The lies within ADHD
There’s a lot of misinformation in the ADHD space.
Recently I watched a video about why people with ADHD like to stay up late and are Night Owls.
Apparently researchers have been puzzled about this for years and after 22, they found the discovery (no study was linked when I asked for it).
The reason is
**drum roll please**
“because the ‘quietness of the night allows their brain to finally feel safe’ and ‘their nervous system has time to relax’”.
Sure, this could be the case for some people.
Yet the way this statement was delivered was as if that’s definitively the case for all of us and everyone with ADHD is a Night Owl.
Challenges
Unfortunately, a fair few of the people I work with have sleep issues.
This is not because they feel safe and their nervous system is lapping up the time to relax.
Quite the opposite.
They are often punishing themselves. Blaming, shaming and holding lots of guilt of themselves, wishing they were asleep.
These people who’s minds are too active and they’re lying in bed processing and analysing every minuscule detail of the day, stressing about having to go through it all again tomorrow.
Sounds really safe.
We need more variability
I understand the sentiment.
That’s usually why I like to wake up early because most of the world is still asleep and it’s a lot quieter for me.
For me.
An individual with a unique experience of ADHD.
The person who posts this 💩 has probably the biggest platform for ADHD and they’re doing some great things.
Just these hyper-generalisations without nuance or variability aren’t progressive or acknowledging of how different it can present for people.
ADHD presents differently for everyone. It’s not right to say ‘People with ADHD experience’.
All it takes is something along the lines of:
‘Some people with ADHD’
‘People with ADHD may’
‘Many ADHDers’
The catch
You may not have realised that this is just ‘clever’ marketing, at the detriment of the condition they’re supposedly trying to help with.
Making everyone feel the same and making it incredibly easy to identify with easy-to-access ADHD traits has a financial benefit for the person.
Not liking big spoons and buying a new planner were always funny ones.
The more you think you might have ADHD because you always buy a new planner or you stay up later etc, the more you’re going to buy this person’s book because it’s all about being new to ADHD.
Everything is now an ADHD trait.
You cannot hate on someone for saying “I’m a bit ADHD” because judging by the new ways to associate it, they probably are.
The catch
I cannot say if this person is intentionally causing harm however they’ve been doing this for at least the past 2 years and despite the comments being full of comments echoing what I’ve said here, things don’t change.
It’s unfair to say that everyone with ADHD experiences this.
And when you’ve got someone, like one of my programme participants, who beats themselves up for not being able to sleep, reading this post about how we’re Night Owls because we feel safe and we can be more productive and it’s amazing, only adds to the shame and guilt someone may be facing.
We’re glorifying ADHD again. Using that cringey ‘super power’ language as if it’s so amazing.
I’d love to know in the comments (or privately) - what do you think about this?
P.s, I’m running some donate-what-you-can sessions with ADHD UK on making mindfulness accessible for ADHD brains
Exactly. I've seen way too many articles equating pure ADHD with the modern phenomenon of algorithm-induced attention deficits—which is why the term 'doom scrolling' is so popular now. In reality, genuine ADHD is a strict neurological disorder from birth. It cannot, and should never, be simplified to just a byproduct of tech addiction or social media algorithms.