I cannot describe the feeling I have while writing this article. It almost pains me that I have to bring attention to this subject through written words. I apologize for the lack of sympathy to those who are on the receiving end, but you need to hear it.
ADHD is not a trend on TikTok or the butt of a joke every time you forget what you were saying the moment it comes out of your mouth. It’s not a self-diagnosed disease that everyone is able to claim as their own; the awareness of its truth and seriousness is dwindling rapidly. It’s a mental disorder. The negative stigma around ADHD, being used as an excuse for someone to be lazy, tired, or forgetful, is truly disheartening. I am not alone when I say that we are tired of seeing people claim they are something that they are not. By these assumptions alone, people do not understand there is more to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder than what meets the “unfocused” eye.
Those with Attention Deficit Disorder are subject to problems that aren’t important to those who don’t understand. It takes those affected extra time, patience, work, etc. to be able to function the way normal people do on the regular, even when it comes to the most basic of skills: focusing.
It is, however, not just about focusing that people are so willingly stuck on. Children and adults with ADD/ADHD are subject to being difficult when attempting to get along with others, overly talkative, making careless mistakes, having a hard time resisting temptation, cannot stay organized enough to finish a task properly and thoroughly, and have moderate to severe troubles with impulsivity; the list could go on forever without scraping the real surface of issues that we deal with. If you read the previous statement and thought to yourself “that is definitely me,” then you are part of the problem.
By numbing the issues of ADHD and degrading the level of power it holds over those affected, we take away the importance of learning about this mental disorder and how to cope with it throughout our lives. From personal experience, the journey to grow from having ADD at such a young age to now, has not been easy. The uphill battle of finding new medication to help me stay on task, as well as training myself to go against my brain when it is haphazardly functioning at 100 miles per hour in all different directions has not been an easy one. The idea of people attributing their self- diagnosed ‘ADHD’ to the idea that they can’t focus or do their own tasks at hand should be demolished. People with ADHD want nothing more than to focus – we just have a harder time doing as such. More effort goes into the things we do, contrary to what self- diagnosed people think. We do not simply give up on a task and blame it on our ADHD. Enough is enough.
We, as a young generation in society, must stop using disorders like ADHD and depression to describe normal feelings that humans feel on a daily basis. Every time you can’t focus, it is not because of ADHD. Please stop self-diagnosing yourself as such because it suits you at the moment; we never wanted it to suit us.