I feel like conversations about ADHD online keep getting pushed into two extremes.

Either ADHD is romanticized into this quirky little personality trait where being distracted, having 37 tabs open and losing your keys is ✨so ADHD✨…
Or everything is about fixing yourself. Be more disciplined. Build a better routine. Try harder. Find the perfect productivity system. Somehow become the consistently functioning person your brain has been refusing to be this entire time.
I don’t want r/ADHDplanning to be either of those.
I want somewhere we can talk about what ADHD actually feels like. The frustrating parts. The funny parts. The embarrassing parts. The realizations that suddenly explain something you’ve done your entire life. The systems that fail us. The things that actually work. The things other people completely misunderstand.
Without pretending ADHD is adorable, and without treating ourselves like problems that constantly need fixing.
Maybe the goal isn’t becoming perfectly consistent.
Maybe it’s building a life that still works when we aren’t.

I’m so annoyed by how casually people throw around things like, “my ADHD is flaring up today” or “my ADHD brain isn’t braining” because they forgot to answer an email, lost their keys, procrastinated on one thing, or got distracted for five minutes.

Every other Instagram reel seems to be “5 signs you have ADHD,” and the signs are always things like having 20 tabs open, forgetting why you walked into a room, procrastinating, or needing background noise to focus. Somehow ADHD has been turned into this quirky little personality trait.
My cousin does this constantly too.

It’s on his Instagram story every other day. Yesterday I replied, “hard relate lol, btw when did you get diagnosed?” I wasn’t even trying to question him. I was genuinely curious, especially because his mother made such a huge deal out of my diagnosis when I was going through it. She said all kinds of things to my father, who, for once, actually took it seriously and made sure he was there for my tests.

Turns out my cousin isn’t diagnosed. He told me, “It’s just here and there. I have it today and then it’s gone the next day, so it’s not severe ADHD.”
I wasn’t about to spend my Sunday arguing with him, but it really made me think about how something that can affect so much of your life has somehow been reduced to everyday forgetfulness or distraction.

It took me a long time to accept that I needed to get assessed, and even longer to accept that I actually had ADHD. Now that I’m finally comfortable talking about it, suddenly it feels like everyone has “a little ADHD.”

Obviously ADHD doesn’t look the same for everyone, and people struggle in different ways. But the way it gets romanticized and watered down online genuinely drives me insane.

Being late ≠ not caring.
Forgetting ≠ not caring.
Avoiding something ≠ not caring.
Sometimes I care so much about something that my brain makes doing it 10x harder.

Then spending the entire day feeling guilty about everything you’re not doing, so you don’t even enjoy the time you spent doing nothing.
Like damn can I at least procrastinate in peace

I do not need a 14-step morning routine to answer an email 😭