ADHD & Me...

I was going to do a bunch of research about ADHD and how to cope with it. But I decided it was best just to tell my story.

I was diagnosed with Combined ADHD last fall. That means I have Inattentive ADHD and… I know this sounds like a dad joke at this point but I seriously can’t remember what she said after that. And apparently, my brain doesn’t feel like remembering that part either…I just had to look it up: Hyperactive.

I’m on a daily medication that really helps me focus and get things done. It feels like a miracle for what it has done for my self-esteem too. We all want to be productive, and this has helped.

Ok, on to my story. 

I struggled, especially as a kid, prioritizing tasks.

In school, I couldn’t pay attention, and if something wasn’t interesting to me, you may as well not even try. BUT if something was interesting, you better believe I took in every drop of information I could. I was an info hawk for history and sports.

Math? (Quick side note I would love it if Mr. S could read this. Guess what jerk? We do in fact walk around with calculators in our pockets now!) Ok anyway, I sucked at math.

I was terrible in school altogether except for in regards to three things. History (which was a passion), Art (another passion), and Phy Ed. 

History was and still is my wheelhouse, man. I could bob, weave, debunk and drop knowledge on the teachers. So much so that I actually taught a class one day. Looking back now, I bet “Mr. Sommer, would you like to teach the class?” was more of a rhetorical smart-ass comment than a challenge…weird. And art is so hands-on. It’s creative and I could get my restless demons out to play in a way that high school economics just didn’t do, ya know? P.E. is an easy one, kids are meant to move. That's pretty simple. 

All the way through high school I earned shit grades. It was extra frustrating because I knew I was smart. They just weren't teaching me things I was interested in. I was always told things like “I know you have potential”, or “grades aren’t necessarily a reflection of intelligence, but a reflection of responsibility.” 

Science and English were absolute nightmares. Funny enough, half of a life removed from public schools and science and english are some of my favorite things. Don’t get me wrong art, sports and history still take the top of my list. But I love learning about science on my terms. And English, both reading it and writing it is a literal hobby of mine now.

I hated being forced to read certain books and so I didn’t. I never read a single assigned book in my entire school experience which is really unfortunate because I took that gross feeling of books with me as they sent me out into the adult world. I was 31 before I read my first novel, and I couldn’t stop. I read The Hunger Games back to back to back. I know it's not groundbreaking literature but it was awesome! It was a gateway to an entire world that I never would’ve known about if it wasn’t for my wife (and her/ my new kindle). 

On the science front, I’m highly interested in motorsports and, always have been, it is wildly science and math-based. I taught myself basic physics to learn more about why a car acts a certain way when cornering. And from there I introduced geometry into my self-taught school (a subject I failed so badly in high school that the teacher didn’t even let me take the final exam because it “wouldn’t do any good anyway”) to learn more about the physics of suspension and brakes. I learned more… MUCH more about Math, Science, and English outside of school than I ever did inside. 

I’m not saying public schools are bad. While I could write an entire blog on how the current standardized testing is complete bull shit, instead I will stick to why this system is not only not helpful, but detrimental to neurodivergent folks.

There are so many people like me, that felt stupid their entire time in school.

And once you start to feel that way you begin to believe it.

Unfortunately for the vast majority of people that carries over into adulthood. I can't even count how many times at a job that I have been given directions to do something only to realize after I said “sure no problem” I had no idea what directions were that were given to me.

Then generally I’d ask for them again.

Sometimes, however, I would decide not to ask because either a. My supervisor would give me shit about being a space cadet (which really pissed me off because I knew exactly how much smarter I was than him.) or b. The supervisor would get pissed at me. So I would decide not to ask, then the task doesn’t get done, and guess who gets labeled a dumbass because they can’t do simple things? 

Fast forward years down the road, and I never grew out of losing everything.

It’s insane, I could lose anything, at any time. And I hate living up to stereotypes. So the old adage about husbands are dumb and can’t find anything and having to have a wife find it because we stoopid cavemun kills me.

But god damn it if it isn’t true.

I often play a fun (sarcasm alert) game every day called “where did I take my shoes off yesterday?” It’s almost never in the same spot. And short of finding them in the fridge, everywhere else is fair game. I almost need to kaizen my home just so I know where to put stuff so I can find it later. 

In comes TikTok…

“Hey, babe?” Renee my wife said as I was passing through the living room one night, most likely looking for something I just lost, “You should check out this video.”

I took her phone and preceded to laugh at some of the stuff.

I can always laugh at relatable stuff on the internet, I’m human after all. Turns out that the video was “you might have ADHD if…” and I could relate to way too much.

My first thought was, I’m not a kid I don’t have that. And I’m in no way hyper but it was an interesting thought. A few days went by and that video was all I could think about. I kept bringing the list of symptoms up on my phone and going over them. After a few days, I had given in.

Let's run through the list according to Mayo Clinic shall we?

Impulsiveness: LOL yeah that's how I probably ended up with an Air Hockey table back in 2013.

Disorganization: I’m not even going to touch this one, let's just say I tick this box and move on. 

Poor time management skills:… wait you guys can actually manage time? 

Problems focusing on a task: Uhh yeah, see school, and also jobs I’m bored with, duh. 

Trouble Multitasking: Ok so this one is a bit gray because honestly, no one can really multitask effectively. But I know for a fact I can get distracted. So if I end up with more than one thing to do at a time… yikes. Probably going to end up disappointing someone more than once that day. 

Excessive activity or restlessness: This is one I really struggled with. I’m not restless. EXCEPT FOR WHEN I AM!!! Every night at about the same time I’d have to stand up like a weirdo and pace to watch TV just to keep me from trying to stand on the ceiling. Also If my alarm goes off I can get up and get dressed and be out of the room before my wife can even say good morning. Unless I don’t want to then good luck getting me out of bed. 

Poor planning: I always just chalked this one up to being eccentrically spontaneous. Turns out it’s not. I’m just really bad at it. One year my son, dad, and I went on a trip. When we decided to grill out we realized we forgot tongs to flip the burgers and also forgot condiments. We ended up fashioning a box in such a way that we could barely, safely flip the burgers without our homemade spatula starting on fire. Just so we could eat dry burgers. So yeah… a big check on that one.  

Problems following through and completing tasks: I have so many great ideas. And those great ideas lead me to start a project. But then I either get bored or distracted or both and when I come back to the project, if I can find it, I have zero interest in it. 

The next four symptoms were really hard for me to identify, and actually, I’m going to clump them all together because they sort of naturally go together.

People know me as this laid-back guy that doesn’t let anything get to me. I don’t worry about things because I always figure out a solution. I was once told that I was the calm voice in the middle of a panic storm.

Low frustration tolerance, frequent mood swings, hot temper, and trouble coping with stress are the four horsemen of ADHD. The Dementors. The harbingers of ruined relationships. This is the hard part.

The other stuff is, to me, the quirky side of ADHD. It’s frustrating at times but in my case, still something I can chuckle about in the end. The stories of answering my phone while looking for my phone, and cleaning the house at 11:53 pm because I have a burst of energy can quickly fade away with the really shitty side.

It took a few days of some deep soul searching for me to realize that I do actually have some of the anger symptoms that come with ADHD. My low frustration tolerance can make me seem insane if anyone were to see it. Like if I set something down and let’s say I set it half on something and it tips over… the Hot temper comes in.

My hot temper was easily, and unknowingly, hidden for years.

And I honestly just confessed to my wife a few months ago that I had a bad temper. She of course didn’t really believe me because in the almost 8 years we’ve been together she's never seen me have a temper once. But the funny thing about my hot temper is that it's white-hot. Like I can literally feel my body temperature spike, my ears get warm, and I can hardly see. But just as quickly as it comes, it burns itself out and I go about my day. The whole process may be takes 3 seconds at the most. It happens so fast that I never even thought about it.

My low frustration tolerance set off my hot temper. And I can remember the exact event: I let my dog out. I grabbed the leash and went to hook it up to her collar and I missed.

That’s it.

Just to be clear my frustration tolerance/ temper is always in reaction to something I’ve done, no one else can unlock that part of me. I piss myself off better than anyone can.

But just as soon as I missed I screamed “F*#&$^(K!” in my heart and it was over.

I hooked her up, scratched her behind her ear like I do every time, and let her out. To someone watching they never would’ve known what unfolded.

And honestly until recently neither did I. 

The frequent mood swings are something I don’t think I really struggle with that much, but I do know I can go from happy to sad pretty quick, and the other way around. But I wouldn’t say that's a frequent thing. 

And trouble coping with stress is something that comes and goes. I had a good friend of mine move over 1,000 miles away and I had a hard time with that. But we also moved, and it felt like things were changing a little too much for comfort. I laid awake a night feeling lost and abandoned, feeling like I was aging too quickly and staring into my own mortality… I guess you could say that caused me stress.

There are also times the world could be on fire around me and I wouldn’t be bothered with something as trivial as worry.

But at this point, it's hard to tell if the stress of the world ablaze isn’t getting to me, or if I’m too focused on trying to find my damn shoes. 

Sound a bit too familiar?

If any of this sounds familiar to you, it would be a good idea to reach out to your doctor and have a conversation. They should be able to help connect you with a resource to get evaluated.

And maybe check out ADHD on TikTok too. It’s pretty eye-opening and can help you laugh about some of those… quirks… you may be experiencing.