Not trendy. Just named.

Everyone’s a bit ADHD.

People say it like they’re being kind, like they’re meeting you halfway. But it often lands like a shrug over something that has shaped the whole texture of my life – my energy, my relationships, my work, my sense of self.

I can understand what they’re reaching for. It’s a kind of reassurance: you’re not alone. But it doesn’t reassure. It dilutes. And for me, it carries that familiar “oh, don’t be stupid” scoff that hits deep.

Because if everyone’s a bit ADHD, then no one would need support. No one would need accommodations. No one would need to be believed. And we wouldn’t have the diverse set of people that we have in the world.

Yes, plenty of people forget appointments, procrastinate, zone out, get overstimulated, or lose their keys. That’s being human.

ADHD is when those things don’t just come and go – they pattern. They show up across days and settings, and they cost you: time, money, health, relationships, self-trust.

It’s the difference between tripping on a step and living on a staircase with missing rungs.

And that phrase is convenient. It lets the speaker feel empathetic without doing any learning. It keeps the conversation light, and it quietly puts the responsibility back on the ADHD person to cope better.

And the truth is: it’s not trendy. It’s just finally named.

We didn’t invent new brains. We found new language.

For a long time, people like me walked around carrying a private, shapeless mess — the constant effort, the friction, the sense that everyone else got a manual I somehow missed.

Then words started showing up. Not perfect words. Not magic. Just language that made patterns visible. ADHD gave me something I didn’t have before: a map. Not a label to show off — a map to stop getting lost.

It also gave me a new understanding of the patterns and behaviours that have often given me, and still do, a lot of shame and guilt. Not “a lack of willpower”. Some terms you may here when speaking to someone with ADHD:

Executive dysfunction: the gap between wanting to do something and being able to start it.
Time blindness: five minutes becoming forty, or the whole day disappearing into a fog.
Working memory that drops thoughts mid-sentence like it’s buffering.
Emotional dysregulation that turns a small thing into a full-body event.

And sometimes it’s the weirdly specific ones that hit hardest — the “oh… that’s a thing?” moments.

Hyperfocus that feels like a superpower until you resurface dehydrated and late.
Sensory overwhelm that makes ordinary noise feel like sandpaper.
Rejection sensitivity that turns a neutral message into a spiral. The constant background work of self-management that no one sees.

The narrative of you’re lazy, you’re just quirky, and the persistent feeling that things were just… off. Starts to flip and you then get the vocabulary that you can use to explain yourself. If you can.

Why it looks like everyone has ADHD now

It’s tempting to believe there’s been a sudden explosion. That people are jumping on a “diagnosis” bandwagon. That it’s just a social media fad. That we’re collecting conditions like badges.

But the simpler explanation is usually the truer one:

more people have access to information,
more people are comparing notes out loud,
more people are brave enough to ask for help,
more people are realising their struggles were never moral failures.

It’s not that ADHD appeared overnight. It’s that silence cracked – and once you have words, you can’t un-know yourself. You can’t not reflect on things that you have done in the past with this new lens.

Watching a stranger on social media describe what’s going on in your head in a way that make you feel like you’re in the Turman Show, can trigger that visceral, get the fuck out of my head, moment like nothing else.

You realise there are other people out there like you – struggling and managing, but also seeking and reaching out for help. And you can’t help but follow the thread to see what else you might finally understand.

The system doesn’t treat all ADHD the same

This is the bit that turns anger into grief. Or the other way round – it depends on the day. The world is quicker to recognise struggle when it’s disruptive – when it spills over, when it’s loud, when it causes friction for other people.

A child who can’t sit still, can’t stop talking, can’t be contained is often treated as a problem to solve.

But the quieter versions get missed. The ones that look like daydreaming, perfectionism, anxiety, “bright but not applying themselves,” or a constant private effort to seem normal.

Those are easier to dismiss, easier to mislabel, and easier to blame on personality. Or just being “quirky”, are you getting a sense that I hate that word now?

We reward masking and punish disruption – then act surprised when the masked people burn out. Or infact realise who they are and start to unmask.

Masking is work, but it has a cost

Masking is the performance of being fine. It’s the internal translation happening every second: How do I act? What do I say? How much is too much? It’s learning which parts of you are acceptable and hiding the rest.

Sometimes it’s physical. Smiling when your jaw aches. Holding eye contact a beat longer than feels natural. Keeping your hands still. Keeping your voice steady. Sitting through the discomfort like it’s a normal price of entry.

Sometimes it’s social. Mirroring the right amount of enthusiasm. Rehearsing what you’re about to say. Editing yourself in real time so you don’t interrupt, don’t overshare, don’t come on too strong, don’t vanish.

Sometimes it’s logistical. Building a whole scaffolding of lists, alarms, routines, notes, apps, backup plans – not because you love productivity, but because you’re trying to keep life from slipping through your fingers.

From the outside, masking can look like competence. Inside, it can feel like constant strain.

You can look organised while you’re white-knuckling it. You can look calm because you’re holding your breath. You can look “high functioning” because you’ve made your life smaller – fewer people, fewer plans, fewer risks – just to keep it manageable.

The cost doesn’t always show up in the moment. It shows up later.

It’s the crash after the socialising. The burnout after the sprint. The shame hangover after the missed reply. The panic-cleaning before someone visits. The mental inventory running all day in the background.

It’s the way you can spend years being praised for being capable, while quietly believing you’re one mistake away from being found out.

Masking can buy you approval. It can also drain you.

The moment you name it, people reveal themselves

This is where I wish I could keep it neat and educational, but it isn’t neat.

The minute you say ADHD out loud, people react. Some soften. Some go quiet. Some try to relate. And some scoff – not always cruelly, sometimes casually, like you’ve announced a new hobby.

And I keep thinking about how small you can make a person with one sentence.

When someone says everyone’s a bit ADHD, it can feel like being told I’ve misunderstood my own life – like the years of trying harder, organising better, being more disciplined, being less sensitive, being more normal were just… dramatic.

That’s the grief part. Not the diagnosis.

It’s the realisation that I could have been understood earlier, held differently, and kinder to myself sooner. It’s looking back and seeing how much of my life was spent trying to fix a moral problem that was actually a neurological one – and how many people around me felt entitled to judge instead of get curious.

And then there’s the bit that catches in my throat: looking back at little Sam.

I think about how many moments could have gone differently if they’d known sooner – if an adult had clocked it and said, calmly, you’re not broken, your brain just works differently.

Maybe there would have been support instead of scolding. Strategies instead of shame. A little more patience in the rooms where I was clearly trying, even when it didn’t look like it.

Maybe I’d have learned earlier that needing help wasn’t a moral failure. That rest wasn’t “lazy”. That struggling didn’t mean I was doing life wrong.

And that’s what makes it grief, not just frustration: it’s not only the life I lived. It’s the life I might have had if someone had handed me the map before I’d spent years blaming myself for getting lost.

Some days that lands as sadness. Other days it lands as anger. Most days it’s both, braided together.

What to say instead

If you’re trying to comfort someone and the words everyone’s a bit ADHD are forming in your mouth, try something that actually meets them where they are:

“That makes sense. Thank you for telling me.”
“Do you want to tell me what it looks like for you?”
“Is there anything that helps day to day?”
“I believe you.”

Relating is fine. Overwriting isn’t.

If your first instinct is to say “me too”, pause and ask a question instead. Let their story stay theirs. You don’t need to prove you’re relatable. You don’t need to shrink their experience so it fits inside your understanding.

You just need to be present.