Before the Caffeine and Chaos
Growing Up With Untreated ADHD
My childhood sucked.
I know, bold to try to hook you that way. But it’s the truth. And it’s an important part of understanding who I am and why I’m passionate about care and resources for neurodivergent folx.
Sure, I have some fond memories from my childhood, but my overall experience was one of existing as a disappointment and failure. It wasn’t until I was an adult with my own child that I realized why:
My ADHD. Allow me to clarify.
I am not saying that I deserved the abuse I experienced growing up because I have ADHD. Absolutely no one deserves to go through trauma and abuse, especially when it is for something — like a disability — that they can’t control.
What I am saying is that because my ADHD makes tasks exponentially more difficult for me than a neurotypical person, many people in my life didn’t understand — or chose to ignore — the reasons why I wasn’t normal, and I was repeatedly abused because of it.
Let me break my ADHD down for you.
When people are confused as to why someone with ADHD experiences ADHD paralysis when it comes to neurotypically simple tasks like cleaning the kitchen, I explain it to them like this:
When I look at my kitchen, every single thing out of place is a step. Salt on the counter? Step. Three dishes on the island? That’s three steps. Do the dishes need to be rinsed and put in the dishwasher? Add that many steps to each dish. And their silverware.
Imagine now that you have three days worth of these messes, plus whatever other items you normally put away like keys, hats, the kids' school assignments from the week… the list goes on. Each one its own step on your to-do list.
Now here’s the kicker. Imagine while you're processing all of this input to put on your to-do list, you’re typing it up on a quirky vintage typewriter. Cool, right?
Nope. The whole to-do list you’ve typed has just been layered on top of itself because the enter key doesn’t work. The paper never moved.
Your whole list and the time you spent creating it are useless. Ready to start again so you can get that kitchen clean?
LOL.
A 30-step kitchen cleaning list generated by goblin.tools, but layered on top of itself, making it illegible. This is how to-do lists and the steps of a task appear in Mandy's brain.
But now back to our regularly scheduled program of growing up with untreated ADHD!
The 1990s were hard for a girl with ADHD. Historically, ADD and ADHD were looked at as an experience of white AMABs, or individuals Assigned Male at Birth. Almost all ADHD research had been done on white males, and the criteria of ADHD in the DSM-IV reflected that research.
When it comes to AFABs, or individuals Assigned Female at Birth, ADHD diagnoses are disproportionately lower than for AMABs. The disparities are even wider for People of Color.
There are many reasons for this, from the difference in displayed symptoms to straight up patriarchy.
Another struggle of ADHD, especially in the 1990s, was that it wasn’t really viewed as a disability. The public treated ADHD like an excuse to be lazy, and neurotypical people stigmatized ADHD as an impulsive, spastic, socially awkward excuse to avoid responsibility. See: Abernathy Darwin Dunlap in the cinematic classic “Accepted.”
So, when we compound the historical lack of ADHD diagnosis in AFABs and women, the social stigma of living with ADHD, and the mere existence as women in a patriarchal society, childhood for us neurospicy girls was hard.
School became its own traumatic experience.
I don’t remember much of my elementary days, just that fourth grade was when the bullying started. I was always a little quirky, and my emotional regulation was low even as a child. These traits made me an easy target for teasing.
My parents divorce — which was not a common occurrence in a Southern family at that time — also gave ammo to the army of bullies attacking me.
By the end of sixth grade, I had been pushed down flights of stairs, had clothing torn off of me, and been called whatever horrible name my classmates had learned from their older siblings that week.
But I was mostly bullied by those divorced parents and my teachers. But they didn’t call it bullying, they called it “constructive criticism.”
“Repeated bouts of fear, frustration, and failure in school create stress that
is neurologically damaging.”
Jerome Schultz, PhD
Mandy sitting at her kitchen island in Longmont, Colo. attempting to do homework, with a messy apartment and hyperactive child in the background April 23, 2024. Mandy describes her ADHD as a combination of inattentive and hyperactive. (Scanlon)
Framing bullying as “constructive criticism” exacerbated my RSD.
Now, in the name of transparency, I also have RSD, or Rejection Sensitivity Dysmorphia. RSD is not a formal medical diagnosis, but more an experience that as many as 99 percent of ADHD folx experience. It is exactly what it sounds like; our sensitivity to rejection is heightened, and we have stronger emotional reactions to negativity.
Even considering that I am extra-sensitive when receiving feedback that isn’t positive, the constant negativity towards things about me I couldn’t control made me feel like a failure. My teachers loved to tell my parents how smart I was, but that it meant nothing since I was even more lazy, distracted and talkative.
What they all failed to recognize was that my ADHD made focusing on schoolwork hard; having to keep still for long periods of time forced me to create socially acceptable “stims,” or repetitive movements or sounds used to soothe a dysregulated nervous system.
Not assimilating to neurotypical standards constantly got me in trouble.
While less noticeable stims like hair-twisting and leg-shaking are more socially accepted — and stims I often leaned on — they weren’t enough for a full school day. The constant expectations of classroom etiquette were too much in middle school, and I needed to release the energy in other ways.
Trying to maintain those ableist classroom standards, like staying still and maintaining eye contact, required so much energy that when I did it for too long, I would become irritated.
I would take it out on teachers questioning my distracting stims, or students teasing me for them. I was quick to blow up on people when I tried my hardest to conform to neurotypical standards.
Another fundamental part of who I am being labeled as inappropriate.
After years of complaints from my teachers, and my parent's endless disapproval of my inability to keep up with my responsibilities at home, they finally took me to a child psychologist to find out what was “wrong” with me.
Emphasis on the wrong.
I would tell my parents I literally couldn’t clean the room I messed up because I didn’t know where to start. Rather than provide support and show me a starting point, they would tell me I was just being lazy or that I was lying, and that got me in even more trouble.
I don’t really remember the sessions specifically, but I was diagnosed with ADHD and it was strongly suggested that I be put on ADHD medication at 12 years old.
Nothing was wrong with me; I just didn’t have support — and my diagnosis proved it.
Now, because of the abuse I experienced growing up, I refused to trust my parents, anyone they hired, or any medication they wanted to put in me. I flat out refused to take it.
When I refused medication, my parents denied my medical condition.
Middle school is almost a complete loss for me. When I recall it, I remember holding the record for most days spent in in-school suspension, my parents refusing to let me be in "The Wizard of Oz" my eighth-grade year — despite likely being chosen as Dorothy — and that solitude was safer than camaraderie.
I do remember learning to mask effectively, though. Masking is when neurodivergent folx hide their neurodivergent traits in order to fit in socially with their peers. This is a coping mechanism ADHD and autistic folx develop to avoid further trauma of bullying and abuse. It's an exhausting process that takes a physical and emotional toll on neurodivergent folx.
Remember that kid from school that you couldn’t figure out why, but they were kinda weird and seemed a little fake? It’s possible they were neurodivergent and couldn’t help it, so they were trying to mask.
Masking came in handy when I started high school.
I had been an ugly duckling up until ninth grade. I wouldn’t say I became a swan, but I grew boobs and gained a stepsister that was the epitome of trendy and cool. We shared clothes, dressed up as two of the Spice Girls for Halloween, and she taught me how to do my makeup. For the first time, I felt accepted.
I started my freshman year at a school where virtually no one knew me except my uber-cool stepsister. It was the fresh start I craved after seeing the same faces for eight years. I had a blast my freshman year; I had actual friends, a few boyfriends, and I was starting to gain confidence in who I was becoming.
My ADHD did hold me back academically, though. Since I had such a hard time in middle school, my teachers wouldn’t recommend me for anything higher than basic-level courses, and the distractions were strong. I also brought my struggles with focus on schoolwork into high school.
Contrary to popular beliefs of the time, you don't just "grow out of" ADHD.
It also didn’t help that I could walk to school when I started my freshman year, and in between my house and my school was the mall; a teenage girl’s sanctuary in the 2000s. And if I needed one thing at this time in my life, it was a sanctuary.
I spent most of my high school years in an emotionally abusive, manipulative home -- the kind where my abusers would strip my room of everything including books when I didn't answer the phone in a way they felt was acceptable at that moment.
My stepmother was a very particular person when it came to cleanliness, and I was repeatedly put down and insulted by her because I could not live up to her standards. She had even gone so far as to hit herself and tell my father I hit her when "throwing a hissy fit," which is what she called my responses to her emotionally abusing me because I struggled to achieve her strict cleaning routines and standards. Again, I was being abused for my disability.
The abuse destroyed any sense of confidence I briefly gained.
The abuse would become so bad that I just stopped going to school, and eventually was pulled out in 10th grade to work full time at a local Panera Bread. It was great at first, but this was where I was first introduced, unknowingly, to ADHD burnout.
I started thinking something was wrong with me because for months, I ran circles around my coworkers. Then, out of nowhere, I struggled to keep up with them. I couldn't get up on time to make it to my morning shifts, I couldn't focus on tedious tasks and I was starting to talk back to my supervisors.
By this time, I had completely forgotten about my ADD diagnosis.
I had no reason to keep ADD in the mental schema that was my life.
I fought to go back to school -- a decision that would get me kicked out of my father's house-- and I graduated on time as the Millbrook High School Most Improved Senior of the 2004 class.
I tried college for a few weeks, but after virtually no support from my family and still trying to navigate the world as a disabled person without supports, I dropped out and swore college wasn't for me.
After my sad attempt at community college, that familiar feeling of failure showed back up. I spent my free time smoking weed in the woods or housing Jager Bombs with my of-age friends. I didn't call myself an addict and I still don't, but I definitely leaned on substance abuse to numb the traumas I experienced because I never accessed treatment for my ADHD.
I spent the next 15ish years on the burnout roller coaster I first boarded at Panera: Start new job, love it to pieces, kickstart unmaintainable productivity levels, then comes the inevitable burnout and contempt for a job I once loved.
The burnout made a nearly annual occurrence of either quitting or being fired.
I was fortunate in that I had met a wonderful man when I was 19 who supported me on the ADHD roller coaster rides. Despite having ADHD himself, I don't think he ever suspected I had it. Although, it is quite possible he just never told me. I wasn't exactly the most communicative partner during our 10-plus year relationship.
My burnout eventually bled into our marriage, and in true ADHD-impulse style, I blew up and told him I wanted a divorce on Thanksgiving day. I boarded a plane to Denver, Colorado a week after Black Friday. It was in Colorful Colorado that I learned self-love, became a mother, and finally discovered what the hell had been wrong with me for all these years: Nothing!
After the birth of my son, I started working to heal my past traumas so I wouldn't pass my traumas onto him. Through deep therapy work, I unlocked a memory of my diagnosis and started researching what ADHD actually was.
I began to follow ADHD influencers on Instagram, and I felt so seen.
Influencers like Hayley Honeyman, Blair Imani and Georgia Holliday are the reasons I have names for:
-
The agonizing guilt trip of having so much to do but an absolute inability to move,
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A humorous name for those times I've left cash in the ATM and drove away,
and lots of other things.
I discovered ADHD life hacks that make losing my keys a lot more difficult than before and tell me if I took my meds today. There are accommodations all over my home, including a new attitude of forgiveness and grace towards myself.
I understand now that I have to work twice as hard to accomplish my goals and give myself twice as much time to recover. But I'm doing it. I've been doing it and I'm going to keep doing it.
Rediscovering my ADHD opened me up to accepting that I was never a failure; I was failed.
Now, I'm a mom to a neurodivergent child and I have no choice but to lead by example. He sees me advocating for him the way I was never fought for. His sensory needs make only a handful of food edible for him, so I give him autonomy in choosing his meals. I don't yell at him for jumping off the furniture; I give him a crash pad.
After a lifetime of feeling ostracized in my own family and being abused because my brain functions differently, I fight everyday to make a better future for my family. I make sure my home is an open, equitable, democratic space where all emotions are welcome and embraced.
Neurodiversity is celebrated here.