ADHD Isn’t Quirky & Funny

It’s a serious problem that feeds anxiety and isolation

I don’t have trouble admitting I’m ADHD, because nobody takes me seriously.

“I’m so OCD.”

They aren’t — probably.

People suffering from OCD don’t joke about it because it’s not funny. It means living in a state of anxiety all the time and at its worst, it’s living in an episode of Hoarders.

The jokesters are most likely uptight due to a project, deadline, or temporary pressure.

Or they suffer from the understandable anxiety that accompanies living in an oppressive society where some pigs are gaslit, oppressed, and economically marginalized more than other pigs.

“I’m so ADHD” is relatable because we all become distracted, forget key details, or feel like avoiding mentally taxing work.

I don’t tell people I’m autistic because why bother? It’s so misunderstood and pitiable there’s no upside. You might as well admit to being dim-witted and anti-social because that’s the level of understanding the average person has about autism.

I made the mistake of outing myself about autism with a friend I thought was well-informed and she reacted by telling me I’m not like the other person she knows who’s autistic, so I’m not autistic.

You have good social skills, she says, and I wait for “…for somebody like you.”

If I mention I’m ADHD, people laugh because they know I’m different but they don’t know why and ADHD is palatable.

The most acceptable version of myself I can manage consistently is a smart-ass.

At this point, it’s automatic. At least people notice sarcasm.

My sarcasm comes naturally, from a deep well of anxiety, hostility, and failure. If I don’t use sarcasm, I risk falling into a dry pit of bitterness.

My humor comes from feeling like an alien — as if I’m observing a world nobody else sees.

Wit is a powerful tool but I’m missing the essential building blocks for adulting.

My inability to adult has colored my whole life. My lack of executive functioning has robbed me of professional opportunities and left me friendless and underemployed as I age.

I think people need to know this about ADHD: it’s not a joke.

Living with Undiagnosed ADHD

I lived with undiagnosed ADHD for the first 57 years of my life and never stopped beating myself up for failing.

When you are told you have a high IQ because your salient talent is test-taking, and you grow up privileged, there is no one else to blame.

It wasn’t like I was looking to blame others. I got so used to criticism I believed, for a long time, my parents were hypercritical.

They weren’t. I just made so many mistakes I heard constant correction.

My giftedness masked my ADHD. My femaleness masked my ADHD. My work ethic — falsely described as laziness — masked my ADHD.

My compliance masked my ADHD.

My white, upper-middle-class privilege masked my ADHD.

Of all the nasty names I’ve been called, being tagged lazy is the most galling.

I’ve never given up.

Although I hate school, I have two master’s degrees. I got through high school in nearly three years and graduated college on time. I work my ass off — but nothing sticks because I don’t absorb material well unless I can immediately apply it.

I was a C student until I figured out how to get grades in grad school, at the age of 36.

I work hard and I go in circles, so I work harder, then I become exhausted and stop working.

People view me as lazy when I simply feel beaten.

The only classes I ever liked were typing, art, and a motorcycle class where we got a tolerable dose of book learning in the morning and a full afternoon of motorcycle riding. It was paradise.

The price you pray for living with undiagnosed ADHD is wrecked self-esteem in a world that tirelessly explains how self-love is the cure for everything.

I wonder if I’ll ever be able to like myself.

It’s hard to fully describe because it sounds like I’m complaining about failing, and some failure is necessary (in fact, beneficial) for learning. But ADHD failure is different. It doesn’t promote learning, it promotes terror of future failure unless you FIX yourself.

You can’t fix yourself. The failure loop is coming from inside the house.

But that’s only half the story — because when you are ADHD you constantly fail others.

Puttering

I experience success in bits and pieces, on a limited scale in a brief timeframe.

Building anything complicated takes huge effort and once constructed, the structure randomly crashes to the ground because it’s missing some key piece I forgot to install or can’t maintain.

Life resembles Jenga.

In midlife, I’ve indulged in the art of puttering around the house and repairing things. This is immensely satisfying because I can feel and experience the efforts of my work.

Puttering is the opposite of school.

I’ve learned to read directions, slow down, and manage tasks step-by-step.

In school, I felt utterly disconnected. Most of my energy went into figuring out the directions. When I succeeded, it was magic — and as unreliable as a perfect sunny day.

I either performed brilliantly or not at all. I could write great poetry, but I couldn’t figure out how to join a club or why anyone would want to.

My test-taking capacity was entirely divorced from actual achievement.

I think this is why I feel so detached from my own life. When I succeed, it feels random, as if I have no agency over it.

It’s like I’m numb, which isn’t the same as depression but shares some of its features: anhedonia, lack of motivation, emotional detachment.

The way motivation works is you feel agency, so you repeat what you’ve done because it feels good, fulfilling, and repeatable. Success breeds confidence, for a neurotypical person.

Self-agency is motivating, but when you have ADHD any success feels like a set-up for further demands, and when you possess zero confidence you can perform the same trick again, demands are anxiety-inducing.

ADHD reinforces getting motivation from others by being pushed or pulled, so pretty soon other people begin to feel like demands.

ADHD people can’t keep their ducks in a row because they aren’t working with little rubber duckies, they are working with actual ducks that want to escape.

Other People

As I was a mystery to myself, I irritated others.

All the time I spent in self-flagellation was mirrored by other people feeling equally let down by my behavior.

I often feel I have to choose: should I let myself down, or let someone else down?

“Teamwork” became a dirty word and a giant puzzle in which I would nervously do math calculations to figure out how to not bother people.

Often, they were too “nice” to say anything so instead of constructive feedback, I got patient tolerance, as if I were a cute child who couldn’t be trusted and certainly couldn’t be put in charge of anything.

I could do tricks and had limited utility.

Or they would just yell at me out of nowhere because I’d been irritating them for so long.

If I was lucky, they were simply mystified. In the workplace, I was often unlucky

They hated me and assumed I was being willful, difficult, arrogant, aloof, or lazy.

It’s impossible to form relationships when you constantly disappoint others. People lose patience, but they never tell you why.

The isolation I feel is accompanied by a longing to communicate, which is why I write. The frustration is constant, which is why I use humor.

Humorous writing is the only acceptable way I can express myself genuinely unless I write a serious piece for the neurodivergent community.

We, as a community, are starved for validation. We want to be taken seriously because we haven’t been.

I can’t communicate my real feelings in real time unless it’s with my husband or sister. Friends mostly want me for light entertainment.

I don’t blame them. It’s a lot of work to maintain a relationship with someone who has ADHD and autism, and most people prefer entertainment over work.

It’s a lot of work to figure out what I mean because sarcasm isn’t most people’s native language.

How I Know I’m Not Crazy

I know someone else with undiagnosed ADHD, and he should be wildly successful.

He’s handsome, smart, personable, artistic, musical, and a white male Boomer — and he’s struggled in his career.

He’s a professional in a high-status profession. He even, miraculously, chose the right profession for his talents! And yet he’s struggled professionally.

And it’s because of the ADHD, so when I look at him I realize what I’m up against.

My problem isn’t childhood trauma, being female, or bad luck — it’s ADHD and autism.

Despite its comical, quirky reputation, ADHD is a curse that undermines adulting and sets people up for failure.

I don’t have a personality disorder, bipolar disorder, or some other mental illness. I have ADHD or more accurately, I am ADHD.

Now that I’m well into middle age, I’m mostly hoping for self-acceptance. I’m hoping I can somehow dig my self-esteem out of a lifetime of being disliked, marginalized, put down, and unsuccessful.

At least I know why everything has been so damn hard, and why I can’t find real friends.

I’ve made progress on not putting myself down, but almost nobody wants me to show up unsarcastic, so I’ll probably have to settle for acquaintances and pretense.

Lucky and Unlucky

Like my ADHD friend, I have a lot going for me.

I’m highly intelligent, superficially personable, and hit the privilege lottery at birth. I’ve been lucky in marrying the right person — a good fit and someone neurodivergent who has stayed gainfully employed for over 50 years.

I’m lucky I had good parents and I learned the basics of self-care, finances, and social skills.

I’m lucky my parents stressed the importance of an education and self-sufficiency.

I’m lucky I somehow grasped the lesson of never getting into debt.

If I weren’t lucky, I’d be living on the streets, because now that I look back at my life as a clueless ADHDer, I realize the only reason I’ve managed is because of a stable childhood, money, intelligence, and a decent husband.

Normal teenagers start picking up clues about adulting and setting life goals. I’ve deduced the rules from watching others, and it’s only begun to make sense in my fifties.

When my college or 20-something friends began starting families or establishing careers, I simply couldn’t grasp what they were talking about.

How?

I’ve never had career goals because I get through one day at a time. It takes up all my mental and emotional capacity. It burns through my resources.

I’ve had jobs — dozens and dozens.

Intelligence isn’t something that overcomes ADHD, OCD, or other problems with executive functioning.

Executive functioning is adulting.

Adulting means making goals, and then reaching them. When you run around in circles, you can’t reach goals.

Advice to Parents

If your kid has ADHD, don’t treat it as comical. They are trying their best, and constantly dealing with failure.

Don’t turn them into entertainment because they do weird things.

It’s unbelievably frustrating to fail at simple things, especially when they are so basic they are invisible to everyone else.

Being laughed at isn’t good for your self-esteem.

Be patient and treat them like people who have a missing puzzle piece.

Don’t accomplish things for them. Help them feel ownership of their accomplishments.

Teach them how to build, praise them for habits not tricks, and remember their lives are like a game of Jenga. At any point, with the slightest breeze, the tower may come crashing down.

They may never be able to build a tower.

Encourage their artistic and scientific gifts, because living as an artist, performer, or nerdy expert is how they can earn a living.

Consider alternative educational institutions. They will probably do much better with hands-on learning.

The best thing you can do is figure out the problem because without a diagnosis they won’t be able to figure it out for themselves in time to meet the usual adult milestones.

No matter how brilliant, privileged, handsome, and lucky they are, ADHD isn’t a funny, quirky, comical, entertaining trait.

It’s a disadvantage that bulldozes self-esteem, self-worth, and success.

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Jean Campbell is based in Hot Springs, Arkansas. She has been writing on Medium for years and recently published her first novel, Down and Out on the Road South, with Wings ePress. She is serializing the first part of her second book, City of Lies, on Substack.