(Following ADHD Awareness Month, we’re continuing to give space to the voices that matter most those with lived experience. This special feature is written by our guest contributor)
There have likely been times when you’ve struggled to express your feelings. It’s not that you don’t understand your thoughts, but that ADHD makes you experience things differently. Something that hurts you deeply might seem insignificant to someone without ADHD. Bringing it up can feel like you’re wasting their time over nothing. But your feelings do matter. Just because someone doesn’t react the same way as you do doesn’t make your emotions any less valid.
Personally, I find it easier to communicate with people who already know my diagnosis. It takes away the pressure of having to over-explain why something hurt me more than it supposedly should have. But that creates a dilemma for me, because I don’t like people knowing I have ADHD. So I end up stuck. I want to talk about my feelings, and explain why something affects me, but I often feel that I can’t.
So what do I do?
I have spoken a lot about the difficult side of ADHD, but I haven’t fully touched on the positive. People with ADHD are often deeply emotionally intelligent. We are compassionate – sometimes so intently that we’re surprised when others aren’t. We notice tone shifts, body language, and small changes in energy. That sensitivity helps us understand people, even when we struggle to express ourselves.
The next step is learning to understand yourself. Use that same emotional intelligence to articulate your feelings in a way that will reach the person across form you. When I’m anxious about what I need to say, I write it down first. Seeing the words on paper helps me make sense of them. And through that process, I realise that I don’t need to tell someone I have ADHD to express something that upsets me.
