jjleonard

ADHD is totally normal

You might think you have Superpowers. I actually have them, and they are better than yours.

I started therapy about six months ago, and after a couple of sessions my therapist suggested I might have ADHD. Well, what she actually said was “All your habits and tendencies track very closely with the symptoms of ADHD. Have you considered that?”

Fuck no. The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind.

Of course it’s totally normal to be entirely dependent on a calendar for everything that has a date.

Of course it’s totally normal to have a todo list that rules the very core of your existence, because without one you literally have nothing to do… right?

Right?

I’m just following all the productive practices that help me avoid procrastination, and keep me on track as my lunatic mind tries to divert me off to the latest shiny new thing. It’s totally normal to chase the latest productivity fad and change them at least once a week… and still have procrastination too…

Right?

Er… no.

“People with ADHD have very poor short term memories, get distracted easily, and suffer depressive episodes more frequently than most.”

Erm…

So we’ll skip over the reason why I went to a therapist in the first place, OK? Those monumental depressive episodes that had me questioning the actual reason why I was doing all the work I seemingly hated (hint: I didn’t) and spending days at a time, staring endlessly into space, wondering just what the hell I was doing with my life.. Let’s just skip over that for a moment.

I took a test.

I passed the test with no indication that I had ADHD.

Then, a couple of hours later, I took the test again, and answered every question as if I didn’t have access to the structure and scaffolding I had religiously built up around myself over the last - I don’t know, decades? - of trying to cope with distractions and waning interest and depressive periods and so on, and so on.

Surprise! I have ADHD. The test told me I had a high likelihood of it.

I also learnt that ADHD isn’t just the jiggling leg, desire to keep fidgeting, getting up and walking away when interest has departed, oh no. There’s also the part of it when introspective thinking, distraction, etc etc are all present and correct, and in a person of my advanced age (did I mention I am 55?), all the detritus is piled up against the prison walls I’ve built to keep the noise out and my social obligations in place.

Yep, I had ADHD for literally decades, and instead of realising that, I had been studiously assembling ever more rigid methods of working, with dependance on calendars and todo lists at their very core.

If I were to confess how many todo management systems I had constructed over the years, you’d shudder and look away.

But somehow I managed to keep my shit together and be a productive person. Sure, social interaction isn’t quite my best skill, and I have a habit of being brutally honest about systems that are failing around me, seeking out the person nominally in charge of them, providing an honest assessment and a path for rectification that I had constructed in the two or so hours before our meeting, and then just going and assuming authority for the resolution that inevitably worked (while I had control of it, anyway).

Over time, I’d put my complete and total inability to manage anybody else down to standards. As in, everybody I tried to manage just didn’t live up to my standards. They were disorganised, unstructured, and seemed to just live life on the edge all the time.

Oh, boy, did I discover how wrong I was.

Turned out that my rigid modelling of every work and social situation I was in was not a normal reaction.

Turned out that relentless tracking of every activity and decision that led to that activity ‘because I have a bad memory’, wasn’t, in fact, because I have a bad memory (though I do, and it did help). It’s because I’m completely incapable of handling something unless I have built a detailed internal model of how to interact with that thing and predict its every move. even something as casual as social interaction with other people.

Hmmm.

My therapist got to witness - and guide - me through the five stages of grief, as I came to terms with this discovery.

I had an answer to all my questions about my interaction with the world!

I’m working on the last part of that right now. And trust me, dear reader, it ain’t easy. I still lurch between “doing the thing that gives me comfort but doesn’t actually help me at all” and “allowing myself freedom to be scared about the future” and “trying not to define every interaction I have as being defined by ADHD tendencies”. And all the other thoughts that rampage unchecked over the surface of my wildly complex thought patterns every waking moment of every day.

And I just thought everybody was like that.

Instead, per my therapist, I have, and I quote: “Superpowers”.

Yup. Who knew it?

I work in a specialist area of writing called bids. I’m the expert who has been doing them for thirty years, and if you want someone to write a bid for you, or explain a complex area of legislation that dictates how a response should be written in order to ensure it is evaluated correctly, or build a structure that allows you to independently write bids in future with just a little guidance from me as you get used to it… well, I’m your man.

When I was occasionally asked in the past what I did, I’d open my explanation with the words “What I do is insanely boring for the majority of normal, not-completely-unhinged people”. Then I’d smile, call myself a professional writer, and try desparately to avoid the next 45 minutes expanding that definition into a complex discussion about the nuances of professional procurement legislation and how it has created an entire industry of people like me.

Because that discussion would inevitably cause the poor sod who asked an innocent question to glaze over completely, make a barely legible excuse, and slink away with absolutely no intent of ever approaching me ever again.

I’m working on my social skills so I can explain this better - which is hard.

This particular superpower boils down to my ability to sit, over Christmas, and construct from out of nowhere a 50+ page response to a complex set of client requirements, double and triple cross check it, explain it in detail to the person who asked me to write it for them, and then once the work is done, completely and totally forget about it. Apart from the basic summary I needed to put in the followup invoice for the work.

And, if I’m honest, that superpower pays quite nicely, thank you. Well, not ’lamborghini in the driveway’ money, but enough. It would be more than enough if I didn’t fritter a portion of it away on endless distractions - such as latest hobby or the must have piece of software, or a new desk, chair, laptop… the list goes on, but they are mere indulgences. I can afford them, so why the hell not?

So, yes. For me, ADHD is entirely normal, because I have absolutely no experience of anything else.

It does also partly explain why I have started many blogs like this in the past and uncermoniously ditched them, but 2026 is different. For a start, I have a therapist who holds me to account while I navigate my way through this tangled mess. She makes me write a gratitude journal every day , for chrissakes! Surely I can throw a post up once a week where I incoherently rant about a topic that inspires madness in me?

Well, that’s what this is for. So help me holy jeebus, I will do my best to do it. And if after 52 weeks, I see 50+ posts, and 2027 starts off with “well, shit, I actually did it”, then I will be very proud.

And much better at coping.

<< Previous Post

|

Next Post >>