“It’s me, I’m the problem.”
By the time folks turn up at my virtual ADHD therapy door, they have often tried all the ways they know to take the strain out of their lives. Many people with late diagnosed ADHD have spent years trying to make life work by following the rules, trying harder, and assuming that effort alone will eventually pay off. And it’s not working.
This can plant the idea that they are the problem. This can stem from the idea that following the rules, doing the ‘right thing’ leads to a life that’s easier than the one they’re leading. And if they’ve been following those rules and it’s still not working out, the fault must lie with them.
What If You’ve Been Following the Rules All Along?
The ‘rules’ are everywhere. Some explicit and others more implied, but they all suggest that following them will lead to a smooth ride and great outcomes.
How many times have you been told to just stick to a routine, use a planner or a bullet journal, plan your meals, take on the difficult task first (eat the frog first)?
Wanna check your blood pressure now that you’ve read all that?
I certainly feel a wee uplift in mine when I notice how those suggestions make me feel and the very unkind thoughts that arise when I hear them. Some even pair well with very unsociable hand gestures!
Advice around ADHD organisation, ADHD productivity, and common ADHD coping strategies can sound wonderfully simple on paper.
What if you’ve been trying the common ADHD coping strategies of trying to follow those rules, and yet life is still bobbing along on a very blinking hard setting? The outcomes do not reflect the effort you’ve put in or the great intention you set in the first place.
When Trying Harder Becomes the Default Answer
I bet some of it did work for a bit.
And maybe there was no way some of those suggestions were ever going to be practical for your actual life.
Creating and maintaining routines can be one of the areas where adult ADHD shows up most clearly.
And if you happen to be AuDHD, you might really crave a bit of routine, but the ADHD parts of you get bored with it in no time and go for something interesting, new or exciting very soon after attempting to implement it as a coping strategy.
If difficulty with executive function is one of the ways your ADHD shows up, you might have struggles with turning intention into action. Many people assume this is a motivation problem. In my experience, that’s not usually what’s happening.
The organising might go no further than buying all the software or stationery to get more organised. Or you might even get to the very pretty GANT chart stage, where you have a beautifully detailed and aspirational plan. But the deadline for starting just keeps moving out.
It’s likely that the idea that the rule or plan can’t be at fault since it works for the people who suggested it. And that only leaves you (the adult ADHD-er) as the culprit for this going wrong.
So, working a bit harder, pushing yourself for a bit longer makes sense if you’re going achieve that life that others seem to manage so effortlessly.
And when you really can’t any more (see ADHD burnout or ADHD overwhelm), the inner self-critic might turn up right on cue with some pretty harsh well practised put-downs for you. And because you can’t possibly be the things the self-critic suggests, up you get and try some more.
The Problem With Advice Designed for Other People
Advice can be fantastic if it’s given when it’s needed, if the beneficiary has asked for it, and if it fits their needs very well.
The trouble creeps in when that advice was given based on someone else’s experience. We are all so unique that what works for someone else may not be what’s helpful for us.
So go carefully with the great ‘eating the frog first’, ‘just do it’, ‘build a routine and you’ll be fine’ brigade.
There may be snippets of that advice that could work for a bit for productivity, organisation and to support adult ADHD-ers, but test it like you’re tasting a new exotic food.
See how it fits over time. Check whether it supports your needs. See how sustainable it is. Recognise how you feel when you’re following this advice and after attempting it.
Advice is often based on assumptions about attention, memory, motivation, and consistency.
Those assumptions don’t always take account of ADHD in adult life.
So don’t believe it will change your life forever and pin all your hope and self worth on the outcome. If you follow someone else’s rules, it might not work, and worse, it could cost you a lot more than money.
The Cost of Assuming You’re the Problem
When we throw ourselves into implementing well-meaning self help advice (or the rules of conventional wisdom) and it doesn’t pay off, ADHD-ers often get left with the idea that it didn’t work because we are beyond help (especially before we’re diagnosed or understand ourselves to be ADHD-ers).
That we are so broken that we can’t even follow simple plans.
It can lead to self-criticism, frustration, loss of confidence, low self-esteem and shame.
Years of working against the grain can contribute to ADHD burnout and ADHD overwhelm. For some people it can also become a form of ADHD masking, where huge amounts of energy go into appearing as though everything is manageable.
When we’re comparing our speed, our outcomes and our ways of working with others it can also engender the idea that we’re constantly behind where we should be.
I believe this idea can be traced back to how our education system works in many cases. We’re taught to believe that everyone in a certain year group ‘should’ be able to perform within certain parameters and then we’re graded on that.
We’re able to compare our grades against others and then we might base our value on it too.
If we carry that mentality with us into the rest of life and we compare our income, we compare the level of seniority in our job, we compare where we can afford to live, perhaps even the kind of partner we have or how our children are performing academically and in extra-curricular activity.
Not that helpful.
Because unless we have reached the pinnacle of performance, there is always someone out-performing us and that can be used as evidence that we are not good enough yet.
And that could throw us straight back into the old cycle of just trying harder to catch up.
Exhausting, isn’t it?
What Changes After an ADHD Diagnosis?
I’m tempted to go into all the details of how and why people might choose or not choose to get an assessment for ADHD, but that is a topic for another blog.
When adults choose to pursue an ADHD assessment and a diagnosis follows (not every assessment results in an ADHD diagnosis), people react in a variety of ways.
Some feel great relief because the diagnosis validates that their struggles have been real all along and that they can not be blamed for some of the tough stuff in their lives.
Some feel great grief for the version of them that was misunderstood for so long. Sadness for the lost opportunities that might have been if they had this information earlier. A sense of injustice for all the times someone else (or they themselves) judged them harshly. Like all the times they were called lazy, stupid, slow, careless, or useless.
And for some a sense of hopelessness might follow. If this is a life-long diagnosis, will life never get any better?
A diagnosis can help with understanding ADHD, and understanding ADHD and living well with ADHD are not necessarily the same thing.
This can lead to a sense of urgency around getting medicated.
As if medication will fix everything.
And yet what we hear from people who do take medication is that it may help with the ability to initiate tasks and regulating energy at the time we need it, and it does not offer solutions to setting up routine and being kind to ourselves.
What if we are still trying to succeed by following someone else’s rules?
What if the issue was never the amount of effort we put in, our character or that we were just lazy?
What if we are still measuring success by someone else’s parameters?
How likely is that to work out?
Understanding how our brain works and the conditions that work best for us could be an opportunity to recognise what success actually looks like for our life. It could be an opportunity to change our life to fit our needs instead of ignoring our needs to fit some other ideal of living that is not realistic or healthy for our real circumstances.
Strategy only works if it is built around the needs of the person who is using it.
From Following Rules to Making Choices
One of the parts of my work I love the most is when I can come alongside my clients to devise structure for making new choices for how they will live their lives.
To help strengthen their autonomy.
This is where ADHD self-awareness becomes incredibly useful.
When following someone else’s rules is no longer appealing, healthy or useful, it helps to have your own guiding principles on which to make choices.
Clients often get to this crossroads and feel some trepidation about who they’ll be or how they will navigate choices when they no longer follow the prescribed paths they’ve been used to.
‘What if I get even less done or just mollycoddle myself into the abyss?’
Since we’re all innately good enough as we are already, our structure does not need to rely on constant self-improvement or comparison to the lives of others.
We get to look at our lives with curiosity and compassion.
We get to choose how we would like to be.
Understanding ourselves gives us more information to work with when we’re deciding how we’d like to live.
The answer often comes back as something to do with being happy, being safe, being well, and having some more ease in life.
To use those pillars as life guides requires us to see what already works well and to see where the pain points are.
Here are some questions people can use to get going with this. (And of course, your own open questions that invite curiosity are just as valid as these.)
- When do I feel most capable of doing things that matter to me?
- When do I feel least able to do those things?
- Under what circumstances is my relationship with food and eating most beneficial to me?
- When do I notice a loss of choice?
- What happens when I follow someone else’s routine?
- How long does that last?
- What happens if I rest first with the intention to resource myself for the tasks that matter?
- How do I get on with those tasks when I’ve taken this approach?
- When do I feel most at peace?
- What circumstances can I engineer to bring that about?
- Under what circumstances do my relationships with others feel most nourishing to me and to them?
- When do they feel most depleting?
What If You’re Not the Problem?
What if you were never the problem?
What if following rules that were never about your needs has been the issue all along?
Perhaps the next step has less to do with finding a complete formula for life, or a new guru.
What if it’s more about noticing what actually fits your life?
So What Might Actually Work For You?
Many of the ADHD‑ers I work with arrive feeling exhausted from trying harder, following more rules, and blaming themselves when things still feel difficult.
Together we explore the patterns that are getting in the way, strengthen self-understanding, and develop approaches that fit your actual life rather than somebody else’s idea of how life should look.
For many people, ADHD support starts with understanding themselves well enough to make choices that genuinely work for them.
If this resonates for you, you’re welcome to explore my website, you’ll find an option there to arrange a free chat if the time feels right.
