Julie and Jel Legg discuss the common yet invalidating comment, “You don’t look like you have ADHD,” and explore how ADHD traits can create paradoxical behaviours that confuse observers. Welcome to the flipsides of ADHD.
The Flipsides of ADHD highlight the contrasting extremes that can coexist within moments—swinging from overthinking to underthinking, oversharing to withholding, and being highly organized to thriving in chaos. These complexities emphasize that ADHD is best understood through appropriate tools and expert guidance, rather than through casual judgments from friends or family.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- ADHD’s Paradoxes: People with ADHD often exhibit seemingly contradictory traits, such as overthinking one moment and underthinking the next. This duality can confuse others and even those with ADHD themselves.
- The Challenge of Understanding ADHD: ADHD’s complexity makes it difficult for both neurotypicals and individuals with ADHD to fully grasp. Outsiders may simplify or misjudge the condition due to a lack of proper context or tools for understanding.
- Invalidation Through Misjudgment: Phrases like, “You don’t look like you have ADHD,” can be invalidating and stem from others’ limited perspectives rather than reality. These remarks highlight the importance of promoting awareness and education.
- The Importance of Perspective: Understanding ADHD requires the right tools and expertise. Lay observations are insufficient, much like using a tape measure to estimate the distance to the moon.
- Navigating Misunderstanding with Grace: Instead of responding harshly to misinformed comments, individuals with ADHD can use them as an opportunity to educate others while maintaining self-compassion.
- ADHD is Personal and Nuanced: No two ADHD experiences are alike, making it essential to approach the topic with sensitivity and an open mind. It is not a condition that can be boxed into simple categories or stereotypes.
LINKS
- Julie Legg, author: The Missing Piece – A Woman’s Guide to Understanding, Diagnosing and Living with ADHD
- ADHDifference Instagram
- ADHDifference Facebook
- Contact ADHDifference
TRANSCRIPT
JULIE: I’m Julie Legg, author of The Missing Piece and diagnosed with ADHD at 52.
JEL: And I’m Jel Legg, diagnosed at 55.
JULIE: Welcome to ADHDifference. In this episode we’re going to be talking about the flipside of ADHD and it really stems from quite a common conversation that’s had with some newly diagnosed ADHDers, and that is “It doesn’t look like you’ve got ADHD.” And this normally comes from colleagues, friends, or family and they don’t particularly understand the dynamics of ADHD. But rather than coming down very hard on them, because it’s quite a difficult thing to hear when you’re trying to understand your own ADHD and starting that journey, rather than coming hard on those people I just thought it was going to be good to chat about the dynamics of ADHD and why it can be confusing for some people to understand how complex ADHD can be.
JEL: I think it’s extremely confusing. It’s certainly confusing for those of us that have ADHD and I think it’s doubly confusing perhaps for those who don’t have ADHD, don’t have such an intimate understanding of it. They can’t be in our heads. They can’t know what it’s like. They can empathize and they can seek to understand, and we deeply appreciate that, but you know it’s sometimes I can’t even really explain what it’s like to have ADHD. Sometimes I can’t even understand myself. Sometimes … yeah it … because it’s my norm, it’s only by looking at people who I would consider to be very neurotypical that I can perhaps start to understand what my ADHD really is. The symptoms can be explained. The results, and the actions that lead to the results can be explained, but exactly trying to put it in a box and describe it, it’s not always so easy, is it? [Yeah.] I do want to just start by saying something. Often people will say “You don’t look or sound like you have ADHD.” I think a good way of thinking, if you’re on the end of that comment and you have ADHD, is to either think, remind yourself or say, you can only … in science, you can only describe or measure something with the right tool. So, it’s a bit like saying, in their opinion, “It’s not that far to the moon as I’ve got my tape measure out.” You know, you can’t measure the distance from where you are to the moon with a tape measure any more than using a tape measure can measure the width of an atom. You have to have the right tool. So, if someone says to you “You don’t look or sound like you have ADHD,” they don’t have the right tool to know whether they’re right or wrong.
JULIE: Unless that’s coming from a psychologist. [A psychologist, yeah.] Or psychiatrist. [Yeah.] Obviously listen to them. They know what they’re talking about.
JEL: But we’re talking about you know, the regular people in your life; your family, your work colleagues, your friends. So it’s really important to understand the idea that you know, to measure something you need the right tool and so someone’s comment “You don’t look or sound,” is as irrelevant as saying “How far it is to the moon based on this tape measure.” You can’t measure it so it’s irrelevant, if that makes any sense.
JULIE: I thought we could give some examples why it might be so confusing for onlookers or observers to try and figure things out and just really it’s emphasizing the complexity of how ADHD can be. So, for example, we can overthink and under think. And overthinking can take minutes, hours, days, months, sort of going around in loops overthinking a particular subject, or issue, or challenge. And then we can also under think and do things very impulsively. And so again to an observer you know, which one are you? Well, the fact is we can be everything. We don’t have to be put in this box saying “You have ADHD therefore you must overthink.” Well, we certainly can, yes. We do often but also we can under think. So I thought we’ talk about some of the yin and yang of ADHD and just to show how complex it can be.
JEL: Starting with the over-thinking under-thinking, we can actually do it simultaneously at the same time. So, we can be over … we … someone can observe us overthinking a problem, going round and around in circles not being able to break out, and then instantaneously suddenly picking the phone up and calling someone and saying something, and not thinking that through. And to the observer it’s like “Well hang on a sec, you’ve been mulling and over-thinking on this and then you’ve reacted in a rash, hurried way, without thinking it through. You did. You’ve made it worse now.” So that’s over-thinking and under-thinking exactly at the same time.
JULIE: And, but depending on the environment, if they only ever observe you perhaps under-thinking and making those impulsive phone calls or whatever, it may be they don’t see the other side of you which is often hidden because ‘thinkings’ you can’t see that.
JULIE: The over, the under-thinking tends to be more observable in so far as it’s your actions. It’s your reactions and actions and what you do. The over-thinking is less observable because it’s an internal monologue that keeps going round and round and round.
JULIE: While we’re talking about over and unders, there’s also over-sharing and under-sharing. And I know for me when I’m in a very comfortable space, or I think it’s a safe space to do it, I’ll overshare. And sometimes I’ll pull myself up thinking “Oh that was probably too much information,” based on people’s reactions or the amount of time that it took me to explain a certain thing. I think “Ah maybe that was oversharing too much,” but then I can under-share as well. And that yin and yang is I’ll under-share because I’m putting the brakes on myself because of too much oversharing. So depending on who’s with me in a room they might see that I’m a very open person or they might see me as quite an insular, closed person who doesn’t share very much at all. It’s still me, it’s just the environment that can trigger the two extremes. [Agreed. Yep, I agree with that.] Sorted. So it … I know we’ve touched on under-thinking and impulsivity, but there’s also impulsivity and then procrastination. We can do both extremely well too. I think procrastination is something where we think yes, it is overthinking but it’s also we just delay the inevitable. We delay it because probably it doesn’t hit our dopamine levels or we see it as too hard. And we’ll think about making that phone call, or writing that report, or doing that tax return, we’ll leave that for another day because we can’t deal with it right now.
JEL: Yes, and all these examples we’re talking about today it’s always … at the root of it it’s always about the dopamine. It’s always about if my dopamine levels feel satiated and I’m fine then I’m probably going to procrastinate on doing some important things stuff that I don’t see, I don’t need the reward of doing them. And that can apply to exciting and fun things too. But if I feel like I need the dopamine levels to be brought back up then I’m likely to act in a good or bad way, productive or unproductive way, but thought through or not thought through. You know, take your chances what comes out of that. So recently one of the things we’ve been doing, I know this comes up so often, it’s this word of the age ‘mindfulness’ but well actually I like old fashioned words. We’ve had some big decisions recently where we’ve had to go one way or the other, and normally we just react and go one way, boom. That’s sorted, that will deal with that problem by going in a different direction. But we have started to sleep on things and not just give it one night, but give it several nights. I think what … that stopped us making going from the frying pan to the fire in some decisions but also ironically it does the other thing too. After a few days you sort of lose your motivation to even make a decision. It just … you forget about it and move on. And they’re big decisions you know, they’re important decisions that have an impact on the future. So we’re really difficult people to read, aren’t we? [Yes we are.] If you’re trying to sort of … imagine someone, a life coach and I know there are ADHD coaches they do a lot of good work, but if you just got a regular life coach to try and sort of, or PA, or someone to organize you and they didn’t know you had ADHD, they’d probably run screaming out the door after a week. It would be impossible.
JULIE: So another one is being very disorganized and organized in different aspects of our life. And again, who might see … work might see you being extremely organized, pedantic. Yet at home you could be very disorganized and lose keys and you know, run out of milk, or leave the hose on. [Living in chaos.] Yeah, exactly. And it doesn’t mean that you’re one thing or the other. Yes, you can be both. And it can be quite confusing and frustrating for us ADHDers. Why can we do something so well in one environment and not in the other, and we’ll get on to some of these reasons shortly.
JEL: Yeah, I think it a lot of that, and I’ve heard lots of or known of examples over the years, people present in at work in an incredibly well presented, groomed, organized manner and then you go visit them in their home or see their car good examples, yes cars. Their cars can be complete traveling bomb sites, absolutely chaotic and you almost don’t know where to sit. You don’t want to sit in there but as a person they always present so tidily and nicely. They’re not scruffy people but their cars are just tips on wheels. [Guilty as charged.] Well, you’re not too bad. I’ve got some examples that really should have been condemned. But I think in those cases, for the people, it’s where you put your priorities, you know. You can’t beat yourself up because you’re very organized and tidy in one place and not in another because if that other place has no dopamine hit for you, no priorities, no interest, then that’s just how it is. You’re too busy focusing somewhere else and getting your hits, and your life happiness from somewhere else. Whereas without ADHD I think people were more likely to have a more balanced approach across the board, more typical. Everything sort of seems to fit together like a nice jigsaw puzzle, whereas with ADHD our lives aren’t completed jigsaw puzzles. There’s little bits here that are done, and some parts of the sky over here, and the clock tower, and the rest of it just a pile of bits. And half of them are upside down or under the couch, you know. [Or lost.] Yeah, yeah. Or lost.
JULIE: Another one I thought was good was empathy; so to be empathetic in some aspects of your life or appear to be very unempathetic in others. And I think for me, I’m really empathetic for situations and people that I really care about, me personally and so I can appear to be very unempathetic in other situations. Which you know, even talking about that, that almost sounds as like a slur on my character. I’d like to be seen as empathetic but I can’t be empathetic to everything. And I guess if I was, I’d have no time. I’d just be a dribbling mess probably. But yeah, so my empathy is in certain areas of interest but if I’m not interested in that area then I won’t be.
JEL: Okay and so in that area if I’m thinking in terms of empathy, whether I’m empathetic or not, it can vary hugely. So one day I can find myself empathetic to the plight of someone or people or a situation. and the next day I’ve just completely no interest in it whatsoever. So catch me on a good day and I’m all ears. Catch me on a bad, not a bad day, that’s not the right word, but catch me on a different day and I’m going to be a lot sharper and quicker and “Come on. Sort this out. We’ve been through this before.” Bam. Bam. Bam. We’ve had this conversation. That’s not very empathetic. Again, it’s difficult to read us because we’re capable of every emotion, and every good thing and every bad thing in a character, but you can’t always predict when it’s going to be. It depends at that moment where our dopamine’s at and where our focus is at. It’s like this other part of our brain that’s just … it’s just not working the same way and so it doesn’t regulate our reactions, behaviour and so forth, the same in a predictable way which you can nail nine times out of 10.
JULIE: Which I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. And we talk about regulation and that’s the whole thing with an ADHD brain, right? So it’s … whether it’s big emotions or whatever it may be. [Or small emotions.] Yes. [Which is empathy/non empathy, big and small emotions.] Absolutely. And so another yin and yang I guess would be difficulty multi-tasking yet in other times where we hit every deadline and we’re sorted. We can be both. I mean I used to be the ‘hit every deadline’ situation at work but at home when I was in a safe space, my relaxed space, I’d have several things on the go. I’d be washing the dishes, cooking dinner and watering the garden all at the same time, and not particularly achieving in all of those tasks. But you know what I mean, I just … I was more relaxed at home to go back to my normal stuff.
JEL: So hyper focusing on something that’s absolutely … whether it’s writing or something creative, or practical whatever, we can be hyperfocused on something for hours and then days and so the rest, everything else gets neglected. Where suddenly we can turn around and do everything at once and you know, tidy the whole house, sort out those little things that needed doing, achieve things, that’s when I think we see all of those little tasks as one task. And so suddenly we hyperfocus on that one task. We take the gather up the little ones. It’s like “My word, you’re like a human hurricane, dynamo. It’s incredible. I can’t believe you’ve done….” We’ve been doing this recently. We’ve had open homes, well sort of. People come to see the house and I think we lose a little faith in ourselves to have the energy to keep doing that level of tidying up. And I’m never ceased, I never ceased to be amazed when I turn around and Jules has going through the house and tidied a whole bunch of things. And I guess secretly you’ll look outside like “Oh my word, all the spiders webs have gone. And the garden’s looking great and everything’s tidy.” We sort of allocate different jobs we do. And so a whole bunch of complex tasks that we could easily leave suddenly all get done very quickly. Yeah, so that’s the opposite to living in a mess. Then come on another day when we’re not expecting anyone to come to the house and we just, pffff, you know, doesn’t matter.
JULIE: Pretty relaxed. [Yeah.] Another flip side would be being really good in a crisis, and a thing known as ADHD paralysis, again two very very different things. Good in a crisis is “What’s the problem? Yep, sorted.” With our quick thinking and out … you know, thinking outside the box and problem solving, we can be really good in a crisis. Yeah, to the point. And yet the next day, or even that afternoon, paralysis can set in, when there are so many options and we don’t know which one to take. And yeah, so it’s ….
JEL: Again, dopamine. Emergency. Do something. Get it sorted now. Bam. Now if that attracts our, if that triggers this opportunity to raise the dopamine, bam. We’re the first in. If that dopamine is not required or is not triggered by the events unfolding in front of you/us then it’s whatever. It’s your problem. You do it. Stop making a mountain out of a mole hill. Whatever. “So can’t you see it’s a ….” Hmmm.
JULIE: So, I’ve got one more and that is making careless mistakes versus perfectionism, and I know that I can be both as well. And again, this all comes down or back to what was said earlier in the podcast and that was you know “It doesn’t look like you’ve got ADHD.” So we’re talking about what people observe of us and it can change. So, in a work environment will be very very different from a social environment, which will be different yet again from a home environment. So it is quite interesting I can be quite gregarious when I’m socializing, or I can be quite introverted depending on how I’m feeling at the time, my energy levels, the people that I’m socializing with. If I feel safe around them or if they’re strangers, or maybe that’s a good thing or maybe that’s a bad thing depending on the situation. So, I remember an old acquaintance, we’d known each other for 20 odd years, and we were having an open conversation. And she said “Oh when I first met you I thought you were stuck up and …” Me? No! “Oh you were just really quiet. You weren’t really involved in conversation so, you know.” It really shocked me. That’s the last thing I felt in that situation. I felt quite intimidated in that group of friends, it …. early on, all those years ago. So I kind of held back from contributing just in case my conversation was wrong, or I was too intense, or I over shared. But it yeah, observation eh.
JEL: So back to the careless mistakes or do a great job, hyperfocus so … [Perfectionism I think.] Perfectionism sorry yes. So if I’m motivated, I actually get tested on that aspect of ADHD on a regular basis due to the nature of my work, still do a lot of web development. So you get a list of … for instance I had about 140 things I had to do this last week, pieces of data that had to be changed. So if I’m really motivated, which I was, and focused, then the odds are they’ll all get sorted and they’ll get done well. If I’m doing that under duress because I’d rather be doing something else, my mind’s not concentrating, then I can’t kick in something to make it accurate and I’m likely to get the result back “You’ve missed 10 of them, 20,” whatever which I won’t have done. So, you know, one way of dealing with that is giving us the flexibility to find that moment when we’re motivated to do it. In a work environment, forcing us to do it at this moment and it must be done. Sometimes it’s not the best thing to do. Whereas say “Look well I’ll get this out of the way and do this then later, then I’ll give that my attention.” Listen, if you’re a boss to that person who knows how their mind works or say “Look it’s got to be done by 5 o’clock. You don’t have to do it now.” Right, okay I’ll do it at 4 o’clock and I really hyperfocus and I’ll probably nail it. “You seem to be rushing it.” I’m not rushing it. I’m focusing because if you’ve given me 3 hours to do this job and it’s meant to take an hour whatever I’ll probably just wander off my brain will disappear somewhere else, and I’ll make loads of mistakes. Give me an hour and give me a chance to really get into it. So we can deliver. So, how do you judge someone in a work appraisal, annual appraisal with that “Sloppy. Makes lots of mistakes,” or “Very accurate and very fast.” We can be both. So from managing us in a work environment, or managing others depends what angle you’re coming from. Understanding their strengths and weaknesses, and giving them the job or at the right time can get different results. So we’re neither sloppy nor super perfectionist accurate. We could be both. [Yeah, absolutely.] True?
JULIE: Yeah. This is the flip side of ADHD. Yeah. [The flip side, yeah.] So also I think it was interesting maybe to reflect on child versus adult, as an me as a child, me as an adult same for you Jel. We’re the same person, well we’re the same person, I’m the same person, but my dynamics or my character may have sort of changed somewhat throughout the time. I remember or I thought of myself as a hyperactive child but it might not have come across as that because I was also very shy because I was masking and trying to fit in. But my head has always been hyperactive and so if I was to take my thoughts out and draw a picture for you about how I thought about my hyperactivity it would look crazy, busy, creative, wild. And, as the years have gone by particularly since my ADHD diagnosis coming up three years ago now, I actually feel that I can express that hyperactivity more now because I own it more. So I’m more likely to be a little bit more flamboyant in a social situation than I did when I was a child. So same person, same brain, maybe just different ways of expressing that which can be observed in different ways too.
JEL: Yep. And of course, as we go through life we acquire skills, and get older and experienced, and we find tools, mental tools to adapt to situations but we never change underneath. As adults we’re the same as when we were children. Yeah, I think any idea … well I don’t believe in growing out of it, I think you sort of grow into it. So you, as an adult yeah you require these skills to deal with it better or not. But I … all through my adult life I’ve always looked forward if I … to making it to a certain age, around now actually, where I’m still reasonably fit and healthy and compos mentis and so on, and I’m looking forward now to growing down and going back to enjoying some of those hobbies and interests as a child, the things that brought me you know unadulterated joy and you know wonderment, bewonderment, whatever the word is. You know there’s all sorts of things I’m still interested in that I want to try and sort of bring back into my life because it’s a full circle thing. Yeah.
JULIE: So talking about ‘full circle’ just as we’re wrapping this up, the idea behind the flip side of ADHD was really to say observers will observe part of you but not the all of you. Some things will be seen and easy to observe like actions, others will be impossible to see like your overthinking, and your internal dialogue that you have. And so try not to be too upset if someone says it doesn’t look like you’ve got ADHD. Know that they probably misunderstand ADHD or are misinformed. [Certainly don’t have the right tools to measure it.] Correct and … but those psychologists and psychiatrists who specialize in ADHD will do so they’ll have something more meaningful to say on that matter. But it’s okay to be a bit of everything. You can have extremes. You can be both and you don’t need to be put in a box. You don’t need to give yourself a hard time. You can be everything and you can be your wonderful self and have those non-regulated ADHD traits. And one last thing while I think of this too, they see ADHD as being on a spectrum. Not ‘the spectrum’ as an autism but a spectrum. And so it is possible that you can have all of those traits yet some of them, I wouldn’t say mild, but some of them are maybe not so observable because you’ve put these little strategies in place or, over the years you’ve worked out that you know, you need to put your keys on a hook otherwise you’d lose them forever, you know what I mean. So some of those ADHD traits may seem minimized only because you’ve got these coping mechanisms in place.
JEL: I also think it’s … it would be reasonable to suggest, and I’m not a psychologist or psychiatrist, that while you may be at a certain point, a certain place on that spectrum of ADHD, it can move I would have thought, and it could have moved. It could move according to life’s events, say leading up to becoming a parent, or being a parent, or getting married or divorced, or having big impacts on your life. And as you move through life you gain coping skills and learn things that may move you back down the spectrum. Then an event pushes you back up. [No, I agree with that.] Maybe.
JULIE: There you go! [There you go.] Complex. And that is the flip side of ADHD. Thank you for listening.