You Knew the Shame Before You Knew the Name

When ADHD isn’t named, it becomes something you think you deserved

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You’re sitting in class. You're seven.

You can’t stop moving. Not because you’re defiant, not because you’re wild.

Your body is just louder than the room.

The teacher slams a ruler. The other kids laugh.

And someone says the thing that starts it all:

That moment doesn’t end when the bell rings.

You carry it. Through high school and job interviews.

Through relationships you swear you ruined by being “too much.”

Now imagine if nothing was ever wrong with you.

What if it was the way no one ever asked that was broken?

You were never taught to understand yourself.

You were taught to obey.

You were taught to fold your feelings into tiny shapes and hide them in your desk drawer.

They didn’t give you a solution, but a punishment.

And that punishment became, in certain way, your personality.

There’s a man I used to work with who saw himself as some kind of behavior police, always proud of how things used to be.

Once he heard us talking about ADHD, and jumped in:

“These days, everyone thinks they’ve got something. Back in my day, if a kid wouldn’t sit still, we’d tie them to the chair.”

He laughed.

And I felt it in my stomach, because the cruelty wasn’t gone, was just waiting for permission.

Because if this is how we talk about kids now, what happens to them when they grow up believing that suffering quietly is strength?

Have you ever been scared to open an email?

Not because you’re lazy.

But because you’re afraid it’s already too late to fix what you missed?

That’s ADHD.

It doesn’t look like bouncing off the walls.

It looks like avoiding the check-in, dodging the deadline, hiding from the inbox, because your brain is already punishing you.

And when it all finally collapses, people ask,

“Why didn’t you just say something?”

But you did.

You just said it in the only language you knew:

Silence.

Delay.

Exhaustion.

Collapse.

What would happen if you stopped apologizing?

What would happen if, for once, you treated your needs like they mattered?

Because if you don’t do that now, someone else is going to grow up inside the same glass box you’ve been trying to shatter your whole life.

This isn’t about the past anymore.

It’s about what you’re willing to unlearn, so that someone else doesn’t grow up thinking their wiring is a mistake.

You survived what you didn’t have a name for.

That alone means you can help someone else not carry the same weight in silence.

💚 If this reminded you of the first time someone asked, “What’s wrong with you?”, or the 100th time you asked it to yourself, send this to someone who might still be asking.

💚 Feel like saying “that was me” or just screaming into the void? Leave a comment. I’ll read it. Then I’ll panic. Then I’ll write you a heartfelt reply and forget to hit send for three days. But I’ll get there!