ADHD – A Personal Walkthrough & Guide

I’ve gotten to see quite a few of my friends lately!

Just for example, this past weekend, one friend I don’t get to see that often came with me to a bridal expo, which was great! I had another friend of mine and his girlfriend visit Tuesday night for pizza and board games. And this week, I’m seeing an old friend of mine who I haven’t seen since December.

I’m so glad to be able to see them all and to keep in touch with even more of my friends over text. It’s just really nice to have friends! (Especially all of my wonderful and nerdy friends. 😊)

It hasn’t always been this way for me, though. My experience with friends when I was growing up was quite a different story. 

Quite A Different Story

I always struggled a lot with having friends and fitting-in. I mean, I was a very smart, very sweet kid and made short-term friends just fine on vacations or at summer camps and such, but not at school. Until I was about 11 years old, I went to a small private school with only about 12 other girls in my grade, and 20-ish kids in total in our class. To my knowledge, I was the only girl in that class to have ADHD.

I had a lot going against me. First there were my impaired social graces (like struggling to take turns in conversations) and then there was my “disruptive” behavior in the classroom (getting regularly reprimanded by teachers for speaking out of turn, staring off into space, or moving around too much at my desk). It wasn’t long before the other kids labeled me as “weird” and saw me as a safe target for all sorts of teasing and bullying.

(The teachers never really seemed to notice me getting picked on, either; If anything they tended to see the girls who bullied me as “good students” and me as a bit of a “bad kid” because I didn’t fit the neurotypical mold for a perfectly behaved student. 🙄) 

I was, without exaggeration, the least popular girl in my class. I remember trying so so hard for years, though, to figure out how to be friends with the other kids. My mom would try to help me come up with ways to make friends and I even read a book or two on the subject. We even tried to get some help through the school guidance counselor. But despite all of that effort, nothing really helped.

Even once my more obvious ADHD symptoms diminished after I was diagnosed and medicated around age 8, I was still seen by my peers as the weird kid they were all at liberty to pick on. 

In fact, if anything, the bullying only escalated as time went on. 

In my last year at that school, many of the other girls all decided it would be funny, I guess, to act as if I was some sort of disease.

They would inch away from me if I was standing near them. If I picked up a pencil they dropped or something and handed it to them they’d say “ew” and make a big show about needing to get hand sanitizer to clean it off. Even the girls who didn’t usually outright make fun of me started to participate in treating me like that, and they’d all laugh with each other at how “hilarious” they all were being. 😑

It was so so mean, and yet, when my mom asked me if I wanted to switch to the public school the next year, I was still adamant that I didn’t want to leave my classmates.

That school year was petty darn miserable, but it wasn’t until one night while I was volunteering at my church/school’s summer festival that things changed for me.

I was running one of the kids’ games for a couple of hours that night and one of the other girls from my class was running another one. A bunch of our classmates came by our area and talked with the other girl for a long time, but they didn’t even say hi to me. Later that same night, I ran into someone I knew a little bit from dance classes I’d had years ago and she and I had a great time hanging out! We were having a blast – talking, riding rides, playing games, etc. She went to the public school and told me that if I went there, she was sure I’d make lots of friends. 

Looking at how the people I’d been trying to get to like me for years didn’t even give me the time of day earlier, while this girl I barely knew happily spent a couple of hours straight with me, I realized that I could do better. I finally decided to switch schools.

Doing Better.. (Sort Of)

I didn’t end up seeing that girl all that often once I got to the public school that fall (different class schedules and everything) but I did still have a bit more luck with friends. I even had a best friend for a year or two. Things seemed better. 💛

By the end of 8th grade, though, it became clear that I still wasn’t all that well liked.

When it came time for everyone to choose their groups of eight for the big class field trip to D.C., all of my supposed friends formed a group without me and no one was willing to leave the group or rearrange anything so I wouldn’t be alone. And no one else I knew at the school wanted to take me into their group either. 

I had thought I finally had friends.. but.. it turned out my presence was mostly just being tolerated, rather than being welcome. 😞

I got the impression that I was pretty much always an intruder on any groups I was in. No one really wanted me around.

And by that age, I’d formed the unconscious habit of talking faster and faster whenever I felt that what I had to say would be seen as uninteresting. I think I was trying to take up less of other people’s time since people didn’t usually want to give it to me.

Unfortunately, that habit only made people check out on what I was saying even faster because no one could understand me when I was speaking 200 words a minute. People would just ignore me halfway through whatever I was trying to say and get back to their real conversation with their real friends, which I wasn’t meant to be a part of. 

I suppose I was at least bullied less than I used to be, but I was still not being treated well by my peers and it hurt tremendously to realize that no one particularly wanted me around.

By the time I got to high school, I started to withdraw and mostly stopped worrying about having friends. 

Back in grade school, I used to refer to all my classmates as “my friends” when I talked about them, but by 9th or 10th grade I started to describe pretty much everyone I associated with at school as just “acquaintances”. 

And the bits of friends groups I did have throughout high school through things like marching band, well, I always seemed to annoy and eventually alienate those too. 

I have a journal entry that I wrote around 10th grade that sheds a pretty clear light on how I thought of myself by this point. I do remember it being a really nice day, but in my entry I specifically wrote about just how great it was that the other two girls didn’t seem to be “too annoyed” by me being there, (even though I surely talked a bit more than I should have).

It’s not even like I was keeping a regular journal or anything back then. Spending an afternoon with people who wanted to have me around felt like such a significant occurrence to me that I felt a need to record the memory. 😞

Overall, it just kinda felt like no one really liked me.. like there was something about me that made me inherently unlikeable.

I started to get the impression that.. while someone might think they liked me at first.. once they spent enough time with me.. they’d realize how annoying and unpleasant I was and start to wish I’d just shut up and leave them alone. 

Doing.. Better??? 🤨

When I went off to college, I still saw myself in that negative light. I believed, to my very core, that I wasn’t someone people liked having around for very long.

I did manage to make friends but.. always at a bit of a distance, and with a bit of a mask. I finally had some great friends – friends who also liked to be nerdy and silly, friends who weren’t phased by chaotic conversations, friends who appreciated my sense of humor.

But I was so sure no one could actually want me as a friend that I couldn’t trust it.

I feared that everyone would inevitably get sick of me if I interrupted too often when they talked, talked for too long like I always did, or otherwise failed to be perfect and keep myself out of the way of everyone else. 

I’d internalized all the criticism and negative feedback I’d gotten over the years and started putting myself down before anyone else could. I constantly felt like I was just one wrong move from tipping the scale and losing my friendships. ⚖️

Seeing Reality 👓

I carried this mindset with me, without dispute, until a few months after I graduated. That summer, I had started catching up with a British person I’d met a couple of years prior (during this whole layover/flight cancellation fiasco thing). I had only talked with him a handful of times before that summer, and really didn’t know him that well when I’d reached out to catch up. It turned out that we got along well, though, and over a month later we were still chatting regularly. 

As always, however, I felt myself teetering on that scale. I knew I tended to send a lot of long messages and I was so sure that I’d definitely bothered him plenty of times by sending too much. I figured that half the time he was probably only replying to me to be polite or even to get me to stop talking. 

I told myself, “of course”, he’d have been annoyed by me. “That’s just what happened when I talked with someone for too long; I annoy them.”

We were talking multiple days a week for a while, and that whole time, I would frequently scold myself for being too much and bothering this person who probably just wanted me to leave him alone most of the time. I was even a bit afraid that one day I’d get told off by him or something like that.

Finally, though, after this anxiety of mine had gone on for a couple of months, I worked up the nerve to open up a little bit and told him about it. I told him that I kept worrying that I’d probably been annoying him with my messages. 

And here’s what followed: 

I literally couldn’t believe it. My mind was blown! SURELY I had gotten on his nerves at least a FEW times!! But he said “NEVER ONCE”?!? How was that even possible?? 

When I told him about my worry of annoying him, I thought he would just say something like “Ah it’s fine, you’re not that annoying.” or “I don’t really mind hearing from you all that much”. But I was absolutely not expecting him to say I’d never annoyed him once!!

I was so certain that I’d frequently been an insufferable burden to this person.. but apparently I was perfectly fine. Even more than that, he actually even enjoyed talking with me??? 🤯

I was so surprised by his answer that I even went on to ask him to clarify how/why my messages hadn’t been annoying; I literally could NOT wrap my head around it.

After that experience, I started to think.. maybe.. my other friends weren’t bothered by my existence either. Maybe.. my other friends didn’t just put up with me, but actually liked me!?

All at once, a previously unbreakable, negative self-image formed over a lifetime of being shunned started to crack. New notions about myself, about how other people might genuinely appreciate my contributions to a conversation and actually be glad to have me around started to seep in.

In the past few years since then, I’ve come to see myself and my relationships with others a lot more clearly. And I have been able to appreciate that I am a kind, caring, insightful, and interesting person who can be a lot of fun to talk to. 

I still have some insecurities about how much I might mean to my friends. Little things like figuring they probably have other stuff they want to do more than “giving up” their time to come hang out with me, and then being surprised and deeply touched when they actually show up for my Halloween party, don’t bat an eye at driving an hour to hang out and play Switch games for a day, or are enthusiastic about “giving up” their Sunday just to come with me to a bridal expo. 😅

I honestly hadn’t even quite noticed I still had those lingering insecurities until they were pointed out recently by my therapist. But, I’ve already managed to work through so much of my self-doubt and feel so much better about myself than I used to, that I know I’ll be able to reframe and overcome the rest of my negative self-assumptions. 

Even with the bit of healing I have left to do, I have a rather vibrant social life these days; I think my younger self would be happy to know that I really did find some friends, even if it took a while. 😄

Oh, and remember that English friend who inadvertently made me rethink my entire self-perception? Well, we’re still very much in touch and last year I actually got to visit him in the UK! My fiancé and I stayed at his place in the countryside for a few days, we got to meet a lot of his local friends, all we all went sightseeing together. We all had an amazing time and it was quite possibly, without exaggeration, the best trip I’ve ever been on in my life! 😁

So, if you’ve had some similar experiences with not “fitting in” or not having friends know that you’re definitely not alone. And just because some people don’t appreciate the wonderful person you are, doesn’t mean that you are not someone worthy of appreciation and friendship.

There are absolutely people out there who would love to have you as a friend; Sometimes, it just takes a little while to find them. 💛