That ended with me finally explaining to him how the way he and my mother treated me as a child, with undiagnosed (and really not even conceptually understood at the time) ADHD caused me lasting trauma that persists to this day. I’m a 45 year old man, and I cried.
Eventually the science will show ADHD and a slew of other ND psychoclassifications are entirely genetic. It’s very likely one of your parents are driving the same brain around as you, with all its faults and strengths. In their childhood psych didn’t have the labels and treatments, you didn’t really want to mess with those abusers. Society also found it ok to beat children that didn’t behave. The parent with the ND brain was probably beat by their parent until they figured out how to wear the right mask. And not just beaten by their parents, but every single authority figure, teachers, pastors, etc. The cycle of physical abuse was only recently broken. We still haven’t broken the cycle of emotional abuse this society forces on ND people. The majority of psych pseudoscience still ongoing considers ND to be subhuman, excluding us from studies, using derogatory language that only serves to dehumanize and not empathize, recognize, and accommodate. They fail to recognize the positive aspects that are unique and common amongst ND, so we end up not even realizing in ourselves. In your parent’s generation they’d treat perfectly capable ND people with a lobotomy. There are probably more psych professionals practicing today that were taught by books written by the same folks who practiced lobotomies, than those that learned the still incorrect (but at least more correct than a fucking lobotomy fixes everything) science from 10 years ago.
Sorry for the rant.
The problem is people like you grew up in a time when things didn’t really need to get done like they did in your parents time. Their generation didn’t have the luxury, yes luxury of being treated differently because of shortcomings like missing a limb or being ND. They had to get things done to literally survive.
So to their generation, saying you can’t do something because of ND over and over again starts to sound like nothing more than an excuse.
If a blind person can do xyz, what’s your excuse as someone with ADHD?
There is literally no way to tell the difference between someone who has ADHD trying to do a task like clean the kitchen (and failing) and someone who simply doesn’t want to do it.
This is the core of why people doubt people who don’t have visible disabilities: there is no way to tell if you’re just faking or not.
Once you realize this, working with NT ppl becomes somewhat easier.
one of your parents are driving the same brain around as you, with all its faults and strengths
… and a firmly-rooted “I accomplished so much through anger and self-hate, so you can too” image. Don’t forget that.
I feel like I’m having that conversation with my father all the time and he still doesn’t get it.
The icing on that cake is that he totally has undiagnosed ADHD and PTSD, and he’s a rich old white man so he gets to go through life ignoring the consequences (for other people) and saying things like “That’s not my problem,” when anyone calls him out.
I’m 43. I feel you. Lately I started processing what happened to me because of ADD. I’m lucky, fell on my feet and have a good life but I’ve lost so much time and was misunderstood for so long.
This is me, too. Undiagnosed ADD until my 50s. No H, probably like you. Misunderstood for decades. It was really hard for my parents, but they had no idea and are now passed.
Learning about it made everything click about my difficult life, but made me proud of what I had accomplished in spite of ADD. And now I have a toolbox of methods I can use to recognize my ADD as it is happening, and help counteract it. I also have medication to help.
I think one of the things I needed to know is, ADD / neurospiciness can also be an asset at the workplace. One of the marketable I excel at is learning new things. Whenever I am given a new skill to learn, I dive into it passionately. I love learning new stuff! So that fits perfectly with IT, which is constantly moving forward with new technology.
And with that I’m currently working on a late-life Masters degree in IT. So, happy ending, I guess. Find your niche!
