ADHD: Why Am I Like This? Part 5

In the previous articles, we explored genetics, prenatal influences, childhood stress, family dynamics, self-esteem, and rejection sensitivity.

Along the way, I kept encountering clues.

Some were obvious.

Some were hiding in plain sight.

Some I spent decades explaining or numbing away.

Yet throughout most of my life, I never seriously considered that those clues might all be connected.

I simply assumed I was me. I was a complicated bag of crazy.

And if I was struggling when everyone around me seemed to fit in fine, then the problem must also be me.

The Clues Were Everywhere

Looking back, the evidence feels almost embarrassing.

I lost things constantly.

Wallets.

Keys.

Tools. I hated it when I had to search to find a tool and would often just abandon the project before it began.

Thoughts halfway through conversations.

I started projects with enthusiasm and abandoned them with equal enthusiasm.

I became obsessed with new hobbies.

Took them up to 90% completion and then forgot they existed.

I could spend hours researching subjects that interested me while avoiding tasks that actually moved the ball of my life forward.

I was intelligent enough to succeed.

Disorganized enough to sabotage myself.

Motivated enough to dream.

Distracted enough to struggle turning those dreams into reality.

At the time, none of these things felt connected.

They were simply individual frustrations.

Character flaws.

Evidence that I needed more discipline.

More effort.

More self-control.

Or so I thought.

The Wrong Picture

Part of the problem was that I had the same picture of ADHD that many people still carry.

When I heard ADHD, I pictured a hyperactive little boy bouncing off classroom walls and making his teacher regret her career choices.

That wasn't me.

I got good grades.

I spent plenty of time quietly reading.

I could focus intensely on subjects that interested me.

I wasn't disruptive unless I had something to say and the teacher failed to appreciate the urgency of hearing it.

I wasn't failing school. My elementary report cards were filled with "Excellents" and "Very Goods," great class participation, and consistently the same footnote:

Jesse lacks self-control.

(To be read: Jesse never shuts up.)

I certainly wasn't running laps around the classroom, although I had plenty of energy.

ADHD just wasn't something you heard much about where I went to school from the late 1980s through 2000.

Life Started Asking Harder Questions

For most of my life, my coping strategies were good enough.

Not perfect.

Not healthy.

But good enough to be functional.

Then life became more complicated.

Relationships became more complicated.

Responsibilities became more complicated.

The consequences became larger.

My separation and impending divorce forced me to begin asking questions I had spent years avoiding.

How did I get here?

Why did I keep repeating the same mistakes?

Why did certain patterns keep appearing in my life?

Why did some things seem so much harder for me than they appeared to be for everyone else?

Why am I like this?

Those questions eventually led me toward an ADHD evaluation.

I wasn't looking for an excuse.

I was looking for an explanation.

For the first time in my life, I didn't want to rawdog my life on my own anymore. I wanted a pill to fix me.

Receiving the Diagnosis

When I finally received my diagnosis, my reaction surprised me.

I wasn't devastated.

I wasn't angry.

I wasn't even particularly shocked.

Mostly, I was curious.

I often joked that I was the poster boy for what I thought ADHD was, but something strange happened.

Dozens of disconnected experiences suddenly began arranging themselves into a recognizable pattern.

The lost Batman wallet.

The unfinished projects.

The forgotten appointments.

The emotional overreactions.

The memory gaps.

The feeling that I was somehow simultaneously gifted and failing.

The diagnosis didn't create those experiences.

It connected them.

For the first time, I could see the outline of the picture on the box of the puzzle that was my life.

The Missing Instruction Manual

The best way I can describe it is this:

Imagine spending decades trying to operate a machine without ever seeing the instruction manual.

Sometimes the machine works brilliantly.

Sometimes it refuses to cooperate.

Sometimes it does exactly what you want.

Sometimes it appears to be actively working against you.

Eventually, you begin assuming the machine is defective.

Then one day someone hands you the manual.

Nothing about the machine changes.

The buttons are still in the same places.

The machine still behaves the same way.

But suddenly its behavior makes sense.

That was my experience with ADHD.

The diagnosis did not fix my problems.

The diagnosis explained my problems.

And it showed me a more modest path to operating within my limitations.

What the Research Says

As I dug deeper, I discovered my experience was not unusual.

Researchers have found that many people with ADHD reach adulthood without ever receiving a diagnosis.

This is especially common among individuals who performed reasonably well in school, developed coping strategies, or simply did not fit the popular stereotype of ADHD.

Researchers have also found that receiving a diagnosis later in life can improve self-understanding and reduce self-blame.

That finding immediately resonated with me.

Because the greatest gift my diagnosis gave me was not medication.

It was context.

A Better Question

For years, I asked the wrong question.

What's wrong with me?

It's a terrible question.

It assumes the conclusion before the investigation even begins.

The diagnosis helped me ask a different question.

How does my brain work?

That question led somewhere useful.

It transformed confusion into curiosity.

Instead of viewing every struggle as evidence of personal failure, I began viewing them as clues.

Some clues pointed toward weaknesses.

Others pointed toward strengths.

Most pointed toward patterns I had never noticed before.

For the first time, I felt like I was on to something.

The Next Clue

The diagnosis answered some questions.

It created others.

Once I understood that ADHD was part of my story, I started noticing patterns everywhere.

Patterns in relationships.

Patterns in work.

Patterns in motivation.

Patterns in emotional reactions.

Patterns in the things that repeatedly helped me and repeatedly hurt me.

Why did that trim above the television that needed caulk and paint bother me so much, yet I had no motivation to get up and fix it even though I had the tools and experience?

The diagnosis was not the end of the investigation.

It was the moment I finally understood what I was investigating.

And that raises another question.

If ADHD explains some of the struggles in my life, what can I actually do about them?

In the next article, we will begin exploring emotional regulation, impulsivity, overwhelm, and why people with ADHD often feel emotions with the intensity of a smoke detector that cannot distinguish between a house fire and burnt toast.

Next

Part 6: The Emotional Brain - Why Feelings Sometimes Arrive Without Brakes

References:

Barkley, R. A. (2015). Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: A Handbook for Diagnosis and Treatment (4th ed.). Guilford Press.

Brown, T. E. (2013). A New Understanding of ADHD in Children and Adults: Executive Function Impairments. Routledge.

Faraone, S. V., Banaschewski, T., Coghill, D., et al. (2021). The World Federation of ADHD International Consensus Statement: 208 Evidence-Based Conclusions About the Disorder. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 128, 789-818.

Asherson, P., Akehurst, R., Kooij, J. J. S., et al. (2012). Under Diagnosis of Adult ADHD: Cultural Influences and Societal Burden. Journal of Attention Disorders, 16(5 Suppl), 20S-38S.

Kooij, J. J. S., Bejerot, S., Blackwell, A., et al. (2010). European Consensus Statement on Diagnosis and Treatment of Adult ADHD. BMC Psychiatry, 10, 67.

Sibley, M. H., Arnold, L. E., Swanson, J. M., et al. (2022). Variable Patterns of Remission From ADHD in the Multimodal Treatment Study of ADHD. American Journal of Psychiatry, 179(2), 142-151.