ADHD Behaviours I Failed to Change Time and Time Again

Getting up close and personal with the ADHD parts of me that cause me the most grief

Picture this: you’re in Paris, a city you’ve been dreaming to see since the early days of learning French in your old teacher’s tiny flat, adorned with souvenirs and tourist maps from the promised neverland of boulangeries and museums. It’s a beautiful, sunny day, you’re with your partner, your favourite person in the whole world, you’re young, independent and ready to explore all the places you used to gaze at dreamily online or in books.

You’re at the Louvre, one of the largest museums in the world, spanning kilometres over kilometres of galleries. Where to start and what to skip? Because you know yourself and you know you won’t have it in you to see the Louvre in its entirety, much less to take it all in. Now, it’s a known fact that most tourists don’t complete the full tour of the Louvre. Some say that an entire day isn’t enough.

But to me, the overwhelm of everything I could see that day, and especially of everything I knew I would miss, hit particularly hard. My impatience, one of the aspects of my personality I loathe the most, has caused me to miss opportunities and experiences over and over again.

This is only one ADHD behaviour I tried and failed to change over and over again, before discovering I had the condition.

Lack of patience is not necessarily an ADHD trait and it affects most people, especially in this day and age when we’re all in a constant rush. But lack of patience, to me, can be physically painful. Waiting for something or someone, having to take my time to complete a task I’m not particularly animated by, or engaging in a repetitive activity for a long time (museum visits, for instance), can cause me actual pain.

This comes, in part, from time blindness, my complete inability to assess any length of time. This is a common symptom of ADHD and one of the ones I struggle with the most. Any stretch of time when I’m not particularly engaged feels like an eternity to me. Waiting for the kettle to boil or for a response to an email makes me as uncomfortable as nails on a chalkboard.

But, more importantly, impatience in people with ADHD comes from our emotional dysregulation. Any strong emotion for us feels several times more powerful than it does for neurotypical people, which makes it extremely difficult to control. So, at the Louvre, getting tired, hungry, overheated and definitely overstimulated, of course my impatience got the better of me.

Thankfully, I am now in a place of acceptance and wisdom when it comes to my ADHD, knowing how to prepare for moments like that, how to prevent them or manage them in the moment. I’m also kinder to myself when they arise.

Another ADHD behaviour that causes me an exhausting amount of grief, sometimes on a daily basis, is decision paralysis. I cannot, under most circumstances, take decisions, no matter how easy they are. My trip to Paris, while lovely, was dominated by this, as we tried to find places to eat or spots to visit to fill our time. I am simply unable to take decisions most times.

Decision or choice paralysis, another direct result of ADHD, comes from our inherent need to overanalyse each option, realise we don’t know enough about most things, ending up catastrophising or overthinking how other people might judge our decisions. Hence, paralysis. It can feel like the end of the world for me to make a choice and then figure out that there may have been a better option. Which, of course, is the case in most situations. There’s always a better option. The tricky part is to make peace with your choices and move on. Easier said than done.

Rejection sensitivity, which is also a main trait of my character that I’ve tried to no avail to overcome (I’m better with it now, but it’s still there), has a big part to play in decision paralysis. If the person or people who are involved in my decisions end up disapproving of them or being negatively affected, I spiral, and I spiral hard.

On our first night in Paris, I chose a restaurant which ended up being rather expensive and the food particularly average. Even if my partner didn’t blame me for the decision, I could see he was disappointed, which prevented me from choosing where to eat for the rest of the trip. I simply could not face the possibility of disappointing him again, although, of course, I couldn’t have known and it wasn’t my fault. It also wasn’t a big deal for him, while to me, it felt like a catastrophe.

These are two major aspects of who I am that I can only try to alleviate, mitigate, or step on, despite how difficult they are for me. With time, I’ve learned to accept them and, ever since I stopped trying to simply become more patient or more assertive, I have overcome some of the embarrassment that comes with the failure. Because I will never be any of those things. But what I can do is fight for small wins and stay kind to myself.

Eliza Lita is a freelance writer based in the UK. She covers books and reading, ADHD and health, fitness, and lifestyle. For more of her stories, please consider signing up for a Medium membership through her referral link.

For a lighter read and a bit of a laugh about silly ADHD behaviours, check out my other articles: