ADHD Isn't REAL

EVERYONE has problems remembering.
EVERYONE has problems managing time.
EVERYONE is socially awkward.
EVERYONE gets distracted.
EVERYONE has problems staying on task.

YOU ARE NO DIFFERENT.

*sigh*

Isn't this kind of like telling the autistic to "suck it up?"

The history of ADHD suffers by a myriad of definitions and the scholars that use these definitions.  In 1967 I was diagnosed with "Minimal Brain Dysfunction".  The theory was that it would "go away" at age 12 or so.  Didn't happen.

Later it was Attention Deficit Disorder.  That didn't work either.  It didn't take onto account issues of hyperactivity or impulsivity that were a part of the lives of the people who live with the disorder.

Still later it was Attention Deficit, Hyperactivity Disorder.  That brought on complaints as well.  For many, hyperactivity had been tempered by age.  Impulsivity hadn't gone anywhere and the hyperactivity had been refined by time and social modeling.  Many believed that "ADHD" didn't define their experience.

To this day we see people who define themselves as "Primarily Inattentive".  The DSM has a rather narrow band of descriptors that clarify impulsivity and most who fight with impulsivity would prefer to downplay that part of their reality.

Okay.

I have ADHD- Combined Type.  At the age of 52 (well, nearly) I am still hyperactive.  I fight daily with impulsivity.  My attention is seldom.

Is that all there is?

Nope.

The average ADHDer lives with the equivalent of 100 television sets in their head.  Those sets are ON 24/7 and they are all on a different channel.

Can you think functionally in that cacophony?  Didn't think so.

We ADHDers MUST.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  "That can't be possible!!!"

Want to live in MY brain for awhile?

Unless a disability is visible, it is ignorable.  I know this to be a truth.

My friend Mike has been a quadriplegic since his teens.  He is in his 50s today.  He lives in a large motorized wheelchair.  You would think that people would be willing to accept both his strengths and his limitations.

Not so much.

I've watched people trip over him and then get pissed because he didn't move out of their able-bodied way.  I know he gets left out of social situations because of the way others perceive his limitations.  In my perspective, he is limited by others- based on their beliefs about him.

My disability is in my brain and it affects how I am perceived.  I personally know of two people who took my husband aside to advise him to get rid of me early-ish in our relationship.  One did this on my birthday- when I would have liked my husband to be with me- my mother had died two months earlier.  Hubby took the meeting because he thought the person could be helpful from a career perspective.  What he got was a pissed off me- after hearing that an irrelevant someone else spent that time to tell him to get rid of me.  That person was useless from a career perspective.

I'm open about my ADHD.  That gives others permission to either disregard me entirely or assume I am functionally retarded.

That's special.

You don't have to believe that ADHD is real.  You don't have to believe that gravity is real either.  At the end of the day, your belief is meaningless.