ADHD might be easier for neurotypicals to understand if you know that adhd means that our baseline dopamine is lower than a neurotypical's.

A thread on understanding ADHD a little bit more.

The most obvious result of this is depression, but not like clinical depression. It looks similar though. Boredom, nothing seems exciting anymore, and even surface level things like not getting out of bed and bad personal hygiene are there.

Because as you can imagine, low dopamine sucks. In its basis, it causes underexcitement. Someone with ADHD will take any opportunity for a shot of extra dopamine.

To an outsider, this looks like intense and always changing interests, inability to focus on mundane tasks, recklessness with money, overeating and snacking, always doing multiple things at once, inability to sit still, etc etc.

And that's what ADHD was named for: what it looks like from an outsider's perspective. The hyperactivity. The symptoms that are inconvenient for neurotypicals.

ADHD is a disability. It causes us to be impaired or unable to function in a neurotypical world. It impacts our schooling, socialization, work etc.

But that's not how it's known to the outside world. People don't know about how it feels for us to be understimulated, to have a brain that just. will. not. do what you need it to, to be marked as lazy because our symptoms are misunderstood.

The biggest thing of which is the inability to start and focus on mundane tasks. When a brain is at low dopamine, it does NOT want to do something that will lower that even more. It'll always be looking for something to increase it.

And that's why you'll often see us on our phones. They're a handheld dopamine machine. Social media, games, music, all the information about our special interests is at our fingertips. That's extremely interesting and tempting.

And before anyone compares this to addiction: stop it. Right now. All we want is the normal amount of dopamine. Compare it to being thirsty all the time instead.

So, please, before you judge someone with ADHD for something you don't know a lot about, consider researching a little bit or asking that person if they can describe what's happening inside their brain. We're not lazy, just always looking for a normal dopamine level.