Dealing With Regret and Shame Over Having ADHD

The first time I took Ritalin was the day I got my diagnosis from my psychiatrist. I didn’t have much hope for it. I have been diagnosed with depression and GAD before, and the meds took a few weeks to kick in, with tons of unbearable side effects, which probably offset the mood-lifting benefits the medicine was intended to give me.

But I felt my entire world change just a few minutes after I took Ritalin. It is hard to describe how it feels, but it feels analogous to how a magnetic charger fits perfectly with the slot in your laptop. Like, zing!

Your thoughts slow down, you feel less jittery, and everything feels… right. I cried at that moment, feeling a mix of ecstasy (Finally! Everything makes sense!) and sadness (Is this how neurotypical people feel? All the time? No wonder things are so easy for them…)

The doctor briefed me on Ritalin’s potential side effects – nausea, constipation, dizziness, vomiting – but he missed the most crucial one: Excruciating regret.

Suddenly, I regretted not having been diagnosed sooner. I regret being unable to explain myself when dealing with accusations of being dreamy, messy, and stupid. I regret trying to mold myself into someone I am not and the continuous attempts to apply neurotypical methods of survival, which only led me to failure and self-blame.

Even after taking meds regularly now, I still regret the fact that I am only able to function “normally” in the 2-3 hours when my Ritalin takes effect. I compare myself to the successful people I admire (most of them neurotypical) and regret the fact that I’ve tried to model their daily lifestyle and failed.

Arella, my friend who was a fellow ADHDer, put it rightly when she said: “No matter how much you mask your ADHD by using ADHD apps, games, note planners, etc., ADHD will always be there.”

When I ask neurotypical people how they deal with personal insecurities, they tell me to work on changing or improving these traits that contribute to insecurities. Some have even told me to pretend like I don’t have ADHD. As people with ADHD have already experienced, it is, in fact, worse to not be aware that you have ADHD and attempt to live life according to neurotypical standards despite having it.

Indeed, a diagnosis becomes a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it provides the tools you need to navigate your life. On the other, it gives you profound regret, or perhaps by validating your suspicion that you are different, may bring about shame.

Prior to the diagnosis, it is like playing a game on hard mode without being told you are on hard mode and wondering why you cannot do something you think is supposed to be on easy mode. Post-diagnosis, it is realizing that you are playing in hard mode and starting to strategise from that standpoint. With this realization, however, we may feel jealous of people who play in easy mode.

To combat these feelings, I’ve been following successful people who have ADHD and reading what they have to say about their condition. The main thing they all have in common is that instead of regretting something they do not have control over, they view it as a difference instead of a deficiency.

Debbie Jeffries – a neuropsychologist, clinical psychologist, and director of her own clinic – attributed her strong empathy and high energy levels to her ADHD.

She discussed how when training as a psychologist, she could not sit in a chair and listen to her clients like neurotypical practitioners, so she focused her specialty on children instead of adults, as she gets to walk around and interact with them in a more dynamic manner.

Her difficulty fitting in as an employee motivated her to leadership positions, such as directing her clinic and having neurotypical psychologists work under her instead. The key is finding work environments that emphasize our strengths and not our weaknesses.

Maureen Kelly, founder of Tarte Cosmetics, also had a similar story. When she began developing Tarte, she was doing her PhD in Psychology.

Although it was her special interest, she had the same problem of not being able to sit in a psychologist’s chair for extended periods of time. She was self-aware enough to realize she might not be successful as an employee, so her only option was to become an entrepreneur.

Although she had no cosmetics background, her “impulsiveness” (a symptom of ADHD) caused her to dive into this venture with enthusiasm, calling up dozens of cosmetic formulators and showing up in their waiting rooms, facing rejection after rejection until one chemist helped her “out of pity”.

She also had very strong values which she could not compromise (another common trait in ND people), which made her brand stand out in 1999, as anti-animal cruelty and clean beauty was a new concept then.

“It’s not that people with ADHD cannot be successful. I know a lot of ADHD people who are successful, and shine amongst normal, perhaps boring, NT people,” said Arella.

She stressed, “The point being, NDs work differently from NTs. While an NT might be more logical, such as looking for work to pay the bills and live a stable life, an ND has big dreams. They chase things that they passionately believe makes their life worth living, and will not, or cannot, compromise on that.”

While our strong, often overwhelming emotions, may be neurotypically described as having “poor emotional regulation”, why can’t we call it as being extra passionate?

Having strong, uncompromising values, which make us very emotional and make it difficult to tolerate situations where they are not in line (such as blowing up in anger at seeing injustice), might often be described as immature, inappropriate, or idealistic, but they also strongly motivate us to be agents of change.

Jesslyn, another neurodivergent friend of mine with autism and ADHD, described it as such: “I can’t live in a world where people are oppressed despite not doing wrong. I literally can’t. It feels like dying when I have to see people get bullied, harassed, or assaulted, and not be able to do anything about it. I have a very visceral reaction towards it. Not doing anything feels like dying. I’d rather die.”

Describing how strong emotions make her a more authentic and approachable person, Arella says: “It really feels like whenever people get to know me, my personality SHINES through. I cannot hold it back – you can see it from my face, body language, tone of voice. And I am happy how I can express this so fluently. I’m honest, authentic, and transparent.”

It is hard to live with very strong emotions. If controlling emotions were analogous to driving a car, a neurotypical person would have a normal car, while a neurodivergent person would have a car that accelerates too fast and is difficult to brake. This not only leads to feeling very strongly about values but also about our hobbies and interests.

Neurotypical people tend to pick one, two, or a few hobbies and really specialize in them. The guy obsessed with martial arts will be known as the martial arts guy. The girl who leads an MUN club will be known as the debate girl. And the person who is talented at piano and violin will be known as a (neuro)typical Asian.

However, ADHD people are described as being “dependent” on dopamine receptors. I have been called a “pleasure devil” before, seeming as if to chase what makes me feel good in the moment. But this is not because we are morally faulty, but rather that our dopamine receptors work differently.

Neurotypical people experience dopamine in anticipation of a reward – “I will study this boring subject because I am anticipating a good score,” – and merely anticipating produces dopamine which is the motivating neurotransmitter.

On the other hand, people with ADHD do not produce dopamine in anticipation of a reward – “I will NOT study this boring subject because I feel nothing anticipating a good score.”

But because the only way we can produce dopamine is to do something enjoyable in the moment, we end up reading 50 tabs about the history of how flannel shirts were originally work attire for lumberjacks, but they ended up in second-hand stores and being picked up by grunge musicians due to being affordable and soon became a distinctive style in alternative fashion and lesbians.

Dopamine, effectively produced by novel experiences, results in ADHDers having tons of hobbies. Arella says: “I don’t focus only on one thing, I am a jack of all trades. I can do violin, bouquet making, clay arts, 3D-modeling, wood making, sewing, singing, boothing, marketing, creating illustration and graphic works just because I ‘dilly dallied’. No NT could do this shit.”

So, I, and I’m sure many other ADHDers, can claim this proudly: Be amazed at how articulate you are in expressing the things you value and believe in and how strongly you stand by what you’re really passionate about.

You are so knowledgeable in many things, you initiate so much, and so many ideas and concepts are inside your head, rushing through as if you never run out of ideas.

You love intensively, and what you’re passionate about always shines through in the things you write and the stories you share. You unpurposefully, and perhaps unknowingly, engage and invite people simply by existing as unfiltered, vibrant enthusiasm.

It’s time we shift the language from deficiency into difference. Weakness into strength. Disadvantage into a unique advantage. Let it be your unique selling point!

Having treated children with ADHD and ADD for 25 years, Dr Hallowell from AccuTrain advocated for a strengths-based approach, which involves focusing on ADHD children or adults’ special interests and talents rather than “fixing disabilities”.

As he puts beautifully:

“When you begin with the positive, it’s so much easier to start working on the negative. Because you bring into the equation hope, enthusiasm, excitement, interest. If you only look into what’s wrong, you expel those. People don’t want to work on what’s wrong, unless they have something positive that they’re trying to work toward. […] The old way of doing it, the disability model, creates what, in my opinion, are the most profound disabilities — which are shame, fear, loss of hope, broken dreams, and lowered expectations.

That’s what holds people back in life.”

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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