Labels I Carried Before My ADHD Diagnosis

Growing up, nobody looked at me and wondered whether I might have ADHD. Instead, people saw my behaviours and labelled them instead of me. Over time, those labels became a huge part of my identity; I was seen as lazy, dramatic, too much, disorganised, forgetful, and someone who just needed to “try harder.” Looking back now, I can see that so many of the things I was criticised for weren’t personality flaws at all; I was just struggling with an undiagnosed neurodevelopmental condition, but over the years I believed them.

The hardest part of being diagnosed wasnt finding out i had ADHD. It was the years spent thinking  “i was the problem” A diagnosis didn't change who I was. It changed the story I'd been telling myself.

One of the words I heard the most was “lazy” It’s a word that many late-diagnosed adults carry with them for years. The reality was that I wasn’t lazy; I desperately wanted to do well. I wanted to start the task, keep my room tidy, reply to messages, and stay organised. What people couldn’t see was the invisible barrier between knowing what needed to be done and actually being able to do it. My brain was screaming “just do the fucking dishes,” but I would be stunned with task paralysis. Executive dysfunction isn’t about not caring; it’s about struggling to initiate, organise, prioritise and complete tasks, but when you’re repeatedly told you’re lazy, you don’t grow up thinking your brain works differently; you grow up believing there’s something wrong with you. I genuinely thought for years I was the problem.

School wasn’t much different; every report was filled with comments like, “Would do well if they just applied themselves,” “Has so much potential,” and “Talks too much” (i still do, to be fair). Those comments might seem harmless to some, but they left me wondering why I couldn’t seem to live up to the potential everyone else could see. Teachers recognised my ability, but they couldn’t see the amount of energy it took just to stay focused and remember instructions. I wasn’t choosing not to apply myself; I was trying harder than anyone realised, to the point i would achieve really good grades but at the cost of burning myself out.

Then there were the comments about my personality; I was told I was “too much”, “too loud”, “too emotional”. For years I tried to make myself smaller because I genuinely believed there was something wrong with the way I expressed myself. I learnt to mask parts of who I was so I could fit into spaces that weren’t designed for people like me. Now I understand that emotional intensity is something many people with ADHD experience. We don’t choose to feel things so deeply; our nervous systems simply process emotions differently.  I also spent years being told I was “dramatic” whenever I became upset or overwhelmed; it was often dismissed as an overreaction. What people didn’t understand was that emotional dysregulation is a common experience for many people with ADHD. My emotions weren’t fake, exaggerated or attention-seeking; they were real, but I often struggled to regulate them in the moment. Being told I was dramatic only taught me to question my own emotional experiences rather than understand them.

The hardest part of growing up with undiagnosed ADHD wasn’t the ADHD itself; it was the years of believing the labels other people gave me. After hearing them often enough, I stopped questioning whether they were true and started questioning myself. Maybe I really was lazy; maybe I was too emotional, maybe I was just not trying hard enough. Those beliefs didn’t appear overnight they were built over years of criticism, misunderstanding and comparison.

Receiving an ADHD diagnosis didn’t change who I was because I was still the same person I had always been. What changed was the story I had been telling myself. The diagnosis helped me understand that many of the things I had spent years criticising myself for weren’t character flaws. They were differences in the way my brain processed the world. It didn’t erase the impact those labels had on me, but it gave me permission to let go of some of the shame I had carried for so long.

If you’ve spent years believing you’re lazy, too much, dramatic, messy or simply not good enough, I hope you know this: those labels do not define you. Whether you have ADHD or not, our behaviours almost always have a story behind them. When we replace judgement with curiosity, we create space for understanding, healing and self-compassion. Sometimes, the most powerful thing we can do is stop asking, “What’s wrong with me?” and start asking, “What happened, and what might explain the way I experience the world?”