Author Daragh Fleming on ADHD: 'It's just a way to describe how my brain works'

I wasn’t the type of child who acted out in class, ran around classrooms, or was disruptive. I was diligent, curious, and quiet.

I was diagnosed ‘accidentally’. ADHD Now had reached out to me to help them create content, so people could find out about the services they provide. 

I did the consultation, so I could make a video about what a consultation looks like. I was surprised when the psychologist told me that I should proceed with a diagnostic assessment. 

My world changed and yet remained exactly the same after she uttered a sentence she has likely spoken hundreds of times to clients.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder had never been on my radar. But as we talked through symptoms and my past, it clicked in to place. It made sense.

A month passed and I got my official diagnosis. Nobody I told was completely blindsided.

I am not the stereotype of external hyperactivity, unable to sit still, always moving. Instead, my mind is always moving. I am never not thinking about a hundred things.

The symptoms emerged in my 20s: When I started working for myself; when I started writing; when I had to begin organising my own life.

The focus was there, but ever-moving. I would chase something until another anything came along to chase.

My tendency to get bored with relationships is out of my control and has the potential to hurt people. I know it has in the past.

And I’ve always felt bad about this. I wrote my book, Lonely Boy, to figure out this problem. But that was before I knew I had ADHD.

I don’t think this condition excuses bad behaviour, but it’s hard to force emotions, to make them real. I grapple with this constantly.

If people aren’t in the room with me, I forget they exist. Their presence is necessary for me to think about them. If you don’t know I have ADHD, this can seem self-absorbed. 

But it’s not like that. I spend most of my time worrying about the thoughts of the people who are currently present. So, if you’re not here, you’re just not on the list.

It’s hard for me to do anything long-distance or keep up with friends and family. It all feels so overwhelming. Sometimes I feel like I’m letting everyone down.

I am constantly engrossed in decision paralysis. I can never get anything done because I’m trying to do so many things all at once.

It’s like trying to force too many objects through a single funnel: Everything gets stuck. I do what I can to be productive, but the idea of being productive is based on brain conditions that are not inside my skull.

Productivity, for me, looks entirely different. I don’t just fixate on one task for hours. I jump between multiple tasks. 

I often find myself writing an essay, then checking my email, replying to a friend who texted hours ago, and trying to remember the task I forgot I had to do.

If people could experience what is happening inside my brain for even an hour, they’d be amazed that I can get anything done at all.

To people obsessed with money and corporations, it looks unproductive.

I am productively unproductive. Every day ends with feeling like I haven’t done enough.

Here’s another example: I thought of a point to make while writing the last paragraph and have already forgotten what that point was.

I have ADHD, but I am not ADHD. It’s just a way to describe how my brain works. It is not my identity or my personality, but it affects my identity and personality. It contributes.

Parts of me that my friends and family love wouldn’t be there without it: Like how quickly I can reference movies, TV shows, and books.

Or how creative I can be and how I can think of solutions to problems. Some of my flaws wouldn’t exist without ADHD, either. It’s how my brain is wired: How it works and doesn’t work. I’m not keen to be defined by it.

This feels too reductive, too simplistic, to say that I am who I am because of these symptoms. Do we define a river by the ways it bends?

When people find out about my ADHD, even ones who have known me since childhood, they treat me differently at first, like I am wounded or fragile or broken.

But this isn’t the case. I’ve been like this my whole life and will continue to be for the rest of it.