ADHD has been around for a millennia as long as humans have been around. A lot of the great hunters of the past were ADHD and that’s what made them so good at hunting because they were able to hyper focus on the survival aspect. You tell a kid growing up that they have problems in their brain instead of figuring out or helping them become their best selves is going to cause problems for that kid growing up. People just need to learn to love themselves.
People always pretend like hyper focus is a super power when it's the opposite, since you can't choose what you're focused on. I'll have a deadline for a paper tomorrow and instead I'll be researching some bs for 17 hours straight, I won't get up to take a leak, I won't eat and drink, I won't even turn around to close the window when I'm freezing.
And yes, sometimes I'll do more in that time than someone else could've done, but nowhere near enough to compensate for all the times I couldn't do anything. Hyper focus is like turning off your pain before doing something painful, it makes things possible that weren't possbile before, but it's also just a matter of time until you do more damage than good.
The real reason why people with ADHD did well enough historically is not because they had strengths that others didn't, it's because ADHD simply isn't as detrimental in an environment with fewer levels of abstraction.
If you're hungry you go get food. How did people do that then? They went to the food. How do people do it today? They go to school for years and do stuff that has nothing to do with food, then they apply for a job, and do a lot of paperwork and theatrics to get the job, and then they go do work that has absolutely nothing to do with food, and then a month later they get paid, and then they go to the food. A brain with ADHD literally cannot anitcipate the ultimate reward, that's why we do bad now and didn't before.
If you constantly focus on the bad, you’re going to get more bad. If you focus on what’s good, you’ll get more good. Learn to love yourself. Help those who are younger and struggling, find a better path. There are plenty of very successful people who are ADHD. That which is ADHD is not the problem. The problem is as humans, we tend to focus on the bad, instead of the good. Again, learn to love yourself.
Romanticizing your problems isn't the same as loving yourself. Loving yourself means accepting yourself despite your flaws, not dressing them up to not be flaws anymore.
Everyone has flaws. You work with what you get. One of my best friends is in a wheelchair and has ADHD. He’s one of the smartest and funniest people I know. Makes jokes all the time about being in a wheelchair. But he’ll never get to know what it’s like to walk on his feet. But he’s never let that stop him from achieving his goals despite his flaws.
You work with what you get. If you’re hyper focused, you are learning about something. Crazy can be good or bad. Hyper focus can be good or bad. You choose what it is. Everything is about perspective.
But at the end of the day, you’re the only person who can control you. No one else can make you get out of bed, go about your daily life, no one can make you get on Reddit. That’s all you being in control of yourself.
Love, the entire definition of hyperfocus is that you can’t control it. That is the whole deal with ADHD focus, we can’t properly control it. And yes, you can often work out strategies to reduce it or keep it in check, but it will never be fully controlled and never stop being an impediment. It’s a lot like my PTSD symptoms, basically - I can learn strategies to keep calm and stable, and in deeply limited circumstance, being hypervigilant and jumpy might actually make me safer, but at the end of the day, when I have a bad day and flinch at every sudden movement or have a flashback, well. It’s still an issue. Do you get what I mean?
(obviously, unlike my ADHD, there is a nonzero chance I’ll be healed from the PTSD at some point. But my brain will forever be a bit different and hopefully, if I get the right circumstances and learn the right things, that’ll be a neutral fact of life or even a cool thing more often than not, but it’ll be a difference either way.)
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