ADHD is in big part quirky human behavior turned up to 11.
Edit: ngl, I’m tired of people just coming here, saying that everyone’s like that, getting lots of upvotes and downvoting people when they clarify stuff. :/
The problem is that a lot of examples people use are not the ones turned up to 11. I have ADHD but I don’t tell people I lock my door walk 4 steps and realize I was thinking about other things and therefore have no idea if I did and have to fix it. Because lots of people do that
Stuff like re-arranging your room every 2 months due to flashes of inspiration, sure. Getting frustrated because you had the brilliant idea to do two things last night and now you can’t decide which takes priority, sure. Endlessly scrolling on Netflix? Nah
So it means that we can’t post stuff that ADHD people find far more relatable than your average folks because they also experience it from time to time? It kinda kills the purpose of this sub imo. :/
why does it bother you that this is not necessarily a trait of ADHD and normal people also show this behavior?
why is it bad that it’s just normal?
It’s “ADHD Memes”, it’s supposed to be our safe space but people come here to belittle our struggles. I don’t get where did you get the idea that we dislike the idea of other people experiencing the same things but less. We dislike the idea of people dismissing our struggles when experiencing stuff like in this post is really painful when you do it over and over again and not just sometimes.
Can’t speak for them but I can relate some ADHD perspective.
ADHD people often are told “what? Pfft! You don’t have that” in various ways despite our being diagnosed by a mental health professional and despite our disorder causing many significant problems for us in all/most areas of our lives from childhood onward.
The disorder makes me, personally, feel like I am not fully human, and that something is wrong with me. And I doubt I am alone in that.
You see, we are much more often in hot water with someone either due to behavior, procrastination, focusing on the wrong thing, forgetting appointments and deadlines, and so on. We are criticized and chastised much more often than neurootypical people from childhood onward.
I mention all this to provide context, only, not for tiny 🎻🎻🎻 :)
One of the ways the “you don’t have ADHD” message manifests is when we try to explain some symptoms and the person dismissively claims without hesitation, “everyone does that,” rather than trying to understand our perspective better, understand to what degree it affects us and how often it does so.
This can feel like minimizing our situation or outright denying our disorder depending on context (the old “ADHD iS oVeRDiaGnOSed”).
Tying into the context above, for me, dismissing my diagnosis and symptoms also sounds a lot like saying to me, “you know how you finally don’t hate yourself for moral and character failings because you understand why you are the way you are? Well sorry, that’s all bullshit, you don’t have ADHD you just fucking suck as a human being, so you may now go back to self flagellation and loathing.”
And so this sort of thing can be kind of “triggering” I suppose.
And one of our symptoms is poor emotional regulation so if we get disproportionately upset hearing “eh, that’s normal”… now you know why :)
Hopefully this offers some helpful perspective.
Edited: reworded for more betterness
