found help me tamp it down, after years and years of struggling with it, which has been daily for me with my passion for programming still going strong.

No but it actually is though. The entire thing with ADHD is that the whole attention mechanism is defective.

Yes I can purposefully focus on something, but not consistently or over longer periods. That's the handicap. It's not a matter of not trying hard enough or figuring out one crazy trick. People with ADHD work differently from normal people and so far there's no fix for it.

There are extreme methods you can take that legitimately solve for the "defective wiring", such as meditating 10 hours a day. It's not permanent once you go off it, but you, yes you, can read a novel straight through.

But you don't actually need to go that far to reap 80 percent of the benefits. Real, effective protocols lower the threshold for stimulation. Constant novelty (seeking escape in external stimuli such as phones and computers) exacerbate our symptoms.

This whole identifying as a person with ADHD thing has gone way too far, and I say this as someone who has struggled with it my entire life.

You can do something about it and that something about it isn't only restricted to medication.

I was simplifying, maybe too much, but honestly I am sick and tired of people that keep telling me to "just try harder". I'm running at redline fucking 24/7 and it's barely enough to survive.

I wasn't implying that if you've got ADHD you might as well give up trying to focus or productive. I'm just saying that expecting an ADHD person to get the same results as someone without without lots extra effort is absurd.

You can say what you like but ADHD is a real handicap for which we do not have a cure. We've got workarounds with different levels of efficacy. I'm tired of being expected to measure up to a standard which I both can't do and don't even want to do.

I'm diagnosed ADHD, too.

My luck is that I have a loving wife who helps me. It would be far more difficult without her, but I guess I would have to use checklists if I had to do this on my own.

I should've said that I've been ADHD since my early 20s and have been coping for over 30 years.

Or maybe it should have been obvious by the specificity of my advice.

I see lots of harmful "advice" pushed by supposed ADHD sufferers.

One time I saw an older ADHD sufferer trying to mentor a young person with ADHD by telling him to cut out preservatives and take up meditation.

Leafy Greens and Pay Attention are barely a step beyond vagina crystals and positive thinking, and its awesome that you think they worked for you, but people should be referred for proper medical treatment, always. Even if you add your other wins as supplementary options, it should never be seen to be something alternative to medicine.

Meditation can and does help those with ADHD, especially in conjunction with correct medication.

>in conjunction with correct medication.

>in conjunction with correct medication.

You're not arguing in good faith, and haven't everywhere you've commented in this thread. You've been nasty, short, and insulting to everyone you've engaged with.

Equating the benefits of meditation and learning to exercise the muscle of attention to "vagina crystals" is pure ignorance with an agenda.

I had a psychiatrist for my Adderall prescription, but he was really just a drug dealer who was forced to retire after one of his patients committed suicide. But that was long after I had quit Adderall and learned how to deal with my shit on my own.

Anyway, I wish you well, and please find a medical professional that can evaluate your real problem.

If that person had caught it, and referred me on to get an ADHD assessment, I would be miles better off.

Instead he gave me exactly the advice you just did, and it achieved nothing. Guy actually owned the whole food / wellness / woo store he referred me to which makes it worse.

Now I have my medication I look back on shit like this with absolute scorn. I know you probably intend the advice in good faith but its absolutely not a replacement for medicine.

I'm not selling anything, my friend. I'm sorry I didn't tell anyone that I was diagnosed with ADHD over 15 years ago, but I've been in the trenches for a long time now.

And, absolutely, medicine is next-level helpful, but if you can't use it, as I can't, then you have to do the best you can. Out of my love for others like me, I simply offered the best non-pharmaceutical advice I could, because that's what I use.

Peace be with you.

I explain this more fully in my other comments in this thread.

This isn't woo, my friend; it's the advise of programmer who has been in the ADHD trenches for over 30 years. And it's the best advice I can give because it's the best set of advice that I wished I would have gotten those decades ago.

But I will also say that ADHD, if you have it, is an essential part of your identity regardless of your awareness of the label.

Part of the problem is the identifying with a spectrum of symptoms we assume to be eternal and unchanging.

eg relationship advice says you shouldn't "change your personality" for your partner, but in my last relationship both of ours changed quite a lot when our medication changed or even if we hadn't taken it that day, so I don't really feel attached to it.

We know what happens when ADHD is underdiagnosed and not recognized in society (which requires it to be labeled appropriately). You have scores of children who get labeled as “problematic” or “bad students” ans suffer from that discrimination for the rest of their lives.

Labeling may not help a particular individual but helps all in society as a whole

I completely agree with you though, I don't mention it to people generally. I may be quirky and might have some weird rigid rules about how I work personally, but I hate the idea of sharing it publicly.

Final note: I think it's a good marketing tool for productivity tools. "It's such a good to-do list that people with ADHD can find success with it! That implies that if you don't have ADHD, you will be a superhero when you use it!"

Source: I had / (have?) ADHD, don't think about it at all anymore, just keep working hard, stick with hobbies and you can do great things regardless of what "labels" society has assigned you.

It's a cluster of executive-function-related symptoms, any number of which a given person with the disorder can have a little, a lot, or even not at all. (I forget what all of them are offhand, but I have about a half-dozen of them in noticeable amounts, and several others that seriously debilitate many people with ADHD I've never had problems with.)

So while you may be able to "[not] think about it...just keep working hard...and do great things regardless", that's guaranteed not to be true of everyone with ADHD.

The worst advice anyone with ADHD can give someone else with it is "just do exactly what I did, and you'll never have problems again". That goes triple when "what you did" is ignore it.

The best advice I know of is to learn and understand what having ADHD means to you. Then use that knowledge to figure out how best to mitigate the problems it causes. For some, that will be medication. For others (like me), it may mean finding specific interventions for individual symptoms, and learning to live with some of the others.

Whether I believe that the number of people who actually get diagnosed with ADHD is correct, especially in places that have medical systems and cultures like the USA, I’m not sure, but certainly I now see how for some people it can be completely disabling.

Somewhere along the way, the mission moved away from the aspirational culture of identifying problem areas and addressing them, to a more stagnant culture that only goes so far as to validate your present behavior and mindset. It feels good and positive on the surface, but it lacks productivity over the long term.

Assuming even a tiny amount of those are loud when exploring their discovery would mean a lot of people talking about it online.

This is likely also combined with Millennials (my cohort at least) being one of the most self-aware generational cohorts in history (while also being a tad self-centered).

I have my own journey with ADHD ("many markers" but no official diagnosis, as that could negatively affect my life in Sweden) and it was really liberating to learn that, no, I wasn't just lazy, that I may have an issue with executive function and if I work around it I can at least partially tackle it.

The amount of stress that gets applied by society for people who are "not performing up to their potential" or slacking off or what-have-you is actually quite immense when you cannot force yourself to work, so I understand people who feel liberated in the moment and who seek solutions, loudly.

Nonetheless, the rest of your post resonates with me and and your points stand on their own :)

Here is a reputable source that claims 25%

https://wexnermedical.osu.edu/mediaroom/pressreleaselisting/...

The broader point that's often missed is that this is a naturally occurring and common phenotype that doesn't gel well with office-work culture and the modern regimented schooling system, forcing people to sit for unnaturally long times focusing on anxiety-inducing problem solving all day. It's not normal, and it's a recipe for burnout, and our only answer, is not to change the system, but to try and medicate it away, with sometimes devastating consequences.

i hope we move away from pathologizing and toward making social and economic structures adaptive for people that are currently challenged by them, and likewise find better ways for people to adapt their lives to fit how their minds work

Half of the population are provably on a different circadian rhythm than the other half, but we force everyone to function only one way.

There’s a dozen more examples, related to psychiatry and medicine.

Honest question: why is this an issue? If someone makes it part of their identity its because they feel its important for others to know, and that can be for a variety of reasons.

Is there a reason we shouldn't make it part of our identity, if we so choose?

Secondly, when we do attach, we now have a shield we can use to abdicate responsibility for, well, the duties of being a human in a society. I've had to remind people who have thrown their hands up to exclaim, "I have ADHD!" that hey there buddy, so do I, but I still have to live my life right here in the same society/job/relationship they do.

Where diagnoses like ADHD are useful is as frameworks to understanding your own symptoms, but there's no reason to pull them in as part of you, and I've seen a great deal of harm done in our generation by people insisting on playing out their identity fantasies.

I ask because my experience is similar to yours (I also have ADHD). Anecdotal so take it with a grain of salt: I work in software engineering, know and have worked with a lot of self-diagnosed ADHDs who make it part of their identity, while some of them probably do have ADHD, the vast majority of them feel like perfectly normal people who would latch onto any opportunity to prove that they have ADHD. (e.g. people who have a single habit that could be stimming but otherwise don't exhibit and ADHD traits saying stuff like "sorry I can't help myself because of my ADHD brain").

In contrast those I know who have been properly diagnosed don't behave like they constantly need to tell people they have ADHD. They are usually deeply interested in the condition but you probably wouldn't know unless there is a proper setting for them to disclose it (invited to talk to an audience about their experience) or if you're someone they trust.

It feels like people who have the tendency to make ADHD part of their identity just want to been seen as special and important in some way (I don't mean this negatively) perhaps because that's how they see their genuinely neurodivergent peers. They tend to have many excuses for not getting a diagnosis because they won't risk the chance of finding out that they don't have ADHD as they have already made it part of their identity.

On the uglier side, there is also no shortage of people lying about having medical conditions for clout and money on the Internet.

It’s likely that those using it in a self diagnosed way are using it as a way to have an excuse for something they do that is unpleasant.

That said, I have no trouble freely talking about it either. The shame is gone for me now. It is part of my life therefore my identity in some form

This is the reason: people who know they’re definitely carrying the gene will start to ascribe any clumsiness, any brain fog, anything at all to the disease once they know they’re definitely carrying definitely have it.

I have seen the same thing with everything from cancer to divorce to death of a child.

ADHD is a structural brain difference that results in different and in some cases paradoxical responses to various things that affect alertness, attention, etc. Which makes a very good reason to distinguishing between things “for concentration” (presumably targeting neurotypical audiences) and things “for ADHD”.

In my mind, ADHD and identification with ADHD (self labeling, medical system labels, etc.) is only a liability.

Sincerely, person diagnosed at age 35

I was diagnosed late at 28. When I got diagnosed, my psychologist told me that I had to reassess my life. Many behaviors that people had misinterpreted as laziness, carelessness, or lack of commitment were actually manifestations of my ADHD.

Friends who thought I didn't care when I forgot plans, teachers who believed I wasn't trying hard enough, and colleagues who saw me as disorganized - they were all seeing untreated ADHD symptoms, not character flaws.

Understanding this was liberating because it meant I wasn't fundamentally flawed as a person. I had to rebuild myself, my confidence - it was a new start in life.

It's a process to relearn and teach yourself that you can do it now. Labeling publicly, saying to your friends and family that you are ADHD makes it so that you OWN your change, you OWN your disability.

tldr, ADHD as an IDENTIY is for me : Reclaim control over your narrative instead of letting others define your behaviors

Create accountability for yourself and set realistic expectations with others

Remove shame from the equation by openly acknowledging your challenges

Enable yourself to access appropriate accommodations and support systems

I tend to notice that more with younger people who find out earlier and get it treated.

Finding out in your 30's because you realize things shouldn't be going so inexplicably wrong is different.

That ADHD is over diagnosed?

That it doesn’t require tailored interventions or advice?

That social media is exploiting interest in ADHD to provide low quality advice?

Or something else? Can you clarify your point?

A label by itself isn’t useful until, you understand the condition, how it impacts you, and what things you can do to make your life better, know you know.

Re symptoms like “daydreaming whilst reading a book” tbh think this misses the point. The frequency a barrier happens and the amount of disruption it causes to someone’s everyday is highly significant.

Neurotypical people also daydream whilst reading a book. The difference is if you can’t focus on a book so much you barely get through the first page, on every page you attempt etc.

I’m adhd, autistic and dyslexic. The value of these diagnosis is to be empowered to understand myself, rock where I rock, accept the things I probably will waste time trying to fix, and use various things to address the challenges I have, that are possible to address and worth effort.