Hacker News Reader

Comment by fullstackchris | Hacker News Reader

Definitely agree there. There seems like there is a label for EVERYTHING these days. Coincidentally there was an article in the paper I saw just today about how destructive self diagnosis can be (and how many gen z / alpha are doing that via tiktok) I rememeber when some first tried to explain ADHD to me... and I was like... "what? elementary school kids dont like sitting in a classroom for 6 hours a day? so like, being NORMAL?"

Source: I had / (have?) ADHD, don't think about it at all anymore, just keep working hard, stick with hobbies and you can do great things regardless of what "labels" society has assigned you.

View on HN

I think what's incredibly important to remember is that ADHD is not a binary thing. It's not even a single spectrum.

It's a cluster of executive-function-related symptoms, any number of which a given person with the disorder can have a little, a lot, or even not at all. (I forget what all of them are offhand, but I have about a half-dozen of them in noticeable amounts, and several others that seriously debilitate many people with ADHD I've never had problems with.)

So while you may be able to "[not] think about it...just keep working hard...and do great things regardless", that's guaranteed not to be true of everyone with ADHD.

The worst advice anyone with ADHD can give someone else with it is "just do exactly what I did, and you'll never have problems again". That goes triple when "what you did" is ignore it.

The best advice I know of is to learn and understand what having ADHD means to you. Then use that knowledge to figure out how best to mitigate the problems it causes. For some, that will be medication. For others (like me), it may mean finding specific interventions for individual symptoms, and learning to live with some of the others.

I used to look at ADHD with scepticism until I met someone who it to a debilitating level. Shared a room with them once at a conference and seeing them in the morning before taking their pills was eye-opening. They were trying to have about 10 conversations at once, switching between them from sentence-to-sentence, every time they sat down to do something they instantly sprang up and started doing something else before springing up and switching yet again to something else, it was exhausting for me and I was just watching.

Whether I believe that the number of people who actually get diagnosed with ADHD is correct, especially in places that have medical systems and cultures like the USA, I’m not sure, but certainly I now see how for some people it can be completely disabling.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com