Now I’m Going To Have to Eat My Words. Everybody is ADHD these Days!

I’m one of those members of my generation who harrumph about the creeping pathologisation of human nature. I’ve been guilty of rolling my eyes and saying, ‘everybody is ADHD these days!’. I’ve sighed – ‘whatever next’ - over the latest diagnostic sub-category (Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, Pathological Demand Avoidance, Oppositional Defiant Disorder etc).And I’ve risked high blood pressure over being one of those people who derive their world view from YouTube videos.But now I’m going to have to eat my words. Not only do I think I’m ADHD, I’m addicted to Instagram Reels on the subject.

In our family we’ve always thought my eldest son (now 39) was ADHD, even way back then, when it just applied to schoolboys who couldn’t sit still. Now it makes even more sense. The seriel hobbies which lasted two minutes and yet routinely required mounds of inessential equipment and accessories; the insistence on eating the same food every day until the day it was never again, to name but two of the ADHD red flags I’ve read about recently.

And then my other son (now 34) said that he was pretty sure that he was too. I didn’t think he was the type. We talked about the Zoning Out which I thought was just a normal inability to listen to your mother banging on. We watched a YouTube video together in which some American ‘expert’ rattled through a hundred indications of ADHD that had us both on the floor cackling with laughter and recognition.

Then, out of a sense of solidarity, I started to read books about it (Gabor Mate’s ‘Scattered Minds’ etc). And I began to wonder why I hadn’t wondered this before: am I like that? Did they get it from me? Because there it was, all the mainline stuff I’m ashamed to admit to in public, or even to myself: anxiety, depression, substance abuse, conflictual failed relationships, difficulty concentrating, frequent job changes, impulsivity, oversensitivity to criticism, unfinished projects, overthinking, untidiness, domestic chaos, losing things, talking too much, being loud, talking over people, butting in, not listening, and tick, tick, tick, tick.

Three or four years on, combing through my past for ‘evidence, I’ve accumulated an exhaustive list of things that have fed into this self-diagnosis. In our family, for instance, the story goes that my charismatic difficult dad, who’d left school early, was literally unable to write because, his teacher said, ‘his brain went faster than his hand’. My school nickname was Blabbermouth (how cruel!). My first boss after university said that I was a ‘nymphomaniac of ideas’ and I don’t think it was a compliment). Only a few years ago, in my 60s, I overheard my aunt on speakerphone to my mother saying, ‘well she’s just not normal, lovey, is she...’. It’s no wonder I’ve always felt I was in a continuous state of convalescence from the unfortunate condition that is myself.

In the 1980s I was invited to be a talking head on the Robert Kilroy Silk daytime TV talk show. I clearly remember thinking at the time that there was no way I could make a career of this kind of thing. From the minute I agreed until two weeks later on the show, I was frozen in a paralysed state of waiting, unable to do much of anything besides staring into space. I’ve learnt that this is a common experience for those living with ADHD. And it has put paid to a number of careers I dreamt about as a young woman, work that I was more than capable of, in many other ways.

It’s been painful looking at my life again through this new lens. Which is why the Reel world of Instagram has come as such welcome, comforting light relief. In Instaland, ADHDers are currently depicted as the clowns and clutzes of our world, charming and endearing, childlike, funny, fondly tolerated by their neurotypical partners as they dash about their business.

They leave cupboard doors open, their brains keel over when listening to verbal instructions, they implode with impatience when walking behind slow walkers, or listening to people who take too long to get to the point, or sitting in theatres watching shows that are less that 95% mesmerising. Their bedroom floors look like someone has been vapourised right out of their clothes by aliens. They get bruised legs from knocking into things and find drinking water boring... I just cannot get enough of this stuff. I feel so seen!