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The speaker reflects on a decade of making ADHD content and invites the community to share how their understanding of ADHD has changed. The discussion begins with major shifts in awareness and language around ADHD.
Hello brains, happy ADHD Awareness Month.Actually, happy 10th ADHD Awareness Month since I've been doing this channel.It's been wild to see how much has changed both in terms of how I think about my own ADHD and what I understand about my condition, as well as how the conversation about ADHD has shifted in general.You could fill a book with what I did not know about my own brain when I started a decade ago.There's so much I've learned, there's so much I know that you have learned as well, and I was really curious to hear about it.So, I asked you, the community, to let me know, what are some of the things that have changed for you?What are some of the things that you used to believe about ADHD that you now know aren't true?
Hello brains, a lot has changed in the last 10 years when it comes to ADHD.What changes have you noticed?How is your understanding of ADHD changed?What about the understanding of the people around you?At home, at school, at work, in society in general?Let's get into it.It's becoming more known that the hyperactivity part frequently happens in your head.It doesn't automatically mean physically bouncing off the walls or being unable to sit still.I didn't know I was hyperactive.I thought I was just inattentive.I thought I had trouble focusing because my hyperactivity did not look like my brother's hyperactivity.My hyperactivity was often more verbal, speaking really quickly with no spaces between my words, or having a million tabs open, bouncing from thought to thought.For a lot of adults in general, even the boys that were running around being hyperactive physically, it can often become more internal later on as you grow.
You can totally be hyperactive and not look like a stereotypical hyperactive person with ADHD.Honestly and personally, my biggest misconception and my doctor's biggest misconception was that I had borderline {slash} emotionally unstable personality disorder.Turns out it was ADHD and autism.Finding that out and finally receiving the appropriate ADHD medication has had a profound impact on my life.You can have uh personality disorders, mood disorders um alongside ADHD and or autism, but what a lot of people didn't know, and it's still not in the DSM, it's still not in the diagnostic criteria, is that emotion dysregulationis a big part of having ADHD.Language.We now have a shared language of terminology to understand our experiences and advocate for ourselves with.That to me has been the biggest societal and personal change.I'm going to cry.I know it.Side note, your work has contributed massively to this change.
You're a legend who wears it lightly and I thank you so much.Oh, thank you.Um, I thought that I was educating people about tools and strategies and all of that.That's what I thought I was doing.That's what I was doing for myself.What actually happened, what I kept hearing again and again from you, from the community, as well as experiencing for myself, is that the most powerful thing that I think has happened is this language shift.How we talk to ourselves, how we talk about ourselves, is more accurate and less shaming than it used to be.Having the language for the things that we struggle with, I think has been the most powerful thing.To the point that in my book, uh, shameless self-promotion that I did not plan in advance, like actually I did not.I do have a glossary in my book.
Things like circadian rhythm and set shifting and emotion dysregulation and divergent thinking and emotional impulsivity.All these things that helped me understand my brain and hopefully helped you understand yours better, too.Oh, yeah, and by the way, uh, the paperback version of my book is available now.I promise this video was not meant to promote my book.I thought about it at like the last second.I was like, I should probably talk about the book.It's paperback's out now.My publishers will be happy.
This chapter covers common myths about ADHD, including growing out of it, willpower, focus, sleep, and hyperactivity. It also emphasizes how strategies, systems, and self-understanding can improve life with ADHD.
It's becoming less common for people to think you'll grow out of it as you get older.So, I just got back from the Paris Hilton ADHD event and understood.org was there educating people and correcting some common misconceptions.And that was one of them, that you grow out of it as you get older.That's not actually what happens, it turns out.If you have ADHD, you kind of have ADHD, but you maybe find systems that work for you, you find jobs where you're not as impaired, relationships that can support you, and so the impairment can decrease, but you don'tgrow out of ADHD.That's not really a thing.The change in belief that ADHD can be overcome by willpower and I'm just not trying hard enough.Also, the belief that it's limited to primarily children.Yeah, now we understand that you can be an adult with ADHD.
You can be smart and have ADHD.You can be a woman and have ADHD.And that's another thing that Understood came in and talked about is that yes, even though boys are more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than girls, they actually occur at similar rates.It's just that girls are going undiagnosed, under recognized.But that's changing.It's improving and I'm very happy about that.How it impacts people who will do or did menstruate is a huge leap in my understanding even as someone who works for an ADHD clinic.Yeah, this is new information for a lot of us, myself included.I just did an episode on ADHD and hormones and I learned new things during that episode.If you have not checked out the video on ADHD and hormones, I will link to it here.I will also link to it in the description below.
Show your doctor, watch it, take notes, like it's it's good information.And if you want to know even more, Dr.Jolene Brighton has a great book out called ADHD and Women where she's really vulnerable and talks about her own experience as well.I used to believe that ADHD means you can't focus at all.Since I'm able to focus and really half the time the problem is that I focus too well on what I'm doing, I can't have ADHD.A lot of parents say that about their kids.They're like, well, he can focus on video games for hours.Like that's not the problem.He just doesn't want to, right?Doesn't want to, doesn't care about his homework, cares about his video game, can focus on that.That's not really how it works.It's not difficulty with attention, it's difficulty with attention regulation.So we have a harder time controlling what it is that we focus on.
Hyperfocus is the flip side, right?So like some things you can't focus on at all.You keep getting distracted and on the flip side, sometimes you can't pull your your attention away.And these are two sides of the same coin.It's this difficulty regulating our attention.Understanding that sleep disorders are very common in ADHDers.I didn't know I had a sleep condition.I just thought I was a gosh, let's see if I remember it almost 10 years later.I just thought I was a night owl with restless legs syndrome who couldn't fall asleep, stay asleep.No, I don't remember this at all.Yeah, sleep disorders are very common.I have a whole video about it here.A very early video talking about delayed circadian rhythm, which I didn't know that that was an ADHD thing.Not that everybody with ADHD has it, just that it is it is common.
I believe that I couldn't be better at doing things that I struggle with.When I learned about habit stacking, my life got better.Not perfect, just better.That is more than good enough for me.That's a good point.Sometimes what we're learning isn't just about ADHD, it's about strategies.It's about systems.It's about supports.Like hacks.Like ways to work with our brain, not against it, that are helpful for anybody, but maybe especially critical for those with ADHD.It helps me understand myself better.My limits are okay and not just push through till I burn out.I don't have to do it like everybody else.I can find my own way of doing things or not doing things, and I'm happier, a better version of myself.This helps me accept and love myself more.What a beautiful upward spiral that is.Realizing you don't have to do it like everybody else, you can do it in a way that works for you, and then that making you feel better about yourself and more confident, and that's going to make you more
effective.And so like then that helps with the positive self-talk and it's this upward spiral.That's really cool.
The conversation turns to changes in schools, treatment, masking, and the lasting impact of internalized shame. It also explores late diagnosis, grief, and the growing availability of information and resources.
There's been a really obvious shift in how it's managed in schools, at least in the UK where I live.When I was growing up, the focus was so much on managing me, making me fit in the classroom, and when I had a meltdown, trying to basically shuffle that under the rug.Don't get me wrong, I had a lot of support, but the meds I was was on were as much about helping others as helping me.Yeah.Now it feels more holistic.They seem to actually ask questions and try to work out what underlies difficulties and tackle that, not just clamp you down so you're more palatable to for others.I got to say, there are a lot of people that I have heard from in the comments that thank me for the channel specifically because they didn't want treatment because it was kind of shoved down their throat when
they were kids as something that like you need to take meds so that you are acceptable, so that you are easier to deal with.Who wants that, right?Who wants to be fixed?Who wants to be managed in that way?And so what I talk about on the channel and what the conversation has shifted to in general, and that's so nice that it is, is what do you need?What are your goals and how do we support you in reaching them?It's honestly even shifted the other way, which is really cool, which is like, "Hey, let's not mask any more than we need to, right?Like let's start to take some of that mask off when we can.Not that masking is bad.I think it's very protective and I think there are situations where that makes sense.In line at the airport comes to mind, right?
I'm not going to go through security and be like, "This is a great time for me to be real ADHD."There are times that it makes sense to fit in, but fitting in can come at the expense of belonging.And we deserve to belong.It took me years, even after my diagnosis at age 40, to stop feeling like my procrastination and lack of motivation was a character flaw.This is bringing up a really good point, which is that the messages internalize growing up don't just go away because we got a diagnosis or because we started to learn about ADHD and started to understand our brain better.They have a lasting impact.Even I, after 10 years of doing this, am still dismantling some of the internalized stuff, some of the internalized ableism, some of the messages about like me being wrong or bad.Even I still have days where I feel like I've failed or I'm a bad person if I don't use all of my tools perfectly.
Like Brendan and told me, "You're allowed to have ADHD."And that doesn't just mean you're allowed to have it.It doesn't just mean you're allowed to struggle with it, but it means that you're allowed to have days where you're not functional.It takes a a superhuman amount of strength and resources and energy and time, frankly, to manage your ADHD perfectly, and it's not your fault if you don't.The fact that more people talk about ADHD and accept it is great.Awareness, less shame and guilt surrounding it are a bonus.As a woman diagnosed at 60, I have learned so much about my brain.It's overwhelming and nearly brings me to tears on a daily basis.Diagnosed at 60.This makes me sad because it's such a common story for people in that generation to be diagnosed really late in life, especially if they're women.Anytime you get a diagnosis or you start to understand your ADHD, you start to understand your brain, there's a lot of grief that can come up about, "Man, like, what if I had known this sooner?
What would my life have been like?If I had understood my ADHD, I would have asked for accommodations in college instead of being like, 'Well, I'm smart.I shouldn't need them.'"Yeah, when you're hyperfocused on a class you're really excited about, but what about the rest of them?And also, you keep forgetting to register for them, right?It's really easy to get into the like, what if I had known sooner.But like at 60, it's wild cuz you're not just looking back at what if I had been able to graduate college.It's like you've had an entire career, maybe a family, maybe not a family, whatever.You've lived an entire life not understanding how your brain works.And that's why I'm still doing this is because after doing this for 10 years, still meet people who don't understand that this is how their brain works or don't know how to work with it effectively.
And it makes me really sad.You're going to bring me to tears today.The amount of resources and information out there now has gone miles to making me feel less alone and also helping me manage my symptoms better.I learned some new stuff about my ADHD from watching one of your videos literally today.Ah.The problem when I started the channel was a lack of access to information about ADHD.I had been diagnosed for 20 years and been seeing doctors for my ADHD for 20 years.20 years I didn't understand my ADHD.There weren't the resources.The information was not there or it wasn't being disseminated to me as the person living with ADHD.I read these research papers with tears streaming down my cheeks because these researchers knew things that I didn't know about my own brain.I wanted to get that information out there.
And now I'm like, should I retire?Because like that information is out there now.There are resources.The information is there.I'm not going to retire, but I'm going to be starting a podcast which will also live on this channel about what next, right?Now that we have these resources, this information, we've got a toolbox that we're that we're building up of tools that we know work for our brains.What are we going to use those tools to build?So that's my next chapter of my journey is educating myself and the community, hopefully in the process, in this investigation of what makes for a good life when you have ADHD.
The final section addresses ADHD beyond work performance, including relationships, medication use, comparison to others, and the right to rest and have fun. It closes with gratitude for the community and a call to keep learning and supporting one another.
I've noticed a shift away from the idea that you can't possibly have ADHD if you were outwardly organized and put together.There are times where I have really looked like I'm on top of stuff and it's been because in the background things are chaos.I put all of my energy into like looking like I'm doing okay or achieving in a specific way that I am motivated and or pressured to achieve.I was on the Dean's Honor Roll in college for like a semester, but at lunch I was eating lemon cookies and bananas because I couldn't budget, didn't have money, and also like just didn't know how to feed myselfand figured out there's a 99 cent store across the street.So, I would get an entire package of lemon cookies and bananas every day for lunch because I didn't know how to feed myself.It's the tip of the iceberg, right?
Like what we see at the tip of the iceberg is like not representative of what is underneath.And that's true of struggles and it's also true of function.I used to think it only affects my productivity and work-related stuff, but I'm I'm surprised how much it affects my personal relationships and friendships.If you have ADHD, you have ADHD at work, at school, at home, with friends, in the bedroom.You have ADHD everywhere you go, right?It's your brain.And so, all of the same things that we struggle with at work, we're going to struggle with at home.But I can allow myself to take medication on the weekends, too, so I can actually use my free time, not just lay still on the couch.Okay, this is a misconception that needs to die if it has not died already.The idea that we should only be using medication for when other people have priorities for us, like when we're at work or when we're at school and like have to perform to make somebody else happy or make somebody
else money or whatever it is, like the idea that that's the only time we need meds is wild.When you're engaged with hobbies, when you're spending time with friends, with your partner, you need your brain then, too.There's people who take breaks take meds breaks on weekends or whatever, and that's fine if that's what works for them.But this idea that like you should only take meds when you're at work or when you're at school.This condition is not just about productivity.It impacts our ability to regulate, to regulate our attention, to regulate our emotions, to regulate our sleep.And so, if you are treated for ADHD and you function better on the medication, taking it on the weekends, too, can allow you to be just functional for your hobbies and your friends and your partner.I used to think that everyone is a little ADHD and that it is a spectrum for everyone.
Yeah, this is a really common misconception and brave of you to post that because it's something that a lot of people with ADHD get very frustrated with people saying because it can be dismissive, right?But it's really interesting that even people with ADHD thought well, everyone's a little ADHD.understood.org at the Paris Hilton event covered this, too.The truth is everyone struggles with the things that people with ADHD struggle with sometimes.Everyone is running late occasionally.Everyone loses their keys.Everyone is disorganized in the middle of a move.Like somebody cuts them off on the freeway, probably everyone gets mad.But it's the extent to which people with ADHD struggle with that makes it diagnosable.It's the extent to which it happens.It's the frequency with which it happens.I used to think that I'm not allowed to do what's fun.I'll be honest, I'm still unlearning this one.
I believed I didn't get to go do fun things because I wasn't done yet.Because my work wasn't good enough.Because I hadn't managed my time well and I wasn't I wasn't finished.If I hadn't showered that morning and like done all the things that a human is supposed to do, that I couldn't do the like bonus extra fun stuff of going out with friends.That makes me really sad.The idea that I get to and deserve to live a good, fun, fulfilling life even if I still have ADHD.Even if I still struggle with what I struggle with.Even if my house is a mess, I can stop and go have fun.It's hard to feel like you can if you feel like you haven't earned it.And then if you go do it anyway, it's hard to not feel guilty because who are you letting down?
Downtime, rest, fun, these things are not rewards, they're fuel.Being able to take time away from your work can be preventative against burnout.If I never rest until all of my work is done and I don't let myself have fun until I am the responsible human everybody needs me to be, my cup is going to be pretty empty and I'm notgoing to have a lot to give.When I take the time for fun, a better version of me shows up.Not just for other people, but also for myself.I think that's a nice place to end it.Thank you so much for everybody who contributed.This is a really neat trip down memory lane and just evidence that the work that I've done matters and the work that you all do matters.Talking about your ADHD, educating other people about it.It has been such a cool privilege to go from nobody's talking about ADHD ever, anywhere, 10 years ago that I'm aware of, not in like public spaces for sure, to I can go to a restaurant now and hear
somebody at the next table talking about how their partner has ADHD and what he struggles with and what they are doing as a couple to help, to support him.It's been an unbelievable privilege to be able to see this journey.It used to be said, "Don't talk about your your ADHD at work."Like it will hurt your advancement and now people are disclosing their ADHD at work.Not everybody, it's not safe for everybody yet, but it has been so cool to see how normalized it has become to have ADHD related struggles when you have ADHD.So, it's great that we can talk about that.Thank you to our brain advocates and all our patron brains, not just currently, but all of you over the last 10 years.If you have ever supported our channel, you have helped us get to where we are.You have helped to shift the conversation.
You have helped to correct misconceptions.You have helped to make this book happen.You have helped to make the next book happen, which is Okay, it's not happening yet.It's in progress.You have done so much and supported so many people and created so many ripple effects.You have no idea.If you are not a patron supporter and you'd like to support the work that we're doing, we're doing some really exciting stuff right now.We are really trying to focus on the mission and what we want to do.Um slightly worried at the moment about our bank account.So, if you can support us, you can make it so we can continue to focus on what matters most and not have to worry about how to pay the bills.Oh, and we have a Discord through Patreon.So, if you are still trying to unlearn some of the messages you accumulated growing up about ADHD, um let go of some internalized ableism, if you are trying to educate yourself about ADHD, you can come join the most
knowledgeable ADHD community on the internet.Let me know if I missed any, if there are any misconceptions that you had that you understand differently now, let me know in the comments below.Like, subscribe, click all the things and I will see you next video.Bye, brains.