ADHD and...Shame 🙈

Having ADHD is hard. And sometimes, we make it even harder by being angry with ourselves…and letting that anger turn into shame.

When you have ADHD, you tend to do things like…

• Accidentally miss important appointments and meetings

• Forget to do something you promised to do

• Arrive late

• Blurt out answers or sudden thoughts

• Interrupt conversations or talk over someone

• Quickly forget someone’s name

• Have a messy living space

• Arrive disheveled because you were rushing

• (Insert other forgetful or impulsive thing here)

All of those things can cause you to feel feelings like shame, anger, and frustration with yourself.

And if there are witnesses?

It’s worse.

And if they SAY SOMETHING ABOUT IT?!?

I have felt this way many times. Heck, just last weekend, I texted friends asking about our get-together that night. Turns out it was rescheduled to the next weekend, and I had said “that works for me” in the text thread…but then never updated my calendar event.

🫠

These kinds of moments happen all the time. All. The. Time.

And most of the time, there are witnesses.

How to Manage ADHD Shame

First of all, I just want to acknowledge the fact that this is not easy—nor is it quick. These suggestions that I’m going to give you are all things I’ve been working on since my diagnosis in 2024, and continue to work on today.

Heck, I’ll go so far as to say these are lifelong lessons that you just have to keep plugging away at.

1. Reframe your thinking

The first thing you can try when feeling shame is reframing it.

Because, if you’re feeling shame, then you’re looking at what happened as a personal failing. You failed to change the calendar event, you failed to leave on time, you failed to sink that person’s name into your memory.

And sure, there are systems you can put in place to try to reduce some of those “oopses.”

But in reality, you were late/loud/messy/forgetful because you have ADHD.

If you could choose your brain, you’d probably choose to be a person who remembers things, arrives on time, and keeps a clean space.

But alas, you can’t change your ADHD. It can’t be cured, and you can’t become a different person. It’s going to be there with you for life.

So, reframe your thinking. Turn “I was late because I suck at managing my time and I’m a horrible human being” into “I was late because I have ADHD, struggle with time blindness, and had a lapse in executive functioning.”

2. Learn how your brain works

If you have ADHD or suspect you have ADHD, one of the best things you can do for yourself is to learn about how the ADHD brain works.

It’s incredibly easy to keep blaming yourself and feeling shame over something when you don’t know that you struggle in that area due to having ADHD.

When I was a new mom with undiagnosed ADHD, I completely beat myself up over being late to things. I would arrive late to my baby’s check-ups, play dates, meetups with friends, and my own appointments.

On top of that, my house was a mess, I bought way too many toys for my baby and then toddler, and I kept forgetting a lot of things.

At first, I thought it was new mom brain fog and overwhelm.

As my daughter grew and I couldn’t really claim to be a “new” mom anymore, I legitimately thought I was getting early onset dementia or something similar.

I was always beating up on myself for not being able to just do the thing. Just get the laundry done, just keep the bathroom clean, just pick up the living room, just remember why I walked in this room…so many justs.

Finally, when my daughter was about 5, I started meeting virtually with a therapist. After a few meetings of trying to describe my overwhelm and my scatterbrain issues and my general all-over-the-place-ness, she asked gently if I had ever looked up symptoms of ADHD.

Although I had seen a few TikToks that kind of resonated, I mostly just brushed it off. I was a high performer in school, so I assumed it wasn’t possible.

Spoiler alert: You can absolutely have been a high performer in school and still have ADHD.

After getting a diagnosis (that I had to do some serious advocating for, but that’s a story for another day), I dove in to allll the ADHD content. I learned so much about how my brain works and what the “typical” ADHD struggles are for women, and began the process of changing my inner narrative.

I won’t pretend this whole process has been easy. Although I know a lot now about ADHD and have put a lot of systems in place to support my executive functioning skills, I still mess up sometimes, and I still feel shame.

But it’s easier to recognize what’s happening and use my coping skills instead of spiral like I used to.

3. Educate

Once you learn more about how your brain works, you get the fun job of explaining it to the people in your life that you spend the most amount of time with.

Of course, this is optional, but I found it was necessary. Because I wanted my husband’s help and support rather than his confusion when I forgot something that seemed impossible to forget, for example.

He’s had a front row seat to all of this, so it makes sense to me to educate him on what’s going on in my brain so he can help me rather than make me feel inferior (it doesn’t take much…see RSD).

Thankfully, he’s usually open to reading things that I send him, watching TikToks I find that perfectly explain something, and exploring YouTube for explanations.

I hope you have someone supportive in your life who’ll listen to you and help you navigate your neurodivergence with encouragement.

You are not a failure, a flake, or a mess

You just have ADHD.

Giving one rec today before the subscriber cutoff, because this advice is too important to hide!

Watch Jessica McCabe of How to ADHD explain her approach to managing her own sensitivity, shame, and self-acceptance:

Ok, now on to the other recs!

ADHD Rec #9: On learning how your brain works