My ADHD Made Me Feel Like a Failure, Until I Started Forgiving Myself

by Mayre Flores 

When I first received my ADHD diagnosis—and started treatment — I thought life would begin to work out the way I thought it was supposed to. But I quickly learned that wasn’t going to be the case.

For me, having ADHD feels like my mind is going 1,000 mph until it finally lands on something. See, it doesn’t matter whether I add or subtract things from my to-do lists, because there’s always a voice in the back of my mind reminding me that I should be doing something else.

Typically, I’m able to do the hard work of staying focused and on task. But there are still days when I struggle. I can have a steady pace going for days—maybe even weeks — at a time. But once something changes in my brain, I find myself falling off of the progress I had made.

It’s as if I’ve suddenly stopped functioning “properly.” It’s frustrating. I don’t like it. And sometimes, I beat myself up over it.

“I can’t believe I’m still doing this. Now it’s going to take even longer to complete this one thing.”

“That task could have been done a while ago.”

When these thoughts begin to fill my head, it’s hard to find a way to silence them or move on. In a way, I failed to do something. And it takes a lot to convince myself to start over, because failure doesn’t feel good.

But then forgiveness comes into play.

Sometimes it’s easy to forgive myself for falling off of a good habit or project. Other times it’s a bit harder.

I’ve had to start asking myself what’s more important: completing a task at my absolute best or just simply completing it? For me, the answer is simply completing it.

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Thank you Mayre for giving us permission to share your writing.