Discovering my personality was ADHD

The personality that was not a personality#

For most of my life I thought I knew who I was.

The one who tries too hard. The one who is a bit much. The one who is fine, always fine, and never needs anything. I thought those were just my traits, the way some people are tall or good at maths.

Then I started reading about ADHD, and the list kept matching. Not one or two items. Almost all of them.

I want to be careful here. I am not a clinician, and this post is not a diagnosis for you or for me. ADHD is assessed properly by a qualified professional, and the NHS explains what the signs look like and how to get assessed. What I can share is what it felt like to read a list of symptoms and realise it was a description of me.

Chronic people pleaser#

I am very good at reading what someone wants and giving it to them before they ask.

It looks like kindness, and some of it is. But a lot of it is fear. If I keep everyone comfortable, nobody gets upset with me. If nobody gets upset with me, I do not have to feel that sinking feeling.

The cost is that I do not know what I want half the time. I have spent so long managing everyone else's reaction that my own preferences went quiet.

Over preparer#

I do not walk into things. I rehearse them.

Meetings, conversations, appointments, even casual plans. I run through what could go wrong, what they might say, what I will say back. I research more than I need to and I arrive with a backup for the backup.

From the outside it looks organised. On the inside it is anxiety wearing a tidy jacket. Preparing is how I try to make sure I cannot get it wrong, because getting it wrong hurts more than most people realise.

Being the intense one#

I feel things at full volume. I care at full volume. I talk about what interests me with an energy that can make people lean back a little.

For years I took that as a flaw. I learned to watch other people's faces for the moment I had gone too far, then shrink myself to fit. Being intense is not the problem. Being told, in a hundred small ways, that I should be less of it is the problem.

Independent, but never asking for help#

I am the one who sorts it out. I will figure it out myself, thanks.

That is partly pride in being capable, and partly something sadder. Asking for help meant risking a no, or a sigh, or being seen as a burden. So I made myself self-sufficient and called it independence.

The irony is that I am very quick to help other people. I just do not believe the same rule applies to me.

The over apologiser#

I say sorry constantly. I say sorry when I walk into a room, when I ask a question, when I am interrupted.

The part that took me longest to see is that I say it even when someone else has upset me. Someone causes the hurt, and somehow I am the one smoothing it over. In my head the logic goes: if I am hurting, I must be too sensitive. If I am too sensitive, I am too much. So I apologise for being too much.

That phrase, "too much", has followed me for years. I am starting to question who decided that.

RSD: when rejection feels like an emergency#

This is the one that hit hardest.

Rejection sensitive dysphoria, usually shortened to RSD, describes an intense emotional pain in response to real or imagined rejection, criticism, or disapproval. It is not an official diagnosis, but it is widely discussed in the ADHD community, and ADDitude has a clear explanation of how it shows up. Reading it felt like someone had been watching me.

Here is what it does to me.

• My mind creates problems that are not real. A short reply, a delayed message, a slightly different tone. My brain builds a whole case that I have done something wrong and they are pulling away.
• I need reassurance. Not once, but repeatedly. I know it is a lot to ask, which feeds the feeling of being too much, which makes me need more reassurance. It is a loop.
• I struggle to say how I feel. The words do not come out in a calm, tidy order. So I say nothing, or I say "I'm fine".
• I bottle it up. For days, sometimes longer, I carry it and keep functioning.
• Then my nervous system explodes. Something small tips it over. To anyone watching it looks out of proportion, because they are seeing the last drop and not the whole glass.

Afterwards comes the shame, and the apologising starts again. Everything I described above feeds this one cycle.

Understanding it has not stopped it. But there is a difference between thinking "I am dramatic" and thinking "my nervous system treats rejection like a threat". One of those gives me somewhere to go.

Hyperfocus: all in, or nowhere#

When I love something, I disappear into it.

Hours go. I forget to eat, to reply, to look up. Everything else gets completely tuned out. It is a brilliant state when it is pointed at something I care about, and I would not trade it.

The flip side is that anything I do not care about barely registers. It is not that I am ignoring you or being lazy. My attention does not work like a dial I can turn. It is closer to a spotlight that goes where the interest is, whether or not that is where I need it to be.

Executive function: the heavy bit nobody sees#

Executive function is the set of mental skills we use to plan, prioritise, start, and finish things. CHADD describes ADHD as a condition that affects these abilities, and ADDitude has a good breakdown of what executive function actually covers.

For me it looks like this.

• Making a plan feels huge, before I have even started.
• Deciding what comes first is exhausting, especially when everything feels equally urgent or equally pointless.
• Starting is the hardest part. I can know exactly what needs doing and still be stuck.

None of that is about not caring. It is a heavy weight in my mind that I carry around all day, and it is invisible to everyone else. From the outside it just looks like I have not done the thing.

High IQ, and no memory of my day#

This one confuses people, including me.

I can handle complex tasks. I can untangle a technical problem, hold a lot of moving parts in my head, and see how things connect. People assume that means I have it together.

Then someone asks, "How was your day?" and I have nothing. I know I did things. I know I was busy. But I cannot pull the day back up. It is a blur of tasks with no story attached.

Being capable and struggling with ordinary things are not opposites. They can live in the same person, and ADHD is one of the places where they do. Being clever is also a good way to hide the struggle for a very long time, which is part of why so many people find out late.

Feeling empty inside#

This is the part I almost left out.

Under the people pleasing, the preparing, the apologising, and the bottling up, there was often a hollow feeling. Not sadness exactly. More like an absence. Like I had spent so long being what everyone needed that there was no one left in the middle.

I do not think that emptiness is a character flaw. I think it is what happens when you mask your whole self for years, and when so much of your energy goes on managing other people and surviving your own head.

I do not have a neat ending for it. Understanding ADHD did not fill it overnight. But it gave me a different question. Instead of "what is wrong with me?" I can ask "what have I been hiding, and what do I actually need?"

Where I am now#

Discovering this has been equal parts relief and grief.

Relief, because so much finally makes sense. Grief, for the years I spent thinking I was too much, too sensitive, too intense, when I was running a brain nobody had explained to me.

If any of this sounds familiar, you do not have to be sure. You can be curious. Read, ask questions, talk to someone you trust, and speak to your GP or a qualified professional about an assessment. ADHD UK has practical information on where to start.

And if the empty feeling is heavy, or you are struggling, please do not carry it alone. In the UK you can contact Samaritans on 116 123, free, any time.

You are not too much. You might just have been missing the manual.

References#

• NHS, Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
• ADDitude, Rejection sensitive dysphoria and ADHD
• ADDitude, What is executive function?
• CHADD, Overview of ADHD
• ADHD UK
• Samaritans