You don’t outgrow ADHD, but I think I understand why some people think you do.
(For the record, I don’t have a formal diagnosis of ADHD. But the coping mechanisms and tips and tricks recommended for ADHD patients to help them survive as functioning human beings all work on me, so that’s what I’m rolling with until I can afford a therapist.)
Life has gotten so much easier since I’ve been able to control my own schedule and set my own deadlines. I’m very lucky in that I was able to find a job suited to my temperament and energy level. It makes me wonder how I ever survived high school and early adulthood. I’m not being dragged out of bed and thrown onto a bus and being held to someone else’s schedule and someone else’s educational standards. I’m not being made to sit still and learn about math fractions when I need to stare out the window and twirl my hair. If I want to twirl my hair for three hours while thinking about sexy unicorns, then by God that’s how I’m spending my afternoon. And YES, in case you were wondering, my split ends are a hot mess.
And speaking of math, I actually enjoy it now that I have control over what and how I learn. I was a terrible math student in school, not out of any natural ineptitude but just sheer frustrated boredom. And math isn’t boring at all. I just wasn’t suited for the environment and the schedule being forced upon me. It wasn’t math I hated; it was the context. By the way if you’ve got Curiosity Stream (and you need to have Curiosity Stream), there’s a great documentary about algorithms that everyone should watch.
Because I’ve been inside my own brain for so long, I’ve gotten to know its quirks and workarounds. I can check my spoons and decide ahead of time, “Nope, not doing that today. Too peopley.” Or I’ll think about a writing project and go, “I’m not quite ready to start that yet, I have to zone out for *checks clock* twenty more minutes and then I’ll be ready for real world stuff.” I’m not lazy or procrastinating; it’s that I struggle with changing gears. I have to prepare myself for the next thing, and if I don’t have time to prepare my brain gets flustered and locks up. This was a problem when I had to exist in an environment that gave you about four minutes to race from one end of the building to the other and maybe even stop off for a textbook along the way.
Over the years I’ve come to suspect that a lot of neurodivergences are only disabilities in certain contexts. It’s not that a person with ADHD or autism can’t function; it’s that they can’t function in this specific environment under these particular stressors. And most of the time there’s nothing they can do about it. Everyone likes to talk about the land of the free, but we don’t have the freedom we think we do. Most of us can’t even afford to look for a better job; we have to keep the crappy one for the health insurance. If everyone could look for the work that suited them without having to worry about paying for health care, we could probably save a lot of money on health care. Depression, anxiety, and ulcers would all go WAY down. Something to think about, anyway.
Dawn Napier 