Rejection or Irritation?
The ADHD Misunderstanding That Shaped My Whole Life
Clara sighs, tapping her fingers on the desk. The universal sign for impatience.
"Can you just stay with me for one second?"
I blink. My brain was already three thoughts ahead, and I didn’t even realize I’d lost her. Again.
Her expression tightens and I can see frustration mixed with something I can’t quite place. And yeah, it stings. I’ve seen that look before. Teachers. Classmates. Even my own family.
For years, I thought it meant they didn’t like me. That I was being rejected.
Turns out? It wasn’t rejection. It was irritation.
People were irritated by me. But why?
What exactly was it about me that made me an outsider?
Surprise! It’s ADHD. But figuring that out wasn’t easy—especially when you don’t get diagnosed until 25 and suddenly realize you’ve spent your whole life mistaking ADHD symptoms for personality traits…and mistaking people’s irritation for rejection. And honestly? It makes sense. When you grow up as a kid who gets left out because you’re different, you don’t really question why. Kids don’t analyze social dynamics or think, Oh, maybe this person is neurodivergent. No, they just decide you’re weird and move on. And you? You internalize it.
What does that do to a child? What happens when every interaction with others tells you, in subtle or not-so-subtle ways, that you’re just a bit too much? You start monitoring yourself, trying to guess what exactly it is that annoys people. Is it how you talk? How you move? Do you interrupt too much? Are you too intense, too loud, too lost in your own world? And when you don’t have answers, you do the only thing you can do: you shrink yourself down. You learn to mask, to mirror others, to become as invisible as possible.
The Gifted Child Mask
Growing up, I was the classic “gifted child.” I excelled in subjects like english, philosophy, politics, art, and biology—anything that engaged my curiosity and let me deep-dive into ideas and words. But math? A total disaster. Numbers, and later the combination of numbers and letters (help!!!), felt like a foreign language my brain refused to learn. I’d miss lesson after lesson, avoid asking for help, and just hope no one would notice how lost I was. But they did notice…just not to my advantage.
I missed a lot of school in general. Depression hit me hard as a teenager, keeping me home for months at a time. At one point, I couldn’t bear to take the bus to school anymore because I felt observed and judged every second of my existence. My anxiety peaked just looking outside the window, seeing other people. I hid in my room whenever someone rang the doorbell—I had developed agoraphobia.
Teachers saw my absence as laziness, so they decided to force me to school with the help of regulatory services who took me from home and brought me into the class. In front of my classmates. I get angry and sad when I remember this, and part of my healing process was accepting that I didn’t deserve what they did to me. In reality, I was overwhelmed, exhausted, and stuck in a cycle I didn’t know how to break.
My mom did everything she could. She worked full-time, raised me alone, and tried her best to support me. But without a diagnosis, without the words to explain what I was going through, we were both left guessing.
I wasn’t “difficult” or “dramatic.” I was struggling. But when no one, including yourself, knows what’s going on, the only thing left is the assumption that you just aren’t trying hard enough or that it’s just “puberty.”
ADHD in Women: The Signs No One Talks About
It wasn’t until I was 25 that I finally got my ADHD diagnosis. By then, I had already spent years thinking I was just bad at life: Bad at focusing, bad at remembering things, bad at managing my emotions…and time, bad at fitting in and keeping the friends I struggled so hard to find.
But ADHD in women often hides in plain sight. Next to hyperactivity, we may also struggle with:
Chronic forgetfulness (appointments, deadlines, where we left our phone three minutes ago)
Disorganization (our desks, our minds, our entire existence)
Emotional dysregulation (intense mood swings, rejection sensitivity, anxiety, depression)
Masking (adapting to social expectations so well that no one sees our struggles…until we burn out completely)
Hyperfocus (sinking so deep into a task that we forget to eat, sleep, or answer texts for hours)
…feel free to complete the list in the comments (If you don’t forget by the end of this article)
It was never just “laziness” or “bad habits.” It was ADHD. And because I didn’t fit the stereotype of the hyperactive little boy disrupting class, no one, including myself, thought to look deeper.
The Damage of an Undiagnosed Childhood
Going undiagnosed for years, you don’t just struggle with ADHD—you struggle with all the side effects of not knowing you have ADHD.
You become the kid who doesn’t understand why they always lose things, why they can’t keep their room clean no matter how hard they try, why they forget instructions the moment they hear them. You feel stupid (my classmates even called me stupid, multiple times) and unreliable. You wonder why others seem to have it together while you’re constantly one step behind.
You overcompensate. You develop perfectionism to hide your struggles. You learn to work twice as hard just to keep up. And when you still fall short, the self-doubt creeps in.
ADHD, when left undiagnosed, doesn’t just make life harder—it changes how you see yourself. You don’t grow up thinking, I have a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects my executive function.
You end up depressed…at least I did, and I’m still trying to recover from that.
Reframing Irritation: Understanding the Disconnect
Once I understood that people weren’t rejecting me, just irritated by things I often couldn’t control, I started looking at social interactions differently.
ADHD means my brain works fast, my thoughts jump before conversations can catch up, and my excitement sometimes reads as interrupting or dominating a discussion. It means I miss social cues, forget to text back, and hyperfocus so hard on something that the rest of the world disappears.
People don’t always get that. And when they don’t understand, they get irritated. Not always in a mean way, but enough that I feel it. Enough that it used to make me withdraw, assume I was just too much, and retreat into myself.
Turning ADHD into an Advantage
Now, I see it for what it is: a difference in wiring. And with that understanding, I’ve learned to navigate it better. To communicate more openly, to set expectations, to surround myself with people who get me instead of trying to mask and fit in where I don’t belong. It’s not a flaw, but a different way of thinking. It’s why I thrive in creative strategy, why I can connect dots that others miss, and why I’m obsessed with crafting content that sticks. ADHD has definitely made most things harder, but it’s also given me a unique edge (and the trauma definitely shaped me lol).
But enough about me! Have you ever mistaken irritation for rejection? How did it shape the way you see yourself? Let’s talk about it in the comments, because these conversations truly matter.
Catch you next time,
Paula
I really appreciate you highlighting this issue. I’ve come to realize the unique challenges that those with ADHD face, even in the face of stigma. While they may be labeled as having concentration deficits, it’s important to recognize the strengths and unique perspectives they bring to the table….