ADHD being a moral failure is the biggest misconception society has on the disorder, and sadly it affects people with ADHD’s lives negatively.
The amount of self-hatred and negativity an average person with ADHD has increased significantly when their environment keeps pushing the idea that they are a failure for not meeting their standard of what a good person should be like. This happens because society’s ideas of a good person depend heavily on someone’s actions, and ADHD disables people from doing such actions normally.
For example, people with ADHD are prone to lateness because of their time blindness. This can be seen as a moral failure because it shows they don’t value your time as much, but from the other perspective, people with ADHD can still try their best to show up on time and still be late due to numerous reasons that neurotypical people cannot comprehend. Having many alarms might help, but time blindness might still shine through sometimes despite their effort.
Another example is people with ADHD’s forgetfulness. Forgetfulness happens either because they cannot pay attention and get distracted by other things, or because ADHD brain’s inability to fully operate their short-term memory as well as neurotypicals. This might appear as them being careless whenever they lose important documents or not pay attention during classes, but for us, reminders and alarms don’t work sometimes despite us trying because our brain… gets distracted and forget a lot.
How does this work? Why can’t we just try harder remembering where things are, or showing up on time? It’s because ADHD symptoms don’t allow us to fully be as capable as neurotypicals. In my own words, it seems like there is a hidden force inside us not allowing us to do certain things despite remembering it (executive dysfunction), and sometimes we just don’t remember it because we are occupied with other things or because our brain decides to just forget about it (happens a lot more than you think), and sometimes things just don’t work out even though we have planned it thoroughly.
These are caused by ADHD affecting our frontal lobe. The frontal lobe is a part of our brain that is in charge of focusing, organizing, language, impulse control, motivation, social behavior, attention, problem-solving, and many more. The frontal lobe of an average person with ADHD might be weaker and cannot fully mature until they reach 35. This itself explains why despite trying really hard, sometimes people with ADHD just… fail.
However, does this mean people with ADHD are doomed? Of course not. Despite having ADHD, everyone has their wants and motives. Despite our proneness of being forgetful, we can counter it by our willpower to not forget, and this can be translated into us having multiple reminders, or putting things where we can see them, or asking people for external help.
Despite the symptoms, I see myself as someone who likes to pay attention to detail (even though my ADHD makes me miss some details), careful (even though sometimes I make impulsive decisions), resilient (even though ADHD makes my motivation come and go), and creative.
This is good for me because I see it as compensation; even though I might miss some details, I still try my best to pay attention to every detail. Even though I can be impulsive, I still try my best to be careful when I remember to.
From my own perspective, this is (so far) the best that I can be: someone who can do basic stuff but sometimes makes mistakes here and there. However, from other people’s perspectives, my life can look like someone who is average but makes too many mistakes that she isn’t bothered enough to change.
They don’t see the struggles and the amount of work I have put in myself to be as functional as today. When people keep punishing me despite me doing the best that I could, I push myself even further and end up in more burnout because while they’re giving their 100%, I am giving my 120%.
In conclusion, it takes a lot of effort for me to not let my symptoms take over and there is nothing more devastating than being told that I am not doing good enough.
ADHD is a real disability. While some affect others more than the rest, it still needs to be recognized as such. This doesn’t mean we get a pass, but would you ask someone walking with a cane to climb 15 floors using stairs because they just need to try harder? Of course not.
