I just went and read the article you referenced about receiving your ADHD diagnosis and I just want to say - it is one of the best articles I’ve read on Substack. I laughed (the Adam Levine v neck analogy cracked me up) and cried. I can relate to your story so much as a lawyer who thrived in school (except I never did the reading and was always incredibly stressed out), but hit an absolute wall when my career required me to write boring stuff and bill boring hours in a desk all day, and then hit an even bigger wall when I started having kids. I really appreciate your perspective about environment and that resonates so much with me. I tried adderall and didn’t love it. What’s worked better for me is accepting my limitations and restructuring my job so that I do a lot less of the boring document drafting and a lot more time talking to clients. It was hard to admit to myself as someone who has always been really ambitious and competitive that I just really really suck at sitting in a desk all day and billing time, but also why shouldn’t that be hard for me? I also can’t carry a tune to save my life and I’ll never be able to touch a basketball rim at 5’3”, and yet I’ve never felt shame about the genetics that make singing and playing basketball particularly hard for me. It’s interesting how we moralize certain limitations as lazy in our society and accept others as acceptable and unchangeable. Having a diagnosis to point to a few years ago was helpful in helping me unpack the shame I felt around my limitations, but over time as I’ve healed I’ve also felt like the label is less important as I’ve accepted the idea that I thrive in certain environments and don’t in others — just like every single person on this planet!
I have a son who has literally all of the “classic” ADHD traits (constantly getting in trouble with teachers and coaches for his hyperactivity and impulsivity) who is getting evaluated by a psychologist next week. This article has given me a lot to think about, especially with regard to medication. I look forward to reading some of your other posts. I can tell you really, really “get it.”
Wow Ashley, thank you so much for sharing this, you articulate so many things I relate to very well. Yes of course. Then we have to think about it all through our kids. Don't we? Reach out if you want to talk through the evaluation stuff. You sound like you're doing a great job trying to be a person!
Really enjoyed this article! As an adult currently going through my own grownup ADHD diagnosis with a 4.5 year-old who is also showing a lot of signs, I can really relate to the part about environmental factors. I think a lot about how navigating late stage capitalism as a self-employed person with small kids has made it feel a lot more difficult for me to organize myself and manage symptoms in recent years that I used to feel pretty on top of. Chaos in the mind begets more chaos.
I also appreciate you shouting out that different kids might need different things. A big goal with my diagnosis is simply to understand my brain better… so that in time I can hopefully help my daughter to find the right environmental conditions to suit her own mind.
Sarah, I found your comments so illuminating with your keen observations and curiosity. I have another piece to add to this puzzle. OUR KIDS ARE OVERWHELMED. OUR PARENTS ARE OVERWHELMED. I don't know if you actually know how overwhelmed your generation of families are! Being a baby boomer, I knew the less complicated life as a kid and even as a parent. Without the seduction of the internet and the unending options/decisions to sort out/process and the need for both parents to bring in money to cover your too large mortgage or rent and other expenses. Your lives are so complicated and so demanding. I wonder what effect this has on the ADHD kid or parent. I have amazing executive functioning skills. But when I am feeling OVERWHELMED I can hardly get myself into the shower. That's not depression. It is a NORMAL reaction to TOO MUCH IS EXPECTED OF ME! Life is moving so much faster in this generation - for kids/for parents.
Are kids with ADHD brains telling our society that the structures/institutions/cultural norms are TOTALLY OUT-OF-WHACK/TOO DEMANDING?
One thing I found so interesting was the way that he pointed to how ADHD meds don’t improve outcomes. Instead it just makes life feel less hard or boring or unbearable , but we don’t actually perform any better. As someone who only got treatment at age 37 after having a diagnosis at age 11 hidden from me for most of my life, can I say: I don’t really care if I perform better or not. I want to just be able to tolerate life like a normal person. I want normal things, like being in relationships, to not feel unbearable. But he acted as if that impact was meaningless.
This comment is low key heartbreaking. I’m so sorry your diagnosis wasn’t shared with you as a kid. And the recognition that the meds I take-which have changed my life immeasurably for the better-are basically designed to make me a better worker for capitalism comes back to me daily (“haunts” seems melodramatic, but, yeah).
Thanks. I was given a psycho-educational evaluation as a child and I was diagnosed with depression and ADHD. the choice as made to treat my depression and see if that would be sufficient. It mostly was, as I was an intelligent and motivated young person. But when I got to college the wheels came off the bus and I could have really used behavioral support and context for why things were so difficult for me. Sometime in my early 30’s I found the report that had been done and was shocked to see ADHD diagnosis on there. At age 37 two things happened, I hit perimenopause and I left my marriage. My ex had helped manage a LOT of my symptoms (especially helping me with not being late for things and beginning work everyday) and also the hormonal shifts made it worse. Those two combined meant that suddenly it was like my ADHD got turned up to eleven. It was tough, but thanks to already have a child diagnosis I was able to get treatment pretty quickly. I still struggle with transitions, lateness, and managing my energy but it’s better, but looking back at all the years I didn’t understand myself and thought something was wrong with me, I wish I had been given the language and learning. My mother continued to deny I had ADHD until she died, even when I showed her the diagnosis I found in her own file cabinet!
Thanks for sharing this, I think a lot of adults who were evaluated as kids never really were given the time and care to understand their diagnoses. I'm glad you got to a clear place about it
Off the bat, you have pretty much covered everything I think about ADHD and made me less anxious to read the Times article. As someone who identifies as disabled and has ADHD I would say that environment reigns supreme. And so many other factors dictate whether I can function at all on any given day. My chronic pain is poison to any regulatory efforts I make for my ADHD. Autoimmune symptoms can snap me out of regulation quicker than you can say “neuro-divergent affirmation”.
Recently, I started very low dose stimulants and it has changed my life. It took a while to adjust (to all of it: shame undoing, meds onboarding, regulation of my physical activity so I don’t over do it and have autoimmune setbacks, not over sharing about my new meds, lol). I can actually get work done, I find joy in my artistic process, and can manage the ridiculous workload that an artist must endure if they want to practice their craft for a living. This counts as my environment, right? I have a disorder because the perilous expectations on artists is something that someone without this disorder would be just fine with? Hardly. I managed to make it 44 years without medication simply because I masked and made excuses for my baseline mode of operation, but the rest of them experience non critical self-satisfaction working double time because their work is undervalued.
My therapist always reminds me that diagnoses are just words. Regardless of similarities of a malady from person to person, we still all experience them differently. She also reminds me that Americans are terribly reliant on “disorder” as a descriptor for, well, things that are just part of who TONS OF PEOPLE ARE!
One last thing, and then I’ll go watch that video- we all have expectations put on us from childbirth that will lead to ADHD symptoms in those who don’t even have it. Humans are expected to work too much. I used to say Americans are expected to work too much, but technology seems to have made that argument less endemic. The amount of work we must do to undo the amount of work we are programmed to do feels like a fool’s errand, especially when
Whew, yes yes yes Aaron! I think we add layers when we talk about adults making decisions for kids' treatment, but I have heard your experience echoed in children and teens I work with as well. And I'm glad you're having it! I think asking "what counts as environment" is really helpful and interesting. The culture is the culture, right, so even if we believe it's wrong, we have to wake up every day and, as I relate to do " ridiculous workload that an artist must endure if they want to practice their craft for a living!" or whatever other thing we do. We expect a lot of adults, and HOO BOY do we expect a lot of kids. Chronic illness interacts with it all too -- I was mysteriously ill for half of last year and it really changed how I think about what I need, what's ok to depend on others for, what a good day or life is. And by the way, thanks for infusing your neurotype and life experience into stories for kids, which means everything!
"People (Tough, I think, is a bit guilty of this, as am I at times!) often spend whole articles debunking some research, then going 'but this one study of 25 people tells a totally different story'"
Yeah, that one section of the article that pointed to a few antecotes to make the argument that ADHD goes away if you get your dream job (and didn't take the next step to ask what people should do if they don't end up getting their dream job in film or some other very niche field).
I also appreciated Tough’s piece and your commentary, Susan! What I wish he’d written more about was the disconnect between the constant rewards of the digital world and the increasingly sedentary, proscribed (as in, boring) expectations of school. Wouldn’t this also have an effect on the increase in diagnoses and the ineffectiveness of medical interventions?
Thanks so much for sharing this! You are not alone. I get that feeling of, if I can do it without meds I should! But what is that about? Some weird pull you up by your bootstraps American individualism? In a complex culture like ours, it's not like not. Meds is pure and meds is messy. Everything's messy as you note! I'm so glad you found something that helps you through the hard times, OF COURSE those conditions are more than one can handle. Keep reading and sharing!
I just went and read the article you referenced about receiving your ADHD diagnosis and I just want to say - it is one of the best articles I’ve read on Substack. I laughed (the Adam Levine v neck analogy cracked me up) and cried. I can relate to your story so much as a lawyer who thrived in school (except I never did the reading and was always incredibly stressed out), but hit an absolute wall when my career required me to write boring stuff and bill boring hours in a desk all day, and then hit an even bigger wall when I started having kids. I really appreciate your perspective about environment and that resonates so much with me. I tried adderall and didn’t love it. What’s worked better for me is accepting my limitations and restructuring my job so that I do a lot less of the boring document drafting and a lot more time talking to clients. It was hard to admit to myself as someone who has always been really ambitious and competitive that I just really really suck at sitting in a desk all day and billing time, but also why shouldn’t that be hard for me? I also can’t carry a tune to save my life and I’ll never be able to touch a basketball rim at 5’3”, and yet I’ve never felt shame about the genetics that make singing and playing basketball particularly hard for me. It’s interesting how we moralize certain limitations as lazy in our society and accept others as acceptable and unchangeable. Having a diagnosis to point to a few years ago was helpful in helping me unpack the shame I felt around my limitations, but over time as I’ve healed I’ve also felt like the label is less important as I’ve accepted the idea that I thrive in certain environments and don’t in others — just like every single person on this planet!
I have a son who has literally all of the “classic” ADHD traits (constantly getting in trouble with teachers and coaches for his hyperactivity and impulsivity) who is getting evaluated by a psychologist next week. This article has given me a lot to think about, especially with regard to medication. I look forward to reading some of your other posts. I can tell you really, really “get it.”
“It’s interesting how we moralize certain limitations as lazy in our society and accept others as acceptable and unchangeable.” So well put 🙏🏼💛
Wow Ashley, thank you so much for sharing this, you articulate so many things I relate to very well. Yes of course. Then we have to think about it all through our kids. Don't we? Reach out if you want to talk through the evaluation stuff. You sound like you're doing a great job trying to be a person!
Really enjoyed this article! As an adult currently going through my own grownup ADHD diagnosis with a 4.5 year-old who is also showing a lot of signs, I can really relate to the part about environmental factors. I think a lot about how navigating late stage capitalism as a self-employed person with small kids has made it feel a lot more difficult for me to organize myself and manage symptoms in recent years that I used to feel pretty on top of. Chaos in the mind begets more chaos.
I also appreciate you shouting out that different kids might need different things. A big goal with my diagnosis is simply to understand my brain better… so that in time I can hopefully help my daughter to find the right environmental conditions to suit her own mind.
Sounds like you're on the right track! Thanks for reading
Sarah, I found your comments so illuminating with your keen observations and curiosity. I have another piece to add to this puzzle. OUR KIDS ARE OVERWHELMED. OUR PARENTS ARE OVERWHELMED. I don't know if you actually know how overwhelmed your generation of families are! Being a baby boomer, I knew the less complicated life as a kid and even as a parent. Without the seduction of the internet and the unending options/decisions to sort out/process and the need for both parents to bring in money to cover your too large mortgage or rent and other expenses. Your lives are so complicated and so demanding. I wonder what effect this has on the ADHD kid or parent. I have amazing executive functioning skills. But when I am feeling OVERWHELMED I can hardly get myself into the shower. That's not depression. It is a NORMAL reaction to TOO MUCH IS EXPECTED OF ME! Life is moving so much faster in this generation - for kids/for parents.
Are kids with ADHD brains telling our society that the structures/institutions/cultural norms are TOTALLY OUT-OF-WHACK/TOO DEMANDING?
yes, maybe we need to listen better to them - the canaries in the coalmine! thanks ma, for this and for helping cover my mortgage :)
One thing I found so interesting was the way that he pointed to how ADHD meds don’t improve outcomes. Instead it just makes life feel less hard or boring or unbearable , but we don’t actually perform any better. As someone who only got treatment at age 37 after having a diagnosis at age 11 hidden from me for most of my life, can I say: I don’t really care if I perform better or not. I want to just be able to tolerate life like a normal person. I want normal things, like being in relationships, to not feel unbearable. But he acted as if that impact was meaningless.
right, there's no great research on the many many parts of our lives that get impacted by how we function. test scores arent the whole goal.
Test scores aren't the goal!
This comment is low key heartbreaking. I’m so sorry your diagnosis wasn’t shared with you as a kid. And the recognition that the meds I take-which have changed my life immeasurably for the better-are basically designed to make me a better worker for capitalism comes back to me daily (“haunts” seems melodramatic, but, yeah).
Thanks. I was given a psycho-educational evaluation as a child and I was diagnosed with depression and ADHD. the choice as made to treat my depression and see if that would be sufficient. It mostly was, as I was an intelligent and motivated young person. But when I got to college the wheels came off the bus and I could have really used behavioral support and context for why things were so difficult for me. Sometime in my early 30’s I found the report that had been done and was shocked to see ADHD diagnosis on there. At age 37 two things happened, I hit perimenopause and I left my marriage. My ex had helped manage a LOT of my symptoms (especially helping me with not being late for things and beginning work everyday) and also the hormonal shifts made it worse. Those two combined meant that suddenly it was like my ADHD got turned up to eleven. It was tough, but thanks to already have a child diagnosis I was able to get treatment pretty quickly. I still struggle with transitions, lateness, and managing my energy but it’s better, but looking back at all the years I didn’t understand myself and thought something was wrong with me, I wish I had been given the language and learning. My mother continued to deny I had ADHD until she died, even when I showed her the diagnosis I found in her own file cabinet!
Thanks for sharing this, I think a lot of adults who were evaluated as kids never really were given the time and care to understand their diagnoses. I'm glad you got to a clear place about it
Oh wow. How powerful that you were able to work through alll of that! Also, your mom…
Right?!?! lol. Bless her.
Off the bat, you have pretty much covered everything I think about ADHD and made me less anxious to read the Times article. As someone who identifies as disabled and has ADHD I would say that environment reigns supreme. And so many other factors dictate whether I can function at all on any given day. My chronic pain is poison to any regulatory efforts I make for my ADHD. Autoimmune symptoms can snap me out of regulation quicker than you can say “neuro-divergent affirmation”.
Recently, I started very low dose stimulants and it has changed my life. It took a while to adjust (to all of it: shame undoing, meds onboarding, regulation of my physical activity so I don’t over do it and have autoimmune setbacks, not over sharing about my new meds, lol). I can actually get work done, I find joy in my artistic process, and can manage the ridiculous workload that an artist must endure if they want to practice their craft for a living. This counts as my environment, right? I have a disorder because the perilous expectations on artists is something that someone without this disorder would be just fine with? Hardly. I managed to make it 44 years without medication simply because I masked and made excuses for my baseline mode of operation, but the rest of them experience non critical self-satisfaction working double time because their work is undervalued.
My therapist always reminds me that diagnoses are just words. Regardless of similarities of a malady from person to person, we still all experience them differently. She also reminds me that Americans are terribly reliant on “disorder” as a descriptor for, well, things that are just part of who TONS OF PEOPLE ARE!
One last thing, and then I’ll go watch that video- we all have expectations put on us from childbirth that will lead to ADHD symptoms in those who don’t even have it. Humans are expected to work too much. I used to say Americans are expected to work too much, but technology seems to have made that argument less endemic. The amount of work we must do to undo the amount of work we are programmed to do feels like a fool’s errand, especially when
Whew, yes yes yes Aaron! I think we add layers when we talk about adults making decisions for kids' treatment, but I have heard your experience echoed in children and teens I work with as well. And I'm glad you're having it! I think asking "what counts as environment" is really helpful and interesting. The culture is the culture, right, so even if we believe it's wrong, we have to wake up every day and, as I relate to do " ridiculous workload that an artist must endure if they want to practice their craft for a living!" or whatever other thing we do. We expect a lot of adults, and HOO BOY do we expect a lot of kids. Chronic illness interacts with it all too -- I was mysteriously ill for half of last year and it really changed how I think about what I need, what's ok to depend on others for, what a good day or life is. And by the way, thanks for infusing your neurotype and life experience into stories for kids, which means everything!
"People (Tough, I think, is a bit guilty of this, as am I at times!) often spend whole articles debunking some research, then going 'but this one study of 25 people tells a totally different story'"
Yeah, that one section of the article that pointed to a few antecotes to make the argument that ADHD goes away if you get your dream job (and didn't take the next step to ask what people should do if they don't end up getting their dream job in film or some other very niche field).
*"to seemingly make the argument", that should have been
I also appreciated Tough’s piece and your commentary, Susan! What I wish he’d written more about was the disconnect between the constant rewards of the digital world and the increasingly sedentary, proscribed (as in, boring) expectations of school. Wouldn’t this also have an effect on the increase in diagnoses and the ineffectiveness of medical interventions?
Yup I think that tracks
Appreciate this smart followup. Thank you, Sarah.
You're so smart and I loved this.
no you
I agree with Miranda
I did find the ADDitude's rebuttal of his article compelling, as he took quotes from ADDitude articles out of context in several instances. https://www.additudemag.com/adhd-article-new-york-times/amp/
Oh interesting, I'll check it out!
Thanks so much for sharing this! You are not alone. I get that feeling of, if I can do it without meds I should! But what is that about? Some weird pull you up by your bootstraps American individualism? In a complex culture like ours, it's not like not. Meds is pure and meds is messy. Everything's messy as you note! I'm so glad you found something that helps you through the hard times, OF COURSE those conditions are more than one can handle. Keep reading and sharing!