Eyes on the Prize: Adulting with ADHD

The American Psychological Association or APA defines ADHD or Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder as a “behavioral condition that makes focusing on everyday requests and routines challenging.” While ADHD is often diagnosed in childhood, many remain undiagnosed until adulthood.

Many adults have experienced the frustration and effects of being negatively labeled, bullied, and stigmatized because of the ADHD symptoms they demonstrated earlier in life.

The damage of diminished self-esteem, low achievement, anxiety, and depression have leveraged impacts against them over long periods. Since many adults don’t discover they have ADHD until later, the diagnosis can bring a sense of relief following an unusually long period of mental anguish and emotional suffering.

An ADHD diagnosis highlights the symptoms and behaviors, illuminating why we engage with learning and life in ways that seem unusual to others. As children, most of our behaviors were structured by other entities. Parents, schools, and organizations, with their own set of expectations, corralled and carried us from one set of activities to another.

However, once we entered adulthood, we no longer had the same restrictions as in childhood and youth. For many, adulthood marks when ADHD symptoms intensify, and the diagnosis is revealed.

Adults and ADHD

As we amass more roles and relationships, we have more responsibility to manage. We attempt to balance not only our thoughts and behaviors, but also the demands of higher education, navigating relationships, maintaining jobs, running businesses, households, and/or roles in our community. New life seasons such as “adulting” demand new coping strategies.

However, the mechanisms we have used haven’t always served us well. We can experience a breakdown in our mental wellness as well as the areas of life where we have relationships, roles, and responsibilities.

Whether you were diagnosed in childhood with ADHD or discovered it as an adult, what many refer to as “adulting” can be overwhelming to the point of triggering an anxious or depressive response. We all learn differently and demonstrate our innate intelligence in a variety of ways. However, adults with ADHD often possess abilities that aren’t valued or measured by what is esteemed in society, culture, and traditional academic environments.

Adults with ADHD who have struggled with school performance often have eroded confidence, underscored by a limiting belief that they are not as proficient as their peers. This has traveled with them into adulthood, often generating anxiety and depression, marked by feelings of being unable to be productive or successful by their own standards in life. To change this, we need to unpack and understand ADHD in adults.

Unpacking and understanding

Adults with ADHD encounter fatigue and frustration with completing tasks that require organization and attention to detail. We encounter difficulty with making realistic plans. Other times, we act or over-commit before comprehending the scope of our decisions. Although good intentions fuel our pursuits, boredom or distractions can disrupt our focus. Zeal for new adventures and projects morphs into a series of incomplete projects that often feel like failures.

In one sense, we overestimate how realistic it is for us to complete all that we intend. On the other hand, we underestimate what these endeavors require. The world of ADHD buries us under feelings of inefficacy that compound over time. We abandon what we’ve begun because we lack the coping mechanisms or community that support long-term commitment.

As with all things, God wants to be with us in these challenges, as Jesus has come to do more than save us. He’s given His Holy Spirit to guide us into thriving in all things.

Set your intentions

While you may have one particular aim in mind, allow yourself the flexibility to re-calibrate and redefine what success means to you. God knew you from before your beginning. While He has outfitted you with gifts, He has also furnished the grace to use them.

He doesn’t expect you to bend your gift to other people’s expectations, but rather yield it to Him. For those among us who have ADHD, we present our unique differences to the Lord, and God demonstrates His creativity to exceed what we could fathom (Ephesians 3:20).

Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and he will establish your plans. – Proverbs 16:3, NIV

Set your attention

Keep it simple. Focus your eyes on the prize you seek to achieve or obtain, but more importantly, on the person of your faith who fuels you toward it. One writer encourages us to drop all that restrains us, then, to rivet attention on our champion (Hebrews 12:1-2). Jesus’ example reveals that He didn’t overcomplicate His mission. He stayed connected to the simple reason why He came: to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10).

Although He could have wandered from one issue to another, herded along by the whims and demands of the people or even His own compassion, He remained devoted to the Father’s will.

Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to accomplish His work. – John 4:34, NASB2020

Set your affections

Take inventory of your heart. Set your desire on the eternal. Practice asking God and being honest with yourself to shift focus to what pleases the Lord. As we consider and prioritize what the Holy Spirit is doing in and through us, we reset our hearts to develop consistent character, integrity, and the ability to move when He moves and follow His leadership.

We receive His grace to reposition our hearts, eliminating what divides and details our focus. We pause to inquire with the Holy Spirit and make pivots along the way.

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. – Colossians 3:1, NIV

Activate your learning style

Adults with ADHD often overestimate their ability to commit to and complete projects, even those within the scope of their daily activities. It can be helpful to have our learning style at the core of how we govern our life activities.

If we respond better to visual learning, then visible words, colors, and phrases on charts or lists may support us with navigating tasks. Those of us who capture information by listening (auditory learners), may respond to recorded information, podcasts, music, or mnemonic devices. Kinesthetic learners, who respond by doing, may incorporate physical movement and activity in their routines to help them remember information and reinforce how to apply it.

Cultivate coping

As one might imagine, there are many different approaches that an individual can take to navigate and manage an ADHD diagnosis. Cultivate practices that maximize the ways that you best learn and process information. As you seek God, receive grace to try something different, which may include medical intervention.

As you have honest conversations with your health practitioner, inquire about up-to-date information on medications designed to help adults offset the symptoms and behaviors of impulsivity and lack of focus.

Community

Who’s in your corner? Find empathetic people who may offer accountability to support or streamline your energies. This can be helpful to invite others to check in with and minimize the distractions that disrupt progress. Having support can help keep your eyes on the prize so that you do not become distracted from your purpose. Nurture the kind of community that helps you to follow through with what you value.

Counsel

Mental health professionals provide empathy, insight, and understanding to adults with ADHD. They convey practical approaches, modeling for us how to balance our complexities and streamline our strengths.

Sometimes therapy and medication are enough independently; but when combined, the two support us with understanding the biology, behaviors, and byproducts of an ADHD diagnosis. Counseling can help to navigate the diagnosis and how to leverage personal gifts, skills, and resources to thrive beyond what was thought possible.

The enemy wants distraction and disorder to frustrate our purpose and goad us into self-sabotage. He wants us to isolate ourselves in our ADHD diagnosis, encumbered by thoughts and feelings of anxiety and depression. However, his work is destined to fail.

We are God’s unique creation, and we can partner with Christ to fulfill the purpose God has planted in us. We don’t have to give up the hope of achieving anything worthwhile but rather recognize our help comes from the Lord and through the coping, community, and counsel He’s sent.

Next steps

The same God who created you wants to express His divine purpose through your unique characteristics. He’s the One who gives all you need for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3). In wisdom and compassion, He has provided counselors who are equipped to help you see the prize ahead and maximize what’s within you to obtain it. Use this site to find a professional who will offer support and strategy as you continue your journey, adulting with ADHD.