ADHD can show up in ways that make perfect sense to the person living it, and absolutely none to everyone else.
It’s a condition that includes more than just struggling to focus, being hyper, or forgetting things all the time. A lot of it is subtle, internal, and impossible to describe unless you’ve lived it. If you have ADHD, you’ll relate to many (or all!) of these all too well. If you’re not neurodivergent, these experiences will likely be completely foreign to you.
1. Feeling mentally exhausted from doing nothing
You can sit on the sofa all day and still feel like your brain ran a triathlon. Even when your body is still, your thoughts are sprinting in five directions, bouncing between tabs, tasks, and memories you didn’t ask for. To the outside world, it looks like you’ve done nothing. But mentally? You’ve lived an entire day in your head. ADHD isn’t just about what you do—it’s about the energy it takes to manage the background noise that never shuts up.
2. Forgetting something the second it becomes relevant
You’ll remember to post a birthday card when you’re brushing your teeth at midnight. However, when you walk past the postbox in broad daylight, it doesn’t even register. The moment it matters is the moment your brain hits delete. It’s not overt carelessness; it’s just the way ADHD splits attention. Your brain is great at storing things, just not always at surfacing them at the right time. You know what you need to do. You just can’t seem to do it when it counts.
3. Getting overwhelmed by the tiniest decisions
You can have big-picture clarity about your life, but spiral over whether to reply “sure” or “sounds good” in a group chat. Even small tasks—choosing a meal, starting a reply, picking a playlist—can create a weird internal traffic jam. It’s not indecision; it’s mental gridlock. Too many options, no obvious answer, and a brain that wants to weigh every angle equally. What looks simple from the outside feels impossible from the inside.
4. Needing chaos to concentrate
Most people want peace and quiet to work. But for some reason, silence makes your brain louder. You need background noise—music, TV, people talking—to focus on a single thing. It’s like your brain uses clutter to drown out the clutter. It sounds backwards, but the distractions actually help you hone in. Without them, your thoughts start pinballing. With them, everything settles just enough to start. You don’t know why it works. You just know it does.
5. Hyperfocusing on random things at the worst possible time
You’re supposed to be doing one thing, but suddenly, you’re reorganising your entire email folder. Or deep-diving into a hobby you forgot about six months ago. The urgency is fake, but the pull is real. You’re not actively avoiding responsibility. Instead, your brain is chasing dopamine. Once it locks on to something interesting, everything else disappears. You don’t even notice how long you’ve been doing it until hours have passed, and the actual task is still sitting there, untouched.
6. Talking too much, then regretting all of it
Sometimes you overshare without meaning to. You interrupt without noticing. You talk too fast, go off-topic, or turn something casual into a full monologue, and then spend the rest of the day overthinking every word. It’s not attention-seeking. It’s excitement, anxiety, and impulse control all rolled into one. The intention is connection. But sometimes your brain skips the part where it asks, “Should I say this out loud?”
7. Struggling with tasks that have more than two steps
Filing taxes, returning a package, booking an appointment—it’s never just one step. There’s a call to make, a form to find, something you have to print, a thing you have to bring. Suddenly, it feels like climbing Everest. It’s not that you can’t do it. It’s that your brain stalls before it even begins. If it’s not quick and obvious, it turns into a wall. People don’t get why you can’t just “knock it out,” but to you, that task takes a mountain of effort to even start.
8. Time being a complete mystery
You either feel like you’ve got all the time in the world or none at all. You start something thinking it’ll take five minutes, and somehow it’s three hours later. Or, you avoid something for weeks that takes ten minutes once you do it. Time doesn’t feel linear. It feels slippery. You’re always either rushing or stalling, with no sense of what “enough time” looks like. You’re not careless; you’re just living in a completely different relationship with time than most people.
9. Constantly bouncing between extremes
You either clean the whole flat at midnight or ignore it for two weeks. You’re either super social or completely off the grid. There’s very little in-between, and even when there is, it doesn’t last long. Balance is something you aim for but rarely hit. Your energy comes in unpredictable waves, and your interests change fast. It’s just the way your brain operates—everything feels intense, or nothing does.
10. Feeling misunderstood even when you’re trying your best
You’re showing up late, zoning out, missing deadlines, but not because you don’t care. You’re probably trying harder than people realise. The problem is, effort isn’t always visible. People see the outcome, not the battle behind it.
ADHD is full of invisible work. The reminders, the mental negotiations, the rewiring just to function in a world that wasn’t built for you. When people assume you’re being lazy, distracted, or flaky—it stings. Because if they knew how much you’re carrying, they’d never say that out loud.
