Why ADHD Makes You Feel Broken

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When trying my hardest was met with "You need to try harder" I reached the conclusion of "If trying my hardest isn't good enough, then trying isn't worth it"

As someone with inattentive type ADHD, that whole thing about "why don't you apply yourself more" basically sums up my experience throughout my school years. I wasn't a bad kid in school, but I cannot tell you how many times I heard people say that I could be doing a lot better if "I just applied myself". No one bothered to look into it, leading me to internalize this idea that there was something wrong with me, that I was broken or something, I didn't get diagnosed let alone evaluated for ADHD until I was 21.

I can CONFIDENTLY say that, after 2 years of therapy, medication and building the right environment, I NO LONGER have this problem. By the way, I was diagnosed at 26.

“Are we broken because we have ADHD, or do we have ADHD because we’re broken”

I wasn't diagnosed until I was 32. I call growing up with undiagnosed ADHD "The gaslit childhood." It fucked me up personally but I think it gave me an extra perk in the parenting skill tree which is that I do not believe unintentional laziness exists. Laziness can only be chosen! It is often a smart natural choice made to preserve energy, recover, or heal; but if you aren't choosing it, it is something else. My job as a parent isn't to dictate how someone should live but to help them discover hacks that make "doing life" the easiest and most fulfilling FOR THEM. My way works for me, maybe not my kid. Growing up misunderstood has burned that into my soul. If my child seems "lazy" about something, we just haven't found the right way yet. Time to get creative! I often learn something about myself in the process.

When your parents clap back with the ‘oh, everybody has a little bit of ADHD, don’t worry’ and ‘excuses are like an asshole, everybody has one but nobody wants to hear it’

He drops these videos in the chronological order my life is going in & how I currently feel & it’s scary

my parents were on my ass about this and forced me to be productive, and I ended up harming myself. I wish I saw this earlier.

So ADHD is why I cried for 2 days straight after drinking for the 1st time. I wasn't even that drunk but alcohol made me feel like a human being for the 1st time ever, because my brain and thoughts would feel defective 24/7. Alcohol does not fix anything in the long run though, and the ADHD predisposition to addiction is real, so try not to drink people...

Gotta love the, spending your entire childhood doing homework because it takes you 10x longer to do.

Oh look, it's me adding this to my saved videos to "watch later" because I want help but don't want it right now 💀

I know I have ADHD; I was diagnosed by a specialist. My sister, criticizing me for some things I informed her are symptoms of ADHD, said "Those aren't ADHD symptoms! That's just how you are!" FFS

"Just try harder" triggered such a powerful visceral anger within me. You've stated exactly how I've felt as a kid and an adult. I'm crying - I'm literally crying right now, because it's like you actually SEE what's always going on inside me. The amount of effort I'd used would be physically painful. I always called myself a broken human.

Please make video where you deep dive into learned helplessness. This belief that "there's something fundamentally wrong with me" has been affecting me my whole life and I struggle to get out of this mental fallacy.

"You have to live up to your potential!" Darn, it still hurts. Even the tone was perfect in the delivery of this line. My entire time at school, my whole family and almost all the teachers I had kept telling me that. "Could do better" on every reports for 15 years. I managed to get a bachelor, and to be frank, I'm not using it professionally. Heck, I'm actually unemployed at the moment, in therapy, and taking steps to accept who I truly am in order to help my neurodivergent kids have an easier life than I had.

“If you just applied yourself you’d do so much better” that just took me back to middle school, I’m 24 now still not diagnosed with anything and I’m doing fine, mostly. But man that phrase felt like being shot with a bullet

I was brought to tears when you said that kids that get diagnosed with depression first have a 3% chance of getting diagnosed with ADHD as an adult. I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder when I was 15-16 and wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD until I was about 26-27. Thank you so much for the content that you put out! It really has validated a lot of things that I’ve been feeling throughout my life. I am 29 now and I am trying my best to get my life together. It’s really hard, but I know I can do it!

I'm 42, I was diagnosed with ADHD when i was 13 and then again at around 32. I'm now 42 and have been waiting for over two years to be rediagnosed as having ADHD because they won't use my other diagnoses. I've wondered if I do have ADHD or if I'm just useless because why is it so hard for someone to agree to help me?. Also, people roll their eyes when you tell them you have ADHD. They say it's not real, which makes me question if it is real as so many people disbelieve. It's embarrassing and makes me feel ashamed, like I'm making excuses. When I was diagnosed in the early 90s, literally no one thought it was real. My teachers would say it's just an excuse. You're just a bad kid. Listening to you helps.

TLDR: If your parents don’t understand that you have ADHD, it is very easy for them to fall into the trap of saying “I know you can do better.” Even if they are superhuman, it’s the most natural thing for them to think and say. I am insanely lucky and have parents that love me unconditionally, are together, and do everything they can to make they succeed. They didn’t know I had ADHD while I was in school, and fell into the same trap of saying “I know you can do better.” In fact, it’s the thing they told me the most in order to encourage me while I was struggling. And after a conversation like that, I would try my best, for a week or two. Then I would fall back into what seemed to me like intentional laziness and procrastination. In fact, even stating that point right now that ADHD was (and still is) the problem, I feel like it’s wrong due to that conditioning. I hate saying it. Which ended up being a massive part of why I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 19-20. What I’m saying is that even in the best case scenario, with the best parents you could hope for. If they don’t know you have ADHD, it’s sooooo easy for them to fall into those same words of encouragement. Saying that you have more in the tank when you’re struggling to get the grades you want, and at times breaking down due to the stress of it all. There was once a time in 10th grade where I just gave up entirely on doing all homework. I just couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t keep up the pace. So I lied to my parents saying that it was alright, as my scores were actively dropping. It took nearly a whole semester for them to notice. I don’t know how I hid it for so long, but then again, I hid almost everything I did wrong from them in an attempt to please them. It took almost the whole rest of the year to catch up, and keep up with the new work that was being assigned. I had the opportunity back then to meet with my teachers after almost every class to describe what work I am doing, and to fact check it with them. They helped me lay out a path which forced me to stay on track. I am not exaggerating when I say that if it weren’t for any one of those people in my life, I would’ve failed all of those classes that year. Keep the people who want to help you close, and they can force you to put in the effort you need into something you don’t want to do.