The Question of Strengths in ADHD

In the first weeks after the diagnosis, half of the texts I read told me I had superpowers. The other half told me my life was a lost life.

Neither fit me. Both bothered me somewhere, and it took time to find the reason for the discomfort.

What I think now is this: both stories make the same mistake. They treat ADHD as something independent of the environment.

The true side of the story

The qualitative study by Sedgwick and colleagues (2019) with professionally successful adults with an ADHD diagnosis reveals several traits the participants reported again and again:

• Crisis performance. Being able to act quickly and effectively under pressure. In the glossary it appears as crisis performance.
• Depth in an area of interest. The intense work that appears during hyperfocus periods.
• Unusual connections. Being able to move quickly between different fields.
• Curiosity. Being able to get into a new subject quickly.
• Resilience. A kind of tenacity that comes from having been strained for a long time.

These are not made-up traits; they come out of the accounts of living people. I recognize them in myself too. When I sink into a subject, I can work for hours, and in those hours I really do produce good work.

But looking at this list, one thing needs to be noted: the study was done with people who had become professionally successful. That is, it is the account of people who were already doing well. This does not make the finding worthless; it sets its scope.

What these traits have in common is this: all of them show up in a certain environment. When the environment changes, they disappear.

Where the story does harm

The strengths story has three concrete risks, and I have seen all three up close.

It makes the need for support invisible. As the sentence "ADHD is a superpower" spreads, asking for accommodations gets harder. If it is an advantage, why do you need support? Once this question has been asked at a workplace, the conversation ends.

It produces an obligation to succeed. This story places a second burden on people who are not doing well: you are struggling, and you are also not using your so-called advantage. Reading these sentences while in a bad period did me no good at all.

It lightens the picture. The World Federation consensus statement (Faraone et al., 2021) clearly shows that untreated ADHD is associated with measurable negative outcomes in areas such as education, work, health and accident risk. Covering this picture with a story of talent can keep people away from treatment.

There is also an invisible cost. Part of what is described as "I'm creative" is in fact compensation skills developed over years just to get by. Presenting it as a talent erases the effort behind it; I named this compensation work in the article on masking.

The problem with the story of loss alone

The opposite extreme is not healthy either. A picture defined only by deficiency produces a collapse related to identity.

The study by Schrevel and colleagues (2016) asks an important question here: does treatment mean that the person becomes someone else? Participants live this tension directly, and I did too. For a while after the diagnosis I asked myself: which of these traits is me, and which is the condition?

Someone who defines themselves only by their deficits cannot find the energy needed to set up systems either. Hope is the precondition of building a system.

What we mean by "strength"

The confusing side of this debate is that two different things are called by the same name.

The first is the claim that a trait is directly brought by ADHD. That is, a general sentence such as "people with ADHD are more creative." The evidence for this claim is not as solid as is believed, and it often comes from small studies based on self-report. Interviews with successful people say a lot about those people's experience; they are not enough to generalize about a whole group.

The second is a particular trait working in a particular environment. "I make quick decisions" is worth something at a crisis desk and a risk in an audit job. The same trait takes two different names in two environments.

Once you make this distinction, the debate simplifies. The question stops being "is ADHD an advantage" and becomes "which trait of mine works for what, in which environment." The second is an answerable question, and its answer changes from person to person.

When making my own list I used three columns: the trait, where it works, where it costs dearly. Filling in the third column surprised me, because the traits I was proudest of also had the places where they were most expensive.

A more honest frame

The view that helped me most was this: ADHD is a difference in fit that changes with the environment.

Poor fit: Long meetings, fixed working hours, constant paperwork, low feedback, predictable and slow-moving work.

Good fit: Short cycles, fast feedback, varied tasks, crisis management, an area of interest.

The same person looks inadequate in the first environment and very good in the second. It is not the person who changes, it is the environment. I went into detail on which jobs fit better in the article on which jobs suit better.

This frame makes two things possible at once: asking for support and looking for the place where you are good. For a long time doing both at the same time was impossible for me; I thought I had to count myself either as sick or as special.

Choosing work to suit yourself is a legitimate strategy. Looking for the environment in which you work well, instead of working harder in the area where you struggle, is seen as an escape. In fact it is one of the most efficient interventions. I covered job fit in the article on ADHD at work.

Making strengths usable

For these traits to really work, they need to be arranged. Waiting for them to appear by themselves was never reliable for me.

• Planning hyperfocus. Instead of waiting for it to arrive, putting the work you are interested in at the hour when your energy is high.
• Producing the crisis artificially. Interim deadlines, promises made to someone else. In the glossary: staged delivery.
• Catching ideas. Ideas that come fast vanish if they are not recorded. That is why the capture habit matters; most of my best ideas are ideas that were lost because I did not write them down.
• Supporting the finishing part from outside. If starting and generating ideas are the strong side, a system is needed for finishing. These two work at different speeds in the same person, and what closed the gap for me was always an external deadline.
• Accepting that energy fluctuates. A good week does not mean every week will be like this. A plan that does not account for this collapses in the first bad week.

What I tell myself

ADHD is neither a superpower nor only a deficit. It is a difference in fit that changes with the environment.

This frame gave me two things at once: giving myself my due in the places where I am good, and asking for help in the places where I struggle. For a long time I had thought these two were rivals. The answer to the question of whether one can be successful also stands here, I think.