The Neurotypical Struggle to Understand People with ADHD

Photo by Dex Ezekiel on Unsplash

Hey friends,

One of the most frustrating parts of ADHD is how it often looks to others.

Without knowing what ADHD really is, most people are just confused by how those with ADHD behave. It doesn’t make sense to them.

They ask themselves “why?” about everything we do.

• Why would you do it that way?

• Why didn’t you prepare for this?

• Why are you making things more difficult?

• Why do you keep getting in your own way?

• Why don’t you just use a planner/alarm/etc?

It’s confusing to them that the things that make sense in their world don’t seem to apply to a select group of people.

To most people, ADHD doesn’t look like “ADHD.”

It looks like character flaws.

It looks willful. It looks like defiance. Laziness. Selfishness. Stupidity. Refusing to follow rules or try hard enough. To someone that doesn’t understand ADHD (or dismisses it due to the many ADHD myths), actually interacting with someone with ADHD can be incredibly frustrating because it doesn’t make any sense to their understanding of the how people work.

In a recent TEDx Talk, Kristen Pressner (an Extra Focus reader) talks about her frustration and confusion in trying to understand her (undiagnosed at the time) ADHD family. And how it just didn’t make any sense to her.

Until something changed.

Once Kristen’s family had been diagnosed, she began to see the reality behind what her family was facing. The truth of ADHD.

How people with ADHD are primarily motivated by interest, while most are primarily motivated by importance.

Even if they agree with you that something is important, unless they find it interesting… it will be a real struggle to get their motivation, and force themselves to do it.

Importance brains like mine, see the world as orderly, dependable, and in control. And the whole world is set up to be this way.

And way across the full spectrum of human difference, you will find interest brains like my family, showing up as the opposite: all-over-the-place, inconsistent, and out of control.

— Kristen Pressner, TEDxZurich

After identifying the negative consequences that come of living with ADHD (how hard it is to get important things to done, to learn from the past, and to prepare for the future), Kristen asked herself, “would people who were just lazy and lacking willpower choose all this?”

And that’s when it clicked.

I won’t spoil the rest of the talk, but this realization helped Kristen see her family in a new light. Those pejorative labels of “all-over-the-place, inconsistent, and out of control” became something new, focused on the unique strengths of ADHD.

I think it can be really easy to slip into an “us vs. them” mentality when it comes to those with ADHD and those neurotypicals that “just don’t understand.”

I’m trying to be better at seeing and understanding both sides of the coin. Not seeing every neurotypical person as someone that is willfully ignorant or intentionally dismissive and hurtful, but someone that is often just confused and misinformed.

After my recent panel at SXSW on how to create ADHD-supportive workplaces, I heard from several managers that did not understand ADHD, but wanted to understand so that they could learn how to support their employees better.

The problem so often isn’t intent, but misunderstanding.

Which does feel somewhat ironic since so much of my difficulty growing up was when people ascribed my actions to my intentions…

Stay curious,
Jesse J. Anderson

P.S. I’m really excited to start inviting early users to use Wavepal soon! If you haven’t heard, Wavepal is an app I’m developing with a friend that helps you stay in touch with your friends—if you’re interested, make sure to join the wantlist at wavepal.app!