Field Note #01
Why I Stopped Fighting My ADHD.
For many years, I believed the answer was to try harder.
I could become completely absorbed in something that interested me and work with an intensity that surprised even me. Yet I could also spend hours avoiding a small task, lose track of an important deadline, or feel paralysed by decisions that appeared simple to everyone else.
That contradiction was difficult to live with. If I could do the hard things sometimes, why could I not do the ordinary things consistently? The easiest explanation was that I was lazy, undisciplined or failing to live up to my potential.
Trying harder became its own trap
I responded by pushing myself. I created stricter plans, made longer lists and criticised myself whenever the same patterns returned. Pressure sometimes worked in the short term. A deadline could create enough urgency to make my brain come alive—but the cost was anxiety, exhaustion and the constant feeling that I was only one mistake away from letting somebody down.
I had already explored psychotherapy, Gestalt therapy and psychiatry. Each helped me understand important parts of myself, but something remained incomplete. I understood many of my experiences intellectually while still finding myself caught in the same cycles of frustration, shame and self-criticism.
The question that changed the direction
ADHD coaching did not begin by asking how to make me more productive. It asked me to look more honestly at the relationship I had developed with myself.
Not simply: “How do I manage ADHD?”
But: “Who have I become because of the way I have experienced ADHD?”
That question was uncomfortable. It made me notice the stories I had repeated for years: that I should be able to cope, that needing support was weakness, that every unfinished task proved something about my character.
Coaching did not excuse my behaviour or remove responsibility. It gave me enough distance to replace judgement with curiosity. Instead of asking, “What is wrong with me?” I began asking, “What is happening here—and what might help?”
Understanding gave me choices
For as long as I can remember, anger was something I carried. As a teenager I punched doors hard enough to break them. I took up kickboxing and other contact sports, hoping I could channel the frustration into something useful. Sometimes it helped. Sometimes it did not.
Coaching did not make anger disappear. It helped me understand where it came from: overwhelm, shame, unmet expectations and years of feeling that I should be able to function differently. Understanding did not make every reaction acceptable, but it created a moment in which another choice became possible.
It also forced me to recognise that ADHD does not affect only the person living with it. Even when Sara knew that my frustration was not directed at her, she still lived with its consequences because she cared about me. Learning to regulate myself was not only something I wanted for me. It mattered to the people I loved.
Acceptance is not giving up
Stopping the fight did not mean lowering every expectation or deciding that change was impossible. It meant stopping the attempt to bully my brain into behaving like somebody else's.
I still use plans, reminders, routines and practical strategies. The difference is that I now try to build them around the brain I actually have. Some experiments work. Others fail. Failure is information—not a verdict on my worth.
Sometimes I wonder how different life might have been if someone had asked me these questions twenty years earlier. Perhaps there would have been less shame, less frustration and less time spent trying to force myself into systems that were never designed for the way my mind works.
I will never know.
What I do know is that understanding changed the direction of my life. I did not need to become a different person. I needed to see the person who had been there all along with greater honesty, curiosity and compassion.
That is why I stopped fighting my ADHD.
Not because the difficulties vanished—but because I finally learned that working with my mind was more sustainable than spending my life at war with it.