My ADHD Experience

Disclaimer: I am sharing my personal experience and perspective here. If you think you might have ADHD, please seek professional help.

It is tough fitting into the modern world as someone with ADHD and autistic traits. Certain societal expectations (holding down a regular job, climbing the corporate ladder, building a conventional life) do not come easily to me. I managed to mask well enough to endure more than ten years of corporate work and build a foundation for myself and my family. But what comes naturally to the average neurotypical person was difficult for me.

Growing Up Before ADHD Was Understood

Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, ADHD was not commonly recognized. We were seen as difficult children and treated accordingly. Restless, impulsive, and fidgety behavior colored my childhood. My parents blamed their circumstances for having me as their child. I was taught from a young age to control myself and learn to fit in by mirroring the behavior of the "good kids." If I did not comply, physical discipline followed. Gradually, I learned to mask my ADHD traits.

I say "mask" because there was no way I could change my natural behavior entirely. It was constantly bubbling beneath the surface, erupting during times of stress and setback. My mind receives a great deal of input seemingly from nowhere, but my brain has difficulty processing all of it simultaneously. As a result, I can appear distracted or forgetful. In the middle of a conversation, my intuition picks up on hidden patterns and meanings behind the words, pulling my attention away, and then comes the awkward silence.

I also have almost no tolerance for bland routine. Tasks that come easily to most people (showing up for work at the same time every day, settling into mundane paperwork) frustrate me. This is why I could not hold a regular job for more than a couple of years at a time. In twelve years as an employee, I changed companies six times. Routine burns me out quickly. I need novelty and meaningful challenges to function well.

Hyperfocus and Finding Purpose

Yet when something captures my attention, I become hyperfocused and enter a flow state. I block out everything else until the task is complete. For people like me, finding our purpose is essential. If I were forced into a conventional role that did not fit me for the rest of my life, it would take a serious toll on my mental health.

I suspect that many freelancers and self-employed people have some form of ADHD. A significant number go through life without an official diagnosis. Many never identify what is behind their inability to sustain a "normal" life. It seems that most people with ADHD have been convinced they are not normal, so they try to mask or work around it, when in fact, we should be working with our wiring. More importantly, finding our purpose and passion tends to quiet the disruptive aspects of the condition.

An Evolutionary Perspective

I do not think ADHD is a defect. This is my personal view, but I believe these traits have been necessary for human survival. For most of human history, life involved constant threat: tribal conflict, predators, and environmental danger. For a group to survive, certain people needed hyper-vigilance: the ability to detect hidden patterns and subtle signals that hinted at possible threats. Those people needed to be alert enough to raise the alarm, even at the risk of being seen as overreactive. And when danger arrived, their impulsiveness propelled them to act immediately.

It is only in recent centuries, with the progress of civilization and technology, that these traits are no longer seen as useful. Yet they remain in our DNA, and our descendants continue to carry them. We now live in an era where the primary expectation is to show up on time, work within systems, and follow instructions. People with ADHD traits cannot simply turn off their genetics at will. And so, we are often viewed as intense, rebellious, or difficult.

Working With It, Not Against It

First, accept who you are. We cannot change our wiring. Trying to hide or conform to expectations that do not fit us only leads to exhaustion. It is important to embrace these traits as part of our identity. That also means doing internal work: healing the patterns that were imposed on us in childhood. Whether it was rejection by family, peers, or teachers, those experiences continue to influence us into adulthood. Finding a way to make peace with our history, and recognizing that what we endured was not a mark against us but a set of experiences that shaped our perspective, is part of the process.

Second, figure out what purpose you are built for and what role you can play. The noise in our heads exists because our minds operate on a broader frequency than most. That broader range is what allows us to receive information that others miss. What looks like distraction is our minds scanning for patterns, connections, and insights from the environment. This manifests as intuition or inspiration that strikes seemingly from nowhere.

I have learned to always note down the intuitive thoughts and inspirations that come to me. Once I began doing this (and noticing which subjects consistently held my attention), I started to see a pattern that guided me toward my direction. After committing to that direction, increasingly clear insights arrived at a faster pace.

This is why I can give my full focus to studying and analyzing birth charts. In truth, I do not think the insights are entirely mine. My intuition consistently draws my attention to particular aspects of a chart. Whatever it signals has never steered me wrong. So I gradually learned to trust it completely and move with it.

The Connection to Self-Knowledge

All of us, whether neurodivergent or not, are born with natural patterns that point toward specific strengths and directions. We are not born just to follow orders and meet societal expectations. It is up to us to identify what fits and commit to it.

This is something a BaZi chart can illuminate. Your natal structure shows the elemental patterns you were born with, including your natural strengths, where your energy flows most easily, and the timing of the phases that shape each period of your life. For people who feel out of step with conventional expectations, understanding these patterns can be the difference between feeling lost and feeling oriented.