Whom to Tell About Your ADHD Diagnosis, and When

After I received the diagnosis, the first practical question going round in my head was: whom will I tell?

I thought it was a question with a right answer. It was not. After a while I noticed that the real issue is not whom I will tell, but what I expect to happen when I do.

This article is about that distinction. Because the advice "be honest, tell" and the advice "never say it" make the same mistake: they do not take the setting into account.

First ask the right question

The answer to "should I tell?" is always sought in the other person's predicted reaction, and it is not found there. Ask this instead:

What do I want to be done with this information?

If the answer is concrete, disclosing usually works. "I want the meeting notes to come in writing." "I want you to brief me in writing, not verbally." These give the other person a task, and conversations that give a task get somewhere.

If the answer is "to be understood," the result is far more variable. Being understood is a legitimate need, and I do not belittle it. But the other person is not obliged to give that understanding, and when they do not, what you are left with is information, not a result.

Before I made this distinction I opened the wrong conversation a few times. I would explain, the person in front of me would say "oh, my attention is scattered too," and the conversation would end. I was left with neither an accommodation nor a sense of being understood.

When you frame the diagnosis as a confession, you go on the defensive. When you frame it as a request, the conversation goes somewhere completely different.

It changes with the setting

In close relationships. This is where the benefit is clearest. The person close to you begins to read your behavior in a different frame: being late stops being carelessness, drifting off stops being disinterest. What the glossary calls reframing is exactly this. The same behavior gains another explanation.

There is a risk too, and I have to be honest: when the diagnosis becomes a shield, the real issues in the relationship can go undiscussed. The sentence "I have ADHD" is an explanation, not an exemption. I dealt with this balance separately in the article on telling your partner about your ADHD.

At work. This is the most complicated area and the place where I hesitated most. The multi-country workforce survey by de Graaf and colleagues (2008) shows that ADHD has measurable effects on job performance and days lost. So behind a request for an accommodation there is not just a personal feeling, there is a ground resting on data.

On the other hand, stigma is real too. The study by Masuch and colleagues (2019) reports that levels of anticipated discrimination and internalized stigma among adults with ADHD are notable. The review by Mueller and colleagues (2012) also summarizes how widespread public prejudice against ADHD is. So the reservation you have when you think "maybe I'm exaggerating" is most of the time not exaggeration.

There is a practical middle way: state the need without stating the diagnosis.

• "Getting the meeting summaries in writing is much more efficient for me."
• "I find it hard to focus in an open office, I'll use headphones."
• "I miss jobs that are given verbally, could you write them in a message?"

None of these sentences requires a diagnosis, and in most workplaces they are received without trouble. Both before I founded my own company and afterwards, when working with clients, I used this third sentence the most. For it to work nobody needed to know my diagnosis.

Asking for a formal accommodation is a separate process; I described it in the article on ADHD and accommodations at work.

In healthcare settings. Here disclosing is almost always necessary. Medication interactions, pre-surgery briefings, planning another treatment: a physician deciding with missing information serves nobody.

At school and university. If you will request an accommodation, you need to notify the relevant unit of the institution; telling someone verbally does not create a right on its own. The details are in the article on ADHD at school and university.

How to tell

Keep it short. A long explanation sounds like defending yourself. I learned this the hard way: the more I explained, the more it came out as if I were listing excuses. Two sentences are enough.

Describe the symptom, say the diagnosis later. The sentence "I miss verbal instructions" does more work than "I have ADHD." The reason is simple: it tells the other person what to do.

End with a request. An explanation without a request hangs in the air, and an explanation that hangs in the air turns into shame after a while.

Be prepared for the reaction. There is a high chance you will hear "everybody's a bit like that." This sentence mostly comes not from ill will but from ignorance. In the glossary it appears as well-meaning misinformation. I have a ready answer and it does the job: "Yes, everyone has a bit of it. I have enough of it to make life difficult, which is why I was diagnosed."

Choose the timing yourself. Telling right after a mistake is the worst moment. That conversation does not sound like an explanation; it sounds like an excuse. Leaving it for a calm day changes the tone of the conversation completely.

Disclose in stages. You do not have to tell everyone at the same time. Tell one person you trust first, see how it goes, then decide about the next. Since it is a decision that cannot be undone, it is reasonable not to rush.

Not disclosing is also a decision

Choosing not to tell should not be seen as dishonesty. A diagnosis is private health information and sharing it is your decision.

In a setting where stigma is genuinely high, staying silent is not cowardice but self-protection. The glossary entry on the decision to disclose describes this balance.

My own rule became this: wherever I tell, I ask the other side for something concrete. If I have nothing to ask for, I do not tell. This rule protected me both from unnecessary conversations and from the "I wish I hadn't said it" feeling that comes afterwards.

The week after telling

There is something nobody says: the few days after telling pass strangely. You look for a change in the way the person in front of you looks at you, you read each of their ordinary reactions with the new information, you wonder "do they see me that way now?"

For me these few days lasted and then passed. The reason they passed was this: the other person was not as occupied with this information as I was. For them it was a sentence; for me it was the spoken form of something I had carried for years.

Knowing this beforehand helps. You do not count those few days as a sign of a mistake; you read them as a normal transition.

And one more thing: you cannot take it back

This is the most overlooked side of disclosing. Once the information is out, you cannot control where it goes. There is no guarantee that the person you told will not tell someone else, and most of the time this does not happen out of ill will either.

So when deciding it helps to think this: what would happen if this information circulated in this setting? If the answer is "nothing," you are at ease. If you do not know the answer, noting that you do not know is also information.

And there is this: not being able to take something back is not always bad. In a close relationship, not being able to take the information back means that the relationship now walks on new ground, and that is usually good ground. The problematic part is the information going somewhere you did not choose. That is why I make the decision according to the person, not the setting. Telling one of two people in the same office and not the other is not an inconsistency; it is deciding according to the person you know.

I dealt with stigma itself and where it comes from in the article on stigma in ADHD.