The Damage
For a long time, I thought the heaviness I carried was depression.
And depression is real. It is serious. I’ve lived with that too.
But what I’m talking about now—what I finally have language for—is something different.
It’s the damage that accumulates when ADHD goes unrecognized, untreated, or misunderstood for years. Sometimes decades.
Not one big, dramatic event.
Not a single failure you can point to.
But thousands of small moments that slowly teach you to doubt yourself.
When the World Says “It’s Not That Bad”
One of the hardest parts of living with ADHD-related demoralization is how invisible it is to people who don’t share your brain.
From the outside, a missed deadline, a forgotten email, a messy house can look minor—annoying, but manageable. Like stepping in a puddle and moving on.
Inside a neurodivergent brain, that same moment can feel like falling into the deep end of a pool without knowing how to swim. It’s not inconvenient. It’s destabilizing. It takes enormous effort just to come back to the surface.
That difference isn’t about weakness or drama.
It’s about a fundamental mismatch between how we’re wired and how the world expects us to function.
A Thousand Small Cuts
The damage I’m talking about didn’t happen all at once.
It started early.
At five years old, I was pulled aside during recess to learn to read. I was thrilled. I loved it. I devoured words. For a brief moment, I felt capable and seen.
A year later, a different message arrived. I was told I struggled to focus, to learn, to keep up. That I might need remedial help.
Even though later teachers praised my intelligence, something had already lodged itself inside me: Hide the parts you can’t control.
Don’t let anyone see where you struggle.
Don’t give them proof.
That fear became a companion I carried for decades.
How Damage Shapes Decisions
As we get older, the stakes get higher.
In college, I joined the school newspaper—something I loved, something I was good at. I wrote my first article. It ran. And then I got a call: there was an error. One mistake.
To a neurotypical brain, that’s a correction and a lesson learned.
To me, it was exposure.
My body reacted before my thoughts could catch up. The shame was physical. My brain didn’t see a mistake—it saw confirmation. You tricked them. You’re careless. You’re not as capable as they think.
So I quit.
Not because I didn’t care.
But because the pain of repeating that moment felt unbearable.
That’s what damage does. It doesn’t just hurt—it shrinks your world. It teaches you to walk away from things you love to protect yourself from feeling that way again.
The Everyday Damage No One Sees
Sometimes the damage doesn’t come from big moments at all.
Sometimes it’s the exhaustion of trying to function.
Last year, after moving a loved one into assisted living, our garage filled with belongings from three generations. At first, it felt manageable. Even motivating.
Over time, it wasn’t.
That one area of overwhelm spread. Tasks that had once been simple grew heavy. Until eventually, I couldn’t open Christmas cards that arrived in the mail—cards from people who loved me, sitting right in front of me.
The world kept moving. Mine didn’t.
And so I judged myself. Berated myself. Retreated. I spent years of my life in my bedroom because it felt like the only place where I couldn’t be seen failing.
This is what ADHD-related demoralization looks like.
It’s not laziness.
It’s not a lack of care.
It’s a protective shutdown.
You’re Not Broken—but You’ve Been Hurt
When demoralization sets in, it can feel like your system has a self-destruct switch. Like a silent alarm goes off and everything inside you just… slumps.
That’s not a choice.
It’s not a moral failing.
It’s the psychological consequence of a capable brain being punished—over and over—for traits it cannot willpower its way out of.
If any of this feels familiar, I want you to hear this clearly:
You are not broken.
But you may be damaged.
And damage doesn’t mean defective. It means something happened over time—and it had a cost.
In the next episode, I want to talk about that cost: the masking, the broken connections, and the grief that comes with lost years.
For now, if you’re feeling heavy after listening, give yourself grace.
Understanding comes before change.
And sometimes, naming the damage is the first act of care.