 Five ways my ADHD makes adulting hard. Yeah, so did I. I'm Sonya. I was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult last year. I never even considered that I could have ADHD until my doctor suggested I get tested. A couple of years ago, I showed up to our office sobbing to her because I felt like I was failing at being an adult. I was anxious all the time and felt depressed and I was overwhelmed by basic things like keeping my apartment clean, paying my phone bill, or remembering my best friend's birthday or where I put my keys. It turns out that ADHD doesn't always look like a hyperactive kid bouncing off the walls, especially in girls and adults. I have a type of ADHD called inattentive ADHD which shows up as distractibility, disorganization, forgetfulness, or procrastination. Once I got my diagnosis and learned how ADHD affects my brain, much of what I struggled with my whole life finally made so much more sense. I wasn't lazy or incompetent. My brain just works differently and it turns out my ADHD makes adulting hard. Here are five ways my ADHD makes basic life tasks extremely challenging. Number one, I'm super disorganized. Do you have a friend or roommate who's always late, constantly loses important things, bounces from idea to idea and sometimes gets lost coming to your house, even though she's been there a million times before? Yeah, that's me. My brain is kind of like a computer browser with a whole bunch of open tabs that I'm constantly jumping between. Just as I try to do one thing, I think of something else that needs to be done or something else catches my attention and another tab gets opened. People with ADHD struggle with a set of skills called executive function that are needed to stay organized and complete tasks. Executive function includes working memory, flexible thinking and self-control. It's sort of like the management system of the brain. It's completely unsurprising that I'm constantly misplacing things, my keys, my wallet, my phone and forgetting to do important adulting things like pay my bills on time or file my taxes. The second way my ADHD makes adulting hard is that I lose hours of my life to hyper focus. Hyper focus is kind of a surprising symptom of ADHD since it's basically the complete opposite of distraction. Hyper focus is when a person becomes intensely immersed on something like a new hobby or topic of activity for a long time. When I get hyper focused on something I'm often so focused I don't notice the world around me or realize how much time is passing. Sometimes the ability to hyper focus is actually helpful. I think pulling an all nighter to cram for an exam, for example, because I can completely block out all distractions and focus super intensely. But more often than not my hyper focus gets me into trouble. I'll miss my subway stop because I'm so fixated on researching which restaurant I want to go to for my birthday dinner. And then I end up late for an important meeting or appointment. I basically need to set alarms for myself for everything because it's so easy for me to get sidetracked when I get hyper focused. The third way my ADHD makes my adulting hard is that I'm completely time blind. My time blindness makes almost every aspect of my life more difficult. What's hard for my friends and family to understand is that I'm not just intentionally ignoring the time or showing up late because I don't care. The ADHD brain actually senses time differently. For me, time passes differently depending on the state I'm in. If I'm hyper focused hours can fly by before I know it. I'll sit down to play a quick video game and then suddenly two hours have passed without me realizing it. I often misjudge how long getting ready to go out for dinner will take or how long a certain project will take to complete. This means I upset my friends who have to wait for me or often have to work through the night because I'm trying to meet a deadline for a project I didn't realize would take so long. Another way my ADHD makes adulting hard is that I have a hard time managing my emotions and I'm super sensitive. Research shows that people with ADHD feel emotions more suddenly and intensely than people without ADHD. The ADHD brain sometimes allows a sudden emotion to become too strong and floods the brain with that emotion super intensely. When I get one of these intense floods of emotion, it's really hard to not have an equally strong reaction like an outburst of anger or sadness or excitement. Typically, these outbursts of emotions don't go over well in the adult world. I'm also extremely sensitive to criticism and any kind of rejection, which I always thought was just because I was super emotional. It turns out rejection sensitivity disorder or RSD is actually a common symptom of ADHD. People with RSD feel extreme emotional sensitivity and even physical pain when they feel like they've been rejected or criticized or if they feel like they've failed in some way. Even though I've come to embrace my emotional nature, it's part of what makes me compassionate, creative and sensitive to others. This struggle to manage my emotions is one of the most difficult parts of adulting with ADHD. Adults are expected to be able to deal with frustrations in life and accept feedback without losing their cool or having a complete meltdown. And the fifth way my ADHD makes adulting hard is that I am the ultimate procrastinator. As the responsibilities of adulting continue to pile up, my ability to hyper-focus isn't always enough to help me get by like it used to. While it may look like I'm simply being lazy, my ADHD can actually make it feel physically impossible for me to get started on something, like doing laundry or studying for an exam I'm nervous about. I will desperately want to clean up my apartment or do my laundry or some other basic task, but I become immobilized with anxiety and feel like I'm stuck to my couch, completely overwhelmed with all the things I need to do that I can't seem to do anything at all. This part of my ADHD is really tough because when I can't do things that seem so simple to other people, like just doing my dishes before they get moldy or remembering to call my grandma on her birthday, I feel stupid. And full of shame. So yeah, adulting with ADHD is hard, but I've learned that it's not totally impossible. Knowing that I'm not lazy, weak or incompetent, that my brain just functions a bit differently has been life-changing. Over time, I've learned lots of ways to cope with my ADHD and even use some of the symptoms to my advantage. A combination of medication, therapy, support groups, scheduling tools, time apps and a lot of self-compassion have turned me into a pretty decent adult. Though I'm still pretty messy and usually late for dinner. This video is not meant to be used to diagnose ADHD. If you think you might have ADHD, the best thing to do is contact your doctor to see about getting assessed.