What if it's how other people treat us that's the biggest problem?

[Tiddler]

ADHD has been holding me back all my life. That much is absolutely certain. I am 41 and it has held me back my whole life.

But I have moved into a field where my divergent thinking, strongly emotional, randomness is a genuine strength. It is not only no longer holding me back but actively helping me.

So I got to thinking, is ADHD a problem in the individual or a problem in the environments most of us spend our time in?

All the benefits I got from my diagnosis are about this difference between me and what my environment expects of me.

I no longer need to accept the ‘stupid’, ‘lazy’, ‘weepy’ labels that were thrown at me. That’s other people’s behaviour – not mine.

I no longer need to ‘try harder’. I am learning to work differently. That was about people trying to make me like them instead of helping me find my way of working.

The depression and anxiety and OCD – all about feeling out of control. Why? Because my environment and me were clashing.

When I’m interested? Really genuinely challenged? Well, that’s different. In the right environment, with no expectations of being stupid or lazy or feeling like I have to work like everyone else? It’s going well. Better than well.

I actually feel like my ADHD IN THIS ENVIRONMENT is a bonus – a genuine ‘gift’.

No, I don’t think ADHD is a gift. I think it’s a flippin nightmare for most of the time for most people. But I am starting to seriously wonder how much of that is down to:

a) other people

b) uninteresting environments

c) the skills ALL of us have being undervalued.

I don’t mean ‘gifts’ bestowed upon us by the ADHD fairy. I mean that everyone has things they’re good at and if filing and remembering dates and paying attention to boring jobs aren’t on our list of good qualities so what? Look around. All the NTs out there are bad at a whole heap of stuff too.

I don’t want to think of myself as broken any more. I have a different skill set. The skills I have have NEVER been valued before and my deficits have been treated as bigger and worse than everyone else’s. But that doesn’t mean they ARE bigger and worse than everyone else’s.

What if they’re only ‘bigger and worse’ because of how we’re treated by others and by the environments we find ourselves in that don’t allow us to do whatever we find ourselves capable of?

So here’s what I think – ADHD sucks. Big time. But maybe that’s not just about the stuff we find hard. Maybe it’s about other people.

Sounds like a typical ‘it’s not me it’s everyone else’ rant? I don’t mean it to be. I am just noticing a whole lot of crap I never noticed before because I’m finally in a place where people don’t do it to me. People want to work in my team. People are interested in what I have to say. The work fits my brain.

And I don’t need my medication…

Go figure.

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