What’s life like without ADHD?

Hey team, this week we have another listener question:

Hi there. I just wanted to say thank you so much. I was riding my bike while listening to your podcast and that really helped my brain to be able to digest the information and I was audibly saying, “Yes. Right. Okay.” And it was like I was talking to you, so I just wanted to say thank you so much. I'm not even sure if I have a question, but today I did Google, “What's it like for people who don't have ADHD?”

And in the three years of you having this podcast, forgive me if that's one that maybe I haven't listened to yet and completely ignore this and just take the compliment and the celebratory win of you are really affecting people's lives. I know that you've affected mine, and I know people have asked me, Hey, continue with your podcast, but because of some of the things I'm learning and managing with my own executive functioning, I haven't been as consistent with my own podcast. So it's really inspirational to know that you are out here doing it and honestly had such a wonderful structure and the music, and I'm like, wow, he really understands. He's really someone who actually understands what it's like in the brain and in the mind. So it was just such a pleasant experience to have found this podcast and I'm just so, so grateful. So I just wanted to say that. Thank you.

Thank you so much for the kind words about the podcast and you know what, that isn’t an episode I’ve done - it isn’t even a question I’ve ever thought about that much, but it is an incredibly intreguing one. Often when we’re talking about ADHD we’re talking about what it’s like to have ADHD, but from my stand point, well I already know what that’s like, so what would it be like if I didn’t have it?

So that the question we’re going to be looking at in this episode as well looking into the terms neurotypical and neurodivergent as well as getting into a little bit about masking.

What’s it like to not have ADHD? This is a hard question because my own lived experience is only that of having ADHD. And it’s not like I’m only dealing with my ADHD some of the time, this is a condition that affects me all day long, medicated or not. To top it off, ADHD is an invisible condition - we don’t actually see the results of having it. When my thoughts are spinning out of control and I can’t get started on something there is nothing to see other than my inaction.

Another aspect that I can see comes from the lament that “everyone is a little ADHD” - now, I’m not trying to lend credence to that phrase, but I think there is a grain of truth in there that everyone has the problems that those of us with ADHD deal with. But the difference is that we deal with these problems on a chronic basis. It’s absolutely true that everyone can be a little forgetful, but for me it’s the rule rather than the exception. I know that when I put the laundry in I need to give myself a remind because it’s not if I’m going to forget about it, it’s if I’m going to remember.

And what about executive dysfunction - certainly there are things that everyone can have trouble activating on, but with ADHD I’m going to have a lot more difficulty.

One of the phrases from Brendan Mahan of the ADHD Essentials Podcast that I really enjoy is, “ADHD is life on hard mode.” But does this mean living without ADHD is easy mode? From the outside it can certainly feel that way, but I’m sure that the reality of the situation is just that we’d have different problems.

And if we’re viewing ADHD as a curse I can certainly see how we’d form the belief that if we didn’t have ADHD, then all of our problems would be solved. That the root of everything wrong in their life is their ADHD. I’m not necessarily going to try and dissuade that idea here, but this thinking discounts everything that we have to work through.

If I had the option to magically remove my ADHD I’m not entirely sure that I’d take that option - my response would probably be, “well could I give it a whirl before I committed to it?” And I do understand that I’m making that statement from an extreme position of privilege here. I feel like my ADHD makes a lot of who I am so I’d be hard for me to so quickly sign that away. I imagine that if I just didn’t have ADHD tomorrow, well, most of my problems would still exist. Now, certainly, not having ADHD would make a world of difference in how easy it would be for me to address those problems. But I’m also sure I’d rack up new exciting problems that I’d still have to deal with.

A lot of this is also going to be imagining certain aspects of being “normal” although that isn’t really what we’re talking about here either.

So some terminology to work through here is neurotypical and neurodivergent - I usually don’t stop to define these terms because they do a fairly good job of defining themselves. Neurotypical being someone who has a neurologically typical pattern of thoughts or behaviors. Neurodivergent being someone who is diverging from those typical standards, be that through ADHD, autism, OCD, schizophrenia, or any other mental condition.

Now I do want to be clear as well that these terms aren’t without controversy, because what makes someone neurotypical? What are the typical patterns of thought and behavior? To be fair, nearly every person I interact with has some kind of neurodivergence, be it anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder or you know any of those things I mentioned above. I mean, more than a fifth of people in the US are reported to have some kind of mental disorder. That’s a lot of people, but that also does leave 4/5’s either free of any mental disorders or just undiagnosed - and I don’t want to suggest that a majority is undiagnosed, just that there is absolutely a percentage of the population in that category.

These numbers do make me question what it does mean to be “normal” or neurotypical because while certainly, not everyone has something going on with their brain there are a lot of us out there. And I think it’s incredibly fair to question how much higher the numbers should be. Like biodiversity, neurodiversity is something that we should be looking for, however, it is something that we’re only starting to understand. There has been a lot of criticism of how ADHD diagnoses have skyrocketed in the last few years, but a big part of that we are just culturally more accepting of the diagnosis. While there absolutely is still a stigma against ADHD there is far more understanding.

One of the reasons that people don’t like the terms neurotypical and neurodivergent is that there is an inherent understanding of being different in there. If you aren’t neurotypical you are different and as humans, we have a drive to conformity. We want to be part of the group and we want to avoid anything that could damage our standing. This means that for many people they don’t want to share that they might think differently - that they might be different. And what they are doing here is masking.

Masking is just what we do to camouflage our natural selves so that we can better conform to social pressures. It’s what we do when we’re pretending that we’re neurotypical. We’re keeping ourselves from fidgeting or faking intense eye contact or staying too quiet so that we’re not blurting things out. It’s when we’re trying to control our symptoms by hiding them.

For example, while I’m driving I often focus to the point that I don’t realize when someone, usually my wife, starts talking to me - when I’m masking I’m just going to pretend to hear what she said, act like I was listening the whole time. When I’m not masking I just tell her that I wasn’t paying attention and missed the first bit.

Or masking might manifest through being obsessively early to things so that people never pick up on my time blindness. Or tamping down your enthusiasm so you don’t look like the most excitable person in the room.

In general, masking isn’t the healthiest coping strategy and it can lead to someone going undiagnosed because they are simply hiding their struggles. Masking tends to be about replacing your outward stress with inward stress. There are of course situations where masking is the better option and masking also isn’t something only neurodivergent folks do. In situations where you’re dealing with an authority figure, it might be better to be putting that mask on. Or hey, maybe my kid did something that really upset me but I need to comfort them at the same time, it’s okay for me to mask my anger in that situation.

Now, I’m not trying to say that everyone is masking their neurodivergence and that neurotypicals don’t really exist - but I do think to some extent we are seeing a rise in the number of people who are neurodivergent as more and more people take off their masks. I also think this is going to shift what it means to be neurotypical as we figure out what is and isn’t part of the neuromajority.

And I think this, in turn, is going to help us identify what it means to have ADHD.

One of the things that I often hear about the International ADHD conference is that people love that they get to be their authentic selves there - that for the first time they don’t feel like they always have to be masking around everyone. And I think that’s what a big piece of not having ADHD would be, that not only are we not dealing with our symptoms, but we’re also not trying to hide them. Now, that does say a lot about the world we live in that there are places where we can get away without masking and be fine, but I do certainly think that’s an aspect that needs to be considered.