Redefining ADHD
There was a little girl who spent so much time venting to her friends. She talked about all the ways she’d been wronged, all the blame placed on her, all the times she wasn’t allowed to show up as her true self. She justified her negativity at every turn: “I’ve tried that. That won’t work. You don’t understand.” Her friend finally said, “Vicki, I wish I could pull my friend out of there, because this isn’t her.”
And she was right—that little girl was me.
When I was young, I was full of wonder and excitement. Life had sanded some of the shine off of me. I have been that person who complains. I’ve prayed, I’ve worked, I’ve done everything I could to change how I see the world—to not default to the negative. And it’s hard. Sometimes it feels engrained. But I keep working at it.
Just last year, my cognitive behavioural therapist gave me a perspective that changed everything. She said:
“Vicki, you talk a lot about imposter syndrome. You talk about feeling like you have to be someone else to succeed. Has anyone ever talked to you about ADHD?”
I didn’t understand that at first because ADHD to me, was a learning disability that kept young boys from focusing. When I started to do the research, I was surprised at the poignant differences between neurotypical brains and those labelled “ADHD”. Suddenly, so much made sense.
I have friends who’ve been diagnosed with ADHD—friends who hate the label, who say it makes people look at them through a negative lens. And they’re right. The label is heavy. But understanding myself through a new lens has brought clarity—truths about who I am, and why I’ve struggled in the ways I have.
I’ve tried to avoid the label because I wanted something more positive. I often refer to my experience as having an “effervescent brain.” Maybe that sounds odd to some, but I am trying to frame my brain in a way that feels … authentic. More accurate. More desired.
But here’s the truth: people understand the term ADHD. And despite wanting to put a spotlight on its strengths, the creativity, the brilliance that can come with this neurotype, I feel compelled to talk about the pitfalls—the parts that have been misunderstood, mishandled, and mistreated for decades.
Because without acknowledging the pain, the power doesn’t mean anything.
Most people picture ADHD like I did, as a hyper little boy who can’t sit still in class. Teachers struggle, classrooms get disrupted, and inevitably the conversation turns to diagnosis and medication—sometimes with an unspoken message underneath: “Please do something so I can teach the rest of the class.”
I say this without judgement. I was a teacher too. I understand the pressure. I remember being told: “You can’t diagnose, but you can suggest. You can ask parents to look into it. You can move the child’s desk so you can watch them more closely. You can put them in the hallway.”
And I look back now and think: That is the worst thing you can do to a child. I know, because I was that child.
This is where I get dysregulated, and probably why I left the teaching profession — the 52 years of being treated as if my way of thinking, learning, and being were problems to be managed instead of differences to be understood.
When I became a Kolbe Certified™ Consultant, 5 years ago, I learned about the third part of the mind—conation: how we naturally take action. Not how we think or feel, but how we instinctively operate. And it blew my mind, because suddenly I had language for the ways I naturally worked what I needed to advocate for.
I see it in others too. Take a young woman I know—brilliant, driven, and struggling with chemistry. She thought she “just wasn’t smart enough.” But her Kolbe A™ Index scores showed she organizes and absorbs information in a different way than the curriculum delivers. She needed time, space, and the freedom to learn differently—but the school couldn’t offer that without penalizing her. She could take the course virtually and succeed, but she’d lose her academic recognitions because she wasn’t learning within the system’s narrow parameters.
And that right there is the problem.
We live in a world filled with rules for how things have to be done and those rules were never built for brains like ours. A world that confuses difference with deficiency. A world that rewards neurotypical ways of learning, neurotypical behaviour, neurotypical minds.
And for people like me—and maybe people like you—it creates a lifetime of trying to overcome “negativity” with positivity, sometimes to the point of toxic positivity, just to convince ourselves that we’re not broken.
But we aren’t broken.
We simply learned to adapt to a system that didn’t understand us.
I’m starting a new conversation—not just about the misunderstood minds of ADHD, but about the need to redefine our understanding of brain function from the ground up. Only then can we truly appreciate the gifts that come with this kind of brain: creativity, intuition, innovation, passion, and resilience.
ADHD is not a flaw. It is a force.
It’s time we start treating it that way.
