Ugly Emotions Series: Shame and ADHD (a rant)

If it were laziness, you'd be having a good time.

Shame can be sneaky. Shame can make it so easy to hide away parts of ourselves. Shame can make us come up with an infinite number of reasons why we’re always late without ever daring to look at the root cause. 

I have yet to meet someone with ADHD who has not experienced some form of internalized shame. Unlearning that shame and healing childhood wounds is an integral part of accommodating ADHD executive dysfunction and other traits or unhelpful adaptive behaviours. Until we can look those traits dead in the eyes and radically accept them, we can’t move forward.

As I write this article, sitting in my office in Ontario, I know I am surrounded by thousands of children, teens, and adults who grew up with a very particular idea of what success looks like. A very particular idea of what organization, time management, and creativity look like. 

Photo by Callum Skelton on Unsplash

Having ADHD traits makes it very likely that fitting into this narrow view didn’t come easily, if it was possible at all. For many, as children and adolescents, this meant comments from teachers, parents, and peers, who just didn’t understand how we could possibly be functioning the way we are, and who could not fathom a way for us to achieve our goals, get a job, or take care of ourselves and others. The comments weren’t just scornful; they were accusations of laziness. 

Which brings up a whole other element – the loneliness of being deeply misunderstood. That sense of being on the outside of what’s normal and acceptable does something to a young person. It teaches the lesson that they are not doing enough; if they are doing enough, they’re not doing it right; they should hide this, and try harder, and be faster, and be more detailed, and the list goes on and on. 

You, reader, have been (or currently are) an adolescent. Imagine how deeply it would have altered your self-image to hear and believe these things about yourself in those years. That’s how shame in ADHDers starts. 

The response to that shame then tends to be to try to hide those shameful traits, which is a huge reason why so many folks have gone undiagnosed until recent years. I’m not saying the stigma is gone, but it is dropping, and so are people’s guards.

Folks aren’t magically getting ADHD in their 40s. They’re realizing that there’s a name for what they’ve been hiding, and a world in which to show it that feels a little safer than it did 30 years ago. 

Thanks. Rant over.